Watched my tent fly away at 2 AM during a thunderstorm in New Mexico
I was camping near Taos last July and thought I had it staked down good... wrong. A gust picked up my whole tent at 2 in the morning and it sailed maybe 50 feet into a creek. I ran out in my boxers chasing it, got soaked, and had to patch a tear with duct tape from my truck. The next day I bought tent stakes that screw into the ground like augers, cost me like $12 at a hardware store. Has anyone else had a tent take off on them like that? What did you do about it?
Yeah, those screw stakes are a lifesaver. I swapped to them after my tent went flying into a wash in Arizona, now I hammer them in at a 45 degree angle and they don't budge. If you're on really loose sand or gravel, bury the bottom of the tent with rocks too.
Failed the 45 degree thing the first time I tried it and hammered one straight down instead lol. Dug it out for like 20 minutes cussing at myself while my buddy just laughed. Rock trick is solid though, I did that on a beach trip last summer after a storm blew my cheap stakes into the ocean. Now I carry a little bag of pea gravel just to weigh down the corners if the ground is too loose.