Your cruising to your camping location in the high or low desert getting excited to setup camp and relax for the evening. And when you stop there is nothing around but sand and rocks, nothing decent to stake a tent in. Huge wind gusts are blowing and your about ready to just curl up on the bench seat of your truck. Well, guess you SOL buddy, that is unless you have some real Toughstakes.
Since we are expedition, adventure and offroad loving fools, Tyler and I found ourselves in Moab, preparing for fun, the return of summer and just enjoying the magnificent scenery that Southern Utah has to offer. As those familiar with the Moab area will know, sand is abundant in slick rock camps and that can make staking a tent down pretty difficult.
The Video Review
Tyler and I tested a typical wimpy tent stake in the sand, it went in easy and with a tiny pull came out easy too. Then we pounded the Tough Stake in the sand and pulled with all our might at a 90 degree angle to get it out. The Toughstakes did not budge! There were some areas where the ground was simply too compact to get the Toughstakes in, it really does have to be sand dune type environment for these to work. We hope to get out to the snow and try them out before it all melts.
The patent pending design behind the stakes makes it easy to visually see why the Toughstakes stay in the ground and actually get stronger as pressure pulls them. 
The Toughstakes Website has this great how to diagram. The key is to have 90 degree angles for the stakes and guy wires.
We love innovative and cool gear like this. Every thing that can make the adventure focused more on the experience and less on worrying about gear, the better. Toughstakes definitely fall into the category of reliability.
The big suckers that we tested also worked well as sand shovels when the time came to put out our bonfire. They are great for a boat and I hope to test them out in a snowy camp soon. I will post an update after I get a chance to do a snow test.
Update
The last weekend in April we were camping down in Goblin Valley having a good ‘ol time and testing out some Goal Zero gear. I brought an old Springbar wannabe tent down, that required the heavy use of staking to keep it up. Luckily I had brought down two of the 17″ Toughstakes (the some ones in this review) and we had a sandy location to pitch our tent. I put the two Toughstakes kitty-corner of each other, they went in pretty good though the rubber mallet I used got a bit chewed up from the semi-sharp stake metal. I then had to use about ten other wimpy plastic or pathetic small aluminum stakes for the rest of the tent.
Being that this tent was so old and the wind was blowing 10-30+mph most of the time, the tent got pulled in all directions and all the stakes pulled out of the ground multiple times, except for the Toughstakes which, no pun intended, held their ground. Check out the short video as evidence:
The Good
- Light
- Strong
- Held up to very strong winds
- Love the color
The Bad
- Do take up a bit more space
- They did get bent
- Really does need to be at least semi-soft loose sand, we tried sandy spots that were fairly compact and they would not go in
