Do you ever pack extra tent stakes?

I always bring an extra one that’s wide and flat. It’s double duty for holding my Altaplex pole in soft soil and for digging catholes in firm soil when the trowel won’t work!

I also bring an extra Ti stake and an extra mini bic lighter, both have come in handy, if not for me sometimes for someone I’m traveling with.

Oops!I forgot to bring all of my stakes this time . :/

I managed to misplace a stake a few weeks ago (since recovered, I’m happy to report!) and found that some wood stakes about 3/4″ in diameter worked just fine, hammered in with a rock.

Where I was (Harriman State Park) I just hammered them in without any sharpening. I broke the small branches easily by stomping on them over a gap between 2 rocks and picked the splintered end that was somewhat sharper than the other. No need to sharpen them with a knife, which is good since my little SAK wouldn’t work for that anyway. ;^)

Yes, I bring 2 extra. Well worth the weight.

Zack—the same exact thing happened to me with the same exact stake a couple years ago on a winter trip—it wouldn’t come out of the ground and got lodged on a root and snapped in half.

And in subzero temps tent pegs will snap in half like glass on occasion.  One lesson I learned was to hammer in frozen stakes an inch or two deeper before trying to pull out and this unseats them.

I have various emergency caches scattered thruout the areas I backpack and some of these caches are just tent pegs I have found on my trips and cache for future use.  Last winter I lost two tent pegs in snow and needed extras which I didn’t carry.

About 4 years ago I was pulling a trip to Mt Rogers and got hit hard in a windstorm on Wilburn Ridge and my tent can take 21 pegs but I only brought 15 so I fashioned and whittled these babies for backup—

Snow? I don’t carry any stakes at all!

Find some sticks about 1″ in diameter and about 8-12″ long.

Bury the sticks lengthwise, about 4-6″ deep, perpendicular to the direction of pull, with tent guys attached with a mooring hitch with a long tail (leave the tail out!) to quickly release the cord when you’re ready to de-camp, leaving the deadmen in the snow. (Easy to find more later, lol, the woods are full of ’em!) I like the mooring hitch because it doesn’t cause any cord-on-cord friction when it is released.

I would have thought that Bob would bring one copper tent stake in case you need to help your canister stove keep up in sub-zero weather.   Or at least machine one aluminum tent stake to the radius of a butane canister so it could be in good thermal contact when used as a “Moulder Strip™ ® © and pat. pending”.

That’d be one heavy copper stake!

Copper is fairly low on the ‘poundability’ scale, lol.

OTOH, Lawson’s most recent Ti skewers are pure awesomeness. I’ve used them enough now to declare them “Best in Class”.

Once I packed 20 extra stakes but nobody wanted to buy them. Couldn’t understand it.

Carry extra stakes? No need. I have been finding everyone else’s extra/lost/misplaced/homeless stakes everywhere in the last few years; found on trails, still in the ground, in tent stake bags as well. Last trip out was the time I found the bag of MSR Groundhogs. I stopped at the Rangers’ Office on my way out and tried to leave them but the Ranger showed me his 5 gal bucket-o-lost stakes and told me to just take my latest find home.

groundhogs for the main stake outs. then a couple more for variety & extra stake outs.

I find stakes all the time but they’re always the crappy, heavy steel ones.

I’d love to find a bag o’ Groundhogs because some of mine are starting to bend a bit in the thin neck area near the head.

I like the Pyramid with snow on it picture.  It definitively pushes in the sides so you have less room.  And the inner surface is cold so there’s condensation.

I used to carry extra stakes until I stopped using carbon fiber stakes and stuck with continuous stakes such as shepard hooks and MSR Groundhogs.