Alright!
Headed out last night to a local campground that has trees to try out all the various things I've been working on. This was my first night actually sleeping in a hammock and it was fab!
According to my cheapie thermometer it was about 42 degrees F just before sunrise. When I retired for the night it was 45. It was calm and there was some fog, although not very dense.
I decided to not worry about the fog too much and it was not really a problem. (I'd posted before about the fog http://www.hammockforums.net/forum/s...ead.php?t=6265) If I were staying out several nights, I'd hope for a nice long sunshiny section at a rest break to get the quilts totally dry.
I stayed warm and cozy all night so that was a good thing. Soooooo comfortable!
I've set up my generic eno-type double hammock with a ridgeline, descender rings as cinch buckles, recycled tie-down straps for treehuggers and threw some silnyl 'skins on it for fun.
I used a truly ugly homemade silnyl tarp in an edges-to-the-ground Aframe config. That was in mesh 'skins.
For a top "quilt" I used my Marmot arroyo bag, unzipped.
For underquilts I started off with my old-down-mummy bag-into-bottom-quilt-thing. (http://www.hammockforums.net/forum/s...ead.php?t=5833) It did not work as well as I'd hoped but it was not totally useless. I'd also brought along my homemade quilt (2 layers 3oz primaloft sport in 1.1oz ripstop) to which I had added head and foot drawstrings and tabs for hanging it as an underquilt.
I had a persistent cold spot under my shoulders and I felt that I could not tighten up the suspension for the down UQ anymore. (risking Pop! Spraaaaang!) It was pretty cool to be able to lie in the hammock and still be able to stick my hands between the hammock and the UQ to feel for gaps.
I added the Primaloft UQ between the down UQ and the hammock (by threading the suspension shockcord through both sets of hanging tabs). This just pointed out to me how badly the down quilt sagged down and how well the Primaloft one fit the bottom of the hammock.
Pondering this problem for a while I realized that I could just grab the stack of underquilts and flip them right over, making the well-behaved Primaloft quilt the bottom layer which would help the down quilt stay closer to the hammock. Perfect! I was able to reach round underneath and strategically fluff up the down to get rid of the cold spot.
The first major new purchase (which will not be right away, worse luck) will be a proper underquilt. I realized looking at the difference in loft, weight, fabric between my new marmot bag and the old former Gerry mummy bag how much technology has advanced. If only, I thought to myself, my down UQ were more like that Marmot ...
The next thing to figure out is how cold I can go with just the Primaloft underquilt.
I lay there in my wonderfully warm nest and started thinking about how much of the tarp was serving no useful purpose (other then to make it difficult to get in and out) and how if it were just a liiiiiiiiiiitle bit longer it would be perfect. My imaginary tarp shape looked an awful lot like a MacCat. So I'll eventually replace this tarp with a MacCat deluxe.
The 'skins for tarp and hammock are totally worth the ozs because of how much easier they make setup/teardown.
Things I'll change:
I tried using my Big Agnes insulated air core mummy pad, half inflated, between me and the hammock. Bah! What a pain! Noisy, wiggly, insufficiently wide for side sleeping. Sometime in the middle of all the underquilt wrangling I tossed it over the side. Buh bye!
I'd rather carry a heavier underquilt. I might try a double-layer hammock and some kind of foam sheet in the summer. Just to see if I like it.
Decided that it was not that my nifty gear-loft hung too low, it was that my ridgeline was just a little bit too long. After I'd had breakfast, I took down the tarp, packed up the quilts and started playing around with the hammock ridgeline length. With a shorter ridgeline the gear hammock would not be whacking me in the knees when I turned over at night.
The shorter ridgeline would also put the walls of the tarp farther away from me - a good thing.
I also tried a different set of trees this morning just for fun. My original set were about as close together as they could be and the second set were as far apart as my tree-huggers would reach. I'm glad my tree-huggers were not any longer because I'd have had to have climbed the tree to get them any higher. Instructive. (can you dig all verbs in that sentence?!)
I liked having the treetrunks serve as 'walls' for the shelter but it was a little awkward scooting out in the middle of the night. The shorter ridgeline will help with this also by raising the tarp relative to the hammock
Tyvek makes a lousy foot-mat. Slippery! Must reconsider this.
I am going to 'spend' the ozs and get some Croc clogs for around camp. Getting back in my shoes - even unlaced - for midnight excursions was a pain!
thaaaaaaaaaaat's all folks!
liz
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Originally Posted by Cannibal
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