Big Agnes Emerald Mountain 3 SL

I recently purchased a BA EM3 SL in the hopes of ending my never ending quest for the perfect tent. I bought the tent directly from BA on their website. It arrived in short order, less than a week. I opened up the packaged and pulled out the tent.

The tent stuff sack is 8X16 or so I would say. It is listed on their website as 8X22 but I think they are included the pole length.
My hand to show relative size of the bag. It is about 15 inches long and could easily be compressed more by using a compression sack.

The poles are stored into thier own stuff sack and smartly attach to the tent stuff sack with a quick release clip and a small bit of webbing on the bottom of the tent stuff sack.
Quick release clip used to clip pole sack to the tent stuff sack.


The tent stuff sack has a nice elastic pocket to hold the pole sack in place.


BA supplies the tent with lightweight aluminum X-stakes.


BA like a lot of other companies these days is using a hub poles system. There is essentially one big length of shock corded pole that makes up like 3 poles because of the hub system. It appears to be very strong and reasonably lightweight. There is also one cross pole that holds the tent sides semi-vertical.


Here is the hub system on the poles.


The ends of the poles slip into grommets at the four corners of the main tent body.


Here is the sleeve that the cross pole slides into.


The main tent body clips to the poles with plastic clips. They appear to be very strong.


Here is the tent up. It took me about 4 minutes the first time out and it can literally go up in about 3 minutes start to finish including the fly.


The tent sleeps 3 people, I would say two comfortably but 3 in a pinch. It has two side doors and I normally prefer side doors. One thing that disappointed me the most was the smallish doors. I don't understand why the doors are so small. There is also not center stake point by the side door. I would think having one there would allow the door to operate a little easier. Also the side walls slope in a little causing my shoulders to hit the side walls when sitting up.


Here I am kneeling in the door. You can see how the door is only up to approximately my shoulder blades.


I am 6'1" and you can get an idea of how high the tent is. It is listed at 44".


Here is a picture of the tent on the ground with the fly installed. The fly attached with four quick clips on the corners and the cross pole at the top of the tent slips into pockets on the fly.




On each side of the tent without doors there is a vent in the fly that can be opened or closed. Here is the vent closed.


Here is the vent opened.


Here is the detail of the small prop rod that holds the vent open with Velcro. When you want to close the vent you just pull this away and Velcro the vent closed. There is no provision in the tent to be able to operate this vent when inside the tent unlike the MSR Mutha Hubba. So if one was inside the tent and it was raining and you wanted to open or close the vent, you would have to go outside.


The tent has guyline attachments at the four corners of the tent and have a reflective stripe on them.


The tent has two pretty large zip on vestibules, one on each side with a flap that covers the zippers.




One odd thing is there are zipper pulls at the top of the vestibule, and at the bottom similar to a sleeping bag. The zipper pull at the bottom can only be operated from the outside of the tent. So if you are in the tent and want to get out, it's easiest to just zip down the door and walk over it.

Here is the view from inside the tent. It was very light and airy feeling in there even with the fly on. The fly also goes right to the ground which is nice.




Half of the vestibule door could also be folded back. I imagine if you were to open one on each side of the tent, even with the fly on, it would stay reasonably cool in there in the summer.


The small door problem is even bigger with the fly on. Here I am kneeling in the vestibule. You can see the door opening is only up to my shoulder blades and even crawling in on my hands and knees my back hits.



Overall I would say this is a very high quality and well built. It's a nice enough tent. Unfortunately I will not be field testing this tent. The doors are just too small for me and thats not something that can be over come for me. If you are a little shorter, this might be a great tent for you, but not for me.