Originally Posted by
east_stingray
... This worked well. The winds collapsed my parents' tent more than once because it pulled the stakes out of the sand. It rained most of the night, and while it turned into a mudslide underneath the hammock I stayed dry.
The second night I had only one place to hang the hammock, and the points were far apart (almost used up all the suspension line) and probably not high enough. I'm pretty sure the ridgeline ended up tighter than it should have been, but I didn't have any other options. The wind picked up that night to what we later learned was over 60mph.
My tarp was pitched so that the wind blew through it. It rained VERY hard that night, and the wind ripped off my parents' rain fly. All of their gear got soaked, and they spent the night cold and wet. For about 20 minutes, rain was blowing clean through my tarp from one end to the other without touching the ground, but I had clipped my dry bag over the suspension line at the head end, so it kept me fairly dry. The UQ got wet, but not too badly. During one of the strongest gusts, one of my corner stakes pulled out. I was able to reach out from inside the hammock and hold that corner against the ground until the wind let up a bit. .....................
While I was staking the corner, I had my back and head pushed up against the underside of the tarp. For a second, I thought someone was throwing rocks at me until quarter-sized hailstones started rolling under the edge of the tarp. It hailed like this for about 8 minutes. I was pretty sure the tarp wouldn't withstand that kind of abuse and spent the whole time waiting for it to fail. Fortunately, the hail finally let up and the wind died down some. I slept the rest of the night with no problems.
In all, I'm very impressed by the Warbonnet gear. I slept well all three nights, which I never did before when camping (on the ground). The panel pulls are absolutely necessary on a tarp as big as the mambajamba. Brandon told me this, but it's not on the website. I'm very glad I ordered them, but be warned... they leak and need to be seam sealed. The tarp itself pulled through some VERY nasty weather which I fully expected to destroy it........