Tension Ridge - The secret behind our award winning tents

If you are tall or share your tent with someone else, you might have found lightweight or ultra-light tents to be cramped and claustrophobic! 

So, when creating our range of backpacking tents our designers set out to make tents with more useable space and better ventilation.

The innovation that would help us achieve this was the Tension Ridge.

In collaboration with Jake Lah, the genius behind DAC tent poles and the creator of some of the most revolutionary tent architecture out there, we designed our Tension Ridge tents-truly spacious, ultralight weight backpacking tents with next-level ventilation.

It was a true partnership—which is unique these days: said our Head Designer and Owner, Roland Tyson. "Jake had lots of design ideas that he had been waiting to share with the right design company—he hasn't done that with anyone else. Once we convinced him that we cared as much about good design as he did, it all took off from there."

What is Tension Ridge?

Where most tent brow poles angle down, the Tension Ridge is a revolutionary antenna-like structure that angles up—raising the ceiling height without increasing the footprint.

The Tension Ridge gives you room to move, get changed and stretch—even if you're tall. With more space from floor to ceiling, sharing a tent is a much better experience too. No more elbows to the face in the middle of the night!

With more vertical height, we were also able to make the tent doors taller. As well as making it easier for you to get in and out of the tent, the taller and wider tent doors give you better views outside.

Higher ceilings also mean our ultralightweight tents don't have those aggressively tapered walls all over. This gives you more room for modern, thicker sleeping mats and pillows. Because you shouldn't have to sacrifice comfort for lightweight design.

More near-vertical walls also mean you don't run the risk of squashing your face and feet into the wall and introducing your tent to its worst enemy: condensation.

Speaking of condensation: When condensation forms in your tent, things get stuffy or damp pretty quickly. To stop condensation from forming, you have to keep the air moving—and that means good ventilation. So why don't you always find the vents at the highest part of the tent when hot, moist air rises?

The Tension Ridge allowed us to create a ventilation system that's never been done before, even though it seems like the most obvious thing to do: we put the vents at the highest point so warm air doesn't get trapped up there.

From the first two tents which featured the Tension Ridge Architecture, Telos and Alto - the range has now grown to include bikepacking versions and our roomy lightweight Ikos.