Warning: don't trust those cheap tent stakes that come with most budget tents

I bought a $40 tent from Walmart for a weekend trip to Big Sur last month, and every single plastic stake bent or snapped trying to get them into the rocky ground. Had to use rocks to hold the corners down and woke up with dirt all over my sleeping bag. Anyone else have a better solution for hard ground?

3 comments

3 Comments

burns.ruby11d ago

Same thing happened to me last summer in Joshua Tree. Those little plastic stakes are useless once the ground gets any kind of hard pack or rocks underneath. I swapped to these thick aluminum ones from Amazon, they're called MSR Groundhogs or something similar. They've held up through like 10 trips now and you can actually hammer them into tough soil without bending.

finley_bennett2811d ago

Does your hand still hurt from trying to pound those plastic ones into the hard ground? I tried using a rock once as a hammer and ended up smashing my thumb instead of the stake. I finally gave up and got some of those beefy titanium skewers from REI, they were like 12 bucks each but I haven't bent a single one yet. You can pretty much drive them into concrete with a mallet and they just laugh at you.

finley_bennett2811d ago

Oh man, tell me about it! I read somewhere that those cheap plastic stakes are basically just decorations, they're not even meant for real ground. Once I switched to the MSR Groundhogs like the other person said, camping got way less frustrating.