Review: Tarptent Stratospire Li in Nordic conditions

I haven’t written a lot about hiking gear here, but if this blog is supposed to be a reflection of my interests, I really should be. Ever since I got into long-distance hiking five years ago, reading up on backpacks, tents, sleep systems and camping stoves has almost become an interest in and of itself. I took it to the extreme before my two month hike along the Swedish mountain chain in 2023, spending an unseemly amount of hours of research (and yes, money) to get the weight of my backpack down without sacrificing comfort.

The most important item on any summertime gear list is the tent, and the one I eventually settled on was the Tarptent Stratospire Li. After almost 100 nights in it spread across three seasons in the Swedish mountains, I feel ready to review it.

The Stratospire Li is an ultralight double-wall and double-door two-person tent designed to be pitched with trekking poles, manufactured in Nevada City, California by Tarptent. The “Lithium“ version of the tent is built with Dyneema composite fabric, DCF, which makes it much lighter (and much more expensive) than the original polyester and nylon Stratospire. Other than that, the two tents are pretty much identical. Tarptent has also released a version of the design built with Ultra TNT, but that’s currently out of stock due to the US tariff situation.

Before getting into my opinions about the Stratospire Li, we should talk about what my requirements were. Like I wrote above, I got the Tarptent Stratospire Li ahead of my Green Ribbon in 2023, which is a hike from the southern to the northern end of the Swedish mountain chain. Much of the hike is spent above the tree line on the Swedish fjäll, where heavy rains are frequent and you’re exposed to gusts that can reach storm levels (~25 m/s, ~90 km/h, ~56 mph).

In previous seasons, my go-to solo tent was the Hilleberg Enan, which I used on the King’s Trail in 2021. The Enan is a really sturdy little tent with its 9 mm poles and nylon fabric, and its bivy-like shape and small footprint makes it extremely resistant to strong winds. Unfortunately, that small footprint makes it uncomfortable if you’re on the taller side, and the strong materials aren’t fun to carry. The packed weight of my Enan, modified with additional guylines, was 1300 g. Pretty heavy for a one-person tent. I wanted its replacement to be much lighter, spacious enough to keep my 192 cm (6.3 feet) frame comfortable for two months, and able to withstand conditions on the Swedish fjäll.

The Tarptent Stratospire Li quickly became a candidate. I spent a lot of time reading the Backpacking Light review by Andrew Marshall, which provides a good walkthrough of the features in the tent (although being published back in 2019, some of it is out of date with the current version of the tent). He praises its low weight, spacious interior, and stability in strong wind. Bingo, right? You’d think so. I became overly obsessed with shedding pack weight ahead of the Green Ribbon, so instead of the Stratospire Li, I ordered the Notch Li, which is the one-person version of the Stratospire design. Lighter than the Stratospire Li, obviously, but with a footprint even smaller than the Hilleberg Enan. I tried it out on a single hike, quickly realized my mistake, sold it and bought the Stratospire Li with the solid interior instead.

The most common complaint against the Stratospire Li is that it’s difficult to pitch well, and that’s been my experience too. You get used to it pretty quickly, but compared to tents with a more conventional rectangular shape and four corners to pitch, like that of the Durston X-Mid, the hexagonal shape of the Stratospire tents with a minimum six stake pitch is a bit confusing until you get the routine down. According to Tarptent, the hexagon shape gives the tent rigidity due to its “symmetrically balanced tension lines”, and I don’t doubt that. When pitched correctly, it feels incredibly sturdy considering the lightweight materials. In addition to the six ground-level stake points, there are two attachment points for guy lines in the ridge line on top of the tent. I found those guy lines to be too short out of the box, so I replaced them with guy lines twice as long for additional stability.

Two of the six corners of the tent have carbon fiber struts that Tarptent call PitchLoc, which increase the interior volume, give the tent stability and can be opened for additional ventilation. When pitching the tent, you first stake down the two opposing PitchLoc corners, then the two corners to the right of them, so those four corners together form a rectangular shape, leaving the corners with the vestibule doors. Next, you lift up the tent at the vestibule door corners, zip open the top of the doors, insert your trekking poles with the handle facing down, insert the tips of your trekking poles into the grommets in the tent ridgeline, and stake down the corners. You can find a video showing the setup here.

