Despite having spent a bunch of nights with my hammock hanging in my bedroom (I love concrete walls), this weekend my official initiation to the world of hammock camping.
Took a group of (neophyte camper) students backpacking in Algonquin Provincial Park and despite far less than ideal weather, I'm pretty darn happy with it.
I'm in a WBBB1.0 dbl with cheap ccf padding and my sleeping bag as a quilt. The packing weight was fantastic and the hammock squeezes down to just about nothing in the pack.
I was a bit surprised how much work goes into finding the right trees. After setting the kids up in their tents, I spent about 10 minutes looking around. The site was pretty exposed so strong wind was an issue. Thought I found a great sheltered spot until I started putting up my tarp and noticed the area was surrounded with moose poop. Next spot had a tree with some branches that looked far less than healthy. Ended up with a spot a bit too far apart so that when I first sat my but was sliding on the ground (also briefly worried since one of the trees was obviously used a a bear cache). Was too tired at that point so I just did my best to get the straps higher and tightened the ridge-line more than I would like. I also neglected to consider (until the middle of the night) the direction of the wind and ended up with a little wind tunnel until I quickly rigged my extra tarp as a door. I'm sure practice will make it easier.
Night time temps were around 7C with winds gusting (I'd estimate) at 40 km/h (tore the rings out of a couple cheap blue tarps) and a decent amount of rain. My butt was a little cold but still slept better than the night before which I had to spend on the ground.
I'm now officially a convert (like every other noob I'll give shug and the rest of you the credit you deserve) though I wonder if anyone has a DIY idea to avoid getting out to hammock to empty the bladder.
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