The Nortent Gamme 4 is the closest tent we’ve ever come across to a portable brick building. Designed to withstand the worst weather imaginable — the type you only get out on Arctic tundras — it’s fully stove-compatible, comes with an optional inner, and makes very easy work of typical British conditions.

The Nortent Gamme 4

Ideal for: Winter mountaineering, basecamps, bushcraft, 4-season adventuring, group trips

Not suitable for: Trail running, fastpacking, ultralightweight activities, thru-hiking, solo adventures

Big, durable and incredibly reliable, the Nortent Gamme 4 is designed to keep you safe in the most inhospitable places on Earth. Offering tons of space inside and being fully stove-compatible, it’s a very comfortable place to while away the longest and coldest winter nights — or for keeping yourself protected in truly horrendous wind, rain or snow.

The Good

Super strong in all conditions

Very confidence inducing

Very versatile - you can use as a duo or a trio, without or without the inner, or as a hot tent

Incredibly roomy

The Bad

Too large for one person to carry in a backpack on their own

Very expensive

Relatively heavy

You need to seam seal it yourself

The Nortent Gamme 4

Nortent is one of the most interesting brands we’ve had the pleasure to connect with at the GBAC. Hailing from Norway, they follow a design process that involves building, testing and rapidly iterating — all to deliver what we think are some of the best tents on the market today. These include the ever-impressive Nortent Vern 1, one of our favourite 1-person 4-season backpacking tents of all time, and the exciting Vern 1 PC, one of the most innovative shelters we’ve seen in recent years and our number-one choice for windy summit camps in the UK.

All that is to say we’re pretty familiar with Nortent. Over the years, we’ve tried everything from their lightweight backpacking lines and their 4-season tipi shelters to their unique take on the bivouac. But, as their products are designed with Norway in mind — the home of proper winters and rolling snowy tundras — we were especially excited to test out their ultimate solution to 4-season Arctic camping: The Gamme.

The Gamme is Nortent’s most rugged, adventure-ready and hardcore camping tent. It’s a spacious and super solid expedition tent that comes with storm flaps around the entire base of the tent for keeping out snow, can be fitted with an optional inner for camping when insects are an issue, and is even fully stove-compatible for making the inside of this shelter toasty warm when the weather outside is anything but.

In true 4-season, expedition-level style, the Gamme is decidedly not ultralight, however. All in, with inner, stakes, footprint, poles and bag, the Gamme pushes 8 kg. Without the inner (which, in our experience, is the configuration you’ll use most often), the weight drops to an advertised 5.8 kg. And while that puts this tent far out of the bounds of anything even resembling UL, the packed tent can be easily divided amongst your group to bring down the total per-person pack weight.

When it comes to price, the Nortent Gamme 4 is almost as expensive as it is heavy. When bought through Valley and Peak, the Gamme will set you back a whopping £1,241.35 for the cheapest version (which is the Artic configuration without the inner or the footprint). Naturally, this puts it very much at the top end of the price spectrum for most people, making it only a consideration for people who are looking for a true 4-season shelter for use on bitterly cold expeditions — the exact use case the Gamme was designed for. In that sense, then, there’s no point in comparing the Gamme with more traditional style backpacking tents, such as the Robens Starlight 1, The North Face Trail Lite 2, or even other more backpacking-appropriate lines from Nortent, such as the Vern 2. To understand how the Gamme sits price-wise on the market, it’s best compared with other products in its class, such as the Hilleberg Saitaris, a 6.6 kg 4-person expedition shelter that will set you back £2250, the Terra Nova Expedition Terra Firma, a 6.7 kg, 4-person tent that costs £1,800, or The North Face Bastion, a 6 kg, 4-person expedition tent that costs £850. None of which are stove-compatible, we might add…

Our experience using the Nortent Gamme 4

To test the Nortent Gamme 4, we took this tent out on a few trips in and around the UK in search of the ideal conditions. In total, we tried it out in the Chiltern Hills (where we test-pitched it and camped in it just to get a better feel for the user experience), tried it with a stove in some still woodland when the temperature dropped, and truly put it up against the worst the UK could throw at it on a multi-day hike through Scotland’s Cairngorms National Park in January. Unfortunately, however (and rather unsurprisingly), at no point were we able to put the Gamme up against the Arctic conditions it was built for; try as we might. On all of our testing trips, the Gamme never once saw snow (despite the temperature dropping deep below freezing numerous times), nor were we able to put it up against sustained sub-zero temperatures. We were, however, able to put it up against wind gusts of up to 120 km/h in the Cairngorms, and we got to see how it performed in a sustained British downpour — both of which it shrugged off comfortably. Therefore, even though we couldn’t gauge its ability to handle snow load or to see how the interior felt in temperatures below -9, our experiences with the Gamme have made us more than confident in its ability to perform in some truly awful conditions — and we’d be happy to hunker down in this tent on a windy Arctic plateau somewhere.

