Mountain Hardwear  Mineral King 3 Tent with Footprint

I bought this tent in 2020 and highly recommend it. Use it for car camping. I am thinking about buying the 2 person version for backpacking. Well designed with quality materials and workmanship. I love the mostly vertical walls, plenty of room for my wife and myself plus our duffle bags, extra blankets and pillows. Easy to set up. But what I’m most impressed with is the performance in challenging weather. One trip to the Sawtooths included a hard rain, probably about an inch. A year later in central Utah, we had hail and about 2.5” of rain including hard rain almost one entire night. Never a leak anywhere. Simply remarkable. I’ve been a backpacker since about 1975 and this is the best tent I’ve used.

I purchased this tent to replace my Mountain Hardware Light Wedge 3 tent that was over 15 years old. I am a botanist and spend about 1000 work hours living out of a tent each year. I loved my old tent but the rain fly was getting very thin and waterproofing spray wasn't cutting it anymore. So I decided to stick with the same brand and buy a tent with a similar foot print that would fit my insulated queen air mattress. This tent seems quite a bit larger than my previous tent though. I waited to review this tent until after my second field season and I would not recommend this tent. The tent does not cinch down tight like the light wedge so windy nights are restless nights for me even with ear plugs in. Now I don't use the rain fly if I'm in the tent unless it's actually raining. Also because the sides of the tent are so floppy it is difficult to open and close doors. I ended up sewing the flap along the door zipper back to the mesh because I was constantly zipping the mesh up in the door. This helped a bit but I still have to be careful. One of the zippers has already failed and is stuck half way across the top of the door. Since the door has two zippers it is still partly usable. On my old tent I replaced the zipper pulls once after it was over a decade old. I have sprayed with waterproofing spray twice now and it seems to keep the water out, but the fabric dosen't dry as fast as my colleague's tents. I have also never patched so many holes! In the floor, in the ground cloth, in the sides, in the mesh, in the rain fly. I only repaired one hole in my previous tent. About the only thing I love about this tent is all the mesh. It's nice to keep out biting bugs and still have lots of air flow. It sets up fairly easy as well. I'm quite disappointed in the quality of this tent compared to my previous Mountain Hardwear tent. Anyone have a rainfly for the now discontinued light wedge 3 they would sell me? I'd be a happy camper!