So, I have been fooling with the gathered end hammock I sewed up a couple of weeks ago, and reading here, I find people talking about using the Exped Downmat 7 in one of these. So I says to myself, "hey, I've got one of those!". So I gave it a try.

It sucked big time.

Pretty much wrecked the whole hammock thing entirely. May as well just put the thing on the ground and be done with it.

I tried it first between the layers of my two layer hammock, that was definitely no good. It was better (which ain't saying much) to pull it out from between the layers, then lay it on top. That way you can orient it easily and on top of that know how it is oriented and lay on the mat with accuracy.

But as far as I am concerned it entirely defeats the whole hammock experience. So if for some reason you were thinking of rushing out to get one of these to use with a hammock, my advice is to spend your money on an underquilt instead.

If this had worked, (well it did work in a certain sense), what I hoped to have gained was to have the versatility of a pad to use if I was backpacking and ended up above timberline, as I am prone to do .....