Fail

[Debi Jaytee]

Went to a kayak camp over this past weekend. Beautiful place, wonderful people and fantastic weather -- until about dinner time on Saturday when torrential rain came down. We were all sitting in a screen tent and every single one of us got soaked, it was bad.
When the rain finally let up, all of us hurried to our respective shelters to assess the damage. I thought I would be ok in my hammock, (the others were all in tents) I'd lowered the tarp and had everything secure. At first glance I was pretty happy, all seemed dry, even the plastic bin I had all my gear in was dry. Then I discovered a puddle of water inside my Hennessy. Huh? Seems that I had left a rash guard shirt draped over the ridge line, and it had acted like a drip line, but dripping into my hammock. Had that not been there I would have been the driest camper in the place, I wound up sleeping very uncomfortably in my friend's car.
Anyone else make a silly mistake like that? Rest assured I won't do that again!
As a footnote, the water didn't soak through the hammock to my UQ so at least I had that as a blanket in the car...

[LuvmyBonnet]

Sorry you had to sleep in the car Debi. Where did you camp? Here in WNY it was sunny and clear Fri-Sun.
I've been fortunate to not get wet in my hammock. I have gotten wet several time in the tent. That's why I gave my tent away.

[Mikeinajeep]

I was caught in a really bad storm a few years ago. Nothing would have survived the wind and rain. Lightning struck about 30 yards from my motorcycle. I threw everything in my bags and bugged out. Spent the night doing 20 on the highway. Not the best night ever.

[joe_guilbeau]

My biggest fail was a November trip to Big Bend National Park and a 120 mile paddle trip down the Rio Grande starting at Santa Elena and going to the take out at La Linda. This was 35 years or so ago.

Cold front blew in on our second night, and let's just say it was a mess. Side canyon flooded our campsite (we were in tents) and it was a good thing we had the kayaks tied to rocks with 150 feet of rope. Packed up the sop at around 2:20am and packed it uphill on the double.

Found a game trail and plopped it all down and hunkered down until about 4:45am when a wild steer made it abundantly clear how unhappy he was with us blocking his front driveway.

Saw two mountain lions in the backcountry, some mexican nationals had some fun with us plinking into the Rio Grande with pistols and rifles just to play with us. My buddy spoke the lingo and jokingly stated that we would give them catfish from the river with juglines, they stopped shooting. We paddled hard...

So, 10 days after getting soaked with temps going down to the upper 20's and daytime temps in the 70's we got back and went Gortex bonkers, with $700 Marmout Down bags etc...

Stopped early each evening and built a large fire. We could hear the DEA folks on the USA side of the river and we joked a bit over being able to hear them...ie (We can HEAR you!).

Needless to say, we got pulled over going out of the park and we immediately declared our weapons, no problems at all. We let them search through our stuff.

So yeah, either learn from others or from your own mistakes.

[SGT Rock]

When I first started using dynaglide suspension and made my first cuben tarp I found out the hard way that dynaglide acts just like a rain gutter down into my hammock. I got that under control pretty quick by making drip lines with strips of pack towel, but then I found out that VHB tape doesn't have great peel resistance. I ended up in the car that night and sorted it out enough to finish the backpacking trip the next day.

Crappy when happening, but fun to look back at.

[mikko]

I made the rather unbelievably stupid rookie mistake of attempting to hang my hammock from a dead tree, four days ago. The dead one was of more suitable thickness than the bigger living one right next to it, which my webbing strap could not reach around all the way. There was a voice in my head telling me that the dead tree was a bad idea, but genius me just decided that it was solid enough, regardless. Set up my Hennessy hammock, tested the tension by sitting on it, on top of the integrated bug net, and instantly felled the dead tree. There was a moment of horror as the tree, maybe 5 or 6 meters tall, could have hit the tent of the two people I was camping with, or yanked and torn the hammock as it went down. Neither happened, and happily I hadn't gone inside the bug net, so I simply stood up and didn't fall on my derriere or get caught in the collapsing hammock. I did feel like a complete idiot, especially untying one end of the hammock from the dead tree on the ground and hanging it (quite successfully) from the thick living tree not one meter away from where the dead trunk had been.

So my hammocking didn't exactly conform to "leave no trace", but on the plus side, at least the tree didn't fall on us on its own in the middle of the night. It was likely going to come down soon naturally, anyway.

[CanGnu]

My first case of cold butt syndrome sent me packing for the truck seats. Not comfortable at all.

[BillyBob58]

Debbie,
Bummer. But I have had water pool in my hammock, and even in my PeaPod, before(wind pulled a stake out while I was away) and I just poured the water out and was still OK. Since your quilt wasn't wet, to bad you didn't just pour the water out and apply any towel you might have a go at it. Might have done OK. Better than the car. Anyway, live and learn!

[Razorkeen]

I haven't actually made a mistake in getting wet in the hammock...yet. I do remember that my first hang ever in the back yard was a very wet night, and when I climbed out of the hammock that morning and walked from under the tarp, it took me a moment to realize why the entire back of my shirt was drenched after having dragged it across the tarp. Talk about a cold and quick wake up.

[Scoutmaster1056]

A couple of nights ago, had the tarp in porch mode. A sudden storm came in about 3am, water pooled on tarp which pulled out a stake. The stake flipped up and wrapped around pole above tarp. I had to go out in the rain to get the stake loose, needless to say I got soaked. My hammock didn't get wet so that was good but all the stuff in my chair under the tarp, until tarp came loose, did get wet. Great Michigan weather!