Pitching the Tarptent SS Li

That looks like a bummer of a night!

I’ve had pretty good luck by removing the lines that come on the tent and replacing them with something longer, slightly decreasing the angle that pulls on the stake.  It also makes things easier for stacking rocks, or changing stake locations (if there’s a rock in my way, etc.).  Hopefully the pic of my tent shows up below, both lines that go to the linelocs are longer.

Not as bad as it looks. I was in the house. I set it up in the backyard to see how it handled the snow. It was vastly unprotected. No rocks.

If that strut hadn’t of came loose. I had two stakes in it. One through the clip. It may have slipped off.

Ill try your method. Thank you.

Also wondering if regular tent poles would have been a better choice for the conditions. I use Leki twist lock trekking poles.

EDIT;

I don’t want to scare anybody with that picture. I won’t blame the tent. It held up well.
I confirmed the twist lock poles did collapse some. I’m not sure they were completely tight. Without the resulting snow load from the pulled stake, they should have held.

Tarptent could address the of the strut stakes pulling out. I’ve seen video reviews with the same issue.
Double staking initially solved the problem for me, however I used a wire stake and it pulled out 1 stake and slipped off of the 2nd.
It all seems like a simple fix. Replace the line and carry extra stakes in the winter.

A simple change for a much tighter pitch. I brought the stake a little further out, using the original line as a leader. My concern would be pulling it too tight and stressing the connection point. I pulled it taut and stopped. 

The issue/solution is matching the stakes to the terrain and conditions. There is no perfect stake all for all conditions and you want to be sure to get the stake driven all way in at an angle so guyline stress wont pull it out.  For snow load you need longer/thicker stakes than the included 6in ones especially if/when the soil is loose.

-H

Thank you.

I appreciate you addressing the issue.

I did switch to groundhog stakes.

I’ll add that the snow load was accompanied with high winds. The winds here tend to swirl around and come from all direction. I’m on the front range, you can see pikes peak in the background.

The wind tends to lift the struts and pull the stake. Otherwise I think it would have handled the snow load. Everything else held fine. Longer stakes would probably do it.

I like the tension from bringing the stake out and it does hold better. I don’t want to over stress the connection.

I also fault the twist lock trekking poles. They were about 4” shorter afterwards.
Ordinarily l would have found a better location. I needed to know what I didn’t know and now I know.  I wanted to see how safe I’d be in it under extreme conditions. As bad as the picture looks, I think it passed with flying colors. I have the utmost confidence in it.
If I had been in the tent, it held up enough to do it’s job. I would have been fine. With my weight in the tent, it wouldn’t have happened.
I haven’t tried the winter insert. I did put a tarp over the netting for the sun. Of course it doesn’t fit. I thought a custom cut tarp would be a nice feature.

I added the Sidecar for my dog. She can carry it. A piece of closed cell foam gave it shape. Magnets along the floors would be nice. If the hook used to hold up the inside door was on the outside, I could hook it to the one on the tent.  Rookie thoughts.

Thanks very much for the reply. Thanks for the quality product.

I also fault the twist lock trekking poles. They were about 4” shorter afterwards.

Yikes!  If the poles shortened four inches, I’d say that’s not also a problem, that is the problem.

I think if the poles had been the fault, they would have fell over. It was the snow load resulting from the failed stake that I believe resulted in weighing them down. Otherwise I believe the tent would have shed the snow. One lead to the other. It kind of snowballed.