This is going to be kind of a long post, but bear with me because it might be a fun discussion!

Last night we had a 70 MPH damaging wind to sweep through the country side real fast. When I realized how bad it was getting, I opened the door to go to the storm shelter, only to feel the most powerful wind I ever felt in recent memory sweep through my house. I said f that, and pushed my door shut and rode it out in my house. The wind died down about 2 minutes after that. Man, I was lucky. The storm knocked down at least 6 trees around my house. Only one caused property damage, no electricity from 9pm until 2pm the next day as the power lines were laying in the road. Thankfully, my freezer kept a good seal to keep all the food frozen.

After the worst had passed, I started thinking about backpacking as I lie in bed. In April 2011 I was at Grayson Highlands and the Jefferson National Forest and we got hammered with a storm. I was setting up my tent and saw the storm approaching. I quickly anchored all the guy lines out, and the moment I got in my tent, down comes the hard rain. After a few minute the rain stop, and my group had a tarp set up, so then we proceed to cook dinner. Later that night, I saw lightenings miles away and coming closer. I bunkered down in my tent then rode out a mild wind and intense thunderstorm. That was first and LAST time I ever slept through a storm in a tent. The next morning I realized everything underneath my rain-fly was completely dried. I can thank Big Agnes for that! Later that day we walked through hail, rain, lightening, etc., it was a surreal experience. We was on an exposed highlands (I'm sure Glenn knows what I'm talking about as he been here before! ) walking about 40 yards apart, then when we got off the open ridge, we hunkered down and let the lightning passed. It was just surreal. lol.

Then I started thinking about how I could survive if I got caught in unexpected wind storm like last night while backpacking. Maybe I need to swap my small nylon rope that came with my Big Agnes out for Amsteel blue lines I have for my tarp, but not for either one of my tents. Amsteel is really light and really strong, and I'm curious exactly how much wind it take to break it or blow a stake out of the ground. I'm not sure if I want to be flying around the mountain.. Seriously, last night after the worst had passed, all i could think about was how to be safe while backpacking in a damaging wind storm that seemed to have blind sided me...

What's your stormiest moment while in the backcountry and how did you make it through the night? Do tell of your setup to anchor your tents down, if you like, so others can read and learn.