How to set up a tent

In a perfect world before you even arrive to this point, you’ve taken some time to pull out all the pieces, laid everything out, and practiced this in your backyard.

You did that right?

Believe us, this will pay huge dividends when you show up to your campsite four-hours behind schedule, its dark and the batteries on your lantern just went out. We’re not saying that’s ever happened to us, but we’re also not saying that.

How difficult your tent is to set up mostly comes down to its size and shape — a single person tent is going to be significantly easier than an five person command post. That said, the basics remain mostly the same — you’re probably going to have a foot print or ground cloth, tent, tent poles, pegs or stakes, a rain fly, a mallet (or a rock) and a bit of patience. Hopefully when you practiced putting up your tent in your back yard, you remembered to put the instructions back in the bag.

Pro Tip — if you’ve lost the instruction manual, most manufacturers make them available for free, online.

Campsite selected let’s get to setting this thing up!

Spread out the groundsheet; groundsheets offer a layer of waterproofing and help protect the tent floor, not essential but highly recommended. Pull all your poles out, snap them together (the overwhelming majority of tent poles these days are manufactured with shock cord running through them to keep them together) and lay them out in such a fashion where like poles are grouped — long poles with each other, short ones and so on. Lay your tent out over the groundsheet, you’re going to want the door away from the wind to keep things like campfire smoke out of you humble abode. Depending upon your tent (here’s where you’ll refer to your instruction manual), you’ll either slide the poles through a sleeve or attach them to the clips to form the skeleton of the tent. Don’t connect the poles to the end of the tent just yet, we need to attach the rain fly. Lay the rain fly over the tent and secure it as directed in your instructions. Go ahead and insert the poles into the flaps at the end, this should pitch your tent up. We don’t want anything flying away at this point so using your mallet or a good solid rock, move around the perimeter of the tent and stake it down in the stake holes provided. Your last step should be to tuck any edges of your groundsheet under your tent floor, so none of the groundsheet is visible. Assuming everything went right, you’re now in business with your home away from home.

So, in recap — setting up your tent does not have to be a stressful event. Practice at home and identify any problems while you can still fix them. Follow the below steps and you’re well on your way to Getting Primitive on BLM managed public lands

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