My friend told me my tent stakes were too flimsy for mountain camping and he was spot on

Last spring I planned a trip up to the Smokies and my buddy Mark took one look at my cheap aluminum stakes and said those won't hold in the rocky ground up there. I shrugged it off because I had used them fine at car campgrounds before and figured he was just being picky. First night at about 3500 feet a gust of wind came through and snapped two stakes right out of the dirt. My tent nearly flipped over and I spent twenty minutes trying to pound them back in with a rock. Next day I went to a local outfitter and bought some heavy duty steel ones for 15 bucks. They drove in easy and held solid even through a thunderstorm. Has anyone else dealt with a gear failure that made you upgrade something you thought was fine?

3 comments

3 Comments

ruby_patel271mo ago

Had a buddy who learned the hard way when his cheap sleeping pad sprang a leak at 2am on a cold night in the Smokies... spent the rest of the trip sleeping on pine needles and regretting his 20 dollar purchase.

oliver21mo ago

Huh, that's rough. Did he ever figure out if it was just a bad valve or an actual puncture?

abby_wilson511mo ago

Yeah that bit about "cheap aluminum stakes" snapping in the rocky ground is exactly what happened to me too. I used to think stakes were stakes, but after one windy night where my tent nearly went airborne I learned real quick that hardware matters. The problem with those flimsy stakes is they bend or snap the second you hit a rock or a hard root under the dirt. I switched to the heavy duty steel ones with the big heads and they're way easier to drive in with a hammer or even a rock. Another thing is you gotta angle them away from the tent at about 45 degrees so they hold better against wind pulling up. Saved my tent more than once since I made that swap.

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