2026 Wolf Den / Black Label 273XLK

The Cherokee Wolf Den 273XLK puts the living room across the back. A rear lounge fills the back wall, a kitchen island anchors the galley ahead of it, and the front is a private bedroom — all opened up by two slide-outs. The convertible living-room furniture extends sleeping to four, and a full bath, an outside kitchen and the line's longest awning at 21 feet round out the plan. At 33 feet 7 inches it is the shortest and, at 7,341 pounds unloaded, the lightest floorplan in the 2026 Wolf Den lineup — the entry point to a full-size line.

Wolf Den is Forest River's large-format Cherokee value line — built on Power Gear frame technology with a Space Saver Rail design, high-impact front metal in place of corrugated metal, an aerodynamic smooth-radius front, a Tufflex PVC seamless walk-on roof, an armored underbelly and a five-eighths-inch tongue-and-groove plywood floor, riding on the Cherokee Exclusive Stable Step. Standard equipment is full-size: a 15,000-BTU air conditioner, a 30,000-BTU furnace, a 200-watt solar panel with a 40-amp controller and a battery disconnect, a backup camera, a tankless water heater, a 12-volt refrigerator and an air-fryer convection microwave.

At 7,341 pounds unloaded against a published 9,995-pound GVWR it leaves about 2,654 pounds of cargo capacity — the second-largest margin in the lineup — and the 33-foot tandem-axle body is the friendliest tow in the line, though it still wants a capable half-ton truck. This floorplan is also sold as the Cherokee Black Label 273XLKBL, which carries its own factory-published figures: 7,489 pounds unloaded against a 9,985-pound GVWR, with an 830-pound hitch weight and a 33-foot-4 body — close to the base numbers, but not the same numbers. For a couple who wants a rear living room and a kitchen island in the smallest, lightest full-size Wolf Den, the 273XLK is the line's entry plan.

The Cherokee Wolf Den is Forest River's large-format value travel trailer — a full-size, family-and-couples line in the Cherokee division, separate from and bigger than the entry Wolf Pup. The 2026 lineup is six floorplans from roughly 33 to 40 feet, all built on the same metal-sided Cherokee stick-and-tin recipe with 12-volt residential equipment, and each is also sold as a Cherokee Black Label trim with its own factory-published weights. The 273XLK on this page is highlighted; every 2026 plan links to its own page.

This floorplan carries its water comfortably. A full 52-gallon fresh tank is roughly 16% of the 2,654-pound cargo capacity, leaving the 273XLK with a usable gear budget even when you tow full.

The published dry tongue weight of 1,029 pounds is 14% of the 7,341-pound dry weight, which sits inside the 10–15% band usually quoted for stable towing. It is still a dry figure: loading the front pass-through and the fresh tank both push it up.

Nothing above changes the ceiling. Loaded to its 9,995-pound GVWR the 273XLK is towing 2,654 pounds more than its 7,341-pound dry figure, and that is the number your vehicle has to be rated for — not the brochure weight.

Tank balance is generous here: 52 gallons of fresh against 38 grey and 38 black, so waste capacity keeps pace with supply and the fresh tank is the constraint that ends a dry stay.

Ranked by GVWR, the 273XLK sits 2 of 6 in the Cherokee Wolf Den line: 9,995 pounds against a line that runs from 9,995 to 11,273 pounds. That position is the useful thing to know, because the plans immediately either side of it are the real alternatives.

Either side of it in the same line: Cherokee Wolf Den 271RK matches it exactly at 9,995 lb GVWR; and Cherokee Wolf Den 294GEBG matches it exactly at 9,995 lb GVWR.

3 other Cherokee Wolf Den plans share this floorplan’s 9,995 lb GVWR, so the ranking above separates plans that tow to the same ceiling. On a shared chassis the figure that actually differs between them is cargo capacity and where the weight sits, not the rating.

Against the 273XLK: the Campsite Reserve 29TJ is 3 ft longer; the Cascade 29TEC is 3 ft longer; the Classic 30RB is 5 lb heavier and 2 ft shorter. Those are differences in the published numbers only — what they cost, how they are built and how they live are separate questions each of those pages answers on its own terms.

Those are the nearest travel trailers from other lines by weight — one per line, picked by proximity on that figure and nothing else. They are listed so the same tow vehicle can be checked against real alternatives, not because they are equivalent inside; layout, build and price diverge sharply across that group.

For scale, the Cherokee Wolf Den floorplans profiled here run 7,336 to 8,989 pounds dry and 34 to 40 feet of exterior length across 6 plans. Where a floorplan falls in that spread usually says more about which vehicle can tow it, and which site it fits, than the layout name does.

Every profiled floorplan in this line, with the full weight table, is on the Cherokee Wolf Den line hub.

This catalog tracks 18 specification fields per floorplan. Named sources publish 14 of them for the 273XLK. The rest are not shown, because the alternative is reading a figure across from a sibling floorplan or from what the segment usually does — and a number nobody published is worth less than an admitted gap.

Not published for this floorplan: exterior height, exterior width, interior height, tire specification. If you find one of these in a manufacturer document for this plan, it belongs on this page.

The completeness figure at the foot of this page (92%) measures the same thing on the full field set: it is a measurement of how much this floorplan’s manufacturer publishes, not of how much research went into the page.

Values on this page carrying an asterisk were derived by arithmetic from published figures, or come from a single source, rather than being printed directly by the manufacturer. The flag travels with the number into the downloadable spec sheet.

How every figure here was sourced and checked is set out on the methodology page.