Dyneema doesn’t stretch like silnylon and other materials do, so it can be pretty tricky to stake down all of the six corners while keeping the fabric taut and the shape symmetrical, especially when there’s limited ground space or when the ground is rocky or uneven. Early on, I had to adjust the corners after the fact more often than not. These days, the first pitch of the season can end up a bit wonky, but the routine comes back to me pretty quickly. I haven’t timed myself, but I think I usually pitch the tent in two or three minutes.

When the tent is up, the Stratospire Li feels sturdy and very roomy when used solo. Mine hasn’t housed two people yet and likely won’t in the future either, but I can fit myself, all of my gear and one dog inside of the inner tent without any issues, with plenty of room to spare in the two sizeable vestibules for storing my backpack and cooking. The interior space is 2,18 by 1,32 meters, with about 1,10 meters to the ceiling of the inner tent, which is enough for me to sit up straight. The vestibules are about 0,84 meters deep at the widest point. If I don’t manage to get a good pitch, the footbox of my sleeping bag can end up pushing the inner wall against the outer when I’m lying straight in the tent, so I’ve made it a habit to keep my sleeping pad on the diagonal inside the inner tent. That likely won’t be an issue for you if you’re shorter than 190 cm.

My version has two interior pockets next to the doors, but whatever I put in them usually ends up on the floor due to the lack of vertical stitching on the pockets, so I tend to not use them at all. There are loops on either side of the ridgeline in the roof, and I have added a guy line with a line runner that I can use to dry clothes and hang a lamp. A small bit of design ingenuity in the tent is that it has magnetic fly door ties, so rolling up the doors of the outer tent and keeping them out of the way is really easy. The inner doors on my model only have two lines that you tie together over the rolled-up door, which is a lot more finicky. The most recent version of the Stratospire has a toggle with a loop on the inner door instead, like Hilleberg tents.

The Tarptent Stratospire Li comes with six 16 cm aluminium DAC J stakes. I replaced them with 18 cm Hillberg Y pegs, which I find give better grip in soft ground (common on the Swedish fjäll), and added two 15 cm Y-Peg UL for the optional guy lines attached to the ridgeline. The pegs add a few grams to the weight of the tent, but I’ll happily carry a few grams extra if it gives me a bit more stability in strong winds. With the Hilleberg pegs and the extra guy lines, the total packed weight of my Stratospire Li comes out to 875.5 g.

Let’s talk about wind performance. I was pretty lucky with the weather on my Green Ribbon, and although I frequently encountered gusts of 10-15 m/s and 20 m/s maybe once, I never had to test the mettle of the Stratospire Li in proper storm winds of 25 m/s. I was pretty careful to avoid exposed tent locations early on in the hike, but as the weeks progressed and I got to know my new tent, I felt confident enough to pick a pretty but exposed tent site over a more sheltered alternative. During those two months, I never felt unsafe, and I didn’t have to go out in the middle of the night to adjust the pitch a single time. It kept me comfortable all the way from my start in Grövelsjön to Abisko, a few days from the finish line, where my partner Rebecka joined me and brought our three-person Hilleberg Helags tent in order to give the two of us some extra space. The Stratospire Li is light enough that I didn’t bother to send it home, but instead carried it all the way to the end of the hike where the borders of Sweden, Norway and Finland meet. It only seemed right for it to join me at the finish line.

The Tarptent Stratospire Li weighs two thirds of my old Hilleberg Enan, and I don’t expect Hilleberg levels of performance from it in really severe winds, but I would definitely recommend it for the conditions you’re likely to encounter on the Swedish fjäll in the summer. Another difference between Hillebergs nylon tents and dyneema tents is that dyneema tents don’t have the same lifespan. Many Hilleberg tents are passed down from generation to generation and can be repaired to extend their life, but after three years and close to a hundred nights in my Stratospire Li, I can feel its retirement drawing closer. There are no tears or holes in it yet, but the fabric has become noticeably worn and thin, despite me babying it as best as I can. I’ll be able to repair it with dyneema patches for a while yet, but in time, the fabric will be worn to the point where it’s beyond fixing. That’s the devil’s bargain of dyneema tents.

Still, it has excelled at everything I’ve asked of it for these three years, and when it comes time to replace it a few years from now, Tarptent will still be at the top of my list of tent manufacturers. I highly recommend the Stratospire Li.