Saw these at REI today:

http://www.rei.com/product/829838/msr-mini-ground-hog-stake

1.5" shorter than regular Groundhogs, half the weight at 10 g/.35 oz. The "flanges" on the stakes are slightly spiraled along the length.

Anybody use these yet?

on a related note:

Twizzlers!
http://www.rei.com/product/829839/msr-cyclone-tent-stakes-4-pack


and carbon fiber stakes!
http://www.rei.com/product/831460/msr-carbon-core-tent-stakes-4-pack


But who in the right mind would pay $6-7 each for something you're probably going to lose sooner or later


The revamped groundhogs do look promising and at a good price point though.

I literally just bought the old Groundhog stakes today.

I didn't see the new ones, they look cool. I might have to check them out.

Those Twizzlers are heavy, and the carbon I wouldn't ever use because I need to be able to really pound on my stakes with rocks.

But yes, the new groundhogs look decent!

Only 6" long?
Not for me thanks. That short is unreliable.

Cheers

[x]

Edited by RogerDodger on 02/07/2013 16:47:04 MST.

"For the same weight, you can have five minis 6 inch"

Actually, Roger, five minis will weigh 1.75 ounce.

--B.G.--

The new "minis" cost $2.95 each.

The older and longer in the tooth groundhogs (heh! heh!) cost $2.50 each.

Dividing the mini's weight by its length equals 0.0583333333333333 ozs per inch.

Dividing the original groundhog's weight by its length equals 0.0946666666666667 ozs per inch.

So what am I missing here? ;-?

One and a half inches of stake! ;-)

At some point you begin to see diminishing returns.

I'm with R.C. on this one, too short IMHO.

Party On,

Newton

You may remember Will's tent stake article from 2008 on holding power

http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/tent_stakes.html

The mini-groundhogs might be a good alternative to people using 6'' Titanium Shepherd stakes. Surely these mini-groundhogs would provide more holding power and could take more pounding than those...

Regarding the 6" mini's, it just depends where you're camping I suppose. They will work fine for most folks. A 6" Y-stake will still offer a lot of holding power in most soils.


Ryan

Edited by ViolentGreen on 02/10/2012 07:22:31 MST.

Didn't see any spiral on the REI pics. Don't see why that would help any anyway. There are also several cheaper 6" Y stakes available as well. Mine are Sierra Designs which now run $10 for 6.

Amazing how they give you less stake (mini ground hog) yet charge you more. Rip off. The cyclone looks gimicky. Golites latest V stakes are pretty cool.

Edited by jshann on 02/10/2012 08:09:02 MST.

Proof they've decided to cash in hard on the UL'er: the smaller stake with less material COSTS MORE. Buy the old one and cut them down. You'll have a handful of totally UL stakes leftover.

[x] ignore test delete

Edited by RogerDodger on 06/21/2012 15:29:28 MDT.

Just to be clear: these stakes are made from extruded "rod stock". They chop-saw a long rod into length, then form the points and lash notch before dumping them in a tumbler, cleaning and then anodizing. The shorter stake uses the same process, but less of the rod material, meaning they make more of them for the same cost.

Supply and demand, so if you're willing to pay more, the proof's in the puddin'.

I am more interested in SMD 6" L stakes .3oz and $1.40 each every thing about them looks better to me except pounding. I used to use a stake like this that came with walrus tents very good holding power. You had to be careful how you pounded them but if you kept that in mind they worked great

I had one of the supplied shepherds hook stakes pull out of my Tarptent Moment in the middle of the night once. That tent has only two stakes, so the failure of one causes the collapse of the entire tent. After that experience I bought the larger MSR Groundhog stakes and had no further pull out problems, which made me a big fan of them.

Now I have a SMD Sil-Nylon Trekker with five stakes. I still had the two Groundhogs from the Moment, so I needed three more. I recently went to REI to buy the Groundhogs and noticed they only had the smaller version which I think are too small.

However, REI sells its own brand of stake that is very similar to the old Groundhog stake for $1. It is silver, with no pull cord, and maybe 1/4 inch shorter. So I bought three of those. I'm not sure if the metal is the same quality as the MSRs, but time will tell.

[x]

Edited by RogerDodger on 02/07/2013 16:48:07 MST.

Steven, I just picked up 5 of the new MSR Groundhog stakes that you provided a link to last night at the REI store. They were a replacement for the 5 I snaped a week ago that were only used 3 times before. The only difference I see between the new style and the old style is the rope color. The ones I broke and also had at home (yellow pull rope) were 6" long to where the notch is toward the top, same as what I picked up last night with the red pull rope. I dont see any spiral on these at all.
I had mine staked in the frozen ground at about an 1-1/2" to 2" deep. I tried wiggling them loose and they snaped on me. I was surprised how easy they broke with little wiggling. The temp was around 10 degrees with about 2 inches of snow. Now I'm going to try using gutter screws with very little snow.

Edit: I see there is a difference between the two. The easiest way to tell is between the stampings on the side. I do indeed have the larger ones.

Edited by jpovs on 02/10/2012 19:03:28 MST.