A poorly pitched tent can easily ruin your camping vacation, it is not right that when you are in a tent, and it rains your tent falls off, but if your tent is correctly put up, and then you have a dry place to take shelter in case it rains. However, if one fails to pitch his or her tent properly, then he or she must be prepared for a fall. Here are some tips and instructions on how to properly pitch your tent to have the perfect camping vacation.
Unless you are alone in your camping trip, you should always get another person’s help in putting up the tent; this is very important especially when you are dealing with a huge tent since it will consume a lot of your time or end up failing in your attempt to pitch it.
You have to carefully check the place that you are supposed to pitch your tent; your tent should be pitched on very flat ground, this makes your pitching activity easier and is also a very comfortable area to camp. If by any chance you have to put up your tent on a slope then position your tent in a way that the door faces the downhill, this will prevent rain from getting in your tent and strong wind from getting caught inside your tent.
You should also leave a lot of space around the tent, if there are other tents around you then leave a minimum of 5 meters between your tent and the other tents. This will help reduce the chances of tents blowing into each other in case of high winds; this is also a good thing to do for privacy. Remember to also keep your tent a distant from campfire spots to prevent your tent from catching fire.
You can protect yourself from wind and rain by using bushes and hedges, however, it is not advisable to pitch your tent under a tree because of tree sap that might trip on your tent, and again, it is dangerous to pitch under a tree because should a thunderstorm occur, you would be in great danger.
Avoid pitching your tent on the wet ground; this can make the pitching process very difficult and can end up damaging the tent.
Before laying putting up your tent, ensure that the ground in question is clear and free from anything that can cause damage to the tent.
Instructions to follow when pitching your tent
Now that you have found a perfect dry place and away from other tents, you should put up your tent and here are the instructions to follow for this process to be successful.
You first have to peg down your tent’s footprint to enable you to position your tent in the exact place that you wanted it to be; this will also provide your groundsheet with some extra protection.
The groundsheet should be the one to be pegged down first; now you will need to peg the back, this is important because it can help you anchor the tent even if there are no poles yet hence prevent your ten from blowing away.
You should not pull the poles too much; this is because it might cause them to break. The poles should not be pulled through; they should only be pushed, in case you find yourself with poles that are connected by elastic then pulling will just separate them and make your work even harder.
You should make sure that you have closed all the zips when erecting your tent.
The pegs should be hammered by use of a mallet, the mallet should be at a 45o angle, and the hook should also be away from your tent.
The guidelines should be placed in a way that it follows the seams of your tent.
For the case of larger tents, after you have managed to peg down the back and also erected the tent’s poles, the tent should now be dragged forward and peg out the two guy lines that are in front, this will help you keep your tent in a proper place for you to be able to peg the rest of the tent down.