The Best Backpacking Tents with a Stove Jack

A stove jack is a fireproof port in a shelter's canopy that lets a wood stove's flue pipe out without melting the fabric. Add a titanium box stove and a single-wall tent becomes a room you can dry clothes in at -10 °C. That is the appeal, and it is real. What the marketing does not say is that almost every hot tent on the market weighs between four and nine kilograms, which is why most of them are sledded, driven or carried a short way from a truck.

This page exists to find the exceptions. Five shelters with a factory jack, ranked by grams saved against the cheapest mainstream hot tent per dollar of list price. Two of them are genuinely backpackable. The other three are on the page because knowing what the heavy ones give you is how you decide whether the light ones are worth it.

What a stove jack actually is

Two designs turn up on this page, and the difference matters when you go to buy a stove.

A sewn-in silicone-fiberglass jack. Seek Outside uses silicone-coated fiberglass with a 3,000 °F melting point and states the tent fabric never touches the hot pipe. Small pinholes from floating embers can be sealed with a dab of silicone. This is the durable version.

A pre-cut opening sized to one stove. OneTigris pre-cuts the Rock Fortress jack at 3.3 x 3.3 in and says it fits its own TIGER ROAR stove system and similarly sized pipes. That is convenient until your pipe is wider, at which point you are buying a separate jack and cutting your own hole.

How we picked

Full rubric at our methodology page. The gate: the maker fits or pre-cuts a stove jack at the factory, publishes a weight, publishes a waterproof rating, and the shelter is currently on sale. No DIY jacks, and no shelter whose weight we cannot read on the maker's own page.

The reference is the Naturehike Ranch Fire 4-Person Pyramid Hot Tent at 4,490 g (9 lb 14.4 oz): the cheapest complete stove-jack tent we could find, and the one a first-time hot tenter actually lands on. Hot tents get their own reference rather than being scored against a three-season backpacking tent, because they are a different product — single wall, usually floorless, pitched on one pole, and bought to be heated. Comparing a pyramid you light a fire in to a double-wall summer tent would tell you nothing useful.

One honest caveat on weights. Hot tent makers are the loosest we have dealt with. OneTigris prints three different weights for the SMOKEY HUT on the same page (5.3 lb in the spec table, “around 4.5 lb” and “2000 g” in the copy); we use the heaviest figure so nobody's grams-saved number is inflated. Seek Outside is the only maker here that separates canopy weight from complete weight, and both figures are on its card.

The evidence side by side

The two shelters light enough to backpack with.

The three you drive, sled or walk in a short way.

The gap at the top of the class is enormous. From the Cimarron canopy to the Massif 4 is 6,894 g (15 lb 3.2 oz) — the weight of a full winter sleep system, for the same basic job.

Who each pick is for

1. OneTigris SMOKEY HUT: the best stove-jack tent overall

2,400 g (5 lb 4.7 oz) by OneTigris' own spec table, 336 x 180 cm on the ground, 20D nylon (or 210T polyester in the brown version) at 2,000 mm, with heat-taped seams, YKK zippers, snow skirts and a pre-fitted flue opening. The box contains the aluminum pole, ten 7075 stakes, six guy lines, a 75D floor mat and the jack — nothing else to buy. It saves 2,090 g (4 lb 9.7 oz) vs the Naturehike Ranch Fire 4-Person Pyramid Hot Tent, which gives it a value figure of Value 9.3/10, the best on this page by a distance.

It sleeps two and the floor mat covers one, so read it as a solo winter shelter with room for a stove, or a tight two-person one. That is exactly the use case that makes a hot tent worth carrying: you are out in the cold on purpose, alone or with one other person, and a fire is the difference between drying your gloves and not.

Buy it if you want to walk in to a winter camp with a stove and not resent the weight. Skip it if there are more than two of you, or you want bug netting and a sewn-in floor.

2. Seek Outside Cimarron 4p 2.0: the lightest hot tent made

1,106 g (2 lb 7.0 oz) for the canopy, covering 94 sq ft under a 6 ft peak, in 30 denier nylon 6.6 ripstop at 3,000 mm with a two-layer X-Pac and Dyneema peak cone and a silicone-fiberglass jack. Seek Outside says it sleeps four without a stove and two with one. It saves 3,384 g (7 lb 7.4 oz) vs the Naturehike Ranch Fire 4-Person Pyramid Hot Tent, and it is handmade in Colorado with a lifetime warranty behind it.

The catch is everything that is optional. The carbon pole, door screens, bug nest, liner and factory seam sealing are all separate purchases; the box holds the canopy, ten stakes, a tube of Silnet and a stuff sack. Pitch it on a trekking pole and the weight in your pack is genuinely the 1.1 kg above. Add the nest and the pole and it climbs.

Buy it if you want the lightest possible way to sleep beside a fire and you already carry trekking poles. Skip it if you want to pitch and sleep the day it arrives, or you need bugs kept out as standard.

