Six Moon Designs Lunar Solo Tent Review: An Ultralight Summer Shelter

Finding nan right shelter for a backpacking travel is ever tricky. You person to equilibrium packed size and weight against livability and really good it stands up to upwind and rain. I've ever erred connected nan broadside of a sturdy tent complete immoderate weight concerns, which is why I emotion the Hilleberg Akto, but I don't ever need nan Akto.

There is simply a short play successful my cervix of nan woods called summer, erstwhile storms are little apt and temps don't driblet overmuch beneath nan 60s. This is erstwhile I've been utilizing nan Lunar Solo, Six Moon Design's flagship ultralight one-person tent. After respective precocious and early summertime trips astir nan northbound woods of Wisconsin and Michigan, it has proved itself a tin shelter. It weighs conscionable 2 pounds, packs down rather small, and checks a full batch of different boxes connected my shelter wish list.

Plenty of Space

There is nary 1 shelter to norm them all, and trying to find 1 is simply a mistake. You're amended disconnected pinch 2 tents, knowing nan limitations of each and utilizing each erstwhile it's nan champion for nan job. Which is to say, I emotion nan Akto, but I besides deliberation Six Moon Design's Lunar Solo is fantabulous for summertime trips erstwhile you prize walking ray complete withstanding aggravated storms.

That's not to opportunity nan Lunar Solo won't support you dry. It will. The silicone nylon, aliases silnylon, is plentifulness waterproof, though you'll either request to seam-seal it yourself pinch immoderate Seam Grip, aliases person nan Six Moon Designs squad do it for you earlier they vessel it, which costs $35. My testing shelter arrived seam-sealed, but being aged capable to retrieve erstwhile you had to seam-seal conscionable astir each tent, I've done it capable times to opportunity it's not difficult should you take to DIY it.

The Lunar Solo is single-wall, single-pole shelter intended to beryllium sounded pinch a trekking pole. This makes for a very mini and ray shelter but besides has 2 imaginable drawbacks: structural integrity and condensation. More connected those successful a moment. Once pitched, nan Lunar Solo offers 26 quadrate feet of surviving abstraction and a highest tallness of 49 inches, and nan vestibule offers 8.5 quadrate feet of further cogwheel storage. Overall I recovered nan Lunar Solo to beryllium plentifulness freely for 1 personification pinch gear. The rear wall expands retired slightly, giving you a spot to stash often needed items without pushing them up against nan shelter wall.

The 20D silnylon and mesh walls consciousness arsenic durable arsenic thing you'll find astatine this weight, unless you want to spell pinch a Cuben Fiber/Dyneema tent, but to my mind nan precocious value of Cuben puts it successful a different category. The level of nan Lunar Solo is simply a much robust 40-denier (40D), and has a bathtub style to thief guarantee h2o doesn't get in. The rear of nan Lunar Solo has a 6-inch mesh information betwixt nan level and nan main wall that helps pinch ventilation.

Any azygous rod shelter is going to struggle successful wind, nary matter really galore guyline points it offers. I did find nan Lunar Solo compressed a bully woody erstwhile I sounded it successful precocious winds connected nan exposed shores of Lake Superior. It was admittedly not a awesome campsite from a seeking-shelter constituent of view, not 1 I would prime if I wasn't testing nan upwind guidance of a tent. But it did person maine that nan Lunar Solo needs either a trekking rod aliases a heavier shelter rod than the ultralight pole Six Moon Design provided. (I did a bully information of my testing while bikepacking truthful I didn't person trekking poles.)