While my family wandered BAM! bookstore today, I perused the magazine rack--found this article and thought I would share.
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Explore Magazine - Fall 2017
Gadd's Truth Article
By Will Gadd
HAMMOCKS TO HELL
Has the hammock trend gone too far? Will Gadd gets grumpy with the Instagrammers
I hate hammocks. Hate is a strong word in today's world, but I would burn them all if I could.
These feelings first started when a hammock tried to kill me in my sleep. It was a model meant to allow "restful" nights on a big-wall rock-climbs--before the invention of portaledges--but it closed over my face and cut off my already meager oxygen supply, lulling me into a hypoxia death spiral of darkness. I probably would have suffocated if the hammock hadn't also inexorably forced my shoulders together like a boa constrictor eating a deer until the pain cut thought the oxygen deprivation and I awoke streaming. Then it started raining, and the hammock neatly accumulated and funneled the water underneath my butt, rather than shedding it outward as promised in the manual. I never actually used it on a real climb because I rather keep ascending in a dangerous zombie state for days that sleep in a device that was clearly out to murder me.
I should have learned, but a few years later I tried out another hammock at a backyard barbecue. The rigging looked sub-standard, but the host assured me it had held him and his girlfriend. At first it held me, but when Zorro (30 kilograms of ADHA Labrador, named after the swordsman who also left his mark) joined me, the whole rig collapsed in a blur of broken plants, old beer bottles, unfinished paintings (people always leave stuff under hammocks), dog fur and chaos.
In soft-focus images, hammocks look safe enough--don't be fooled. They are only suspended from two non-redundant points, and if either blows, the whole mess comes crashing down. This offends the guide and rigger in me almost as much as a rappel anchor rigged in the same way. People have died rigging their rappel anchors incorrectly, where one point of failure point means the rope slips out of the whole system--so why is this tolerated for suspending people above the ground? As any young climber should learn, when anchor points are at less than 120 degrees relevant to the load, the anchor are dramatically multiplied. Which explains why hammock "anchors" fail so often. You need a 24 kN, six-inch tree as an industry standard minimum. And often, hammock materials are sub-standard hippie "natural" fibers clearly tied together by underpaid workers who will never have the luxury of sleeping in a hammock--and if the knots aren't good, well, there are lots of them, right? No reason to slow down the assembly line!
But personal experience does not show the whole picture. The hammock injury statistics (yes, they exist, from the US Consumer Product Safety Commission) show exactly how bad these hanging deathtraps are. More than 3,000 people are injured or killed by hammocks every year in North America. If you figure how few people (obviously, the slow learners with little respect for self-image or gravity) will get into a hammock every year and yet how many are injured, it's clear they are far more dangerous than trampolines, swimming pools or rakes--which also rank high for accidents. Incidentally, women are far more likely to be hammock victims than men. According to the data, women are also more likely to be injured by stairs, plastic containers and bathtubs. Men, somehow, are for more likely than women to be injured by walls and ceilings. How men injure themselves on ceilings is unclear, but never underestimate the genius of the drinking man. (There was probably a hammock involved.)
While hammocks are clearly dangerous and should be banned for that reason alone, there's a deeper and more sinister problem with their soft embrace. The only reason hammocks exist is to promote sloth. Sloth, if you remember you Sunday guild classes, is a Deadly Sin. In fact, hammocks are a favourite of Instagram Sloth Vacation Class. If an outdoor Instagrammer posts a picture of a hammock strung between to palm trees with a scantily-clad woman in it, well, it's going to be her most popular post of the year, as it ticks all the Instagram boxes at once. As the only purpose of Instagram is to promote envy, it also neatly checks another Deadly Sin. In fact, I have seen lost, gluttony, greed (lying in hammocks takes money to burn as they often found in ridiculous locations) and pride ("Look at me in my hammock on Instagram!"). I've got the "wrath" part of the equation covered, so my hammocks neatly embody all the Seven Deadly Sins in one hanging package of poorly designed rest. Rest is for the weak, and those same Sunday classes were adamant that the devil will make work for idle hands. Hammocks are, to hammer the point often reference by haters, against God's will.
If the primary reason hammocks exist is so you can lounge in your own most hedonistic and slothful tendencies, then this is also clearly a feeling best enjoyed with an audience. Search #hammock on Instagram and you'll get about 1.5 million results. Most of these images aren't people relaxing responsibly in there backyard, they are of hammocks strung up in the most ridiculous positions possible, or so Insta-staged that no one would ever rest there for fear of messing up the perfect netting grid and carefully hung candles (candles are also good for Insta-followers).
My special hate for public hamomocking was cemented by two recent experiences. A while ago, I was happily swearing and failing while climbing at a local cliff when two buff young men and an attractive young woman arrived to climb. Or rather, the attractive woman lounged in a hammock, flipping her hair over the side and taking selfies, while the gym-rat dudes talked **** and attempted to climb. My female climbing partners were appalled. Life is doing, not spectating, and I wouldn't want my daughters to aspire to a hammock-based existence.
A couple of days ago, I walked out from climbing along the shores of Lake Louise, Alberta, perhaps Canada's most iconic mountain tourist destination. The trail easily accommodates the walking thousands (which is great!), but it's occasionally throttled a treed path only a few meters wide or so. Half of the crowd is trying to look at the beautiful mountains and half is trying to make it back to the Fairmont's buffet lunch, so it can get tense. Between tow trees, blocking at least half the traffic was a hammock. A man and his girlfriend were leaned back into the pedestrian flow, facing the water while attempting to look relaxed and pretending not to notice the people banging into them and trying to get around the neck-snapping anchor cords. As a guide, I always have a sharp knife in my pack to cut nylon. If it were a rappel anchor, I'd surely cut it down as a public service. For a moment, I felt justified hate filled my heart as I envisioned clearing the path of hammock debris. But even when justifiably hating an entire class, you must remember that it's always about individuals in the end--so I made to with photo-bombing there selfie. I am sure the hammock fell anyhow--karma or no karma, gravity always wins.
And yet today a gear catalog showed up, and there was a new three-point hammock that looked sweet. Greed may conquer hate in the end, and when it does I'll be sure to Instagram a shot with my girlfriend belaying out of the hammock. That would do better than a shot of me, for sure, I'll just have to convince her somehow...
https://www.explore-mag.com/Gadds-Tr...-Hate-Hammocks
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Originally Posted by Shug Emery
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