Pitching a tent in the snow.

[adh24]

What do you most of you do when pitching at tent in the snow mainly staking your fly. Do you dig down to the eartht and then stake or do you used any sort of special anchor??

[Footslogger]

Don't have much of an anwer to your question ...but it brought back a funny memory from 2003. We got a freak snow storm coming out of Franklin, NC. Hiked till we dropped that night and set up camp in an open snow field. Way too tired to be picky ...I just got the tent up as best as I could, wolfed down a snickers and crashed. Woke up the next morning and packed up my tent. Where I had slept was a perfect outline of my body ...sort of like a chalk drawing at a police crime scene.

Had forgotten all about that. Thanks for jogging my memory.

'Slogger

[QHShowoman]

Either use snow stakes, which have holes in them to "grip" the snow or snow anchors. There are two types of snow anchors that I am familiar with: one type is like a set of little bags that you fill with snow and use in place of stakes, the other is a little stubby metal stake that you set in the snow.

[saimyoji]

Can you tie it off to trees?

[Toolshed]

Used to do a lot of winter camping in the "daks.
You can do several things - Snow stakes (http://www.campmor.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?productId=12100&memberId=12500226&storeId=226&catalogId=40000000226&langId=-1) as mentioned. They best way I have found to use these is to first paint them bright orange or red so you can see them when breaking camp. Then tie on 12" piece of cord to each, with a loop on the cord. Run the cord through your tent stake loops and the stake through the loop in the cord. Bury the snow stakes tight and stamp down the snow (it will pack hard like concrete within 30-45 minutes). You might need an ice axe to break them free in the morning.

A cheaper method is to use several grocery bags together and fill them with snow - tie them and bury them as above.

[gtothero]

Use trekking poles, large sticks, rocks, etc.

[rswanson]

Plastic bags grocery filled with snow and buried will work. Tie your guylines off to the bag's handles. Works best if you tie a tautlint hitch to adjust the guyline tension, keeping the know above the snow to aviod freezing (which it will anyway). Not very durable, but cheap.

[Toolshed]

I'd also like to add that if you are TH'ing and just hit some snow, anything will work - deadfall, rocks, trees and the like. But if you are headed for treeless areas and heavy winds as well, you are better off investing in some inexpensive snow stakes to protect that precious investment.

I was brought up to think of winter camping as camping 3-5 feet (or more) of snow, having snowshoes or ski's along to tamp down your tentsite and a small avlanche shovel to dig out your kitchen and cupboards.

[superman]

The closest I ever came to losing my tent was on the PCT. After Pat from Maine, Winter and I left Idyllwild, CA we started down the long steep drop on the way to the Pink Motel (trailer in the desert). We could see way down to the bottom of this descent but underestimated how long it would take to get down. We wound up pitching the tent on a flat ledge of sand. It was a nice campsite. The stars were clear and beautiful and all was right with the world....until the wind came up. We spent the night with one person and Winter in the tent so the tent wouldn't just blow away while the other person piled more and more rocks on the stakes. We stuck our hiking sticks through the tent loops and piled the rocks on the sticks. We survived the night and held onto the tent. We were impressed with the pile of rocks we'd amassed through the night. We didn't know at the time that we were entering that area of mile after mile of windmills that the PCT passes through. It's windy nearly all the time in that area, as we found out.

[mweinstone]

i am. if they ask who the stranger who apeared at the mention of his black diamond megalight, tell them i am the hiker of i am. hears the only way to do everything in the whole world, opps sorry, wrong rant. you just wanna know how to do one thing. pitch in frozen ground.or did you also want to know how to pitch in deep powder? cause thatll cost ya extry. anyway my foods ready and you didnt ask me so ill just say i suck at it and usually go with the sliding deadfalls and rocks that give a flappy loude poorly pitched structurally unsafe in high wind night. or you could bring eight of these.its a deadman. i can climb down off one in good snow or die grasping for air in powder.for tents they work . but only one is ever used. if all the stakes fail, you dont loose the tent. its about the best you can hope for. now if you have fuel to waste melting water, you can do alot of creative anchoring .a snow bullock works well. its a stump of packed snow you adjust to fit conditions and srap an anchor onto. a medium tree stump size one holds well in a blizzard if even poor snow.

[RobKimball]

If your snow conditions are good (light pack, pretty wet, but easy to dig in), you will be just fine with a short stick. Tie off your guyline to the middle of the stick, and bury it flat in about a foot of snow.

It's all I've ever needed, although I've never used it in winds higher than about 40-50 mph. If your tent is aerodynamic, sited and pointed correctly, you should very rarely have to worry about wind on your rainfly