In reply to Paz: I haven't seen the picture you mention but someone I used to know made someting similar out of standard round tent pegs and accesory cord. His had probably 12 or more pegs and a peculiar looping cord system to even out the pull on the pegs but I was never convinced that this system was good idea.
I don't know if he ever used it as a climbing anchor but I think he may have abseiled off it. I do know that he tested it by connecting it via an old climbing rope to the bumper of his car and trying to pull it out. His car at the time was a tweaked Saab 900 turbo and hence quite powerful but the anchor held.
I was living in the Southwest at the time and such an anchor would have been useful for some of the grass topped cliffs and from his testing probably stronger than many of the old stakes that are in use there.
I have noticed that when high tensioned cables or similar are anchored to stakes in the ground they are often used in series rather than in paralel. That is, the cable is fixed to one stake and the top of the stake is then tied back to the bottom of another stake placed behind it. I am sure that I have seen at least three stakes connected in a row like this.
I assume that stakes fail by rotating out of the ground and that this series alignment prevents this happening and hence it is stronger than the two stakes placed side-by-side. The relevence being that I wondered whether my friends device would have been stronger if he had used half the number of "tails" connected to pegs doubled up in the way.
I think such a device would be useful on many cliffs and would be interested to some proper tests done on such a system. I wonder whether people like the Coastguard or the Army may use them?
