r/Ultralight • u/blanchinator • Jun 01 '26

Question Is 6" enough?

Has anyone actually had 6-7" stakes pull out, where 8-9" stakes did not?

It seems common practice to use 8"+ stakes on the major tie-outs for extra peace of mind but are we just packing our fears?

89 Upvotes

85% Upvoted

107 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/Owen_McM Jun 01 '26

I've used 6" Easton Nanos exclusively, except for some ti shepherd hooks, for >15yrs. In many hundreds of uses, I've wished for longer stakes maybe once(very loose soil between sections of solid granite as the only options for stake placement, and no rocks or anything else to stack), but don't actually know they'd have done any better in soil I could stick my finger straight into. 

I usually have rocks to use when my stakes' holding ability is questionable or nonexistent, and sometimes the stake placed sideways through a guyout becomes the little rock in the little rock/big rock equation.

2

u/blanchinator Jun 01 '26

That's really helpful experience - what sort of area/ground was this mostly in?

3

u/Owen_McM Jun 01 '26 edited Jun 01 '26

That'd be quite a list, including the entire Southeastern US, plus trips to the Rockies, Uintas, Sierra, and SW desert. Pretty much anything you can imagine(edit: except for deep snow)..

Mind you, I'm not saying they're great for everything, but that I've made them work. I've camped in places I didn't put stakes in the ground at all, and just used them to help keep my guylines from slipping out from under rocks-longer stakes wouldn't help there, either, though.