By: Blonde Two
It gets windy out there on those hills (we have an excellent ‘how to pitch your tent in the wind‘ video here). So windy in fact that sometimes we Blondes emerge in the morning amazed that our tent hasn’t blown away with us in it during the night.
Many modern tents can cope with wind
Although we have seen whole marquees blown, like super-tumbleweed across Okehampton Camp at the start of Ten Tors weekend, most modern backpacking tents are designed to bend in the right places and shaped to allow the wind to pass over them.
Pitching your tent in the wind
There are, of course, some basic principles when it comes to pitching a tent in windy weather that will give you a greater chance of ending the night where you started it. These include pitching so that the door faces away from the wind, pitching so that the wind isn’t hitting your tent broadside on, and ‘storm lashing’ or crossing guy ropes to give more stability.
The latter was a trick I learned back in my days of Guide camping and is often more suited to a ridge style tent but, if you give the matter some consideration, you will find that some of the guys on your backpacking tent may benefit from being crossed over each other as this tends to give a firmer hold.
How to double peg your tent
One really simple method of strengthening your tent is to double peg. This is particularly relevant where the ground is either too stony to get pegs right into or too soft to hold them safely. It wouldn’t be practical to carry enough pegs to double peg all of your guy ropes but we recommend buying a few spare tent pegs so that you can focus on the important ones. These tend to be the guy ropes that are on the windward side of the tent and on poles rather than the fabric.
Get your peg angle right
By the way… the picture at the top of this post is for demonstration purposes. Tent pegs should ideally be angled at 45 degrees away from the tent and inserted all the way into the ground.
Wild camping courses
Of course, there’s more to pitching a tent than getting the peg angle right. If you feel like you might need a bit of help or a few pointers, why not join us on one of our Dartmoor wild camping courses. Learn all about how to wild camp sensitively and safely at the same time as having lots of fun with us.
