Saving the trees

[I Splice]

I'm concerned about doing damage to the trees. I've got 1" straps that use as tree huggers, which will definitely hold my weight, but at 230 pounds loaded hammock weight is 1" enough??

I'm about 20 lbs heavier than you but I wouldn't worry about damaging the tree with a 1" strap. Well, maybe I'd worry if I was hanging from the same trees for weeks or months. I've never noticed any tree damage from tree huggers.

I have changed to 1.5" straps to reduce stretching during the night.

[WarmSoda]

You do have quite a lot of birches up there. We don't have many. I imagine bark might flake off in the process of putting the webbing on the tree, but I think this is just a minor flesh wound (someone correct me if I'm wrong). The real danger is restricting vascular flow below the bark. Early settlers around here cleared farm fields by cutting away the bark and cambium in a ring around the base of a tree and then came back a year or two later and burned the trees they'd killed.

Birch bark has so many uses, like birch bark canoes, making rope, etc. that people have been harvesting the bark and killing the trees at an alarming rate. Harvesting birch bark for any reason is a serious no-no in some places nowadays. Its so sad, really.

[WarmSoda]

I have yet to see any damage from a 1" strap but I think your concern is a valid one.

One simple solution would be to replace your straps with wider ones...strapworks has a 2" wide version that should fit your bill

I appreciate the suggestion. I'm thinking that a wider width does work theoretically, but I'm not so sure in the field if it would turn out that way. I'm thinking that most of the pressure occurs just on the top rim of the straps and that extra width may not actually do much to help. I haven't used any other straps than the 1" wide ones. Does anyone have any bad experiences and needed to switch to wider straps? I can't be the first person to have worried about this.

[bfulton]

I haven't noticed any indentation on most trees even when sharing a hammock with my wife.

Without sounding like a pervert, are you sharing the hammock overnight or just for short periods of time? What hammock are you using?

Has anyone solved the 2 people in one hammock problem? My wife and I will be thru hiking the arizona trail in March and I would love to save ~4lbs of gear by sharing a hammock tarp under quilt and top quilt. Together we weigh ~270#.

[WarmSoda]

Well, maybe I'd worry if I was hanging from the same trees for weeks or months. I've never noticed any tree damage from tree huggers.

I'm wondering if the damage can be caused in one or two nights? I'm sure that prolonged use would not be good for the tree.

Would damage to the soft areas be immediately noticeable? I'm thinking that I would be going back to the same areas and using the same trees over and over. If I never went back, would I notice the damage? I don't want to ruin my favorite sites. Even if no one else goes there, I GO THERE, and I don't want to kill my support trees.

[WarmSoda]

Theoretically, though, there may be a downside to ... completely encircle the tree.

If you do find a soft tree, one solution is to place a few twigs up and down beneath the webbing. They will ... reduce the pressure to just a few points, rather than the entire circumference.

I really like this idea. I learned a while ago about how native americans harvested maple sap and how they learned through trial and error that vertical cuts left scars but didn't kill the tree like horizontal cuts. Now of course, we just drill small holes that heal quickly to get our sap. The point being that vertical damage is less harmful to the tree than horizontal damage. I think maybe some vertical toggles attached to one side of my straps would give me the option of using them or not as I needed. Though, I don't know if this is really a problem or not, so I can't say that this solution would be worth the extra weight?

So far the consensus seems to be that 1" straps shouldn't be causing that much damage and I may be worried about nothing. This would be good to know.

Welcome to the forums, by the way!

I'm glad to be here.

[BillyBob58]

I was frustrated with some "minor" damage recently. I was hanging from some fairly large trees- I think the one on the head end was a pine, but I seem to have forgotten and need to go back and look. Any way, the bark was sort of loose and flakey(kind of like me I guess). Seems like things were OK when I used the stock 1" webbing on my BMBH. But for some reason, when I tried to use the Whoopie slings, connecting to toggles through 1" tree huggers from HH, every time I would get in the webbing would slip down the tree an inch or two and then hold. It would not slip any more after that, and the slip was on head end only.

But every time this happened, it would scrape a small amount of bark off of the tree. The next day, knowing what to look for, I could see where these scrapes were. Again, I tink it didn't happen with the BMBH webbing and triglides, or at least not nearly as much. But it was a problem with the WS and tree huggers. Weird! And worrisome.

EDIT: It was not a pine. It was the tree on the left side of the 1st picture in post #1 of this thread:
http://www.hammockforums.net/forum/s...ad.php?t=11969

[Drop]

Quick thought re vertical toggles, how about putting a bunch of rubber O rings (or similar) on the straps

[OldMan]

I'm concerned about doing damage to the trees. I've got 1" straps that use as tree huggers, which will definitely hold my weight, but at 230 pounds loaded hammock weight is 1" enough??

Would really depend on the type of tree you are hanging from. I have yet to be out in the wild with my hammock, but when I do I will be mostly hanging from mature Douglas Firs. And they have pretty rough and heavy bark. I can't imagine that a 1" strap would be an issue at all. While I intend to use straps, I suspect they would not really be necessary on a tree whose bark is over an inch thick.

[vitamaltz]

bfulton, I've never spent the night with my wife in the same hammock, in fact I've never convinced her to spend a night in a hammock under any circumstances. We have lounged around in an ENO together though.

ENO, Ticket To The Moon, and Trek Light all make double hammocks that are pretty much identical. Trek Light has a promotion going on now that benefits HF, I believe, and the owner of the business is a forum member. Cannibal did quite a few nights on the trail with Genuine Draft in a Trek Light double. He has posted about it and uploaded photos, but I cannot find them by searching right now. I'm sure he'd share his impressions with you via PM, though.