Thoughts?

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Gross over-kill.

Ever seen a bridge spike? It's a NAIL, 12" long, 3/8" diameter, typical
nail-head on one end, pointed on the other. Available from most hardware
stores. (The local Home Deepot carries them.) Cheap enough to leave behind
for the trip home.

Used with a large washer, bridge spikes are one of the few things able to get a
grip on really hard ground.

A couple of those molded black rubber bungees as gust snubbers, combined with a
hank of 1/4" poly rope and knowledge of a few basic knots, you can secure just
about anything right up to Full Gale force winds. And cheap enough to abandon
& replace as needed.

If you regularly fly into some truly wild & windy locales, buy yourself some
half-inch re-bar, cut it to 30" sections, heat it and bend the top 6" into a
hair-pin. Make as many as you need -- a dozen or so for a really windy site.
Drive those into your tie-down area leaving just the knuckle of the hair-pin
exposed. The tent may take off... with you in it... but the bird will still be
there.

I've found the most difficult tie-downs to be in sand or snow. Sand, I've used
chain attached to old car wheels. You have to dig them in; fix some driftwood
or something to the free end of the chain so you can find it again. I'll
leave the snow people to tell us the best solution there but a bridge spike
goes into frozen ground with the same ease as into a dry lake bed.

-R.S.Hoover