Six Moon Designs Lunar Solo Review: 26 Ounces, 26 Square Feet, One Catch

Six Moon Designs prints 26 oz, 740 g, and says plainly that it doesn't include stakes or poles. Backpacking Light weighed it at 26.2 oz. CleverHiker got 1 lb 10 oz, which is 26 oz. So the maker's number holds, to within a fifth of an ounce.

Here's what the 26 oz buys, by the maker's figures: 26 sq ft of living space, an 8.5 sq ft vestibule, a 49 in peak, and a packed size of 11 x 4.5 in. The canopy is 20D silicone-coated polyester. Backpacking Light and CleverHiker list a 40D floor and a 90 x 48 in footprint.

Now the sum. Backpacking Light gives the floor as 26.25 sq ft. Divide by 26 oz and it's about 1 sq ft per ounce of tent. That's the whole design in one ratio.

And the real carry weight, which The Radavist added up for me: 740 g for the tent, about 90 g for a folding alloy pole, and 60 to 80 g for 6 to 8 stakes. The Radavist's all-in total comes to about 900 g, or 2 lb. If you already hike with trekking poles, drop the 90 g.

One pole at 49 in, 6 stakes minimum and 8 at most, by Backpacking Light's count. No stakes in the box. Bikepacking.com lists the options: a stake set, a carbon pole and a seam-sealing service, each sold separately.

CleverHiker says that once you learn the steps you can pitch it in about two minutes, and that it's hard on uneven terrain, rock-hard ground or in wind. Bikepacking.com agrees it isn't easy to get a good pitch, and that it needs suitable ground, and quite a lot of it, to stake properly.

On wind, Backpacking Light's tester had near-constant evening winds of 10 to 15 mph with gusts up to 25 mph in the Pioneer Mountains. SectionHiker calls the pyramid shape quite wind-worthy and notes you can lower the peak in bad weather. The Radavist found its carbon pole started to bend before the pitch was tight enough for wind and swapped to a beefier one, so if you buy the carbon pole, keep that in mind.

And one splash warning from Bikepacking.com: the vestibule doesn't reach the ground, so with heavy rain coming from the front, gear stored there can get wet.

A tiny whose-number moment that made me happy. Six Moon Designs prints a 49 in peak. Backpacking Light and SectionHiker both list 48 in. The answer is in the maker's own wording: you pitch it with a trekking pole set to 49 in. Set the pole to 49 and the fabric peak sits a touch lower. One inch. Both are right.

Now the rival, and this corrects the old version of this review. SectionHiker's table lists the Durston X-Mid 1 at 25.7 oz, 0.3 oz lighter than the Lunar Solo, and it's double-wall, so the condensation story changes. Wired says it needs two poles and tops out at 41 in, against the Lunar Solo's 49. Roughly the same weight. Eight inches less headroom, and a drier interior. That's the real trade.

The other name is the Zpacks Plex Solo, in DCF. CleverHiker says it weighs over a pound less than the Lunar Solo, and Wired puts the Plex Solo Lite at more than twice the price.