Worst pitch!

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foxyrider
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Worst pitch!

Post by foxyrider »

Okay, here's a fun one, where was your worst pitch and why?

I have a couple of contenders to kick things off.

The first is this innocuous pitch on Amrum, one of the small islands off Germany's North Sea coast not far from the Danish border in the summer of 2015. This is actually my second attempt, the first more sheltered spot i could not, despite proper sand pegs, get the tent to stay up. This final pitch required pegs hidden under the very dry, flyaway sand and judicious use of bags and kit to stop the tent being blown away! The island is pretty much all sand dune and after a long dry spell the sand was just too dry/fine.
DSCN9769.jpg
The second is again in Germany, this time the Baltic coast near Rerik north of Wismar. Once more it looks at first glance quite idyllic, but look a little closer. The prevailing wind is off the sea, the camp site on the edge of a cliff, again i had to use anything i could find to keep the tent on the ground - its obviously a regular issue as there were supplies of rocks but the folks in the tent next to me had nabbed nearly all of them which they used around the skirt after i took my pic. This pitch did for the poles on the Taurus, you can see the 'ridge' pole got almost inverted and pushed to the floor, it was even worse during the night, i barely slept, i woke at one point with the tent almost suffocating me. But maybe i had the last laugh, my tent did survive till morning, my bigger neighbour didn't, the occupants spent most of the night in their car despite nicking all the rocks!
P8040037.JPG
P8040033.JPG
There are others - waking to find yourself floating, an actual tree landing on the tent, ground so hard/stony you couldn't get a peg in the ground, pitches so close you couldn't get out of the tent etc, etc. So don't be shy share with us all :D
Convention? what's that then?
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Retyred.life
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Re: Worst pitch!

Post by Retyred.life »

Dec. 2016. Sonora desert, southern California.
20161220_162200_DRO.jpg

Woken by thunder and lightning at 1 a.m, by 2 all my gear was floating inside the tent! Hadn't realised but obviously pitched in a low point.
20161222_044552.jpg
Didn't get any further sleep.
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pjclinch
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Re: Worst pitch!

Post by pjclinch »

From a technical standpoint it was one on a wee Norwegian islet. After much paddling to what our native friend assured us was a good size hut for the 5 of us we arrived around midnight (this was midsummer, so still quite light) to find the hut would take one at a pinch so I looked for a camping alternative. It was mostly either sheets or piles of rock and no grass, and I had a single-hoop tent...
Eventually got it sort-pf-pitched among a mossy boulder field, no chance of the inner going up so I just laid it out as a groundsheet. Just as well there wasn't a breath of wind!

In terms of terrible nights, high up on the Ben in a Sapcepacker in a sleety blizzard. Every now and then a gust would flatten the tent, though being a single hoop it just sprang back up, so that could've been worse. Had to get up every now and then to re-peg as they were all getting gradually pulled. Everything was soaked, we would've bailed but our pals next door weren't back from Tower Ridge so we stayed up in case we had to call Mountain Rescue (we did, the next day, though our pals were fine having stopped to help someone who'd fallen and they all spent the night on the route).

No pictures, I'm afraid.

No particularly bad ones when cycle camping, though we've needed to be ingenious at times and have been glad of sand pegs in NL.

Pete.
Often seen riding a bike around Dundee...
Psamathe
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Re: Worst pitch!

Post by Psamathe »

My worst one (which was actually quite a laugh) was when the campsite owner called armed police to come and arrest me "because I had a beard"! True. And two armed police arrived, interviewed me, took a copy of my passport ... and din't arrest me.

Detail: In Netherlands and there was a wanted murderer (Dutch male) who had apparently killed a child and absconded to Spain several years ago. But that region in Netherlands had an item about it on TV recently and in the pic they showed the wanted person had a beard and campsite owner spotted I had a beard and needed no more evidence. It sort of came apart as I was British, had a British passport and attending Dutch police were focusing on my being really British. Except I do speak a little dutch (I lived and worked in NL many years ago and still know a very little) and whilst they interviewed me in English, every now and again they throw in a question in dutch to check if I automatically replied and in case I was pretending to be British.

Ian
Pendodave
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Re: Worst pitch!

Post by Pendodave »

foxyrider wrote: 11 Jan 2022, 9:23pm Okay, here's a fun one, where was your worst pitch and why?

I have a couple of contenders to kick things off.

The first is this innocuous pitch on Amrum, one of the small islands off Germany's North Sea coast not far from the Danish border in the summer of 2015. This is actually my second attempt, the first more sheltered spot i could not, despite proper sand pegs, get the tent to stay up. This final pitch required pegs hidden under the very dry, flyaway sand and judicious use of bags and kit to stop the tent being blown away! The island is pretty much all sand dune and after a long dry spell the sand was just too dry/fine.

