I believe you may be ruining a hunt of a lifetime. Am sorry about your outfitter friend and his misfortune, but I have never seen a properly pitched wall tent collapse from snow, not in any of our camps!
For twenty years, I setup a big base camp, for our third season Colorado Elk hunt, at 10,800' elev. We used a 15'x20' wall tent and several canvas gable tents with tarps. Over the years we had some pretty heavy snows, at least 2 feet. One year the snow was so deep that it topped the hood of the truck on the road into camp. Never had a tent collapse.
