Gear review: EMS Tristar
Perfect for hot summer nights and anyone who
loves extra elbowroom

The 'Taj Mahal' of tents: EMS' Tristar.


s someone who likes to pack every gadget and gear item "just in case," I try to make sure my equipment is as lightweight and compact as possible. Normally, I carry a lightweight (4 lb., 9 oz.), narrow, 2-person tent that offers just 25½ feet of floor space. On a mid-summer hike through California’s King’s Canyon National Park, my hiking partner and I packed EMS’ freestanding Tristar tent, instead—a luxury home compared to my old standby, and judging by other hiker’s reactions.

"It’s the Taj Mahal!" said Gary, our bivy-sacking neighbor, one night. Looking around the campsite, I realized we did stand out with our tall (4 feet high at its peak), sprawling (39 square feet of floor space), 2-person dome. Surrounding us were bivy sacks, homemade shelters (constructed with hiking poles and pieces of fabric) and several small one- and two-person tents, plus the aforementioned Gary, whose entire pack weighed just 20 pounds for a week in the backwoods. I found that on this seven-day, 60-mile, high-altitude hike, it wasn't really necessary to have such a spacious sleeping shelter. But it sure was nice.

The three-season Tristar has just about every feature I could ever ask for, and a little bit more. Setup is quick and easy. Two lightweight aluminum poles slip through continuous pole sleeves that run the length of the tent—no darting back and forth to hand-feed, coax or nudge the poles along—and then a third pole with an elbow joint slips over the top of the tent, widthwise, and clips into place. It’s up in 45 seconds, tops.

If the weather takes a turn for the worst, as happened one night in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, it’s a breeze to add the rainfly. As soon as you’ve figured out which way the fly faces (a small indicator—i.e. "front"— would help), you can secure it to the tent in seconds, using six plastic snaps. The fly has two clear vinyl windows through which we watched a mule deer munching on grass in the Sierras, just four feet from our tent.

Double doors provide easy access into the vast interior and two moderately sized vestibules (just over 5 square feet each) are ideal for storing wet or smelly gear and providing ventilation, while keeping foul weather out of reach.

By the time darkness settled on our tent in King’s Canyon, several things were clear: my view through the nearly all-mesh canopy surrounding us, and the fact that, weather permitting, our rainfly would remain off for the rest of the trip. All that mesh meant the nights would be brisk—down to the lower 40s at 10,500 feet—but well worth the views of shooting stars streaking across the Milky Way.

I slept without the fly for eight out of 15 nights, from islands in Maine’s Muscongus Bay to exposed ledges in California’s King’s Canyon. When the rainfly was on, I always left the fly doors at least halfway open for air circulation.

Most of the time, the durable tent road on the front outside of my pack—stuffed into its nylon sack and lashed down with bungee cords—that I often plunked down on rocky or dirt surfaces and occasionally scraped (unavoidably) against fallen trees and brush that swallowed the trail. The tent shows no signs of wear.

The only real malfunction occurred the last three nights of the weeklong Sierra trip. The poles became so difficult to get into the grommets that I couldn’t set up the tent on my own. An EMS customer service person told me that this might be the result of the poles heating up during the day and, as a result, swelling just enough to make them extremely difficult (if not impossible) to insert into the grommets. He said EMS plans to add extra grommets on future Tristar tents.