Bicycle Touring 101: Setting up a tent to withstand high winds

Doug Pfrang is a member of the International Bicycle Touring Mailing List. He contributed the following article on strategies to follow when using a tent in high wind.

With a little forethought you too can have a restful sleep even in high wind conditions.
Click to enlarge.

Virtually any tent can survive high winds if it is properly tied down. Unfortunately, most tents do not have proper tie-outs to make this possible. Also, many campers do not understand how to properly tie down their tents, even if it has adequate tie-outs. Just shoving stakes in the ground, without thinking about the wind forces on the tent, is inviting the tent to collapse if high winds occur.

Make sure all tie-outs on the tent fly connect to the tent poles underneath, not just to the tent fly fabric.

To properly brace a tent, the guy lines need to connect to the tent poles underneath the fly, and preferably to a junction of two or more poles. A guy line that attaches only to the tent fly fabric, and not to the poles underneath, might help prevent the tent from blowing away in high winds, but it's not going to add much structural strength to the tent frame. This is one reason why sewn-in tie-outs are better than the various mechanical gismos that people use to create tie-outs on the tent fly. With a sewn-in tie-out, you can add velcro tabs on the back that you can wrap around the tent poles and create a secure mechanical connection between the tie-out and the poles. All quality tents I know of are built this way, so use this method to add tie-outs to your tent fly if you are using an inexpensive tent that isn't build this way. Also, when you are adding tie-outs to your tent, be sure to put them relatively high up the sides of the tent -- about 1/2 to 2/3 of the way up from the ground to the top. This will enable you to brace the upper part of the tent that catches the most wind. Again, if you examine quality tents, that's where you will find their tie-outs.

Each guy line to the tent should be perpendicular to the tent pole arc or as close to that as practical.

Once a tent has tie-outs that all connect through the fly to the poles, the issue then becomes proper use of the tie-outs to brace the tent frame. The strongest bracing comes from guy lines that are perpendicular to the tent pole arc. Of course, that will mean tying some guy lines upward as well as outward (e.g., to a nearby tree), but this will provide the strongest possible bracing to the tent frame. If you have nothing tall and strong to tie to, and you have no choice but to stake your guy lines to the ground, then at least make the guy lines as long as you can, to make the angle between the guy line and the pole as close to perpendicular as practical. And if you want truly bombproof guy lines, use two stakes on each guy line, driven into the ground in a "^" formation.

Use two guy lines on each tie-out and tie them so that they are perpendicular to each other as well as perpendicular to the tent pole arc.

With two guy lines on each tie-out, tied perpendicular to each other and to the tent pole arc, you will brace each tie-out in all three dimensions: the pole will brace the tie-out along the pole's axis, while the two guy lines will brace the tie-out along the other two perpendicular axes. This three-dimensional bracing adds amazing strength to the tent frame. Likewise, if you must stake the guy lines to the ground, stake them so they make a 90-degree "V" at the tie-out.

Tents that have short rain flies invite the wind to grab them and tear them up. If your tent does not have a to-the-ground rain fly, then fix the problem by stitching a nylon extension onto the bottom edge of the fly. Use coated nylon and you will add both wind protection and rain protection.

Using the above tips, almost any tent -- even a cheap fibreglass-poled dime-store tent -- can withstand high wind. The key is to add extra tie-outs, guy lines and stakes to help brace the tent frame.