3. OneTigris Rock Fortress: the most space per dollar

A ten-sided teepee 12.4 ft across and 7.8 ft tall, rated by OneTigris for up to six, in 70D silicone-coated nylon at 3,000 mm with 24 pegs and the pole included. You can stand up next to a lit stove in it, which none of the lighter shelters allow. At 4,200 g (9 lb 4.2 oz) it saves 290 g (10.2 oz) vs the Naturehike Ranch Fire 4-Person Pyramid Hot Tent, so the rubric gives it almost nothing on value, and it asks a higher MSRP band more than the SMOKEY HUT.

Buy it if a group is walking in a short distance and wants a heated common room. Skip it if your flue pipe is wider than 3.3 in, which is the size OneTigris pre-cuts the jack to.

4. Naturehike Massif 4: the two-room basecamp

Two sleeping rooms plus a lounge under a 5.1 m tunnel, a mesh inner tent included, a 30D silicone-coated nylon fly at 1,500 mm and a 70D nylon groundsheet at 3,000 mm on 7001 aluminum poles. It is the only shelter here with separated space, and the only one that is comfortable in bug season as well as snow. It is also 8,000 g (17 lb 10.2 oz), packs to 67 x 30 x 27 cm, and saves nothing against the reference.

Buy it if you are driving or sledding to a fixed camp with a group. Skip it if the word backpacking is doing any real work in your plans.

5. Naturehike Ranch Fire 4: the reference

The tent this page is scored against: a 300 x 300 x 210 cm pyramid at 4,490 g (9 lb 14.4 oz) in 210T flame-retardant polyester at 3,000 mm, with a 150D oxford floor, a mesh inner tent, an aluminum pole, 15 stakes and 10 guy ropes in the box. It is the cheapest complete hot tent we can find and the only one here that includes an inner tent as standard. It saves no weight against itself, which is what a reference is for.

Buy it if you want the whole kit for the lowest price and the carry is short. Skip it if you are walking far: 4.49 kg in a 60 cm stuff sack dominates a pack.

What a hot tent really costs you

There is a second cost that nobody prints. A single-wall floorless shelter has no bug netting and no ground barrier, so in summer you add a nest or you sleep with the mosquitoes. Seek Outside sells a half nest and a full nest; Naturehike bundles a mesh inner on two of its models; OneTigris sells half-dome inners for the Rock Fortress separately. Every one of those adds weight that is not in the table above.

The third cost is condensation. Single-wall shelters breathe worse than double walls, which is the reason the single wall versus double wall trade-off is worth understanding before you commit. Running a stove actually helps — a fire dries the air — but on the nights you do not light it, you will notice.

What missed the cut

The OneTigris CozShack. OneTigris publishes the full spec — 70D ripstop nylon, 2,000 mm, 9.9 lb, a 40 x 30 cm jack — but it ships with no tent poles at all and is sold to be pitched from trees or a vehicle. It is an awning with a jack rather than a tent, so it is not ranked.

Canvas wall tents and most Pomoly-style hot tents. They start around 10 kg and go up. If you are hauling a sled or driving to the site they are a better room than anything here; on a grams-per-dollar site there is nothing to say about them.

Three-season tents with a DIY jack fitted. Cutting a hole in a 15D silicone nylon fly and gluing in an aftermarket jack does work, and people do it. We will not rank a modification, because the published waterproof rating and the warranty both stop applying the moment you cut.

The Tarptent Hogback and other light group tents. The Hogback sleeps four at under 1.5 kg and tops our 4-person ranking, but it has no jack and its polyester canopy is not made to be near a flue.

How to choose a tent with a stove jack

1. Pick the stove first, then the jack. A pre-cut opening is sized to one pipe diameter. OneTigris cuts the Rock Fortress at 3.3 in for its own stove; if you already own a wider-pipe stove, buy a shelter with a sewn-in fabric jack instead.
2. Decide whether you are carrying it. Under 2.5 kg is backpackable. Over 4 kg means a sled, a short walk-in or a vehicle, and the rest of the decision changes completely.
3. Count the sleepers with the stove in place. Seek Outside is unusually honest about this: the Cimarron sleeps four without a stove and two with one. A stove takes a person's worth of floor.
4. Budget for the nest or the mesh inner. Only the two Naturehike tents here include one. Without it, a floorless pyramid is a three-season shelter with no bug protection.
5. Check who seals the seams. Seek Outside supplies sealant and expects you to use it, or charges for the factory service. OneTigris and Naturehike heat-tape at the factory.
6. Buy a carbon monoxide alarm at the same time. It is the cheapest thing in the order and the only one that matters on a bad night.

Mistakes to avoid

• Believing the marketing weight over the spec table. The SMOKEY HUT page prints 5.3 lb, 4.5 lb and 2000 g for the same tent. When a maker disagrees with itself, take the heavier number.
• Sleeping with the stove burning and the vents shut. Every maker on this page says not to. Ventilation is not optional in a shelter with a fire in it.
• Expecting a hot tent to be a summer tent. No floor, no netting and a single wall. Two of the five here add a mesh inner; the rest need one bought separately.
• Forgetting the stove weight when you compare against a conventional tent. Add the stove and the mat before you decide a hot tent is lighter than a good two-person tent and a warmer bag.
• Pitching a pyramid loose. These shelters hold their shape on tension alone. If you are buying stakes to go with one, the stake comparison covers what actually holds in snow and sand.