Earlier this month my wife and I paddled from Silver Islet at the tip of the Sibley Peninsula on Lake Superior to Rossport, Ontario. Of our eight wilderness campsites, we were able to use standard tent pegs on only one; the others were either sand, gravel, or rock. For both sand and gravel (and for snow in winter), I use long, semitubular aluminum stakes sold by REI, among others. One thing I like about them is that they nest together in a small bundle. Working them into gravel was sometimes difficult on the trip. When I couldn't get them as far in as I wanted, I piled rocks on them. We never had any problems, but then we never had much wind to speak of, either. The day we camped on rock, we put driftwood sticks through the stake loops and then piled rocks on them. This worked too, though again we had little wind. (An unpleasant discovery I made while gathering rocks at this site -- on Spain Island, for those who know it -- was that one rock was sitting on a pile of shit. When I looked around, I saw flags of fresh toilet paper behind several bushes. There was no excuse for this, as there was easy access to the woods above the clearing where I found this stuff where it was quite easy to dig cat holes in the duff.) During a trip in Georgian Bay several years ago, we took along squares of tent mesh with sewn-in snap hooks on which we piled rocks. One night when we were camped on bare rock, this system withstood a thunderstorm accompanied by winds strong enough to bend one of the poles in our Alpine meadows tent. Other times when we have camped on sand we have used deadmen. Chuck Holst *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Tue Aug 17 2004 - 12:31:50 PDT
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