While getting ready to do a test hang Saturday I decided that I needed a way to hold the sides of my 12x12 Gear Guide tarp out - it's a great tarp but man is it hard to get the sides nice and tight! Not feeling up to trying to sew on some panel pulls I looked around for something to use for a pole mod. I found the center pole from my daughter's old Ikea Kura bed tent and it looked to be the perfect size (probably ~3.5-4ft). I hooked it to my tarp ridgeline with a narcrabiner made from braided mason line and then drilled some 3/8" holed in a small piece of wood to keep the pole from trying to poke through the tarp. Then for good measure I ran some mason line back up to the ridgeline to make sure the block wouldn't fall off & the pole wouldn't rotate. It worked perfectly and added a lot of room under the tarp! I would think that you could use this setup with just about any size pole as long as it had enough flex - I may try it with a pole from one of our small tents.

Pole connections




View of tarp walls held out


Plenty of headroom for the "assistant"