The Best Family Camping
Tents for winter 2023
Home away from home. Shelter. Bedroom. Warmth and Comfort. Playroom. Changing room. And on it goes. Your tent is the heavy hitter of the campsite, the piece of gear without which you’re not really camping, you’re just kind of out there in the woods.
With a great family camping tent for winter you can quickly create a space that’s safe, warm, dry, and that can be used for sleeping, for games and storytelling, for mealtime if it’s extra cold (or wet or snowy) out, for dressing and changing and diaper business, and for storing gear and apparel. You can’t really have a good family camping trip without a trusty tent.
So while we have broken things down here based on the best tents for various winter weather and conditions, for the smaller family, for the camping family looking for their best budget tent, and so forth, the common factors here are reliability and the fact that we have tested out gear from these brands ourselves.
The Best Tents for your Winter camping trip
A Kelty Grand Mesa Tent is light enough for hikers yet big enough for families
If you’re looking for a great tent for a three-person group or a snug but reliable tent for four, Kelty’s Grand Mesa 4- Person tent is a good choice. At a little over seven pounds, it’s light enough for moderate trekking (especially if you split up its components among adults) yet the tent still sets up large enough to accommodate four adult-sized sleeping bags, albeit without room to spare. This seam-sealed, double-walled tent will keep you and the crew warm and dry, and when needed you can easily tuck back portions of the rainfly to let the breeze blow through.
A Mountain Hardware Outpost is a great tent for cold weather
To be clear, this is a two-person tent, so unless you and your partner are camping with just one rather small kid, you’ll need to get two of these tents to house the whole crowd. But if you’re camping in cold, windy, and even snowy conditions, it’s a good idea to have a smaller, lower profile tent anyway. This rugged, well-sealed tent can keep its occupants warm and dry and can stand up against gusts and under moderate snow load. It’s an overkill of a tent for the casual fair weather campers, but a great choice for use in wilder conditions when your tent becomes not only about comfort and convenience but also about safety.
A Klymit Cross Canyon tent can serve the car campers, the trekkers, the paddlers, and more
Versatile by the nature of its design, this is a basic but spacious tent with a reliable rainfly, a decently large covered vestibule area, and multiple internal storage pockets. The four-person Cross Canyon is a great choice for the family whose camping adventures take many shapes, from the week traveling on trails or rivers to the weekend where you make camp a stone’s throw from the car. At about 10 and a half pounds all-in (meaning rainfly, poles, etc.) this tent is suitable for hiking provided you share the weight, and you’ll appreciate its 100” by 86” interior when it’s time for some shuteye. Or games. Or dinner on a cold night. It’s a wonderful three-season tent everywhere and fine for winter in many climates.