Greetings from Ontario, Canada.

My wife and I are experienced canoe trippers, backpackers and winter campers. We've always used tents, except in winters when we use snow shelters (quinzhees and lately igloos), but we are thinking seriously about trying out the hammock style.

The biggest incentive for us is that we camp and hike almost exclusively on Crown lands, not in parks, and so we always make our own bush camps after paddling or bushwacking off-trail, where the bush is typically dense, and the ground very uneven or hilly, especially near lakes and ponds. Finding a suitable tenting spot is often hard and we often have to forsake an otherwise ideal camping location because there's no suitable spot to pitch a tent. Stringing a couple of hammocks would eliminate that obstacle.

I'm all ready to take the plunge and try out hammock camping, but my wife is much more reticent (and budget conscious). She has two reservations which I'm sure everyone here has heard: she's concerned about sleeping comfort because she's a side-sleeper, and she likes snuggling in a tent. I can sleep in any position, but she can't sleep on her back except for short periods and she's prone to lower back pain when she can't get a proper sleep. Regarding snuggling, presumably, sleeping two to a hammock is either not possible or not comfortable. The snuggling problem is not a deal-breaker, but sleeping on her back, she insists, is not something she can learn to do. I wonder if anyone here can offer any insight on one or the other concern. We don't have the sort of money it takes to buy a couple of hammocks, tarps, and whatever other gear we might need only to discover she can't sleep comfortably.

I'd consider buying just one setup for myself, which she could try out before buying one for herself, but we always camp together and so I wouldn't need one of my own if it didn't work out for her.

Thanks in advance for any advice or input you can offer, especially from lower back pain suffers.

Cheers,
-Martin