We had a brief window into spring last week — the yard dried up enough to spend some time outside, and the sun was out for more than an hour. I took advantage of that time to pitch the Kelty Hula House 4 in the back yard — you don’t want to pitch a tent for the first time in the rain, right?
Kelty’s Hulu House is a tall, roomy, lightweight car camping tent. It comes in two sizes, four and six. We like a four for car camping because there’s extra room for stuff in side and we’re not up against the nylon when the weather goes bad. The tent is almost all netting, meaning it’s got lots of ventilation — you absolutely want the fly on if you’re going to be someplace where there’s fog or condensation, but for hot dry places, you can leave it off and see the stars. (We once camped at the Green River in Utah under a bright full moon, this is the tent I wish we’d had then.)
Pitching the tent is easy enough. It’s your classic two pole dome tent with an extra hoop (hence the “hula” in the name) that goes over the top. Once the two cross bars are up and the sides clipped in place, you drop the spring-loaded hoop over the top and clip the tent on at additional points. This makes the sides of the tent stand out well away from the cross bars, giving the tent more of a house shape than your classic half dome. It feels very roomy inside, the husband and I could both stand up inside without hitting our heads. (Okay, I’m short. He’s just under 6 ft.)
The fly stakes out in front in such a way that there’s a little vestibule or front porch and there’s a little window in the doorway too. I wanted extra poles to stake out the door way so it could serve as a sort of awning or shade protection, but I suppose you could tie out to some nearby tree if you’ve got them. On it’s own, you don’t have to stake the tent, you do need to stake the fly. The tent stakes aren’t the sturdiest, but that’s typical for tent kits — we usually carry plenty of extras for when ours bend or break in hard ground.
Pulling the tent down was a little bit more difficult. It’s all doable by one person — I did it — but the hoop was so tightly spring loaded that I couldn’t get it to collapse. It’s not clear if there’s a release point on the hoop; this might make it a bit easy. It’s a clever design — the hoop is entirely shock corded, just like the tent stakes, but it took some fussing to get it to release. The whole kit rolls up into a nice bag. It’s not super compact, but it’s not meant to be, either, it’s a family car camping tent, not a back country ultra-light.
There are a few things I questioned. Camping in the wet as we do, I’ll be watching to see how the seams hold up on the floor — I prefer a bathtub construction floor and the Hula Hut doesn’t have this, it’s got taped seams. Because the tent is all mesh, there’s no pretense of privacy without the fly. All that netting might mean that if you have to pitch it in the rain, you run the risk of getting water inside the tent if you take too long to get it pitched and covered. I’ve no doubt that it will keep the rain off from above once it’s up, the fly covers properly and if you pitch the tent nice and tight, you’ll stay dry inside.
The Hula Hut passed the backyard sunny day test quite easily. We’ll see how this roomy portable house does in the rain later this summer. In the meantime, if you’re in the market for a new car camping tent, check out the Hula Hut. You can get yours from Backcountry.com for about $299, or for now anyway you can get it for $20 less at Campmor.
Related: Need a well designed little lamp to hang from the top of your tent? Check out Kelty’s Lumapivot Lantern.
