User Review: MSR Fury

Summary

This tent is bomb proof! It is a lightweight, sturdy, spacious, 4-season tent that will keep you comfy. I would recommend this tent to anyone considering camping in cold and vicious weather.

 
I lived in this tent for 2 months during early spring in the backcountry of Patagonia, and it kept me warm and dry through rain, snow, graupel and fierce winds, even when the ground under my tent turned into a squishy mud puddle it never leaked.

Setup is very intuitive. I have the pole sleeve model, which takes a little more time to set up than the pole clip model, and it can be pretty tough getting the poles into the grommets in very arid conditions (like in Joshua Tree National Park) with only one person setting it up, because the fabric gives less under arid conditions. 

The pitch is very taut, and there are lots of guy-out points to help stabilize it. Even the Roaring Forties were no match for this tent! It's very, very stable, and even more stable when properly and completely guyed out. It takes 8 stakes to stake out tent and vestibule, and I almost always guy out 5 additional points — 2 on each side and one at the end opposite the vestibule. This helps keep the fly off the main body to improve ventilation and prevent condensation.

Ventilation is great! Even after days of rain and snow I never found condensation on the inside of the tent walls. I vent the door low and open the high vent at the opposite end and this works really well. It's great in cold weather because there's very little mesh so it stays warm inside. You can actually close it all up and have no mesh, except for venting of course.

I spent the majority of my time in Patagonia solo in this tent, and it's cavernous. I kept all of my gear inside along with my Therm-a-Rest and sleeping bag set up, and still had some room to move around. It's also really spacious for two, with good length and headroom. The 4 side pockets and gear loft hold a lot and keep little stuff organized and easily accessible even in the dark. 

The one vestibule is a decent size, and even with 2 people sleeping in the tent, you don't have to climb over each other to get in and out. Two big packs can fit in the vestibule, but you would have to move one to get out. I like the pockets in the vestibule, too — they're great for hanging stinky socks to dry out. In short, this is a very livable tent.

The Fury is really light for a double wall 4-season tent. Minimum weight is only 6 lbs. 2 oz. (packed weight is 7 lbs.) I don't carry the stuff sacks with me except for the stake bag with stakes, repair kit and a few line tensioners. I employ the stuff-it-all-into-the-backpack method of packing it, rather than rolling and trying to fit it into a stuff sack (fewer stuff sacks = less weight). 

This tent has held up extremely well under some pretty rough conditions over the past year. I've used it in the Mojave Desert and the Sierras pretty regularly, mostly in colder weather, and lived in it for 2 solid months in Patagonia, and its performance has been consistently excellent.

I did a huge amount of research before buying this tent, and considered many different models. In the end, there were a variety of things that made me decide on this one — weight, interior space, four-season sturdiness — and I definitely made the right decision!