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The original was posted on /r/Ultralight by /u/Wandering_Hick on 2024-11-13 15:56:58+00:00.

Just got back from testing 6 tents in some pretty high winds. Using 2 anemometers, I measured a peak gusts of 72 km/h (45mph), which led to two of the six tents having poles bend (2 tents had already failed). Average wind speeds were 30-40 km/h (19-25 mph) with normal gusts hitting 50-55 km/h (31-34 mph).

One of the tents I was testing was the Zpacks Plex Solo. It’s a tent I’ve seen written off for windy conditions because of how lightweight it is, so I wanted to test it out. The things I thought would help it perform in wind are the geometry, using a robust trekking pole for structural support (Costco poles), and all the guylines. The things i thought might fail were the guylines slipping or ripping off of the tent with too much load.

I set the tent up with the door on the leeward side of the wind. So the entire back panel was being hit. Overall, the tent performed very well. The pyramid shape dumped wind very effectively due to not having any steeper walls like on some of the tents with tent poles. Not having tent poles also reduced a significant point of failure for other tents. An all-in-one pitch makes a big difference when setting the tent up in the wind. I was also able to pre-stake out all the guyout points, which meant I had full guyline support for the tent very quickly after raising the centre pole. The testing showed that guylines are one of the most important factors for tent performance in wind and having 10 guyout points for such a little tent definitely helped the Plex Solo. Some of the guylines did slip a little and I had to lock the tension using a half hitch at the lineloc. The issue of linelocs slipping was happening across all the tents. The triangle line locks did better.

Edit: I pitched the tent on a sports field with good compressed soil and used a mixture of pretty robust stakes.