2020 Gear Review: North Face Wawona 6 Tent

Two weeks ago, I took my young but growing family on a camping/fly fishing trip of New England. Even though it was late June, the weather was quite warm in parts of Vermont and New Hampshire but still relatively cool on the Maine coast. We were using a new app called HipCamp which is like Airbnb but for private campsites on small farms. Knowing that we could park relatively close to our campsite persuaded me to jump in and buy a new large tent. I opted for the North Face Wawona 6 and it did not disappoint. Here is my just-out-of-the-woods review. 

Right from the box this thing was heavy. Twenty-one pounds with an 80 inch max interior height. We opted to get the footprint too and after laying that out on the ground first in our wooded Catskill campsite, we then opened the tent and spread it out. Within seconds we had the gold poles put together and through the color coded gold slips of the tent. The black poles then went through the black slips of the tent. A nice touch that made the whole thing go quicker. We quickly had it standing and in the right position facing the south of the canyon we had just climbed out of in our 4×4. 

Easy Set-up

After staking the tent down we opened the large vestibule area and put our bags and shoes in there before unzipping the actual sleeping area and going inside. It was huge and we loved it. Tons of room. The front doors have a mesh hanging closet space in between them and each corner has even more mesh pockets for clothes, phones, books, flashlights. We rolled up the windows and let the cool air into the mesh screens of the roof of the tent and laid out three sleeping bags. It could have fit four comfortably. Six people would have been a bit of a squeeze but four easy. 

We tied a small Black Diamond Moji lantern to the ceiling of the tent and it lit up the orange dome like a spaceship on another planet. We liked that. Our campsite looked like it was the the first stage of a Himalayan summit. At night after turning off the lights and laying down in our bags we could perfectly view out of the large mesh side wall ports almost the entire night sky above us. My youngest son marveled at shooting stars while listening to the creek frogs bellow and the coyotes (gulp) howl on the next ridge. 

Rain? Haha

The tent has almost 90 feet of square space and two vestibules in the front and back to store gear out of the way and keep dry. We liked that the entire front of the tent including the doors were all mesh and allowed the cool air in while keeping the bugs out. In Vermont we learned that the tent which requires no rainfly was incredibly resilient and waterproof. It actually laughed at the rain. Did I mention we love this tent?

Overall we gave this North Face tent a 4.5 out of 5 stars. It had everything a small family needed for a few weeks of car camping. If you’re looking for something smaller and less heavy, try the North Face Wawona 4.

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