How To Battle The Wind and Gnats at Lake Powell

As a buyer at Liberty Mountain I always have tons of products I want to try out in real life situations.  I usually have at least 8 flashlights, 3 fire starters, a couple of sunscreens and bug spray among other things in my testing queue.

Lake Powell is known for its strong, sustained winds. In fact, it was the sand and wind of Lake Powell that sparked the invention of Toughstakes. Naturally I took about 12 small size Toughstakes and a couple of the large size.  Good thing I did. A gust of wind came along before I had time to attach the Toughstakes to my sisters tent. The wind lifted her tent and pulled out all but one of her thin stakes.  I’m sure it would have been a kite if we weren’t holding onto it.

Unfortunately her tent was made for very mild conditions and had only two places to attach guy lines.  Luckily, I had anticipated we might need extra tie-down for out tents and brought along a handful of EasyKlips.  EasyKlips are sold as a tarp clip but they hang onto tent rainflies perfectly.  The wind blew like crazy all night, turned some houseboats sideways onto the beaches but thanks to our Toughstakes, EasyKlips and substantial lengths of Liberty Mountain para-cord we, in our tents, came out of it just fine.

One suggestion – Toughstakes would be easier to use with mini carabiners to attach the cords more easily.  The end of the Toughstake cable has a metal ring.  Most guylines have a loop at the end so they don’t readily attach to a ring.

I love my headlamps, I have a rather large collection.  I much prefer headlamps over handhelds.  However, on the first night of this trip, while setting up tents, I learned of the only down-side to a headlamp...gnats.  Gnats like light and when the light is on your head they buzz all around your face, in your ears, and worse.  I had to keep switching my light off and back on.  It was worse for my sister who was trying to make dinner.  The gnats not only flew all around her head they were getting in the food.  My 3-year old loves glow-sticks.  I took along several for him, and it turns out the gnats weren’t attracted to the glow sticks.  Once we figured that out we prepared dinner to the soft glow of an orange glow stick.  Unfortunately, I haven’t figured out yet how to attach a glow stick to my head.