Coleman Fremont 6 Family Tent

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Price Guide

Coleman Fremont 6 Family Tent Photos

Our Review

The Coleman Fremont 6 is a very flexible and practical family tent.

Our Opinion of the Coleman Fremont 6

With 3 sleeping areas you could take a few kids, or if you have only two, the option of providing them with their own sleeping area.

Each sleeping compartment can fit a camping double air bed.

The addition of a living area outside the bedrooms provides space for storage, bags of clothes, etc.

As well as the great sleeping arrangements, the Fremont 6 has a large additional living area provided by the porch (the area to the right on the photo), giving you the option of eating in the dry or playing games if it pours down with rain.  This extension includes a bath tub groundsheet, so it is more of a tent extension than a porch.

The whole porch can be unzipped and detached if you need a smaller footprint.

Other features that are useful, which are not found on some of Coleman's other ranges:

• U shaped zip around door so that it can be completely sealed (the Coleman Coastline doors are open at the bottom.
• Handy stow away pockets.

The Fremont is part of Coleman's premium family tents range.

Pitching

Being a tunnel type of tent, the Fremont 6 is straightforward to pitch.

• Unroll the tent and arrange into the area you wish to pitch. Make sure there are no sharp objects on unwanted bumps.  Also think about winds (put the door away from the prevailing wind), and the sun - do you want to sit outside your big porch door?
• Unzip the door.  When tunnel tents pop up there is a vacuum effect as the space in the tent expands.  In a well sealed tent this can take time for the pop up to complete, but if you open the doors first it will make it a lot easier.
• Start inserting the tent poles.  This is straightforward and involves pushing the poles through a sleeve on the tent.
• Once all the poles are in it is time to get it into a tent shape.  Start at one end.  I find that the end I start at, putting a few tent pegs in at the tent corners helps anchor it in place (and a very good idea if windy). Slot one end of the tent pole into an eyelet on one side of the tent, and then slot the same tent pole into the eyelet on the second side of the tent. The second one will require some tension on the tent pole which will bend it into an arc shape.
• Do not put the arc vertical yet, but repeat all the other tent poles so that you have them all in place whilst on the ground.
• For this next step, grab a tent peg, go to the end of the tent, and untie the guy line. Pull on the guy line until the end of the tent goes vertical, then use the tent peg to hold the guy line in place. Note that these tent pegs are just temporary to help pitch, and will be reset properly when finished.
• Now go to the tent and help pull up all the arcs into the vertical (you don't have to stretch the tent to full length for this).

Using the above method, I have successfully pitched large tunnel tents quickly and single handed.  But for this last step, you'll ideally need someone at each end and ideally at each corner to position the tent.

• With someone at each end of the tent gradually pull it apart so that it expands to full size - but don't pull the tension too tight.
• At this point you should probably remove those temporary tent pegs.
• Find the open doors and zip them up.  The tent should now be filled with air, but zip them up for the final pegging out that the doorway doesn't stretch out of shape.
• Tweak the position of the tent and now make sure it is fully expanded.
• Time to go around pegging the tent.  It is a good idea to start with the guy lines at each end of the tent so that the tunnel stays up and in position.

Fitting the inner tents are straightforward.

Coleman has built toggles into the inside of the tent that the inner tents fit into. The key centre toggles are colour coded.  Put those ones in first and just follow the rest in sequence.

There are also a few clips to the bottom of the inner tent to anchor it to the ground.  Fix these before all the toggles are in place.

The porch is put up in a similar way and then zipped to the main tent.

To take the tent down it is the reverse of putting it up.

• Leave the door open to help get the air out.
• For the Fremont you can leave the porch zipped on for next time, and just treat it as part of the tent, but do remove the porch's groundsheet first.
• Unpeg the tent (if windy, leave some corner pegs in so the tent doesn't blow away - yes, it can happen!), leave the end guy lines until last, as removing these will start the process of lowering the tent.
• Slide out the tent poles.
• Fold sides of the tent in to make it long and narrow.
• With the tent poles in their bag, place at the foot of the tent, then start rolling the tent up with the tent poles in the middle. The weight of the tent poles help get any air out and keep the rolling up tight so that it can be got back in its bag.

You can leave the inner tents inside so that the next time you put it up they are already in place.  If doing this you must ensure your tent is dry before taking it down - including any condensation that may be inside.

Ideally, your tent should always be dry, but being in the UK this is not always possible ;-)

We always take our inner tents out, even if the tent is dry.  The reason is that the next time we pitch the tent it might be wet, and we have found it easy to get the main tent up in the rain, put a quick tarp shelter between the car and the tent door, and then get everything inside nice and dry - and never have to deal with any wet inner tents from accidents when pitching.

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