Packing a tent

What is the best way to pack a 3-season tent? It seems I can never figure out a solid way to put it in my pack. I have no problem fitting everything in, but I feel as though I am losing valuable space. Is compression bad for tents over a short period of time? Thanks.

compression bad for tents over a short period of time?

No. That's the recommended way to do it.

you might try folding it (like a bed sheet) and lay it flat on the bottom of the pack.

don't store your tent folded.

Well of course the tent is compressed when put into the stuff sack, but are compression bags (with the straps) bad?

I was reading an article in Backpacker magazine recently that said stuffing a tent into a bag over periods of time is worse than if you rolled it up in an organized manner and then put it into the bag. I'll try to find the article and let you know which issue it was.

Only if you're including the poles in a way where they'll be smashed. Other then that, the tent is plenty durable enough to survive a little smooshing, if that's the way you want to do it.

Turns out that the instructions with most quality tents from the quality manufacturers say to stuff the tent, and that's why they are called "stuff sacks". Folding will eventually produce the creases that are the failure points (or lines) for coated materials (this is not as true for the newest methods of making waterproof floor and fly materials that impregnate the fabric rather than merely coating the surface). Rolling is considered ok, depending on how you do the folding to get to the rolling width (length of the stuff sack. I discovered the "stuffing" recommendation one day when I got a bunch of new tents for the Boy Scout troop I was Scoutmaster of, after many decades of careful folding (and finding lines of leakage in tent floors after a year or two of using the tents every weekend). See, being a techie, "we don' need no stinkin' directions." Who ever reads the manual (except in desperation, or on the 4th day of sitting in a tent waiting out a storm)?

There are some other surprising things, like the proper way to fold poles with a bungie cord in them (always start in the middle and work your way toward the ends - if you start at one end, you are likely to run out of stretch of the bungie, and in any case it wears the bungie out more quickly - and this really shows up in really cold weather, when you end up with a bungie that acts like a wet noodle).

I remember being taught to roll and stuff it different ways to prevent any creases (weak spots).

I always put my tents into larger than OEM stuffsacks and do my poles as Bill mentions, have done since the '70s. I now have much larger sylnylon sacks for my five tents and my three bivies. This is easy in cold weather and allown me to carefully pack the tent/bivy into all nooks and crannies in a given pack.