Kelty Late Start
Bargain tent
Our take It wasn’t too long ago that 4 pounds for a two-person tent was considered light, which means you can now pick up yesterday’s ultralights for a song. And there’s no compromise on weather protection or durability. The Late Start’s 68-denier polyester fly, walls, and floor held up to a bed of shale in New York’s High Peaks Wilderness, and corner pole pockets made for an easy, taut pitch that withstood 30-mph gusts and driving rain at Tupper Lake. Tradeoff: A single door and small, 7.5-square-foot vestibule bring the livability down a notch.
The details The double-wall Late Start’s 29.5-square-foot floor is average and fit two testers (5’5” and 6’2”) with some room to stash gear. Even though the 40-inch peak height is on the lower end, our taller tester had no problem sitting fully upright.
Trail cred “On a 36°F evening in the Adirondacks I was worried about waking up to a ton of condensation, but the tent’s mesh walls prevented that,” one of our New York testers reports.