User Review: Kelty Crestone 2

Kelty Crestone 2
Above: The current Crestone 2, which may differ slightly from the version reviewed.

Reviewed February 27, 2006 by James Navarro

Rating:
Design: Three-season non-freestanding
Sleeps: 2
Ease of Setup: easy
Price Paid: $140

The Crestone 2 is a jack-of-all-trades tent, but it's a master of none. For its weight, the Crestone 2 has quite a bit of room when you're laying down, but it is limited sitting space. It also has two doors is which is nice. When the rainfly is pitched, there's enough of an overhang to keep boots and packs dry.

Setting the tent up is fairly easy thanks to a color-coded clip desing. The rain-fly snaps easily into side-buckles. The tent is non-free standing (which means that it has to be staked in order to stand), and I've found that in rocky or mountainous terrain the stakes can be bent easily. You can try laying the stakes flat on the ground and placing heavy rocks on top of the stakes if you can't get them into the ground, but this is risky because the whole tent's integrity depends on being securely pinned down. The tent can be fortified using guy-outs--which to me seems a little counter-intutive if you've purchased this tent because of it's proported ease of use and simplicity.

The tent is made of a combination of nylon and mosquito netting and stays very cool on hot nights, even with the rain-fly pitched it ventilates well. The fly provides pretty good rain coverage.

The fly is this tent's major flaw, however. It forms a "cow-belly" or sags in the middle of the tent. No matter how tightly you stake down the fly it still sags. The sagging allows rain to pool in the middle of the fly. At the sagging point, there are also two stiched seams that are "taped," but after only a year's worth of irregular use, it allows water to seap in and drip.

It's packing dimensions are fairly large too if you keep everying together in one stuff sack. It's 8x25 in., which takes up a lot of pack space. It's a little taller and heavier if you take the foot-print (ground tarp additional $30.00 @ REI) into account.

Highlights
* Ventilation
* 2 Doors
* Weight

Fake Highlights
* Price 140 @ REI
but not after you add in $30 bucks for a foot-print

Lowlights
* RAIN-FLY leakage
* Non-free standing
* Guy outs can be a pain
* Sparce sitting room