The North Face Mountain 25 tent
The North Face Mountain 25 tent is a four-season tent that is well known for its dependability and durability and commonly used on expeditions where extreme weather is a normal occurrence. I needed to replace my current four-season tent, a North Face A-frame tent that I purchased a few years ago (actually purchased in the 1970’s but who’s counting :-)). Considering how well my original North Face tent has served me, buying another North Face tent was an easy decision once I had determined which model I should be looking for. Although this North Face Mountain 25, that I purchased, was an older version of this popular tent and sold to me as a ‘used’ tent, many of the guy lines were still factory wrapped, so my decision was an easy one.
The tent held up to a good Pennsylvania rain storm without any problem so I expect that it will serve my purpose well over the coming years. A bit too heavy for backpacking compared to many of the newer lightweight single walled tents but my needs tend to be more of a car-camping nature rather than a backpacking nature. I have spent nights in my old A-frame when the temperatures dropped to the -20C range but don’t expect that I will be doing that too often any more.
One interesting feature of the tent is the round foam pieces that keep the fly away from the side of the tent and improve the air circulation under the fly. I had no idea what they were when I first saw them in the bag.
Expect to see more images of this tent as it becomes my home away from home on some future trips. Some reviews describe this tent as bomb-proof. I expect that it will survive any weather that I will encounter. My previous North Face 4-season tent survived Prairie winds that moved camper trailers off of their pads. I expect that this tent will survive that type of weather and more.
As mentioned above, I purchased this tent used after asking the seller plenty of questions and seeing photos before buying. That approach turned out fine for me and, being a long time popular model along with the larger TNF VE25, there are usually plenty to choose from in the used market with TNF tents on EBay being a good place to start comparison shopping if interested in a used model.
Sept 2012 – Had some spare time on my hands when cleaning up one morning recently at a campground near Oswego, NY so got inside with the wide-angle lens.
Most models of North Face Tents
The TNF Mountain 25 tent is a free standing tent so, once the poles are in their sleeves, it can be lifted and moved around to wherever you want to put it. That’s also a useful feature if you want to lift it up to dump any sand or grass out of it before packing it away in its stuff sack.
If you are not sure what kind of tent you might be looking for. Take a look at this page out of the Backpacker Magazine’s Tent Buying Guide.
2014 Sightings:
Spent a couple of weeks in Arizona with no snow but with night-time temperatures below the freezing point on most of those days. Here is a shot of my TNF Mountain 25 in an Arizona campground. Coyotes came up to visit the tent in the middle of the night on my first night at this spot and Javelina visited on the second night.
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Follow my travels and photographic adventures here:
See here to see a pictorial review of one of my other North Face tents: the TNF Talus 33.
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