⚙️ Marmot Nitro 2P Tent

May of 2020 I purchased the Marmot Nitro 2P tent to explore Florida with my seven year-old son on local backpacking trips.

The tech specs:
– weight two pounds five ounces
– floor space 52 x 86 in about 29 square feet plus a 6.5 square foot vestibule
– interior height 47 inches (I am nearly six foot and I do not hit my head sitting up

The trade off with this tent is that it is not free standing, nor is it spacious for two adults. As a father and son tent the space works.

Things we didn’t expect nor like:
– Worthless and inaccurate instructions. Some parts about the tent are not very obvious. And even though the instructions refer to color coded ends, we weren’t able to find any on our trip. Our guess is that the instructions were shared with other Marmot tents (perhaps the Force 2?).
– Terribly designed vestibule. The Marmot 2P has ‘2’ doors, but you can only use one of them if the rain-fly is setup. As for the remaining door, it is a flexibility challenging to get out without rubbing against the rain-fly. We’re ashamed we didn’t think about this before buying it (We thought the designers must have thought it through).  Consequently, one person still needs to crawl over their buddy to get outside when the vestibule is being used to keep out the rain.

The deal breaker:
– Condensation. It doesn’t matter how taut you setup the rain fly, it’s going to touch the mesh at some points. We even brought our own rope and tied the ends to tree branches nearby, and even then the bottom of the rain fly (towards the end of the tent) was inevitably touching the mesh. Then there’s a bigger problem: The fact that the foot section is made of a a thin, waterproof material. It is indeed waterproof – it doesn’t let water vapor escape the tent. We thought the small window would stimulate airflow, but we were wrong. These two pitfalls resulted in our sleeping bags being soaking wet in the morning from condensation. The inner side of the ‘bathtub’ floor was also soaking wet. We tried opening the vent, doing away with the vestibule altogether, but we still got wet the next morning. We’ve gone on the exact same hike with an MSR tent and even a cheap Coleman tent, and we didn’t get more than a few drops of water after a misty, cool night in either tent. While we might live with a compromised vestibule, we can’t live waking up wet the next morning on our hiking trips.

If you hike in humid climates or care about getting wet in the morning, I can’t recommend this tent. Otherwise, go ahead, it’s super light!

UPDATES:

• I Experienced a funny failure using the tent while backpacking in a rainstorm.  One stake pulled out of the soft ground and the tent fell down.  I did remain dry inside.  Unfortunately my trekking pole was damaged.  Leki, repaired the trekking pole after my trip.  I should have double staked the tent.
• This tent is no longer being made.  We still use it as a light weight two person tent for Florida winter backpacking.  During humid Florida backpacking trips we are now using tents by Nemo.