Andy F, I can't find the ground that ti shepherd's hook stakes can't hold, I look for it, I went up to the Cascades/Columbia gorge, a few years back thinking, ok, now I'll find it, off trail, forest duff, but no, denied, the stakes held. Then I went to 3 sisters volcanic wilderness and one night was in sandy ash type ground, and said, ok, now it won't hold, and in fact, I did have to use two for one pullout in the sandiest part of the ground of one corner, put in an inverted v shape, as the hail pelted my tent, I waited for them to fail, but denied again, they held fine. Then deep forest duff, in spots where nobody has camped, just leaves on the ground, the kind where you have to push them way down to just reach something solid enough to hold them, and again, denied, held fine. I'll keep looking for spots that won't hold and trust I will find one eventually. Note that if you have a tarp or other setup that requires a lot of load on the stake, say ridgelines etc, I can totally see some scenarios where a thin ti or aluminum or steel stake won't hold in duff/sandy ground. For non tarp scenarios though I just have never found one. Maybe a beach, yes, a beach, that requires rocks or something, now I remember, I have seen that, but I don't think any stake that's not a sand/snow stake would hold soft sand, time to whittle out a wood one.
note that I put stakes in at roughly perpendicular angle to the angle of the force, which varies depending on the ground, maybe a bit more, ie, shallow angle, depends on the ground, in super hard packed ground, you can usually get away with only 3 inches deep at an angle if that's the easiest way to get the stake in, with duff etc, I'd use less of an angle, ie, greater depth.
I picked up some of the long lawson ti stakes just to have them, and his burly ones, and would probably bring two of those as well just in case that extra inch actually matters. They aren't really long, just an inch or less longer than the regular length ones, almost no weight difference.
I'm also curious how anyone can get big stakes into hard rocky ground, or the icy ground commented on here, since it's already hard to get something about 1/8" inch thick with a thin point tip in. So I'm left with the dilemma of trying to find any situation where ti hook stakes fail. Not just ty, steel, aluminum, same thing. Even in the hardest packed ground I find that using rocks to pound in ti hook stakes is not required ever, I did use to do that for the thicker aluminum hook stakes, those are about 1/4" thick. They tended to bend.
I have the easton stakes, and msr groundhogs, but given I can't find anywhere that ti hook stakes fail, and several where easton/msr do, I can't really figure out any reason to bring the bigger stakes, I'd rather carry 4 extra ti stakes, more flexible.
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