I use ten foot long straps from Arrowhead Equipment. I could have gotten along with shorter ones, but for how light they are it gives me the ability to take my choice of hanging spots rather than be dissapointed when I find my home away from home.
-Mike
I think you will find more spots to hang the more you get out there. Not that its always easy. Most peoples background is camping in tents at established campsites or clearings so not use to thinking of anything else. Now that we're hanging it opens up more possibilities but you just can't hang everywhere. Some areas are harder than others and bigger straps may be needed but i find the more i'm out there the more i see and the more creative i get. I have a slight advantage in that i spent many yrs camping in non established sites so had to learn to look harder for a place to pitch a tent and i think the same applies to hammocks but easier. In the PNW forest can really vary from nicely spaced Pondi pine forest that looks like it was made for hanging to sellal?sp thick underbrush that you can't walk in. The PNW is such an amazing place i think you'll soon find a bunch of favorite spots.
" The mind creates the abyss, the heart crosses it."
“The measure of your life will not be in what you accumulate, but in what you give away.” ~Wayne Dyer
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I agree. I have found that the longer I have been hanging, the better I get at finding hanging spots. Granted, I haven't been where you are hanging, but the first rule, & one that I am still trying to learn (50 years tent camping vs 5 years hanging): Let go of your tent camping way of thinking. Also: It's sometimes hard to see the hanging opportunities for the trees. So, look back the way you came, or go Left / Right of where you are, it may show some things from a few feet away that you can't see close up.Originally Posted by mbiraman
When you have a backpack on, no matter where you are, you’re home.
PAIN is INEVITABLE. MISERY is OPTIONAL.
About where in the NW are you?
I carry 20' long straps. I find that the trees are quite large in the area that I like to hike. Long straps are not that much heavier and allow you to get around those big trees.
I have two doctors, my left leg and my right. ~G.M. Trevelyan
Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time. ~Steven Wright
I think the bottom line here is, get your suspension set-up for the area you are going out in most! For some this mean's 3-4ft huggers and 4-5ft whoopies, or 6-8ft webbing straps, 10ft, 15ft, and so on! If you go with Paul's straps from AHE they are pretty much the lightest strap out there and you are supporting one of our Cottage industry HF members, both are great thing's! If you have to carry 20ft straps, then that's what you have to do, either way it still beat's sleeping on the ground!
As far as the finding a good spot thing goes really you just have to keep looking. I have found that if I start looking as I am hiking along as I get closer to my pre-determined stopping point I have found a pretty decent spot or two! Depending on your area you might have a lot of underbrush do deal with, but keep looking and chances are you will find a good spot to hang!
I know the last time I went out I did the looking as I am hiking thing and found what I thought was a great place only with rocks and deadfall under the hammock, I woke up the next morning walked about 10-15 yards and the perfect spot was right there, so they are there you just have to keep an eye out and sometimes a little searching does the trick!!
Have fun and let us know what you decide!!!
I usually carry a GPS with me and if I come across a great hammock spot I will save that point in my GPS and if need be, I can backtrack to it. And I usually find a spot if I reallyl look hard. I'm in Newfoundland where our trees are not very large but they are plentiful. When on the trail just keep an eye out for good spots it does not take long to get used to doing this.
Take care,
Bluefin
I made my whoopies extra long. I can always put my strap on the load side of the tree and use the extra length from my whoopies to make up the difference. I carry 8' straps and I'm in the northern and western part of the PNW. My trees are big bu I can find hanging spots all over the place. Evne used a trunk and a huge limb once as my two achor points.
Bat
Beginning my NOBO trip on the AT on 2/28/12.
Yeah, I do that! Or come back to it sometime in the future.
Rict, it helps if you can be flexible about when you stop. And if you start looking during the last couple of hours of your hike, maybe willing to stop when you see a prime spot. Or conversely, just keep walking until you find something, and surely you will, unless you are above timberline obviously.
Where I most commonly hike, I bet I lose at least half of the trees to Poison Ivy vines or ground cover. Add in the widow makers, too big/too little/too far apart/too close/ and saplings/brush between the trees and oh boy! Still, in a land of a billion trees, I virtually always find something. Plus, most of these places I'm trying to hang would be even tougher for tent sites anyway. Except at developed camp grounds, where there might be plenty of tent sites but usable trees might be scarce.
The more hangers you have (like at a group hang) the trickier it gets when you are all trying to stay close. Or, if you are with tenting buddies and trying to find good trees close to where the adequate tent sites are.
OK, let me see if I can reply to some of these replies:
Thanks for the info on Arrowhead Equip's long straps; this will at least give me some options.
I guess the area I went this weekend was a combo of these two:
"Old Growth = Medium size trees+ densely packed + underbrush
New Growth = 'Slender' trees + densely packed + LOTS of underbrush + hard to tell the separation between brush/shrubs and trees."
There were some really large trees, many large trees, but LOTS of underbrush...
Yup, I was looking along the way, that's why I said that I hiked for several miles without finding a spot; and yes, it would have been that way using a tent as well: no clear spots because of the DENSE underbrush.
I live in Seattle, but I was hiking on the west side of Stevens Pass; my guess is that the east side of the mountains has better/more frequent sites.
"thick underbrush that you can't walk in"...yup, that was where I was
"I think you will find more spots to hang the more you get out there." I'm sure that's true, I found that to be the case when I was tent camping.
"Most peoples background is camping in tents at established campsites or clearings so not use to thinking of anything else." Actually, I usually go out by myself in areas that are specifically NOT established campsites; the only reason I followed a "regulation" trail this time was that I wanted to find something without hiking for miles...big mistake.
"you might need some shovels, hedge trimmers, or dynamite". I was actually fantasizing about this while I was trudging along...I have some experience with explosives, and I was calculating in my head how much of what kind I would need to blast out a nice clear 20 ft radius!
Apologies if zombie threads are frowned upon - I was not able to find a policy against it, and I did look.
Just wanted to chime in on finding spots, as I recently had a tough time of it and was wondering if anyone can come up with other things I should have done.
I was at a state park which had both frontcountry, RV-style camping sites (which had elevated wooden tent platforms too), and a much smaller loop of so-called backcountry sites. I say "so-called" because, as it turned out, they were just across the park road from the RV sites! The bathhouse was easily within walking distance.
In any case, I had so much difficulty finding suitable trees at the backcountry site. In this circumstance, I couldn't just keep walking until I found some. I was on a designated backcountry campsite, so the area was sharply limited in scope. This backcountry campground was built onto a steep hillside, which I knew wouldn't be a problem for hammocking. There was a tent platform too, though nothing was really as level as it should have been. When looked around the site for good trees, most were rather small and young (2-3 inch diameter), and many of those were growing between the fewer larger trees. On top of that, there were patches of poison ivy everywhere, so the one or two potential pairs of trees I saw would have put the hammock right over it (and on a steep hillside, making a nighttime bathroom break risky in multiple ways).
It was late in the day so I ended up just pitching my tarp on the tent platform in an A-frame. I had CCF, bag liner, topquilt, and a HUG bug net. I just got in my bag liner, slipped into the footbox of the TQ and pulled it up, and draped the HUG bug net over my head and shoulders. I thought for sure I'd be covered in daddy longlegs before long, or get buzzed incessantly. As it turned out, none of that happened, and I slept very soundly (probably helped that I had hiked that day too).
Anyway, just wondering if, under the circumstances, I could have done much else other than go to ground, or risk getting the poison ivy on me / my clothes. Thanks for your thoughts -
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