Stake’mups v.1

I always carry ten titanium shepherd hook stakes on my adventures. Four for the tarp, two for the hammock, and four for the ground sheet. Quite often I don’t use all four for the ground sheet – if the pack is lying across the back, that will hold it down – but having an extra one or two is always good. Several windshield designs I’ve created require the use of tent stakes to hold the pot up over the stove, so they can be used for that as well.

I opted for the orange topped versions, because if you’ve ever had a really powerful wind pull a stake loose and fling it, you’ll understand how hard they are to find on a forest floor. 

While the points aren’t really sharp, they are pointed enough to cause some damage to stuff inside of a pack. Figuring that most materials weren’t really suited, I decided to craft a holder out of more rugged 1000D Cordura.

I drew the whole thing in Illustrator, printed the design out to use as a template and transferred it to the material. I cut the parts out and then took it with me on a week long canoe trip, and sewed it there. Just to have something to do around the fire at night or sitting under the tarp on a rainy day.

It’s not pretty, but it does the trick. Mainly I did this as a proof of concept. I opted to put flaps on the sides so that the hooks couldn’t pop out and snag on anything in the pack and potentially cause it damage. I’ve had the notion that I want to tackle another version of this and use a zipper around the three sides instead.

But to be honest, I’ve been on such a weight trimming kick lately, that I kind of see Cordura as a heavy extravagance. I think instead I want to build a tapered draw string stuff sack out of 70D nylon with a 1000D reinforcement in the bottom. It likely won’t be a huge weight savings, but it’s worth a try.