I friend of mine gave me a hammock stand for the yard. I thought it would be fun to get one of those "portable" hammocks so I could take it to the park and what not. Found a good one online at REI and bought it. I didn't even know hammock camping was such a big deal. I haven't been out of the rabbit hole yet!
new from mich, what made me a hanger? well, its a story so if you wanna take the time to read it i'll tell it.
some friends and I started hiking a few years back, just as I had already started gathering gear to attempt a 100 day solo NB hike on the AT, I didn't have much of a budget and so a lot of my stuff came from amazon and Walmart. I had acquired a total package necessary for hiking from one place to another for around $300 give or take and this included my pack, dbl wall tent w/ footprint somewhere around 6lbs total but i did get a lot of compliments on it and how that was the tent they wished they had 6lbs or not, 40deg sleeping bag w/ liner 2lb, 1.5 mummy air pad 2lb and cookware along with pretty much everything else I didn't list from spoon to bandanas to moleskin and headlamp etc. now my idea of 100 day hike on the AT was realistic and do-able but I ended up failing at my 1st attempt due to lack of proper gear, and I really do mean proper, as in most of my stuff coming from amazon and Walmart just wasn't sufficient for the long haul and everything I needed to carry, I had over-loaded my pack which didn't help my back or legs let me tell you, and some of my gear was just too heavy like my 2lb sleeping pad, in the end I didn't make it all the way because my thighs locked up, i wasn't seriously injured and i walked off the trail but it was still an epic fail for me, it was not a fun time lmao. but that didn't stop me from hiking locally and lighter and with my friends, and so the AT is a "to be continued" as I would gather the appropriate gear to finish the trail one day in the future..
so for the past few years we have been hitting trails all over the state of mich, we didn't realize how many loop trails and great adventures there were sitting in our own backyards lol. but doing those random misc weekend hikes have helped me figure out what I need to change in my setup, what size pack I need and all the above. my 2 buddies though, they have had and used hammock/tarp setups the entire time as to where my setup is dbl wall tent and footprint. my setup obviously takes longer than theirs to put up and take down and they were always giving me grief over it and how I need to do this or that and what I need to change to do what their doing the way they are but as we know, one hikers setup may not work for another and a lot of it is really about personal preference, actually a large chunk of it is personal preference from what you buy to color to how long you want your spoon to be, do you use cont loops or soft shackles, prusik or klemheist? that's just how it is, preference, combine that with essential needs and you pack together your own personal home away from home. back to the story.. so as I'm trying to figure out what to do about my heavy tent situation and lighten my load, along with what new pack I need to carry my gear properly, I had a realization when I was searching tarps for the tent so I can drop the heavy outer fly.. maybe hammocks were the better way to go, so I talked with my hiking friends and they told me where they got their gear, which was mainly rei, dreamhammock.com, dutchwaregear.com, ugqoutdoor.com and mountain goat snake skins found at mountain goat gear via outdoortrailgear.com, so I started saving up, took a long time but I did it, and then when came time for me to get everything, I started asking my buddies whats what, pretty much what tarp you have? what hammock you using? whats your ridgeline made of? whats a flea? lol, now let me tell you, these guys are stubborn and difficult to hike with and for some odd reason they are just about the only 2 hikers I know that want to talk about their gear but they don't want to talk about their gear. so they told me where to get it from yes, and they would point things out when it was set up out on the trails like trailbox would say "this is amsteel, you can splice it and make things" and that's it or mudslide would say "my setup is just like trailbox's", because the setup mudslide had he got from trailbox, but after asking about half a dozen questions it became obvious trailbox was the one that had the answers but what he told me was ridiculous lol, he said "I had to look it all up and find out myself so you do too, I'm not going to tell you" and that was just him being thick-headed I guess is what mudslide told me anyway. I grew up with mudslide but trailbox is a work buddy of his and a new acquaintance to me. afterward mudslide told me he didn't know much of what was what and just did what trailbox told him to do like how to tighten the tarp etc. but I did exactly what he thick-headedly suggested me to do, I literally binge read everything about everything there was to know about hammocking and tarping and suspension and accessories, grabbed myself a copy of the ultimate hang 2 and when everything I was reading started repeating itself I figured I knew pretty much almost everything there was to know about it and my mind was exploding with ideas and there was so much more you could do with a hammock/tarp setup as opposed to a tent setup.