Pitching and packing away the Nortent Gamme 4

The first thing we particularly appreciate about the Nortent Gamme is the ease of pitching. For a tent this strong, you can pitch it in less than 10 minutes when you share the job with a friend, or you can get it pitched in around 15 minutes when you do it on your own. This includes guying out all lines, pegging out all tie-out points and making the tent as tight as a drum skin.

To properly pitch it out, all you need to do is peg out one side and start building the structure. To do this, you need to slide the 3 black poles into place so they’re all criss-crossed over one another, and then simply slide the ends of each pole into the large plastic grommets. At this point, you can then add the 2 red support poles by feeding these through the holds around the structure before pegging out the rest of the tie-out points. Around the Gamme, numerous guy lines can also be pulled tight to ensure the tent remains strong in winds from every direction.

Pitching the Gamme in high winds

When we tested the Gamme in the Cairngorms, the windspeed was shown as being around 70 km/h with additional gusts of around 120 km/h coming in through the night. To maintain structural integrity, we untied some guy lines on the sheltered side of the tent and reattached these on the side being battered by the wind. This reduced the amount the Gamme shook when the big gusts hit it and seemed to make the inside substantially quieter.

When it comes to packing away the Gamme, the process is just as simple as pitching it: You just need to deconstruct the shelter, remove the pegs and roll up the guy lines. The tent can then be rolled up or stuffed back into the generously sized carry case, and you can slide the poles back into the provided bag. Due to the size of the fly, however, it can get a little flappy in the wind. To avoid the tent being swept away in a gust, we got used to leaving one side fully pegged out before rolling the rest of the tent up into itself.

The interior

The Gamme comes with two doors: One to the front of the tent underneath the chimney flap and one to the back. Both come with a built-in bug net as standard, and both offer enough room to easily climb in and out of the tent, even when it’s full of gear. Around the top of the tent, numerous ventilation ports can be opened and closed depending on the wind direction, and there are even some along the bottom of the tent for increased airflow.

Inside the Gamme, there’s also tons of space to play with. In fact, you’ve almost enough space to stand up in this tent, and there’s easily more than enough room for 4 people to sleep comfortably if you’re happy to sleep directly on the ground (as is common in the cold conditions this tent was built for). If you’re camping in insect-prone conditions and want to use the inner, the interior space reduces substantially. With that clipped in, you’ve only enough space for 2 people and gear or 3 people at a push.

On cold winter days in the UK, however, we found ourselves only using the footprint. This kept the soggy Scottish ground at bay and allowed us to make maximum use of the generous space inside. In this configuration, around a quarter of the floor space remains uncovered, which gives you a vestibule-style area to pile up wet kit or to mountain a stove if you’re hot tenting.

While we’re on the subject of vestibules, it’s also worth establishing that the Gamme is completely void of one. This tent is little more than a big dome, so your soggy kit will need to come inside with you. To keep the sleeping area dry, however, both the inner and the footprint leave a large section of ground exposed in front of the Gamme’s main door which serves as a great place to pile up wet gear. What’s more. the Gamme also comes with a 20 cm wide nylon shelf around the foot of the inside wall which can be used to keep bits of kit off the ground, clean and dry.

Durability

With a flysheet made out of a 40 denier silnylon material, the Gamme is decidedly durable. Thick yet flexible, strong yet reasonably lightweight, the purpose of this tent is to be both practical and solid — allowing you to not only move through inhospitable places but to stay safe while you’re in them. And, in our experience, that’s exactly what the Gamme delivers. Granted, as with any silnylon tent, you’re not going to want to put this material near any open flames, nor are you going to want to hang it over a barbed wire fence to dry. But as long as you’re considerate in how you pitch it, pack it and store it, the Gamme will easily last you many seasons.

As is the case with any Nortent shelter, you do need to seam seal the Gamme yourself, however. In a move to keep the price affordable (something that many brands have now instituted), you have to go over all of the permeable seams with the seam sealant provided by Nortent. This process can be a bit messy and can take a bit of time, but it does render the shelter 100% waterproof and extends the life of your tent.

Nortent Gamme 4 FAQs

Conclusion

All in, we have been nothing but impressed by the Gamme. For a tent of this style, it’s relatively lightweight and easy to carry, especially when you share the load amongst a group of people. It’s also so incredibly strong that the tent will keep you safe wherever you use it in the UK. Seriously, the Gamme is the closest thing to a brick house we’ve ever had the privilege to test.

That being said, however, at well over £1,000 for the basic model, we think the Gamme is mostly overkill for any uses in the UK. Aside from winter summit camps or extensive cold weather trips in Scotland, wildcamping in the UK doesn’t really warrant something this hardcore — as long as you’re willing to pick camp spots out of the wind, at least.

That being said, if you’re looking for a tent to take with you on an Arctic winter expedition, enjoy spending multiple days off-grid, are a fan of hot tenting and don’t mind carrying a heavy pack when you head out — the Nortent Gamme 4 might well be the best tent for you on the market right now. But only if you need a shelter that checks all of those boxes.