Customer Reviews

MSR Ground Hog Stake

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

We are not serious campers - car camp in a State Park 1 or 2 weekends a year. Recently purchased these stakes and a tent from Amazon. The first time we used these, the park required us to pitch our tents on tent 'pads' - essentially hard packed gravel that is used for either parking your vehicle or pitching your tent. These stakes went into the hard packed ground like a hot knife through butter. Four other families in our party had either standard issue plastic stakes or the typical coat hangar thin steel stakes. They worked up a sweat trying to get their stakes to make any headway through the hardpack. A couple of them ended up bending and/or breaking stakes and ultimately left a couple corners unsecured. I was VERY happy with my small investment in these sweet stakes. If you are a serious camper and could be out in all kinds of ground terrain and high winds - I gotta believe you are going to want these. If you are a car camper and would rather get your tent set up and have a cold one while your buddies are cussing out their cheap stakes - you wanna have these too!

I have been using the coleman big ol' nail with a collar tent stakes for years. They don't break or bend and they don't come out of the ground under stress, but they are heavy and hard to pull out. I bought these tent stakes to take on RAGBRAI 2010 and guess what? They don't break or bend and they don't come out of the ground under stress, BUT they are light, easy to pack and they pull out of the ground smooth and easy. I have never been a believer in aluminum tent stakes, but these are terrific. I am very satisfied that I bought them.

The Kelty yellowstone tent that I bought came with those candy-cane shaped tent stakes made, apparently, of silver-colored room-temperature butter, which can't withstand being pounded into anything other than freshly tilled dirt. I stumbled across these tent stakes at REI, and thought that they looked quite a bit stronger (with a Y-cross section, it seems like they couldn't easily bend in any direction). Boy, was I right. When beach camping, I can pound these into hardened sand littered with large rocks, and not worry about bending them against a buried stone, no matter how hard I hammer. They grip the ground like superglue, and can't be bent by any amount of hammering. Best tent stake I've ever used.

I was able to pound these into ground that contained lots small stones and they held up perfect. If you hit a stone with these stakes (if the stone is small enough), they just work there way around them. The cheap stakes that came with our eureka tent didn't do so well. I would recommend these stakes.

These stakes are highly rated to be the best out on the market!

If you live in rocky areas, make sure you have these in your tent arsenal. These work great in rocky terrains and you can typically just find a rock in the area, and hammer them in. I will note that the top notched area is known to break but it's a small price to pay for having nice stakes in general. They are $2.00 a piece and if you can get a few trips out of them they pay for themselves.

One more thing to note, once you have them in the ground often times it's very difficult to remove the stakes, good thing MSR puts the little ropes on the end so you can just pull them out vs digging them out.

10/10 rating!