Necessity is the Mother of Invention (Tent Anchors)

Paddlers' Place
#1

I went about solving a minor problem for myself today, and maybe there are a few people out there who might find it interesting. I decided I wanted to have some sand anchors for one of my tents. The tent in question is a “Lean 1 Plus”, made by CCS, and what I like about it is that it’s extremely light and extremely roomy. It has about as much square footage as a four-person tent but it’s taller than most at the peak, and if you include the separate floor (or just a suitable-sized tarp) and a pair of poles, it’s about as light as most one-person tents (without poles (not needed in the woods) it’s much lighter, in spite of its relatively enormous size). Though it’s not self-supporting, it can be guyed out in innumerable ways, and if you are handy with rope that can be done pretty easily and quickly in the woods or in places where lightweight tent stakes can be used. However, I’d like to use it more often on the sandbars of the Wisconsin river, where lightweight tent stakes do not hold well. I’ve said it here before that “the best sand stakes ever” are 0.75" x 1.5" wood stakes that are at least 12" or 14" long, and that’s what I use for any self-supporting tent on sandbars, but since this tent would require a large number of guy lines and base anchors if strong wind were expected, that would require me to bring along way too many wooden stakes (too much weight and too much bulk for my taste), so I came upon the idea of using the kind of sand/snow anchor that looks like a parachute.

Well, heck, when I found out that the sand anchors made by both Mountain Hardware and MSR cost $25 for a set of four, I gave up the idea of buying any. I want to be ready with a whole lot more than four, but not at that price. So, I started making some tonight, using medium-weight plastic woven tarp, cheap para-cord, and duct tape. The parachute part is made from one-foot-square pieces of tarp, and two loops of para-cord cross the back side from corner to corner and at right angles, and are held to the back surface of the tarp by duct tape. The para-cord lines all come together a little ways away from the front surface in a single loop to which an anchor line can be tied. Since the para-cord is on the back side, the tape serves no structural function and pulling the lines won’t cause it to fail. It just keeps the para-cord positioned where it needs to be to do its job. The cost works out to $10 per dozen, with 9/10ths of that being for the para-cord (that part really adds up, with two four-foot lengths of cord per unit). Incidentally, the total weight for a dozen is just slightly more than a pound, but using lighter tarp material would reduce that by a fair amount.

For those who camp on rocky beaches, this kind of anchor can be used to cradle a big cobble or small boulder, instead of being buried.

I realize they won’t last forever, but since they won’t be out in the sun at all, I’m pretty sure they’ll last for years. I’m calling it a bargain, but I’ll report back if they don’t work as expected…

#2

Spend a little time sewing the edges and sewing the cord in place, then they WILL last for a very long time.

#3

@bnystrom said:
Spend a little time sewing the edges and sewing the cord in place, then they WILL last for a very long time.

Yup, you are absolutely right. I had been thinking that that would be “Phase II” of the project if I end up using these very much. In that case I’d probably use nylon fabric instead of cheap tarp material too. On the other hand, I’ll also have to weigh their actual longevity against the time, cost, and effort of making them “the right way”.

#4

If you have lots of space, such as in a canoe, you could bring some empty gallon milk jugs, fill them with gravel and sand (or water!), and tether the tent to the handles of the weighted jugs.

#5

@pikabike said:
If you have lots of space, such as in a canoe, you could bring some empty gallon milk jugs, fill them with gravel and sand (or water!), and tether the tent to the handles of the weighted jugs.

I’ve done something similar to that with the tent in question. I’ve used heavy-duty plastic bags (I have easy access to such bags that are sized about 16" x 24" when spread flat), filled with sand and partly buried. Since the tent in question is unusually large and has no frame, and has a very large number of available tie-down points, one could use a lot of anchors in case there was strong wind. Adding to this already-high number of likely tie-downs, I’ve recently started using two lines spread at a slight angle for corner tie-downs, on this tent and also for tarps (where most people use a single line extending from each corner, I’ve found that two lines at a diverging angle provide several times the stability and hold-down power). That could add up to a lot of milk jugs, and a lot storage volume in the boat.

