Folding Ridge Pole: one solution

[Crispvs]

I don't think I have ever seen a ridge pole joined with a section of pipe (and ours are around ten inches in length and no bolts or pins are involved) which worked itself apart even in high winds, although I have seen vertical poles fall down plenty of times when wind has inflated tents and pushed off the guy ropes.

I wonder - why do you used square section poles? I am fairly confident that most ancient tent poles, like most tool handles, would have been grown in coppice fields, which would make round sections far more likely.

Regarding putting a tent up on your own, I agree that where there is a ridge pole it is very difficult to put a tent up unaided, but for tents lacking a ridge pole, when I was being taught to put up tents singlehandedly when I was in Scouts, I was taught to peg down the front of the tent but not the back or sides, then put up the pole nearest the tent door (or one of the front corner poles if the tent was a square one) and attach two guy ropes which should be pegged to run at 45 degrees to the ground and 90 degrees to each other (and 90 degrees to the tent if a square one). These guys should be adjusted to a secure (but not tight) tension. This should keep this pole steady and vertical to allow you to enter the tent to insert the tip of the rear pole through its eye. Brace this against the ground and return to the outside. Attach two guy ropes and peg them in the same way but leave the guy ropes fairly slack. Return inside the tent and move the pole as far as possible towards its vertical position until the guy ropes are pulled to tension. Go outside again and loosen the guys slightly in order to then push the pole into its vertical position, after which the guy ropes at both front and back can be tightened to full tension and the rest of the tent pegged down. For a small ridge tent the process should take less than five minutes and not too much longer for larger tents. Because the tension needs to be adjusted during the process, either half hitches or wooden slide adjusters should be used.
If the tent is a square one with a centre pole, the other front pole should be inserted second and brought to equal tension with the first, before the centre pole is inserted and allowed to lean away from the door, its weight being held by the guys at the front, which should run out at 90 degrees to the tent. Once this has been done the rear poles should be inserted in the manner described above and tensioned once the centre pole has been brought vertical. I have erected 10' by 10' tents singlehandedly in this way in under ten minutes on many occasions.

Regarding surfaces which cannot have pegs driven into them, in mountainous terrain in New Zealand I have erected tents many times on rocky or stony surfaces above the tree line, where pegs could either not be driven in or would simply pull out with minimal force applied and there was no vegetation to tie lines to. In these places we used to tie guy ropes around stones and then pile heavy stones on top of these to hold them securely in place, which generally worked quite well even in windy conditions. Of course, these were not large tents, but it should demonstrate that weighting guy ropes can be a viable alternative to pegging them.

Crispvs