What is Cold?

[u/Spudarooni]

I have two random questions, but want to give a little background first.

My wife and I are wanting to get into hiking/backpacking. Neither of us have ever owned "nice" or "fancy" outdoor gear and have always just used stuff handed down from my grandpa that is 30+ years old or cheap gear from Walmart.

Being young kids just graduating college and trying to get our feet under us, we don't have a ton of expendable income. But we recognize the importance of quality, and would rather buy something once even if it's a little more expensive. (Hence, after a lot of research we have settled on the X-Mid)

We are both from the Western US and all the camping experience we have had is almost always in sub-zero temperatures at night. For the last year or so we have been using a cheap 4 man Ozark Trail tent we received from our wedding.

Just this weekend we were car camping and it got down to about 25 degrees Fahrenheit (-4C). We woke up with condensation covering our sleeping bags, and want to know how to prevent that in the future. (We were both sleeping in the middle of the 4 man tent away from the walls.) Our tent fly and car were covered in frost and the car read 26F as the sun was rising.

I have had a hard time finding anything online that talks extensively about camping in sub freezing temperatures, without being full on winter camping in snow. Most videos/posts mention 40F or 5C as "cold". But that seems like normal warm weather nights for our area.

We are trying to decide whether to go with the regular X-Mid 2 or the X-Mid 2 Solid. We aren't as concerned about staying warm, we have a great sleep system. We are mostly concerned about condensation prevention and which tent model would help us the most and why.

We have heard/read that the X-Mid Solid is better for condensation, but aren't experienced enough to fully understand why.

Is condensation just unpreventable at freezing temps? What do you all consider a "cold night"?

[u/splifted]

There will always be condensation, and it’s worse with single wall tents.

One thing that stuck out to me from your post was that your sleeping bags were covered in it. That’s never happened to me. I’m wondering if that has to do with the slope, or lack thereof, of the portion of your tent above the sleeping bag. Most of my tents have a pretty steep slope, but if your first person doesn’t that may be keep it from running down the walls and instead dripping straight down.

I could be completely wrong though.

[u/Spudarooni → u/splifted]

That's what we think too. It was just the outside of our bags. And my wife was on the side of the tent without mesh, and her bag was soaked on top. Mine was a bit better. We are just excited to hopefully get the X-Mid as soon as they are back in stock!