21st Century Baker's Tent
an old tent design made with new materials produces an amazing result

Posted on: Mon Jun 14 2021
It's said that Henry David Thoreau lived alone in a Bakers tent on Walden Pond. If true it was a wise choice for many reasons.

You spend a lot of time thinking about being cold when you're cold all night long camping in the wilderness. It was during one of those nights I started wondering about those cheap silver "emergency blankets". I'd bought them before and played around with them and concluded they didn't really work, tore too easily, and were really just a gimmick that always ended up in the trash. But I also knew I hadn't really taken the time to really test them and since I was practically shivering cold that night I was inspired to look into them again.

I also pondered tent designs on those trips. I had bought a bunch of different tents over the years and didn't really like any of them. My favorite tent design wasn't even made for backpacking. It was the old "Bakers Tent" design used by pioneers and cowboys in the movies. Most all of those are still made of canvas and they're not for backpacking, they're for "Camping", and they're still a great design for that. I'd never camped in one but I had seen them and got to check them out several times.

So while I was laying there alone in my tent in the forest one very cold night I finally put the two of those things together. I had seen some videos made by "survivalist" about what they called a "Super Shelter" made with sticks and tarps and lined with those silver blankets. I could easily mock up an ultralight Bakers Tent out those cheap silver "emergency blankets". That would prove beyond any doubt rather they actually worked and if they did I could make a bigger tent that still weighed less than most other tents the same size. I had to find out if they did work.

The first thing I did was figure out how big I wanted to make the tent. I spent quite a bit of time pondering on and measuring that out. When I nailed it down I was ready to make some quick and dirty mockups. This is my first sketch of what I decided on for dimensions but I ended up making the 46" awning panel closer to 60" long:

Basic Design



I made the mockups with cheap duct tape and the cheap clear plastic "drop cloths" you use to cover stuff when you're painting a room and then taped up the cheap silver survival blankets to the inside of that. The front panel facing my campfire did not have the silver on it because that would reflect the heat away.

I didn't take any photos of those first prototypes. They were put together so fast and dirty that they barely held together, but they were good enough to prove rather or not the design would would trap heat and warm up enough to really feel it. When I got the first one ready I took it into the forest in our back yard and set it up, gathered some sticks up, and started a small fire. It was pretty cold that day, below 30º and the ground had been frozen for a few days.

Honestly, I fully expected to prove that silver stuff did not work worth squat. I spent about 15 minutes getting the fire going enough so I could put a small pile of sticks on it and then get inside the tent to see how well it warmed up and how long it retained the heat. I had a thermometer inside the mock up tent and another outside tied up on a tree trunk about 30 feet away. The sun had set and it was cloudy and about 25º outside when I got the fire going.

When I got inside I was stunned. It was already close to 70º inside and it was an even and wonderfully warm heat. It warmed me front and back from top to bottom. It was like sitting in my living room. And there was no smoke. The front panel kept that out. I sat inside after taking off my winter coat for about 30 minutes all warm and toasty. The temp rose to just over 80º before the fire started burning down and it was another 30 minutes before I had to add some sticks to it to stay warm without my coat on. I knew I was onto something good right away.

When I went back to the house I grabbed a sketch of a bakers tent off the internet and started editing it. The first thing I did was reduce the height. I don't need a tent I can stand up in for backpacking but I hated the arched walled tents I'd used that had such limited headroom. One of things I love about a Bakers Tent design is the awning. It provides shade and can fold down to close the tent up tight at night.



Baker's Tent



The next thing I did was colorize my sketch to match the material I'd be making it out of. I decided to use the "SOL Emergency Blankets" because they don't tear like the cheap silver one's do.





That made the sketch look pretty close to what I actually ended up making:

The Baker's Hotbox Tent



I spent my evenings over the course of a week putting it together. I cut to size the sides, top, and rear panels and taped the seems using heavy duty fiber reinforced clear duct tape. I also taped the edges. I made a clear panel for the front of the the tent and made it so the awning could be opened out to offer shade while the clear front panel was either opened or closed. I also sewed some nylon straps with riveted brass eyelets in the corners for tie offs and stakes.

