How do you stake your bivy if needed? Pics

Seems to me that those stake loops are located in the wrong place? Surely best at ground level on each corner.

edit to add: but I've never used stakes with a bivvy!

My setup is similar with the poles, but I just use four rocks to keep my poles upright.

Simply sandwiching the ends of my poles between two large/medium rocks and use the straps on my hiking poles to loop over the opposite pole to basically tie them up together.

Then attached my bungie cord from the top of the crossed poles to the hood of my bivy.

I have never staked out the corners of my bivy in all of these years.

Maybe staking them out might help keep the top fabric off of my quilt to reduce the possibility of condensation, but as snug as the bivy is, not sure that staking out the corners will prevent that contact.

If you are an active sleeper, rolling around could damage your bivy if you roll over one of your corner stakes?

Your greatest protection from bad weather is going to be your tarp.

Depending on how bad the weather your are facing will determine if you stake the edges of your tarp down to the ground or higher up.

Personally, I prefer my tarp higher up for better views in hours of bad weather and have found that the top of my bivy has shed any water that has blown sideways under the edges of the tarp.

Note: my bivy has an eVent top, which is waterproof.

Anyway, keeping it stone age stupid works for me.

Tony

From their site:

"Loops at the four corners are available to secure the bivy to your tarp to keep it in place."

So the placement of the loops in this case would seem to make sense since a tarp is typically raised off the ground a bit for space/air flow.

I wouldn't want my bivy loops in that location since I'd rather stake it to ground instead of the tarp, but that placement by zPacks seems pretty intentional.

Those loops are for hanging the bivy to dry out more than for staking. You don't really need to stake the bivy. If you want to stake it for some reason use some shock cord to give some play so you don't blow out a seam from moving around. And like Matt said you can clip it into your tarp if you want, though it's not really going anywhere once you're in it.

I agree that the position of the Zpacks bivy loops isn't for everyone. However, I suspect that since most people use a bivy such as this under a tarp, the option to secure the corners UPWARD might improve the performance of a bathtub style floor design. I use the MLD superlight bivy which has loops on the bottom of each corner. MLD specifically says that these are not tie out loops. However, I have loosely staked out this bivy with a small Ti hook and a foot of shock cord and I find it helpful to keep in in position and to keep it from blowing away when I'm not in it.

With the Zpacks bivy as pictured, I would be very uncomfortable having stakes so close to the easily punctured bivy material. Maybe rig a piece of shock cord between the top corner loops and the poles at the head and just leave the foot free (when using without a tarp).

Thank you all, answers were what I suspect. Tie outs wrong location for staking. Danger of puncturing bivy from sticks, bag would hold it up to utilize bathtub bottom in case of ground water. I would use a tarp when rain is likely or whatever.
Duane

Most tie outs on bivy sacks that I've own are not for staking. They are for hanging it to dry.

And as someone who has been using a bivy sack since 2008 with my tarp, I've never found the need to actually stake out my bivy. Unless they mosquitos are bad, I don't even hang the netting off my face. And if they are, 90% of the time, I just use my hat to hold it off my face. On the occasion where I used the cord to hang the netting (poles like your photo, a line over a branch or tied to the underneath of my tarp), I still don't find a need to stake out the bivy. When its raining, I've never noticed that my bivy moves around much underneath my tarp despite the fact that I often flip from one side to the other during the night.

I see from the one response pics, that the bivy can be tied up to the tarp, seems they might get in my older, clumsy way. :) I seem to stub my toes more, walking around at home. Thank you for the experienced view.
Duane