Carrying A Tent With A Backpack: A Guide With Pictures

When you go hiking, you carry all your items with your backpack. The way you decide to pack all your items significantly affects how heavy your backpack will feel. Organizing them well makes hiking much more manageable.

In this post, we’ll discuss how to carry a tent with a backpack in a step-by-step manner.

How to prepare and roll the tent

First, you’ll need to check that the tent isn’t too damp or dirty. You probably don’t want to store the tent if it’s not clean. You can sway the tent up and down in the air to remove dust, dirt, and water, which usually helps.

When the tent is relatively clean, you’ll need to align and fold it. Every tent is folded differently, but it will usually fold into a long rectangle. Make sure the folded tent is properly aligned, otherwise it’ll make it harder to properly roll it.

Now you can roll the tent. Try to keep the layers aligned when you roll it, and keep it as tight as possible. The tighter you roll it, the less space it’ll eventually take.

With some tents, you can throw roll the pegs and the poles with the tent fabric.

How to pack a tent in a backpack

Storing the tent inside the backpack is mainly beneficial because of weight distribution. The farther an item is from your back, the heavier it feels. That’s why you want to store heavy items close to your back, and when storing your tent inside your backpack, you can manage that.

Additionally, when the tent is stored inside your backpack, it’s relatively protected from hits and stretches from the outside, and parts can’t fall off and get lost.

The main issue with storing your tent inside your backpack is that it takes up space. You’ll have to take a bigger backpack that’ll also fit the tent, which is less comfortable.

You might also get the bag dirty if your tent isn’t clean, or if it’s damp.

Tips for storing a tent inside your backpack:

• Try folding the tent as tightly as possible, so it doesn’t take up a lot of space.
• ideally, you’d store the tent horizontally for better weight distribution, but that’s generally not possible because of tent poles. Instead, try storing it close your to back.
• It’s better to place the tent in the center, but putting it off-center is fine if you have to, and the tent isn’t too heavy.

How to strap a tent to a backpack

If you don’t have enough space to put your tent inside your backpack, it’s completely fine and easy to strap it outside the backpack. This saves precious space in your backpack, so you can travel with a smaller bag.

Access to your tent will also be easier, so when you’re tired at the end of the day, you won’t have to unpack everything to start setting your shelter up.

The main issues with storing the tent outside your backpack are that it’s less secure, so parts could get damaged from the outside or fall off, and that the weight distribution is less ideal.

It’s generally best for weight distribution to strap the tent on the bottom of the backpack. The next best option is to strap it on top. You can see this in the image below:

Make sure the tent sack is properly closed, so items can’t fall off and get lost.

If you’re hiking in winter, you’ll also need to make sure your tent sack the waterproof, so your tent won’t get soaked if you find yourself hiking in the rain.

You can use the straps that come with your backpack to secure the tent. If they don’t fit or aren’t appropriately located, you can simply use a rope. Make sure to tie it so you can later open the tie up without too much of a hustle.

Strapping a tent on the bottom of the backpack

Your best option, if possible, is to strap the tent to the bottom of your backpack. This will create the best weight distribution possible with a tent outside the backpack.

You can use the backpack’s straps to secure the tent if you have them on the bottom. If you don’t, you can use a rope.

As an example, here’s a picture of the bottom of my bag, where I have some loops where rope can be secured:

Strapping a tent on the top of the backpack

Though a bit less ideal for weight distribution, it’s completely fine to strap your tent to the top of the backpack.

Generally, the top of a backpack won’t have straps you can easily secure your tent with. So you’ll use a rope to tie the tent to the pack.

Here’s an example of how I secured a tent to the top of my pack with the straps:

Avoid strapping the tent on the far back

Strapping the tent to the far back of your backpack is a bad option. It’ll make your backpack feel much heavier because the tent will be far from your back.

This is a common mistake because many backpacks have straps in the far back you can easily secure your tent with.

Final thoughts

In the post, we’ve covered different ways to carry a tent with your backpack. The easiest way is definitely to store the tent inside your backpack, but it’s limiting.

If you decide to store the tent on the outside, make sure you’re strapping it to the bottom or the top of the pack.

Multi-day backpacking is really fun, so I hope you’ll have an easy time carrying your tent around after you read this post.