The Secret to Camping Comfortably in Cold Weather? Cotton Canvas Tents.

Two weeks ago a buddy and I went on an overnight hunting trip in the Montana wilderness. While we were searching for elk, we spotted the aurora borealis. That, and a whole heap of early-season snow. Luckily, we came prepared. We eschewed latest ultralight technical fabrics and relied upon a century-old technology. I’m talking about a cotton canvas tent.

The best cold weather technical clothing prioritizes one performance metric above all others: breathability. Moving moisture away from your body keeps you comfortable and allows insulation to do its job. So why isn’t it common for us to ask the same of our tents? That’s the idea behind cotton canvas, a classic tent material that’s making a comeback.

If you’ve ever spent a sleepless night shivering in a cold, damp plastic tent, you’ll understand the problem. While silicon-coated nylon and other ultralight materials used by most major outdoor brands deliver extraordinary packability and value, their entirely-waterproof nature tends to keep any moisture that gets inside, well, inside. And that’s not just a problem when it’s raining. Human bodies produce about 200 milliliters of moisture in an average night.

Canvas Tents Work as a System with Stoves

Your base layers and waterproof-breathable hardshells don’t evacuate moisture on their own. Your clothing relies on heat produced by your body to create a pressure differential with the outside environment to force moisture outwards. Canvas tents work the same way. It’s important to think of them as part of a system.

The material itself makes this pairing possible. Cotton canvas is naturally heat– and flame– resistant (note that I didn’t say “proof!”), so with a reasonable amount of care, it’s safe to house a wood-burning stove inside a canvas tent. Snowtrekker—a family-owned tentmaker based in Wisconsin—recommends keeping the stove at least 20 inches from the fabric tent body. Should you use a floor, camp on a sensitive surface, or set your floorless tent on a frozen lake to use as an ice fishing shelter (something I plan to do this winter), then a heat-reflective, spark-proof mat can protect the ground from heat and embers.

Tents designed to work with stoves will also feature chimney jacks, made from flame- and heat-proof materials like silicone. These allow the stove’s chimney to pass through the tent without damaging the fabric.

Get a fire going inside a stove, and the chimney will pull smoke away from the tent while the stove’s metal body radiates heat. Just like a radiator you’ll find in an older building, that heat is entirely dry. In cool to cold weather, the warm air created by the stove forces moisture through the canvas, creating an exceptionally dry environment inside the tent.

If you’re picturing a sauna-like experience here you’re not wrong. Snowtrekker actually makes a dedicated version of their tent designed to work as a portable sauna. But while camping, you don’t need to keep the fire burning that hot.

Cotton’s Unique Properties Help Keep Things Dry

Worn on your body, untreated cotton has deservedly earned it’s “cotton kills” reputation. Cotton fibers are hollow inside, and carry a slight negative charge. Water molecules carry a slight positive charge. That means cotton can absorb up to 27 times its own weight in water, then become really difficult to dry out. And, next to your skin, soaked cotton will keep you wet, potentially leading to hypothermia.

Move that fabric away from your skin to the tent body and cotton’s propensity to soak up moisture can actually help keep you dry. Canvas weaves leave gaps between the individual fibers. This is great for breathability, but can let heavy rain through. But cotton swells when it soaks up all that moisture, so cotton canvas’ water resistance actually improves as it gets wetter.

Canvas Is Strong, Repairable, and Durable

While nylon is stronger than cotton, that comparison is only for fabrics of equivalent weights. Most silicon-coated nylon tents measure between 40 and 70 Denier. A single strand of silk is one Denier. Most cotton canvas tent fabrics are measured in ounces per square yard rather than Denier, but the stuff used for tents typically work out around 900 Denier. That’s to say these things are thick, burly, and yes, heavy.

And while that weight means a canvas tent is never going to compare to a SilNylon alternative for backpacking, the upside is we’re talking about a very strong fabric.

Fabric strength is especially important for canvas tents because they’re designed to be lived in rather than only slept in, and must be much larger as a result. Inside a canvas tent, in bad weather, you’re going to want room to stand up, dry clothing, cook, and hang out. Plus you’ve got to leave room for a stove—and that 20-inch safety gap around it. Paired with a strong aluminum or steel pole structure, the heavy canvas fabric creates a resilient structure that can withstand weather in a way that the flexible poles and thin fabrics of backpacking tents could never achieve.

Cotton canvas has other benefits. First, you can patch it. Holes can happen, especially during transportation. But with cotton, you’re never further away from repair than a few minutes with a needle and thread, or glue and a patch.

While exposure to sunlight, weather, and general wear-and-tear can shorten the lifetime of nylon tents to a few years, quality cotton canvas tents should last one or two decades when cared for properly. Longevity is good, considering cotton-canvas tents require a significant upfront investment.

I own two canvas tents because each can perform a unique job.

The Portable Option

Snowtrekker MegaCrew 13×13 (from $2,500)

I’m six-foot-two and 200 pounds, my buddy Connor is six-foot-eight and 260 pounds. I wanted a tent large enough for two big guys like us to comfortably stand up inside, sleep on cots, hang clothing to dry, cook, and hang out during late season hunts. And I wanted that tent, along with its stove, to pack down small enough that it could be carried into the backcountry on a single quad bike, in a single trip.