Using milk jugs seems like a good, simple idea though, and I could certainly see that as a way for the average person to quickly prepare themselves for providing extra anchorage for a typical small tent. Even self-supporting tents ought to have a few additional guy lines during storms (and of course many tents would benefit from being customized with additional attachment points for such lines).

#6

If you could find an object that holds rocks/gravel, has a tyable handle, and NESTS together, that would reduce the volume while being transported.

Maybe plastic pails?

#7

@pikabike said:
If you could find an object that holds rocks/gravel, has a tyable handle, and NESTS together, that would reduce the volume while being transported.

Maybe plastic pails?

Nested containers would be a step in the right direction. As long as we’re bouncing such ideas around, my choice in that case would be heavy-duty plastic bags. The bags I mentioned in my previous post are what I use at my job for physically carrying 50- to 70-pound samples of soil and rock, so they are up to the task. In place of a handle for securing a guy line, I twisted the opening shut and tied it with two or three wraps of para-cord, finished with two half hitches to keep it cinched tight. Then I provided a bowline loop in the free end of the cord. Even a kayaker could carry a few dozen of these bags with almost no noticeable loss of storage volume in the boat (the stack of bags could probably be folded and stuffed under the seat, where nothing else will fit as it is). For anyone wondering, there are innumerable sources of such bags, but one easy source is Staples Online.

#8

Good solution, GBG. I’ve used found sticks as deadman anchors. Tie your guy line to a stout stick and bury the stick in the sand. Are there no sticks on the Wisconsin? I usually bring a GI trenching tool (for hygiene purposes). Having that tool along helps with stick burying.

~~Chip

#9

I like that. Especially since when it comes to non-essential camping gear, I hate unnecessarily becoming the retailer’s friend and parting with even a small amount of bucks for some thing that would just be added weight or bulk. And as I camp more often on rocky/uneven ground, and not so often on sand, bare softball size cobbles/knife-sharpened sticks usually take care of any such problems for me. --But I’ll remember your idea next time I expect to sand pitch.

#10

@BoozTalkin said:
Good solution, GBG. I’ve used found sticks as deadman anchors. Tie your guy line to a stout stick and bury the stick in the sand. Are there no sticks on the Wisconsin? I usually bring a GI trenching tool (for hygiene purposes). Having that tool along helps with stick burying.

~~Chip

LOL, Yeah, Chip, we have sticks here and I’ve used that method too, but as I’ve been pointing out, one might need quite a few of them and surprisingly, there can be times that it’s very hard to find the kind of sticks you need at any given spot on the Wisconsin River without a rather large amount of effort or discomfort. There might be millions that are way too small. There might be enough that are more than big enough but they might need sawing and be half-buried and coated with mud (no fun to saw or carry). There might be a 50-foot-wide back channel between your campsite and the woods on shore, and the shore might be a steep bank topped by an impenetrable wall of poison ivy, or getting very far into the woods might require wading across a number of deep flood channels (I call them flood channels because they carry flow when the river is high, but actually they are just natural low spots between parallel ridges left behind by the gradual shifts in location of the main river banks hundreds or thousands of years ago). And of course, the woods can be so full of mosquitoes that going in there for any reason that deprives you of the use of both hands is just no fun.

So call me lazy, but for a big, frame-less, floor-less tent that might easily justify the use of well over a dozen individual tie-downs, having a little packet of anchors ready to go would normally save a lot of time. Still, a long buried stick might be just the ticket for securing a whole row of bottom-edge anchors.

As for a digging tool, I would be using the same kind of tool that you do (the shovel-only kind, not the shovel & pick kind), except that I happened across a compact shovel that’s about the same size and a fair bit lighter, but it’s the same idea.

#11

GBG I am having trouble envisioning your anchors… Pictures possible?

#12

I’ve tied my lines to a stick I buried and I’ve tied my lines to rocks I’ve buried so one day while bored, I dug out an old tent I had cut up because of too many zipper failures and tears and cut the nylon into 12" squares that I hemm’d all around. Then I sewed more tent scrap into a long strip that I cut into 4" lengths and sewed them to the corners. It isn’t preety but…
…I now have a bunch of tent anchors for sand that were made in an hour from an old tent I was about to throw away. Total cost… $0.00 in materials and an hour of my time when I would normally watch TV.

