For our spring 2009 Adventure trip we decided to try a new tent. Our old Cabelas dome tent was starting to breakdown. The fabric is getting old and we had a large tear in the fly on our last trip.

Having experienced tent destruction due to high winds on a trip years ago I gravitate towards heavy duty tents. We also need family sized tent that will accommodate 2 adults, 1 child, 2 dogs and all our gear. I like a tent large enough that we can live in it during harsh weather.

I looked at REI as well as other companies and I could not locate a tent that I felt would suite our needs. Cabelas sells a tent called the Outfitter Series XWT – Extreme Weather Tent. This tent comes in 3 sizes, 8, 10 and 12 foot square.  Cabelas describes this tent as holding up to extreme wind and weather conditions.  I chose to try this tent out. I ordered the 10 foot tent with the additional pitch kit and floor liner.

The pitch kit allows you to pitch the tent fly and then setup the main tent under the fly out of harsh weather conditions. The floor liner adds a second floor inside the tent that can be removed when the tent is taken down.

I set the tent up inside our house before we departed for our trip so I would not be trying to figure it out in the dark when we really needed it.  The first night it took us about 45 minutes to pitch the tent but we had the time down to less than 20 minutes by the 3rd night.

There was one afternoon were we had to pitch the tent in 30 to 40 mile an hour winds. We used the pitch kit for this. I staked out the fly on the windward side and then we pulled the fly over the poles. This seemed to work well but we had to move fast. Once the fly was fully staked out we went inside and set the tent up out of the wind.

During this windy night we cooked in the vestibule and spent late afternoon and evening in the tent out of the wind. During large gusts the tent moved very little and seemed to be very solid.

I did notice a few problems with the tent. When using the pitch kit, Cabelas instructs you to attach the tent body to the poles with the same connection that is already in place from the pitch kit. They have a pin type design that slides into the pole. We had trouble getting the second pin into the bottom of the pole especially in the sandy conditions. I am going to add small clips of some sort that will be used to attach the tent rather than the pins when using the pitch kit.

The second problem is that Cabelas uses a clip to attach the tent to the center top pole and the same clip to attach the tent to the fly so as to pull the tent body out when the fly is staked out. These clips DO NOT work when they get sand in them. A problem for desert camping. I will be replacing all these clips with one that do not get jammed up by sand.

All said I was happy with the tents performance. We were able to fully pitch the tent quickly and it seemed secure in the most extreme winds. The only deterrent from purchasing this tent is the high cost. We spent about $700.00 with shipping for the tent.