DSCN9769.jpg

The second is again in Germany, this time the Baltic coast near Rerik north of Wismar. Once more it looks at first glance quite idyllic, but look a little closer. The prevailing wind is off the sea, the camp site on the edge of a cliff, again i had to use anything i could find to keep the tent on the ground - its obviously a regular issue as there were supplies of rocks but the folks in the tent next to me had nabbed nearly all of them which they used around the skirt after i took my pic. This pitch did for the poles on the Taurus, you can see the 'ridge' pole got almost inverted and pushed to the floor, it was even worse during the night, i barely slept, i woke at one point with the tent almost suffocating me. But maybe i had the last laugh, my tent did survive till morning, my bigger neighbour didn't, the occupants spent most of the night in their car despite nicking all the rocks!

P8040037.JPG
P8040033.JPG

There are others - waking to find yourself floating, an actual tree landing on the tent, ground so hard/stony you couldn't get a peg in the ground, pitches so close you couldn't get out of the tent etc, etc. So don't be shy share with us all :D
Cool thread.
Though I have a Taurus (2m) and I'm not sure I've ever been happy with the pitch...
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Re: Worst pitch!

Post by Vorpal »

My worst pitch was backpacking in the USA. Our pitch turned out to be on the regular path of a bear who frequented a trail shelter to steal snacks.

The next worst was a result of unintentional camping in the Cairngorms. All things considered, it wasn't so bad.

We didn't have a tent or sleeping bags, but we did manage to find wood for a fire, and some ruins with enough left of a couple of walls for shelter of sorts. It wasn't a comfortable night, but it could have been far worse.

I had plenty of uncomfortable nights when I was a teenager. My brother and I camped a lot with little or no proper equipment. My dad & cousin taught us not to camp in low spots, how to orient a tent, and things like that, but I guess I probably avoided quite a few problems, camping as an adult by making plenty of mistakes as a teenager :lol:
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thirdcrank
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Re: Worst pitch!

Post by thirdcrank »

Complain to a park ranger
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pedalsheep
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Re: Worst pitch!

Post by pedalsheep »

pjclinch wrote: 12 Jan 2022, 8:02am In terms of terrible nights, high up on the Ben in a Sapcepacker in a sleety blizzard. Every now and then a gust would flatten the tent, though being a single hoop it just sprang back up, so that could've been worse. Had to get up every now and then to re-peg as they were all getting gradually pulled.
Pete.
I had a very similar experience up in the Mamores in a Spacepacker although this was only a dry summer gale. The pole was a bit bent by morning but Saunders replaced it free of charge.
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foxyrider
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Re: Worst pitch!

Post by foxyrider »

Pendodave wrote: 12 Jan 2022, 4:00pm
Cool thread.
Though I have a Taurus (2m) and I'm not sure I've ever been happy with the pitch...
My Taurus is the 2/3m model, spacious for one, friemdly with two - i don't want to think about three! The other tent is my 2m Power Lizard, never had any real issues with the actual pitching of either tent, the Power Lizard sometimes needs a bit of playing with the end poles but both go from bagged to pegged in under 5 minutes often much to the bemusement of other campers with Hillebergs and so on. :roll:
Convention? what's that then?
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Slowroad
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Re: Worst pitch!

Post by Slowroad »

Worst pitch... maybe in the weird tent I started cycle-touring with in the '80s with an A-pole - blew down is a gale in Glen Nevis. I was the only person still in my tent at the end of the night but that was because I was the only one without a car to retreat to... Or the much more recent pitch in a pub garden where the only facilities were a filthy toilet and there was something dodgy going on at 5am in the car park so I headed off by 6am not having paid.
Pendodave wrote: ↑12 Jan 2022, 4:00pm

Cool thread.
Though I have a Taurus (2m) and I'm not sure I've ever been happy with the pitch...

My Taurus is the 2/3m model, spacious for one, friemdly with two - i don't want to think about three! The other tent is my 2m Power Lizard, never had any real issues with the actual pitching of either tent, the Power Lizard sometimes needs a bit of playing with the end poles but both go from bagged to pegged in under 5 minutes often much to the bemusement of other campers with Hillebergs and so on.
I've got two Tauruses too - only one (2001) has a leaky groundsheet and the other (2010ish) has a broken pole. Always a slightly odd tent to pitch but great in many ways. I now have a Zepheros Compact 1 and miss being able to sit up straight in the doorway.
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andrew_s
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Re: Worst pitch!

Post by andrew_s »

My worst camping pitch was over the road from the Clachaig, one easter.

There was about a foot of snow, so I trampled it down a bit, and loaded the snow valance on the tent (Phoenix Phortress) down with more. The problem was that a warm front came over at about 2 am, there was a lot of heavy rain, all the snow melted to reveal the bog underneath, and the groundsheet turned out to be no longer properly waterproof so there was about 4" of water in the downhill corner of the inner.
Fortunately, I'd used a goretex bivvy bag inside the tent.