i should probably tell you that I'm a total penny pincher in every way, i use coupons whenever i can and i don't buy what i don't need to survive til tomorrow, more money to spend on other things right? so i went to amazon again and i got everything i needed to hang for $100, hangtight straps, a hisea tarp, just some random dbl parachute hammock and a bugnet/summer sock, it was ok easy and quick, but after trying that just the first time and i seen how my setup compared to my 2 buddies, i knew it still wasn't the right setup and that what i had just put together was more for car camping, which we do all the time so itll get used none the less.
going against my normal routine of spending least amount of money on stuff as possible i thought "maybe, ok, i deserved something fancy for once" lol, so i thought long and hard and i coordinated every piece in every way and meticulously put together my ultimate setup, my own personal superior outdoor home away from home, I went to dreamhammock.com and I ordered me a 11' sparrow with a net+overcover I didn't get too fancy just made it dbl layer with quilt hooks and tieouts, did few accent colors and got an additional gear sling with it which is really awesome so you know, its a dbl ended stuff sack and a zipper pocket pouch, its great it holds my hammock/tarp/straps+accessories, I also ordered some of their titanium shepherd and staple stakes, staples for tarp, i figured 1 staple stake = 2 points of contact into the ground = stronger+more sturdy, got shepherds for my hammock. i went to dutchwaregear.com and i had got some 12' dyneema tree straps and titanium toggles along with some hookworms for guylines and mitten hooks for doors, shockcord, a spool of 1.75mm grey lash it for my lines etc, splicing tool kit, dutch hooks, and some whoopie slings with dbl whoopie hooks on them so if i ever need to use spreader bar with someone i already have the dbl whoopie hooks to do it even though I'm also going to grab some cinche bugs and beatle buckles for sure as well, and maybe some dutch clips too not sure on clips yet, i had also got some threading needles and a loop turner from Walmart they have a wide selection of that in arts and crafts area. I then went to ugqoutdoor.com and got me a WD12 with additional end pole mods and panel pulls and I got their ridgeline too with the aliens, but I then realized after ordering, it was 28' and I kind of wanted 30', so I took some 1.75mm lash it which is the same stuff the ridgeline was and made a 30' ridgeline end to end, I'm going to use the one i got from them on my other tarp setup from amazon previously mentioned, however upon making the longer RL I did splice on a dutch hook on one end eliminating the need for the fixed alien and i have the other alien on the other end as tensioner as its supposed to be, so i have an extra alien just in case, i also made 2-6" lines with a fixed eye and dutch hook as tarp connectors to the ridgelines cont loops that are klemheist knotted as tarp tensioners, those are just larks headed on to the tarp ridgeline loops. i made 2" shock cord loops for tarp guy outs to use with the 6ft guylines i made with fixed eyes and the hookworms on them, i made mitten hook shock cord door closures as you would see in a youtube video many ppl have them on theirs, as i said before I'm using staple stakes which my guylines are larks headed onto, my dbl wall tent organizer pocket works the same as a normal hammock RL organizer works so that can be used on both so that's cool, just had to make a cpl soft shackles to use as klemheist knot tensioners for it, i also made, from someone elses youtube video idea, 4 panel pull lines with 4" cont loops that are prusik knotted as tensioners for the panel pulls to be used with trekking poles for exterior pole mod, and if i don't want to do porch mode on my WD12 tarp i can take my 5x7 footprint tarp and connect its eyelets to panel pulls on one side of the WD12 and trekking pole opposite end of footprint tarp to ground to create a mini side porch i can sit under in my helinox chair zero i scored on campsaver for $80 and by the way a ended up getting a clearanced Gregory baltoro 75 for $160 from rei because they were bringing out the new model so huge save on both of those, grabbed the 12ft mesh dbl snake skins from mountain goat too which are nice and came with pockets. its a cool setup, i love it, easy to setup/takedown, and i designed it to be used with just the few pieces in just about any way shape or form, such as the side porch i just mentioned, or if i didn't wanna use my toggles/whoopie slings with marlin spike i got cont loops on my hammock so i can do sheets bend with just straps and hammock loops, or i could use toggles but not in a marlin spike it would be dbl loop with toggle which would be straps making a loop to cont loops on hammock and toggled, videos on that as well. my sparrow i have is also symmetrical lay and a sparrow has no dedicated head or foot end so i can literally lay any way i choose whether it be left or right, head on this end or that end, which is really awesome. i think that's just about it though, now they say my multifunctional setup is better than theirs, and it requires little gear/accessories, i told em both it was their fault lol. I'm all greyed out though with a little lime and black, grey whoopie slings, grey RL both hammock and tarp, grey lash it cont loops and shackles, grey loops on hammock, grey tarp with black tape, black Gregory, grey hammock with lime accents, black helinox chair zero, grey gear sling, lol grey everything! its nice i will try to get some pics up soon, I'm new here, still figuring it out and all that but ill get my profile filled in and everything..
