Shortly after our Frozen Adventure in eastern WA we traveled to the rainy west side. Where of course, it rained. And rained and rained and rained.
We have camped in these rainy situations in the SkyRise car tent many times with no troubles. This time however, the rain fly AND the tent itself wetted through completely.
It was devastating to wake up to rain in the tent again. We realized this was caused by the damage from the freezing cold and it was severe.
Before this trip, while attempting to dry out the remaining wetness from the Frozen Adventure, exhausted and sick of dealing with tent issues, we made a dumb mistake that caused the first injury to our car tent.
Leaving the SkyRise tent open and unattended to let the moisture escape, the mattress dried indoors with us while we spent our time researching how to combat the growing mold and future condensation.
The tent was doing well all day, but over night the winds picked up, and unfortunately we neglected to tie down the tent. It just didn’t cross our tired minds, there is no chance of it blowing away since it’s attached to the car, but it did blow “over”. The tent, with rainfly fully propped out, folded closed causing overly tight tension on the rainfly.
We woke up the next morning expecting the worst when we saw the tent collapsed on itself. The damage however bad, was not catastrophic.
7 manageable stress rips and a grumpy ladder. The ladder just took some convincing to open and close all the way again. We plan to get some helpful lubricant to protect the ladder for future use. After letting the rainfly dry out completely we patched the rips with extra strength gorilla tape.
It seems like common sense, but we hope others with rooftop tents will learn from our mistake.
ALWAYS tie down the tent.
This plus the tent wetting out really took a toll on our spirits. For a moment we considered giving up on the SkyRise, but we woke up the next day and decided to give it another shot.
We have a lot of issues to resolve, the mold, water resistance, and ladder being top priority, but also some other care maintenance that we learned about during our research. Expect another post soon covering our tent’s much needed maintenance.
