Who saw new hammock stuff at Trail Days this year?
I was looking forward to seeing the HH Typhoon tarp, but Tom never set it up. I saw and held a bundled up one, but never saw it deployed.
The Jacks had their new camo hex tarp on display. Personally, I think they miss neo posting and are trying to charm him back onto the forums.It is like a nicer version of the famous (infamous) "neo tarp" of days gone by. Traditional camo print on a PU coated nylon, except hex instead of diamond. I didn't ask, or don't remember, what the weight is on them but I'd bet more than a dollar it doesn't weigh as much as the neo tarp. I lost my neo tarp years ago, so the Jacks just moved up on my shopping list.
Stormcrow had a couple of teasers in place.There was a purdy cuben tarp he made and the most interesting thing I saw at Trail Days this year, a cuben underquilt (Phoenix style). It was pretty much like holding nothing; very cool. Their special guest star was the easy on the eyes greatest hiker in the world, Dutch. He had stripped the titanium out of the old shuttle fleet and diced it up into wittle bitty chunks of Ti magic. Clips, biners, hooks, and flyz littered one end of a table. So pretty and sparkly.
Brian from OES brought a (just one) cuben Deluxe MacCat. Once I wrote my name on it with a Sharpie, I took a look at it. He's doing some fancy taping on the ridgeline that uses more than just a strip of sail tape. Hopefully he'll explain the techy details, but I'm anxious to put it to some tests. Takes a few days for the tape to cure and it was brand spanking freshly assembled at Trail Days. I figure by this weekend it will be ready for some good tension. Deluxe size which is 13.1 oz in sil and 10.2 oz in Spinn, but in cuben it's a measly 5.7 oz of goodness.
Tree to Tree Trail Gear was there as well, with special guest star MacEntyre. I don't recall anything new, but their stuff sure did look nice hanging out there. They were one of the first booths if you were coming out of tent city, so I think most every hiker walked right past a fleet of hammocks parked off the sidewalk/trail.
Grand Trunk had a canopy set-up in the parking lot across from the church, but I never saw anybody there nor was there anything there...just a canopy.
I'm sure I'm missing somebody/something, but there was a lot of hammock stuff going on this year. One of the most amazing things to me this year was the number of thrus I saw with hammocks. I missed last year, but the growth of hammock users since I first attended Trail Days in 2007 has been steadily going up. This year was like an explosion! The strange thing is it wasn't HHs that I saw in the majority for once. It wasn't Warbonnets either. The clear winner was ENO; hands-down. Wasn't even close. The suspensions were all over the place, but by and large I believe they were mostly uneducated in the ways of the hammock. I suppose there is no better place to learn than on a long hike, but I was surprised to see such a low bar in place. Setups were sloppy and in many cases, useless. I was camped near a guy that had about 2.5' of exposed hammock on one end of his tarp. Looked like he took a diamond tarp and tried to set it on a square. Did I mention it rained all weekend? Dude's hammock had to be soaked, but he was sleeping in it every night. I saw dozens of equally poor setups this weekend. Nice to see the hammocks, but sad to see the level of proficiency.
All of our hammock vendors seemed to do very well for themselves this year. Hammock Gear's booth was pretty steady, Brian sold a record number of tarps and orders this year, Tom was almost sold out by Saturday afternoon and too busy to setup the Monsoon or Typhoon tarps, the Jacks booth was always filled with potential customers (as usual), Tree to Tree seemed to always have hikers milling around their hammocks; just an all around good hammock year at Trail Days. I'm kind of sad we aren't the weirdos anymore. I mean some of us are just plain weird, but the hammock thing is really gaining traction among the hikers out there. Bittersweet.
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Originally Posted by animalcontrol
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