My timing was pretty good because it didn't take long to get an opportunity to give it a real world test with my grandson who was visiting us from Florida. He was a perfect subject since he wasn't acclimated to our cold winters here in the Ozarks and we'd just had a snowfall...





Since then I've spent a few dozen winter nights, usually alone, while backpacking far off the trails in our Ozark Mountain National Forests. I've had the entire forest all to myself most every time too. Bushwhacking a few miles into the wilderness and setting up camp for a few days and always having a warm place to go, life really cannot get better than that for me.

Back to the design, that big front panel lets a huge amount of radiant heat in and the roof, sides, and floor all keep it inside. It will easily warm up to over 80º inside with just a small fire burning in front of it. Point it towards the morning sun and it will warm up inside enough to make it a lot easier to climb out of your sleeping bag and get dressed on a cold day.

Build a fire and hang your wet clothes in it and it will dry them out very quickly. I did that once after a creek crossing went a little bad and it was a wonderful thing to be able to do.

Here's a video where I go over and show the tent in some detail. I was deep in the Mark Twain National Forest in the winter when I made this and I pretty much just rambled on until my phone battery died...






I've never owned a tent that I didn't really dislike but I've really come to love this simple design. Getting in and out is faster and easier than any tent I've ever used. Setting it up takes a bit of time but it's very simple and easy and you have a lot of options for how you can do that. You can use hiking poles, tent poles, or no poles at all. Just stake the corners and use strings to tie the roof off to tree branches like I did in the video.

Sitting inside and prepping and eating meals is easy and doing that on a cold day is luxurious. For an UL Backpack tent it's roomy. It has over 22 square feet of floor space and 90º walls. You can be 6ft tall and still not be bumping your head while sitting inside it and two adults can sit inside and be comfortable with room for food and drinks. And when you make it yourself you can make it any size you want.

The awning can be set out for shade, pinned down at an angle for a vestibule to store gear and shed away rain, pulled down like a front wall to keep heat in when you don't have a campfire, and pulled over and on top of the roof to get it out of your way entirely and to reflect the sun to keep you cool.

The truly greatest thing about this tent is it makes camping in the Ozarks winters so much more comfortable. Compared to any other tent it is absolutely the warmest tent you can have for cold weather backpacking and camping. You can sit inside with the awning pulled back and the clear front panel pinned down and just soak up the warmth of the fire all around you without ever getting any smoke in your eyes or air. You sleep without being cold. I have laid on top of my sleeping bag and fell asleep on below 30º nights, woke up when I got a little chilly and added fuel to my fire and fell back asleep in just a few minutes.

Another amazing feature of this tent is the inside lights up like daylight with just a single small LED flashlight inside. The walls, floor, and ceiling all reflect that light and it just bounces around and lights up everything inside. From the outside it looks like the entire tent is glowing.

All things considered this tent, at less than 3 pounds, is one the lightest 2-person, freestanding, tents around that can handle four-season conditions. And not only will it keep you warmer in the winter, it will keep you cooler in the summer and you can make it yourself for about $60.

Here's a look at how they made and used Bakers Tents in the old days. It was a great mobile shelter design then and this video goes over some of the features of the Bakers tent design. I think it's still is a great design even now, and that this "Hotbox" design makes it even better by being much lighter, much warmer, and packing much smaller. Weighing less than 3 pounds it qualifies as an "two person ultralight backpacking tent", and it comfortably shelters two adults sitting and laying down.







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After all that I probably need to add this:

DON'T START FIRES WHEN AND WHERE IT IS ILLEGAL TO START FIRES. That's just stupid.

DON'T START CAMPFIRES IF YOU DON'T HAVE REAL LIFE EXPERIENCE. Take the time to learn how to safely build, maintain, and completely extinguish your campfire.
LEAVE NO TRACE. Take the time to learn how to safely scatter cold charcoals, unused firewood and your ashes, and always restore the area where you built your fire and camped. When you leave, no one should be able to tell you were ever there.