Performed my initial "disaster check" of my new Darien UL hammock; thought I'd share my initial impressions. Will be taking it on an over-nighter next weekend with some forum members; needed to make sure it checked out so I took it to a local community lake just to set it up and make sure it was good to go.
Goal; a ultralight hammock to optimize my ultralight 3 season set up; the Darien UL weights just over 11 oz including suspension, cuben fiber bishop bag, cuben fiber ridgeline organizer, integrated bug net, tree straps, whoopie slings and a full complement of dutch gear: Dutch whoopie hooks, quilt hooks, dutch clip on tree straps. Site claims this is the lightest hammock with an integrated bug net; I couldn't find anything lighter. Went with integrated bug net for weight and functionality; I'm in Missour so bugs are almost a 4 season issue here. Fabric is 1.0; its so lightweight you can almost see through it. You definitely won't want to poke a hole in it and it comes with a weight limit of 200 lbs; I'm 160 so that's not a problem.
Cost; $200; a good value considering this setup is optimized and complete; perfect suspenssion, carrying sack etc.
Fit & Finish: perfect craftsmanship; that's all you can say about that, the whoopie slings are spliced right onto the whoopie hooks, there are 4 dutch quilt hooks sewn onto the hammock.
Funtionality; The real value of the whoopie hooks is that it reverses your whoopie slings which means you can adjust them a lot closer than you can when the fixed loop is toward the tree. I didn't realize how big of a difference this would make; it enables you to set up your hammock with the ideal 30 degree angle on your suspension between trees that are as close as 4.5 paces or far away. This means you have greater flexibility on the distance between trees; for me it means my tarp is the determining factor for what I need as far as distance between trees. The zippers work very smoothly, I wish they were black instead of silver but I'm nit-picking. The cuben fiber ridgeline organizer is great, holds glasses, a flashlight or Ipod/phone quite well; also it's constructed in a tube so you could stuff something into the tube; hard to explain but it's a very well thought out, ultralight organizer. There's also a little loop sewn into one edge, not sure what that's there for; my quess is you could attach some shock cord to it and stake out that side of the hammock a bit.
Comfort; I opted for the 10' lenght; I'm only 5' 7" so I like the shorter hammock, plus I wanted to optimize the weight. I love how it lays; it's asymetrically cut you can only really lay one way in it but it has extra fabric for the footbox area. Nice and flat. I also love how you can see out of it really well.
Summary; Normally this hammock is offered in ACU and woodland camo but they happened to get a quantity of the coyote in and I changed my order to that; I love the look, it'll good great with my olive green underquilts The Whoopie slings are a hot green color; I would have preferred a more subdued gray but they aren't bad as is.
Getting this light of a hammock with all of these "optimized" (theres that word again) features is fantastic and all of the titanium dutchware is simply outstanding. It's ready to hang right out of the box and the customer service from Dream Hammocks is as good as anything I've ever experienced anywhere ever. I'm convinced that an integrated bug net is the way to go if the majority of your hanging is in a buggy area like my part of Missouri; I've had netless hammocks with a seperate bug net but didn't really care for all of the extra netting. I don't think there's a more optimized ultra light weight complete hammock out there at this moment in time.
I've attached a few pics too; if I notice anything else when I use it next weekend I'll update my post; if I don't, then it performed as perfectly as I expect it to.
The bottom line? This is a perfect hammock if you're under 200 lbs and you're really trying to move into ultralight backpacking; it's also the kind of gear you'll need to/want to take care of.
Gideon
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