User Review: Kelty Grand Mesa 6

Kelty Grand Mesa 6
Above: The current Grand Mesa 6, which may differ slightly from the version reviewed.

Reviewed June 10, 2009 by Shelly Berger

Rating:
Design: three season freestanding dome
Sleeps: 6+
Ease of Setup: extremely easy, can be done by 1 person
Weight: 14lbs
Price Paid: $134

Normally I utilize smaller tents, but for a 2 week trip with my husband, we wanted a taller tent he would not have to crawl into, and that would accommodate our air mattresses and gear when we were using it as a basecamp.

I bought this tent without having time to read reviews after an online order was back ordered. I found it at the local Sportsman's Warehouse on sale for $134.

The tent goes up in a flash and can be set up by one person without much effort. Putting the rain fly on by yourself is a little trickier just because of the height. The spec's list the tent as 5'10" but it is really about 6' or 6' 1". Also because of the nearly vertical walls it provides a huge amount of usable floor space. We had 2 adults on air mattresses, my teenage daughter on a mat, plus 3 large backpacking packs in it and still had an aisle down the middle to move about.

The rain fly creates a huge vestibule that additional gear can be stored under but we never needed it as everything fit in our tent. Again, because of the height the tent, the vestibule space is tall and could accommodate a bike or other large items.

It rained 9 out of 13 days of our trip, plus hailed / snowed 3 times. On some occasions the rain froze overnight and we had ice on the rainfly in the mornings. The tent stayed perfectly dry, was well ventilated, and did not have condensation issues. It ventilated but not to the point we had heat loss issues. I do not know how it would perform in hot weather.

Our son & friend who were sharing a new Eureka tent stayed dry for the first week but then began having issues with leakage under the same conditions.

Overall we are extremely satisfied with our Kelty Grand Mesa and would recommend it to anyone. The only possible downside we noticed was the lack of windows. Without the rainfly on the mesh panels come down low enough that in a public campground you would not have much privacy, and with the rainfly on you have no visibility except when the rainfly door is fastened half open.

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