I also wanted a tent that could easily be towed on a plastic sled by a single person on snowshoes or skis for winter camping trips in and around Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks—all the while accommodating two couples on ground pads.

Those are wildly divergent, somewhat conflicting requirements. Most canvas wall tents this large require transport by truck or pack mule. But Snowtrekker has two major technical advantages—along with some unique design details—that boost their tents’ portability.

Snowtrekker uses a proprietary cotton canvas that measures out at a very-strong seven ounces, but is much thinner than the fabrics used for most other canvas tents. That helps the tent body pack up small, something aided by the steeply-sloped roof, short side walls, and floorless design. It’s an efficient design that uses the least amount of fabric possible to cover such a large internal area.

Duane and Margot Lottigs, the couple who founded the company, also worked with Easton Aluminum to develop a unique pole frame that pairs a narrow wedge with wide guylines to maximize space with minimal material. Other clever design touches are everywhere, from plastic guyline clips made from a material that won’t crack even in temperatures as low as negative 60 Fahrenheit, to wraparound snowflaps that enable you to set the tent up without stakes in deep snow.

The tent measures 13-by-13 feet at its footprint and 9 feet, 7 inches at its ridge pole, but weighs just 37.5 pounds (without the stove), and packs into a 13-gallon plastic tote.

Connor and I set up this tent during truly awful conditions: unbelievably heavy, wet snow combined with 50 mile-per-hour winds, the MegaCrew never felt anything but secure. Snow did accumulate on the tent’s roof and cause notable sagging, and the fire burned out when we were out chasing elk around. Just a few whacks with pine boughs righted the tent to its original shape once we returned to camp.

Something Semi-Permanent

WhiteDuck Outdoors 16.5 Avalon Bell Tent ($1,500)

Last summer, Connor and his wife bought a 40-acre property a few hours north of our homes in Bozeman, Montana with plans to build a yurt with help from their friends. But when his wife got pregnant, we went looking for a structure that’d be easy to put up but still but was still comfortable and reliable, even in Montana’s often extreme winter conditions. This bell tent was the answer.

The unique thing about bell tents is their shape. Instead of a frame, there’s only a single central pole, which is then staked out in all directions, kind of like a circus tent. The resulting cone shape is exceptionally stable in wind, no matter which direction it blows from. Since all loads travel straight down through that vertical steel pole, the tent also resists heavy snow. WhiteDuck adds a short section of vertical wall beneath that cone, which is full of zippered windows backed by bug mesh, or which can be entirely rolled up out of the way. The canvas is a thick, strong 11-ounce cotton.

WhiteDuck also features a zip-in PVC bathtub floor. We planned to install the tent on a deck, which provides a stable, level platform, and also a structure with which to securely anchor such a large tent. Wind would blow through the gaps between the boards with a floorless design, but WhiteDuck’s burly PVC entirely blocks it, keeping the interior cozy.

With a 16.5-foot diameter, and 9-foot, 8-inch peak height, there’s room inside for a full-size Exped MegaMat Duo sleeping pad resting on a folding metal bed frame, plus the wood stove, camp chairs, and plenty of outdoors gear. It’s positively luxurious for a couple, but gets tight in there if we add another single-person cot. I camped in it alone through most of archery season this fall, and felt like I was sleeping in a palace.

And while far from packable at about 120 pounds (it took two of us to carry the box it came in ten feet from the truck to the deck), the level of strength and quality of the Avalon is reassuring. So far it’s withstood a 60 mile-per-hour windstorm without even a single guyline loosening.

A Versatile Stove

Kni-Co Alaskan Deluxe (from $380)

I originally bought one of these for the Snowtrekker and have found it so indispensable that I bought a second for the WhiteDuck. I wanted to retain the ability to drag the Snowtrekker places, even while the other tent is set up on Connor’s property.

Made from 22-gauge steel that strikes a compromise between durability and weight, and measuring 22 inches long inside, the Alaskan Deluxe is large enough to fit pieces of commercial firewood without further chopping or cutting. It can hold three or four logs at once, which, when paired with the right damper settings, can deliver all-night fires. It weighs 18 pounds.

One of the best things about having a wood-burning stove in your tent that you can cook meals or heat up drinks without using an additional camping burner. Bacon and eggs fry right up in a pan set on top, while a side-mounted 1.9-gallon tank keeps water just below boiling for easy tea or hot cocoa preparation. All of those parts, plus the chimney sections, pack inside the stove for transportation.

But a cotton canvas tent and a metal woodstove is a lot of weight, space, and money. Is it worth it? When I don’t take it camping, winter temperatures tend to make me rush through dinner in order to get inside my sleeping bag as soon as possible. With this setup, I’m lounging and taking my time to change clothes and cook. In the mornings I’m putting on warm clothes that have dried out overnight, enjoying a relaxed cup of coffee, and then hitting the trail more rested and ready to go than I am through most of the summer. It’s an experience that approaches the comforts of home, way out in the mountains.