I nearly got a Terra Nova Hyperspace out of it.
I'd just finished packing up and was checking the ground for dropped pegs or whatever when I looked up and saw the Hyperspace rolling across the field towards me, so I snagged it just before it hit a barbed wire fence, and looked for the owners. Nobody came looking so I stashed the tent in a corner round the side of the pub, where it wouldn't blow away.
The owners turned up just as I'd finished loading the car - they had decamped down to a friend's caravan down at the Red Squirrel campsite
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pjclinch
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Re: Worst pitch!

Post by pjclinch »

andrew_s wrote: 16 Jan 2022, 10:25pm My worst camping pitch was over the road from the Clachaig, one easter.

There was about a foot of snow, so I trampled it down a bit, and loaded the snow valance on the tent (Phoenix Phortress) down with more. The problem was that a warm front came over at about 2 am, there was a lot of heavy rain, all the snow melted to reveal the bog underneath, and the groundsheet turned out to be no longer properly waterproof so there was about 4" of water in the downhill corner of the inner.
Fortunately, I'd used a goretex bivvy bag inside the tent.
Had a similar melting snow on boggy ground thing in Norway once, though fortunately the Spacepacker's groundsheet was up to the job. At first I thought I had a leak... but then noticed the whole thing was floating wherever it wasn't weighed down, and as the water was snow-melt it was condensation city on the inside. But a pretty good result and I thanked my tent!
andrew_s wrote: 16 Jan 2022, 10:25pm I nearly got a Terra Nova Hyperspace out of it.
I'd just finished packing up and was checking the ground for dropped pegs or whatever when I looked up and saw the Hyperspace rolling across the field towards me, so I snagged it just before it hit a barbed wire fence, and looked for the owners. Nobody came looking so I stashed the tent in a corner round the side of the pub, where it wouldn't blow away.
The owners turned up just as I'd finished loading the car - they had decamped down to a friend's caravan down at the Red Squirrel campsite
I've had floating groundsheet at the Red Squirrel once, but another occasion the main force of Edinburgh Uni MC camped at the Squirrel while I decided to go to the Clachaig (just being a cheapskate, late 80s so was at least notionally okay back then). Good call, as the site got flooded with some of the party deploying their climbing ropes to help folk to safety!

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PT1029
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Re: Worst pitch!

Post by PT1029 »

Somewhere in France (Brittany I think). Middle of the night, a sratching noise. I have occasionally had this before, a chunky sized beetle under the ground sheet doing what ever beetles do, rubbing against the underside of the ground sheet. Usually a few sweeps of the hand on the top side of the ground sheet sends them scurrying off. This one was very persistant. Got the torch out, leant round the door to look under the ground sheet (the noise was near the edge). Nothing.
Back inside, the noise continued, torch on inside... a crab about the size of the palm of my hand was inside the tent! I went to grab it to lob it out, to which it held its claws up, so I had to get my cook pot, usher it in the pot and lob it outside.
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Re: Worst pitch!

Post by Tangled Metal »

After a very long day backpacking we ended up on forestry tracks still trying to find a spot to pitch at 12:30am. We gave up and pitched on a turning spot made of gravel bank on the side of the hill. It had grassed over and the soil was deep enough for pegs one side but not the other. I got my tent up but the pegs had to be wedged into rocks through the thin soil. My mate had to simply wedge his into rocks. Hard ground and we had to be up and out early as the black sail hostel was around the corner and we wanted a sneaky pitch. A long, hard day without a comfortable pitch.
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andrew_s
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Re: Worst pitch!

Post by andrew_s »

pjclinch wrote: 17 Jan 2022, 8:44amHad a similar melting snow on boggy ground thing in Norway once, though fortunately the Spacepacker's groundsheet was up to the job. At first I thought I had a leak... but then noticed the whole thing was floating wherever it wasn't weighed down, and as the water was snow-melt it was condensation city on the inside. But a pretty good result and I thanked my tent!
I've had that too.
"You're on pitch number XX", which was right at the bottom end of the campsite (in Pézenas).
Big thunderstorm at not long past midnight, and about 4 cm of water all round the tent, with a similarly floating groundsheet. I'd reacted to the initial thunder, and stashed all the loose gear back in the rolled up Ortliebs, so damage was limited to one soggy shoe, which fell off the pannier at some point, and chilly feet on account of the 3/4 length mat I was using.

A similar one was a bivvy, in the pedestrian underpass under the A65 at Clapham. It turned out that the underpass did double duty as a second overflow channel for the river (normally confined to an adjacent tunnel), and I woke up with my feet in the river. Fortunately the water had taken long enough working downsteam that the rain was mostly stopped, so I could just move up to road level, in the open.
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