Originally Posted by
HooKooDooKu
Tent not made for use in wet conditions???
I used to own an REI Co-op Half Dome 2 Plus Tent
{that 'Plus' means it is a great size for two people}
One of the things that was terrific about the tent was the ability to resist water. The 1st camping trip I used it on, it poured down rain for about an hour and the spot I setup the tent became a minor river about 1/2" to 1" deep.
I quickly piled everything inside the tent on top of my 2" sleeping pad getting ready for the impending river in my tent. But it never came. The inside of the tent stayed dry (and once the rain stopped, the river around my tent receded).
Unfortunately, I ultimately returned the tent under the REI one year guarantee because of two major issues:
1. The rain fly allowed water to pool on the top of the tent {kept having to push on the fly to get it to run off fearing it might start soaking thru}
2. The no-seem netting developed a hole with "routine use" of less than 12 nights out (no accidents)
Not sure if there was some special way to setup the tent to avoid the pooling... and I've never had durability issues with REI products before, so I hope both things were a one-off on this tent.
One of the things that was terrific about the design of the tent (that I didn't realize until I replaced it with a Big Agnes) was the offset design of the zipper on the rain fly.
On the down side, it required a minimum of 6 rather than 4 tent pegs to stake out the tent. But the design keeps the zipper close to the tent body.
By contrast, the typical tent (BA and others) is that the zipper goes strait down the center of the rain fly, and that means the zipper ends where the rain fly is farthest from the tent body. You have to either lean out and get your hands in the dirt to reach to zip/unzip the tent, or leave it only partially zipped.