Anchoring A Tent For Any Environment: Tent Pegs

In the wilderness, the last thing a person wants to be concerned about is having his or her regular or pop up tent blow away because it was not anchored to the ground with the proper style of tent peg. Camping and backpacking is about communing with the wild. Wilderness enthusiasts do not want to worry about any logistics of the experience except getting low to the ground to expose every sense to the vast wonder of the outdoors. There are enough challenges—getting a fire started with wet wood, finding a camp spot free of jutting rocks to set up a sleeping spot, preparing food, and proofing the site from wild beasts—all without being concerned if the gear the camper brought is good enough to endure harsh environments. Tent pegs might be the fulcrum by which a good camping trip tips into the bad.


Wooden tent pegs are the most basic form of device used to anchor a tent. Many campers prefer the most basic experience as the best way to be in nature. For them, that means bringing nothing more than a water proof tarp, cordage, food and a backpack with a knife and a change of clothes. Low impact camping relies on scraping up tools that nature has bountifully provided. When setting up an A-Frame tarp (in the shape of a tent without a zip-fly) the camper will often tie off to a tree or find a fallen branch to fashion makeshift wooden stakes. This is a brave way to camp, and it truly leaves the camper to the mercy of his or her design. Driving a wooden stake into the ground can be risky in high winds or when the ground is hard.
For that reason, there is a large base of campers, who, though they enjoy the wild and low impact camping, opt to bring more substantial pegs and tents with four walls for overhead protection. In an extreme environment, even plastic stakes that come with the tent may not be adequate. Especially in mountain terrain, the ground will be frozen and rocky. Hard ground makes plastic stakes more or less worthless. Heavy duty tent pegs are necessary for extreme camping environments.

Titanium tent pegs, for example, can be used in virtually any environment. Along with a mallet, they can be driven into the most frozen ground, and aside from solid rock, there is not a surface they will not bite into and penetrate. Considering that the climbers of Everest are equipped with titanium stakes, campers may rest at ease knowing that they such provisions will keep their tent anchored in the fiercest of winds. Still, there are a few environments that seem to best simple titanium.

Maintaining the titanium provision but adding a thread results in screw in tent pegs are great for big tents like the 6 man tent and the 8 man tent. Like a driving screw, these stakes are able to force into even solid rock. Often times, this style of stake will have a quarter-inch, aggressive pointed tip for hammering into stone. The stake will then have threading that grows wider from the point. Once the peg is driven into the rock, the camper can use leverage to achieve a firm bite on a rocky surface.

While using titanium and heavy-duty stakes is a departure from low-impact camping, it is an introduction to extreme camping. Both styles are revered and respected by hobby campers. Regardless of route, when a camper goes to the land and lives by its rules—either prepared to harness the provisions of tree branches for tent pegs and fire wood, or subdue the terrain with adequate tools—camping has a way of refueling a person when he or she goes with the right tent equipment.

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