thanks for reading my story
G-Adams
Son and I just crossed over into Boy Scouts and went on our first campout a couple of weeks ago. When we got back I jokingly time my wife that all the cool dad's had hammocks and tarps. Few days later she surprised me with an Amazon delivery and here I am watching Shug videos on YouTube (amazingly helpful!), joining this forum, learning knots, reading about quilts etc.
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I'm a long time backpacker and canoe camper. My then wife had a bad back and camping became increasingly difficult for her. We tried thicker backpads and inflatables such as Big Agnes, but ultimately nothing worked. The idea of us wilderness camping together was threatened. A friend wo was an avid backpacker and had a girlfriend with a bad back asked me if I ever thought about hammocks. He said it is the only way his girlfriend could continue to backpack. So for Mothers Day 2013 I bought my wife a Warbonnet Blackbird. We went camping and she slept in the hammock and I slept in the tent. The next morning I asked her how it was. She said "I haven't slept this well since I was in my mother's womb". She bought me a Blackbird for Fathers Day and I haven't slept in a tent since. When we divorced two years later the only thing she wanted out of our camping gear was her Blackbird.
Last year, during the deer hunt, I got cold and never warmed up. I have Reynauds and it is really hard to hunt when you are cold and your fingers turn white. I love to hike and camp and hunt and want to extend my season!
I first became a HANGER because of a new friend that is a HANGER. He got me started by inviting me in go hammock camping. I had never done it before so I said sure. Now I am hooked and still hanging in there.
HANG WELL MY FRIENDS AND HANG IN THERE!
I am now an adult scouter with the BSA. I am starting from scratch, and borrowed a cot from my MIL. It was hard and heavy and OMG uncomfortable. I was at an adult training course, and I overheard a couple of the leaders talking about their hammocks. With my physical limitations being a ground dweller would not really be an option. So I took notes, got home and started comparing the costs of tent + cot etc to hammock+quilts... The honest truth, I was part of a reviewers group, and they had an inexpensive hammock come up for $5. I jumped on it, then realized it would only work for my son, then I had to get one for my other son. (Both the reason that my husband and I are now adult scouters) So I did some research and have been working at piecing together our hammock gear. This weekend we are making turtle-dog hammock stands so that we can hang all the way through California as we are going next month to visit family. Hammocking seemed the logical route to take for us; I have to purchase everything x4 so I am reading through and taking advantage of all the great DIY tutorials available. I will be working on our UQ next.
Looking for SHT trail videos on UTUBE I found "Fronkey" and "SHUG"! And just like that I was hooked!!!! Thanks gentlemen.
Been a long time camper however, no matter what pad I try I've never been comfortable on the ground. I mostly camp dispersed by vehicle and then hike but have never backpacked. I tried 2 different styles of roof top tents, and even added a memory foam topper and still no comfort. I thought I would give hammocks a try. In my typical fashion I got an eno double nest and enjoyed napping in it at camp and even in my backyard but didn't like the fabric wrap around. I've been a long time member on the ADV rider forum and had heard of Hennessy and Warbonnet so I began searching and the rabbit hole is deep. Since I have acquired a WBBBXLC and Superfly tarp along with a wookie for myself and a hennessy expedition zip with a KAQ UQ for my daughter. Next step is to make my own top quilt and 11' gathered end hammock for hanging in our spare bedroom.
I stumbled onto hammocks while looking into kayak camping. Folks recommended them because they can pack up so much smaller than your average tent. But what really caught my attention was the comfort factor! Camping in tents always meant getting a few short hours of very poor sleep. I was willing to give it a shot, and I've never once looked back.
Why do I hammock? One word: COMFORT!
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