The instructions for pitching Cabela eight person tents are printed on the tent bag, as are instructions for many other brands, makes, models of tents.
But they only include line drawings, so we thought some pictures might help. The tent instructions say to have a minimum 2 people pitch it, but it is much easier with four or even six people.
The tent has six identical long poles all the same length and one shorter pole for the rain fly.
The floor of the tent is a hexagon (six sides) with sets of ring pins at each corner. Four of the corners have sets of two ring pins each and two of the corners have sets of three ring pins.
Start by pulling the folded up poles out of the bag and lengthening them. They are all shock-cord loaded so they can be folded up into their bag for storage and when taken out, the stretchy cords in the poles will automatically lengthen out to make the poles into their full length.
Next, three of the six long poles slide into the three mesh pole sleeves at the top of the tent in a triangle:
Get the first three poles into these sleeves at the top of the tent
We have more than one of these tents and each is a little different. On most of them the pole sleeves are color coordinated. All the sleeves for one pole might be gray, for another, off-white, for another dark green. (On some of the tents we marked where each pole goes with a different color of permanent ink pen.)
and then connect pole ends to their ring pins (The pole ends are hollow and the ring pins fit into them.)
This should be done by two people, one on each end of a pole as you get each pole into the correct ring pins.
In the three photos below, a tent pole end is on the left and the ring pin inserted into the hollow end of the tent pole is on the right:
All the first three poles go fully across the top of the tent when in their sleeves
and down to ringpins at the bottom corners:
Doing this will pop up the tent.
next clip these first three long poles onto the tent.
The tent attaches to the poles with simple plastic clips along the pole lengths:
The other three long poles don’t go through any sleeves and do not go fully across the top of the tent.
Next put the other three long poles in and clip them.
And finally, AFTER all six long poles are in place, with their pole ends on ring pins and clipped along their lengths
find the clips or velcro that wrap around at pole intersections and wrap two poles together with each of them.
It really helps to put in all six long poles and clip them along their lengths
to get the tent into a proper shape before you wrap poles together at intersections.
The tent should look like this after all six long poles are properly in:
Next you will run the short pole thru a sleeve on the rainfly, untangle the various lines and cords coming from the rainfly and put the rainfly on over the tent and find the ring pins for that pole. Put the rainfly over the tent with the entrance space right over the main door to the tent before you put the ends of the ring pins into the rain fly pole. (There are three sections with what could look like a door, (two of these are openable windows.) But only one of these sections has ring pins left unused for you to put into the rainfly pole.
There are lines you can then pull outward to tent pegs, or even to a tree.
For example, notice the line from the rainfly at the front door that runs between the ladies in this photo:
also see that line from the rainfly/front door below, with pink tape on it to make it more visible,
(especially important to keep people from tripping on a white line over white snow after dark)
And below, late arrivals Friday evening on the 2011 Yosemite winter trip had help from others pitching their tent:
Four or six people occupying one of these tents
is more comfortable than eight.
(And in most campsites in National Parks we travel to, six is the maximum number of people per campsite.)
The first two photos below are from winter Yosemite trips, the third is from a trip to Grand Teton National Park:
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This next section has examples of good tents, but mistakes using or pitching them that you might want to skip:
Pitch your tent by yourself when you arrive after dark and in the morning you might discover you put the rain fly and poles on upside down:
OOOOPs, he discovered that he had not dried out his tent completely the last time he used it, so it had mold. He and friend slept comfortably in the Chevy Suburban instead:
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On the 2017 winter trip these people pitched their tent incorrectly.
(Many tents have instructions printed on the bag, did they read them? If they borrowed it from someone did they ask for instruction on how to pitch it? Did they try pitching it before the trip?) When they were having difficulty with it they did not ask other more experienced campers they were traveling with for help.
In the dark, from a distance, it looked to the other campers as if they were okay.
They were found trying to sleep in their car in the morning and complained that their tent was “unstable,” as if to say it was a fault of the construction/design of the tent, rather than their failure to properly put the ends of the rain fly tent poles into the ring pins at the base of the tent. As far as the rest of the group could tell, they had just stuck the ends of the rain fly tent poles in the snow. As a result, the tent fabric did not have enough tension to pop out fully into shape.
Their tent in the morning:
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No good tent should have the ends of the rain fly poles in the ground or in the snow. All good tents will have pockets to go into or ring pins for the ends of poles to go on to, as in the example you saw above at this webpage:
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And here a poorly designed tent with a rain fly that is not pitched taut and does not go all the way down the outside, so rain and melting snow drip down onto the tent fabric and soaks in, plus the classic mistake of having a tarp under the tent that sticks out the sides. Then the rain dripping off the rain fly collects on the tarp and soaks under the tent and through the bottom fabric. (It’s better to custom cut a thick plastic bottom protection that fits completely under the bottom of the tent if you want to protect it from rocks and twigs.) These people said their sleeping bags were wet (not just damp) after only one night.
Would you pitch your 8 foot diameter tent in an 8 foot diameter puddle?
That is, in effect, what these campers did:
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For fun, an eight person tent holds this many campers has mostly photos of people who shared these tents. We took the rainfly off the tent to get more light in it when we posed the picture below of tooooo many people sleeping in an eight person tent:
For info on the logistics of where to pitch your tent and staying warm and comfy overnight camping in a tent in the snow, for example on our Yosemite trip, go to: First-timer’s instructions