Snow Peak Amenity Dome M

Sturdy, spacious, this tent shrugs off wind & rain, and provides plenty of space inside, as well as a commodious front vestibule that can open up into a front-porch-style awning.

I have some bits of gear with which I’ve been in love for years. One of them is my Snow Peak GigaPower stove. Another is their small lantern that lets me kill off the last bit of a gas canister with a beautiful warm glow. Then there’s the 450 mL double-wall titanium mug I’ve carried about for probably twenty years or more, and the Solo Ti cook set that is gonna last a couple centuries longer than yours truly, it appears. They make some nice stuff. And the price is usually in line with that—it ain’t cheap.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve found myself doing more car camping than I used to do. (There was a point in my life where I looked at the “campers” in the typical state or national park/forest/etc. campground and inwardly shook my head at the sadness of camping next to an RV with a B&O sound system, a full bar, and an 84” drop-down TV screen on which they would watch State U taking on their old rivals. Now I use these campgrounds as my cheap version of motel rooms in some of my travels. So I just make sure to bring some ear plugs. But let’s get back to the main topic.) Since I’m doing more car camping, I finally broke down and decided to get a tent that had more room than the trunk of a 1965 Plymouth Valiant. But I didn’t want one of those cabin-tent monstrosities, either. Plus I was looking for something stable in bad weather.

Enter the Snow Peak Amenity Dome M in Ivory.

The first use of the tent was in the fall of ’22, along the upper Gunnison and Taylor Rivers in Colorado. It did exactly what I wanted it to do as I popped around from near-river campsite to near-river campsite—it provided good, stable, weatherproof shelter with plenty of space for self and gear.

Since then it’s continued use along the same vein—developed campsites where I pull in, make camp, and do other activities, ranging from fishing to hiking to birding to reading to learning bluegrass guitar, get some rest, and, after whatever seems the appropriate time, move on—in seven states and counting. I’m pleased with it. Very pleased.

The pitch isn’t the quickest & easiest, but that’s to be expected for a tent like this—more importantly, it’s not difficult. Just takes a bit of time—about fifteen minutes for me, unhurried and often distracted by a dog. The instructions tell a reader to be sure to have another person to help with set-up, but I didn’t find that to be necessary, though another pair of hands would of course have made it lighter work.

It does superbly in shrugging off bad weather, at least of the three-season realm; it’s seen a tiny bit of snow, but not enough to make any claims about it.

Ventilation is good to excellent; but the size of the tent also helps in reducing condensation, simply by its internal volume. 

The tent is about 19 lb, all in, and doesn’t pack up small. But it’s not intended to be anything but a car-camping or base-camp tent. Anyone wishing to lug this along on backcountry trips might want to re-examine plans and priorities.

Background

Been camping in tents since Nixon’s first term. Have spent backcountry nights in more different tents than the houses I’ve lived in, ranging from Coleman pup-style tents to ultra-light backpacking tents to canvas horse camp tents to TNF and Black Diamond expedition tents to a friend’s Eureka car-camping tent. Have used this tent on three excursions (plus one at-home test run of two nights—I never take a camping shelter on a trip without doing this). Experienced rain and wind, hot and cool nights, and an owl that would not shut up. This being a car-camping tent, it hasn’t seen—and likely never will—the real backcountry, but that’s not it’s intended use, as far as I’m concerned.