#13

Why not just a piece of tarp or bag and a short piece of paracord to close the tarp or bag and tie to tent?

#14

@castoff said:
Why not just a piece of tarp or bag and a short piece of paracord to close the tarp or bag and tie to tent?

Why not? If you think about it, there are two very simple reasons. This method reduces the amount of bulk of material needed to do the job, and though it doesn’t save time “right now” (when building them), it saves time in the future. Since that wasn’t so obvious to you, I’ll elaborate:

With a “parachute” that is one foot square, it doesn’t take a very big hole to bury that sheet on edge, even though the hole needs to be tapered on one side to make some room for the attachment loops and the guy line. In sand, digging such a hole doesn’t take long at all. Then, with that one-foot-square “parachute” on edge and being pulled sideways, you can roughly think about the way it’s pulling on not less than one cubic foot of sand, and one cubic foot of beach sand typically weighs a little over 100 pounds if dry, and quite a bit more if wet. And that volume of sand is even a better anchor than that approximation suggests since its surrounded by the weight of lots more sand. Now, if you took that same one-foot-square sheet of tarp material and shaped it into a sack and filled it with sand and tied it shut, there would be less than one pound of sand enclosed, and burying it in that wrapped-up condition would be decidedly less effective too since the diameter of the ball would be no more than 4 inches at best (more like 3 inches if barely enough “slack” were provided to tie it shut). So, it’s simply a matter of geometry that a hugely greater square footage of material is needed when relying on a sack as opposed to burying a wide-open parachute, and since I have to store this someplace among my gear, I’m liking the fact that I’m getting roughly 6-times as many anchors for a given amount of tarp material than if I were to use the tarp material to make sacks (it’s actually a ratio of more like 7 or 8 to 1 if you include the material needed to close off the sack’s opening and attach a line).

As to the second reason, burying these things will take time, but as I already mentioned, I have used heavy-duty plastic bags for this purpose and I can assure you that it takes longer to fill a bag with sand and tie it shut than it takes to dig a hole in which to bury a much smaller device, which, as explained above, does a better job anyway (also with the sack, you still have to empty it later) . So, spending a few hours on just one lazy weekend will save time over and over again later on.

#15

@kayamedic said:
GBG I am having trouble envisioning your anchors… Pictures possible?

Here’s a picture. It’s really the same principle as sand anchors by Mountain Hardware or MSR, except that to avoid the need for sewing attachments into the margin, the attachment lines run across the whole back side of the sheet. Also, the attachment loop system is compact and ends up buried within the sand, instead of extending well above ground level. The short attachment lines will have a tendency to “curl” the parachute under load, which would make it smaller, but I’m betting that the soil won’t yield enough for there to be enough curling to actually matter.

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#16

As an ultralight solution for camping on Florida “sugar sand” I often use plastic grocery bags. This might not work for a very large parabolic tarp, but it works just fine for my solo or double tents. These take up little room and weigh very little and are surprisingly strong. Use them to fill with your trash at the end of the trip, and don’t leave them behind. Sticks, buried perpendicularly work well too – I’m not always able to find large sticks on many Florida beaches.

#17

@gstamer said:
As an ultralight solution for camping on Florida “sugar sand” I often use plastic grocery bags. "

Well it don’t come more lightweight than that–But watch it: CA now charges 5 cents per bag in the grocery stores for them, and NY has temporarily delayed instituting the same type program. (But hey, if enough of us paddler-campers take up this as idea, it may just do the trick of preventing more plastic grocery bags ending up in landfills. Not. :wink:

#18

Yeah, and some cities in WA banned the light straphandle bags altogether. We are glad to be back where they are still given out free. Even though we bring reuseable bags to the store, sometimes they aren’t enough, and sometimes we need more of the straphandle bags. They work great when reused for camping or car trip bags, or for double-bagging smelly trash inside a larger trash bag.

Safeway in the bag-ban town sold the old-fashioned kraft bags for 5 cents. But you sure wouldn’t use those for tent anchors, and they are useless for walking with groceries in the rain–you know, like those greenie towns want you to do instead of driving.