Originally Posted by
FL_Rick
I've been camping almost every month of the year, for years, with a Florida Scout troop. I'm encountering similar webbing-size requirements in many State Parks, some local county parks, our favorite state forest, and even on our local water-management district land.
I've run into these park-specific webbing-size rules over the past two-three years that I've mostly converted to hammock camping, but I'm also encountering more and more local, park-specific hammock bans as well. But for suspension, somehow 2" minimum webbing-size is getting to be a the new standard in Florida.
I'm also seeing this 2-inch "requirement" in some local parks for both front-country and back-country campsites.
While I don't really see an advantage to the trees I typically use by using extra inch of webbing-width, moving to 2" suspensions across our whole Boy Scout Troop has helped us get the blessing of some particularly skeptical park representatives. And I'm taking that as a win for all of us hammock lovers.
I've had some very respectful conversations with a few rangers and some "camp hosts" which led to us being granted an exception to hang even under a local ban, and our 2" webbing has seemed to be a big reason why.
Sometimes, those initial conversations just didn't seem quite friendly enough to ask for an exception, especially considering I've typically camped with a mixed group of teenagers and adults where anywhere from 10-20 of us have converted to hammocks. In those cases, it was better to just salute and smile (and unfortunately, sleep on the ground).
But, we've helped to strengthen our case for hammocks over the last year and hopefully spread a better image of hammockers (and cut down on negative comments from park volunteers and/or professional staff) mostly by embracing 2" webbing as our internal standard, slash "olive branch", suspension.
Our youth have also gone fully-educational among themselves, and that helps too. Now, most youth in my Troop, it seems, can explain in detail all the intentional things they are doing to protect the trees in our campsites, what suspension gear we're using, and even why we're using certain items. This helps us a lot - and it's encouraging to see the next generation hanging in a positive way rather than expanding the problems that some parks/forests indicate has led to their new rules and/or hammock bans. And even better, our youth implemented this on their own, not because the adults required it.
As to 2" webbing, last summer we made a project for ourselves to create a common setup of 2" webbing suspensions, and we carry enough sets to cover all of us on all car-camping weekends (the whole collection of webbing setups that our youth created to cover something like 35+ hammocks all fits in a very small Rubbermade container that easily fits in anyone's car trunk). For backpacking or canoe-camping weekends, we've simply "issued" suspension kits to anyone who needed one and they got packed in individual backpacks/dry-bags.
Ive witnessed our common, "oversized" suspensions be enough to occasionally get us permission to hang where we wouldn't have been able to do so otherwise. In some cases, simple 2" webbing was enough to make local park staff friendly about a group of teenagers hanging on their trees (which is something!).
After a few "campsite walkthroughs" earlier in 2019 where a park or state forest representative has negatively commented on our tarp ridgelines being too thin or "touching bark", we've also taken to using short sections of hollow 4" webbing to wrap around our tarp ridgelines where they contact trees. Again, an "olive branch", if you will.
Our youth made enough of these "tree protector" ridgeline-covers" for the whole Troop, and they now also live in the same Rubbermade box with our suspension kits. We used hollow, 4 inch webbing-sections because we happened to have a spool on-hand, thus it was "free", but I suspect something much smaller would also keep us in the good graces of our local landowners.
So, while I'm generally skeptical that 2" webbing and webbing-protectors for tarp-suspension are really "the" things for saving trees from damage, embracing those two items across our whole campsite has helped us get us permission to hang more often.
And again, I'm considering that a win since it keeps my aging back off the ground!
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