Features to Look For

Again, this tent is highly engineered, and might seem overly complicated at first. Bear with it… they’re all there for a reason, and it took us a few nights to understand everything this tent has to offer.

Wind Resistance and Stability: This is where the Portal really stands out. While this tent is not technically a winter camping piece of gear, it’s one of the only three-season tents on the market right now where you can confidently take it out in winter conditions. It is incredibly strong, but if you want to do the full setup with the guylines, be aware that it’s going to take a few extra minutes. Worth it if you know you’ll be in for some nasty weather overnight, but not necessarily something most hikers are going to want to take the time to do at camp each night.

Internal Guylines: An unusual feature, the pre-installed internal guylines “increase lateral stability” without a weight penalty. SlingFin has a tutorial for adding additional sets of internal guy lines here.

Pole Geometry: The SlingFin Portal’s crossed pole structure (no center hub) is stronger and more stable than two-hub designs like much heavier MSR Hubba Hubba (and the similar Nemo Dagger.) Tent pole hubs while convenient for assembly and high on user approval, put a lot of stress on poles where they enter the hub and therefore aren’t as strong as a hubless tents. With two hub design like MSR Hubba Hubba, the tent can warp/rotate into the wind presenting an ever greater area for wind loading, causing further deflection of the tent walls. Finally, SlingFin Portal uses DAC NFL Poles, which are the gold standard with the best strength-to-weight ratio on the market.

OutRigger Trekking Pole Attachment: In addition to the internal guylines, the outrigger poles add a huge amount of structural integrity and are what make the Portal into a four-season tent. As far as we know, SlingFin is the only company doing this. The velcro “outrigger” straps at the ends of the Portal’s spreader bar wrap around your trekking pole handles and reinforce the ceiling (and walls) and make this tent even more bomb-proof. Important when there is potential snow loading.

Premium Fabric$: The floor is a 20D polyether urethane (PE) membrane, as opposed to a polyester urethane (PU) laminate. PU can moisture longer, which can lead to mold and mildew. Tents with PU waterproofing can feel dry, but will still hold moisture and therefore be susceptible to mold. PE normally reduces tear strength, but SlingFin has found a strong PE fabric for the floor. Want to really nerd out? SlingFin does a deep dive into PE vs. PU here.

The Portal utilizes a highly UV-resistant fabric for the fly. Nylon 66 is more durable than standard nylon, with better tear strength and abrasion resistance than the materials used in most tents. This is one of the reasons this tent costs what it does. Two-sided silicone-treated fabric drastically increases the tear strength. Silicone doesn’t absorb water—each morning we just had to shake the fly out a few times and it was dry. The fly doesn’t absorb water which also means it won’t sag and stretch overnight. A tighter fly = less chance of a soggy tent = happier hikers.

KickStand Vents: This is a more effective way to ventilate a shelter vs. the small peak vents prevalent on many tents. Kickstands are small struts that prop open part of the rainfly vestibule doors to create a vent and allow air to circulate and reduce condensation. This creates a large vent with no mesh backing for increased air flow. With one on either side of the tent you get cross-tent airflow. In comparison, standard peak vents aren’t as effective as you’d expect them to be, and are often more cosmetic than effective. Their small area means that air gets choked down, and the mesh backing required in peak vents (necessary to keep bugs out) acts as an additional air block. Finally the peak vent has no cross ventilation option for airflow.

The Portal’s vents oriented away from the foot of the tent keep rain from blowing in. The kickstands do make doors a bit more difficult to use, but we feel the added ventilation is worth it.

Interior Pockets: More than enough interior pockets with smart placement make it easy to organize small gear items. This makes the tent more livable. Unpack your key items (flashlight, glasses, gloves, warm vest, phone, USB Battery) and put them in tent pockets, and then you won’t be endlessly rummaging about in the tent or your pack trying to find them. The pocket above your head is the perfect place for your phone and you can dangle your headset cord down to you ears.

Zipper garage with extra slider: The slider is often the first thing to fail in a tent. They are a huge pain to replace, and almost impossible to repair in the field.

Ripstop panels at apex of tent: The apex of the Portal is nearly flat, which gives more head space. However, parallel tops can be prone to dripping in super humid conditions. The ripstop panels keep condensation to falling into the tent. Flat roof, tons of room, and no drip problem.

Line Adjusters: the line adjusters on the SlingFin Portal are not commonly seen on tents. As such, there may be some initial confusion (how do you cram *this* piece into *that* piece? You don’t!). But the line adjusters create an easy-to-adjust, taught pitch we could achieve even with frozen fingers. And they are super reliable and less prone to slippage and failure than many other line adjusters.