Went fishing with a buddy and escaped the heat of the Phoenix area this weekend up on the rim. Got to test out my new tarp that I made some skins for (What an awesome idea someone had to put skins on a tarp! Amazing!). Also got to test out my makeshift underquilt (see this thread). Few issues with setup the 2nd night but was able to overcome them by being prepared with my bag of "odds and ends"...

The first night we showed up to camp and it was raining. I was excited to show my buddy how simple it was to setup the tarp with skins and how quickly it deployed without hassle. It went flawless and I had a pitched tarp in about 2min... It stopped raining about an hour later, and was nice weather the rest of the night.



First night was in the low 50's, cool from the earlier rain. The underquilt worked like a champ, no cold spots at all. My only complaint was I was too hot all night! I had a lightweight 40f bag as a topquilt and kept pushing it off as I was overheating. I guess thats a good sign that the dirty underquilt method was working well...?

Second night it was clear and in the mid 50's. Had some issues during setup as the spot we chose was tree challenged. I setup the foot end on a nice tree, but the head side was going to a somewhat wimpy tree that really didn't want to bear the load... The spot was tree challenged, most everything very close together. There was a tree to the side and behind my original choice, but it was another 8ft farther out of an already distanced hang. I broke out my bag that has odds and ends in it (loops, prusiks, straps, whatnots...) and make a 5ft extension on my tree strap, opened up the whoopies to their longest reach and made it work. Maybe a good 25-28ft.

Went to sleep with the sounds of Elk bugling in the canyon below us, 30min later it began to rain. That continued till about 5:30am... So first nite in the hammock with rain, everything held up fine, all dry! The sounds of the rain hitting the tarp were pretty intense waking me up a few times throughout the night. Again I was overly warm, and I'm thinking that the bugnet might be keeping in too much heat? Even without the topquilt almost all night I was a bit too warm.

Any ideas on how to cool it down a bit?

Woke up to this view from the hammock... it was awesome!