Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska Tent recommendation please!!

These are just my own experiences, so take them with a grain of salt. I have spent a lot of time both in the Bombshelter and in my Alaskan Guide 8-man. They are both great tents. But if set up in the best way possible for each, I think the AK Guide tent actually is a little better. The Bombshelter is more rectangular and takes a bit more hit with the high winds. It still works, but I found that you have to go outside every so often and re-stake the heavy fly which tends to buffet in the wind and pull the stakes harder. The AK Guide has a more aerodynamic dome shape, more rigid, and in my experience, with the same type of high winds, it does not pull out stakes as much. Mine came with an attachable 7”x10” vestibule. The whole thing with all of the guy lines is held by 46 stakes. It’s pretty secure when you use all of that. Just my own experience.

All that being said, if you’re concerned about really bad weather, you might be better off with two 11-lb three man tents, which would be less than half the weight of either of the above. Last Sept. in SW Alaska, my guide had his 10x1 Bombshelter set up, and I brought the backup—Marmot Thor 3p tent. These are successfully used on Everest expeditions. It has six high-strength aluminum poles, has a lower profile, and mine is staked out with 36 stakes, including countless guy lines. When the winds got over 60mph, the Bombshelter stayed up, but it was constantly flexing and, as said before, we had to re-stake it several times. My Marmot (much smaller with the lower profile and staked out in 36 places) essentially didn’t budge. If the winds had picked up another 10-20 mph or so, we clearly would have been solely in the Marmot.

The obvious dilemma about bringing the two smaller tents as opposed to one bigger one is that they are more stable and trap more body heat. But they also don’t allow you to stand up or put a table in there, etc … Depends on your needs. If the weather was likely to be really extreme, I would prefer to have two smaller expedition tents. If not, a bigger stand-up tent would be better.

Here's the Bombshelter and Marmot. You can barely see the Marmot, but can get an idea of the lesser profile:



This is it more close-up:





A couple of pics of the AK Guide: