Video: Lost Maples Texas...Jan 2013

[CampWalker]

Man I'm gonna hit one of these soon, Cave great vid and write up, Brute cool pics and "BOSS BEARD"

[TallPaul]

great write-ups and videos everybody. Thanks for sharing.

[JollyGreen]

Lol. Sorry you missed it, MuffinKiller... It was a good one.

Haha, you just miss my cooking skills, I'll get down there again for sure

[Pipsissewa]

Great pix, everyone! Backpacker Magazine has a write-up of Lost Maples in its latest issue. I'm like, oh, yeah, Lost Maples. I know that area (because of my friends on Hammock Forums) I'm so worldly! Thanks for sharing!

[SkyPainter]

Great report, vids, and pics! Thanks for sharing those! Looks like you guys had a ball!
As far as the Alcohol not lighting, you have some options next time:

Keep a 4 or 8 oz bottle inside your clothing to keep it warm; Put it in a wool sock, and keep it in the hammock. I will be making a Reflectix Cozy for the fuel bottle, with an outside pocket to slip a Hand Warmer in. Will still keep it in the hammock, but should work well enough. Gets a tad chilly here in the New England Mountains.

Thanks again for taking us along with you!

~ SkyPainter

[Yakfoot]

Unfortunately, there will be a delay in my photos and videos. My camera will not download and I have to send it in for repair. Thankfully it is still under warranty. Not too pleased with this Kodak Playsport.

Report: I got tangled up with this group via Caveman. I sent in a post to the UQ forum about trouble with my KAQ UQ rated at 30 giving be a cold butt at 50, everything looked fine to me but being a pad man this was my first UQ. Suggestion was made that I come to the hang and have people take a look at things. I only live an hour away so I decided to go even though I could not hike due to foot problems. Caveman said he thought people might want to gather at a base camp for a fire so I decided to try to pull some load by doing some cooking for the group. I got a brisket and fixings for some cobbler so I brought my smoker and dutch oven. Easttex and Caveman gave my setup a good looking over and easttex found a big hole that would open up when I got into the hammock. They got things cinched up pretty tight but the first night was not much of a test, it was in the 60s and I woke up sweating about 2;30, but that was an improvement.

Friday night the fellows met up at the camp and I fixed some cobbler in the dutch oven. Caveman set a remarkable example of personal hydration while we were there and probably had to get up at least three times to pee after he got into his hammock. Caveman could not get Eastex's name right and Easttex set a good example of how to utterly ignore Caveman. Texico told tales of his section hike on the AT and Brute sat on a log in a light shirt while everyone else was getting on jackets, stared at the fire in silence, and looked like Budda on a log. After some cobbler they went to camp C.

I put the brisket on the smoker about 8:30. My Hennessy was set up at site 16 which has several good hanging trees. I could sit at the table and watch people as they drove around checking out campsites and watch their expressions as they drove by looking at the hammock set up with tarp and UQ instead of a tent. There were a lot of open mouths and slowdowns. Then, in the PM a car came by and a girl was hanging out the window pointing at the hammock and yelling at the driver, "HEY, HEY, LOOK AT THAT, WOW, THAT IS SO FRIGGING COOL!!!!

This time of year in the Hill Country the cedar (Asche Juniper) releases its pollen in great quantities under the right conditions. Conditions were right and you could see the pollen being released in great clouds. You could see whole trees or limbs on the trees explode with a sudden grey pollen release that looks like a sudden big cloud of smoke. There was a heavy grey haze everywhere and I guess visibility was only about a mile on Saturday. It looked like there was a big fire somewhere and the canyon was full of smoke, but it was pollen in the air.

The guys came into camp about dark and we had brisket fajitas, adobo from Lobatrain and cobbler. Caveman seemed much more subdued than the night before, ran to the bathroom to get a bath and didn't do a very good job of hydrating himself. Eastex decided he wanted to try his hand at baking a muffin with his stove and proceeded to burn about an 80 caliber hole in the bottom of his pot and stink up the place. Everyone wimped out and headed back to C camp early.

When we looked at the forecast on Friday it was for 40 degrees and a 15mph wind. Wind shift to the north happened at 6pm and the temps started dropping. The park police had said he thought it was going to get into the 20s and I thought he was full of it. That was not what the Friday forecast for Sat. night had been. Since I had been having so much trouble with my UQ and had little confidence I got into my hammock armed with a sheet of reflectix under me an a Thermarest pad on the ground under the hammock just in case. It was getting pretty cool and the wind was ripping through the canyon and making all kinds of racket around the camp and I realized that I had forgotten my earplugs. I had gone to sleep and then there was a big explosion on top of me, then boom boom boom, the wind sounded like a freight train coming down the canyon and I figured my little asym tarp had just been shredded. I got out of the hammock and found my tarp still intact but one of the prussics on the suspension had slipped and the tarp had gone slack and was just trying to get shredded. I got the thing stretched back out and tied down the north prussic. It was plain that the tarp was catching too much wind and needed to be re-staked tight to the hammock. I thought about holding the line with my teeth while I was moving the stake but decided that would not be a good idea, I wanted to keep them all and not get them ripped out by the tarp in a howling wind. It was not 15mph like they said, not even in the ballpark. I was thinking that this must be like mountaineering on the exposed face of Everest, **** cold too. I finally got the tarp battened down and got back in thinking that my UQ seemed to be passing the test.

Morning dawned freezing cold with high wind, but it was bright and clear. All the pollen was probably in Mexico by now. My old Svea 123 fired right up after I made a windscreen out of shoes and a water container and I set it to roar under a pot of water for coffee and got some oatmeal ready for the fire. Its hard to beat the Svea for dependable raw power and it had the job done fast. My hands are not very sensitive to cold and I rarely use gloves but my hands were getting numb in the cold wind. I slacked around in my hammock for a long time before I finally got up. Camp was a mess. Stuff hanging in trees perfectly flat things blown completely out of the shelter, crap everywhere. When I was picking up stuff the park policeman came my all humped up and cold. He was looking for the owner of a wallet that had been turned in. He thought is was one of our crew but it turned out not. We fell to talking and it turns out he is a diy man himself, has a hammock and had just gotten a great deal at Seattle Fabrics on a whole bunch of bug net and had made himself a big something or another out of it. I sent him and email and invited him to check out the forum.

Everyone bugged out pretty fast on windy Sunday. I drove around the park a little and left about noon facing a one hour drive to get home. It was great meeting everyone and thanks for getting my UQ sorted out.

Yakfoot.

[Caveman]

Great report Yakfoot....I wondered what was going on at camp while I wasn't around.

[CooOkieCOOon]

Great report Yakfoot. Thanks again for all the wonderful fixins!

[harrellt]

Thanks for the hike along and great video!

[brown4914]

Very detailed reports and a great vid, cheers!