Wind vs Tarp/Hammock. Wind wins.

[ringtail-THFKAfood]

Ground dwellers are NOT desirable hiking partners because often good hammock sites are quite a distance from good tent sites.

Good site selection will solve the wind problem.

A large tarp is not your friend in wind. Often there is not enough room in the sheltered locations to hang a huge tarp.

Most t@#ts are about 41 inches to the peak and have steep side walls. It should not be hard to be more windworthy.

I hang with about 42 inches between the the fly ridgeline and the lowest part of the underquilt with me in it. I try to set the fly so the the lowest edge of the tarp is about 24 inches below the ridgeline. The wind is blocked on the bottom with either an underquilt protector or sock. But the lowest part is only about 18 inches below the edge of the tarp. I can still enjoy a view below the tarp.

I can not sleep with wind blowing across my face. I wear a baseball hat and drape my shirt over my head.

I still own a couple of t@#ts and use them when the situation warrants. But hammocks are my primary shelter. There needs to be a substantial payoff for me to sleep on the ground. I will share a tent with my wife. A bivy at 14,000+ feet is a good experience.

[MuseJr]

I've found site selection to be more important in windy conditions. Aside from that, getting the ridgeline as low as possible makes a big difference. I have setup my hammock inches off the ground and my ridgeline of my tarp @ ~3'. This made my tarp flat and getting in the hammock a real PITA, but I didn't have problems with my tarp that night. (It was a smaller tarp without doors.)

The other thing I've found important is using the largest diameter trees to hang from. If I can find anything other than an aspen grove, I'm staying there. I'm not a fan of being lifted and dropped all night long. (Unfortunately, this has happened a few times and caused a site setup change in the middle of the night.)

Poles make a big difference, but if you are using lightweight materials, then you are probably worried about weight. That would make poles a big no, but they do make a difference. If you are open to adding poles before jumping ship, give it a shot.

@StumpJumper - Good luck in your search. Hopefully you find a solution that doesn't involve abandoning the hammock.

[SSGHawk]

OK I am about as green as a hanger can be. Bought a HH Explorer on eBay a few weeks ago and a 20 degree 3/4 down underquilt last night. Seriously considering an ENO one link double nest. I am a St. Agnes sleeping bag person and plan on having a St. Agnes insulated mattress and one CCF pad
Been thinking about this high wind issue.
Has anyone added some length to the sides of a hard core winter shelter so the sides can be staked at ground level, essentially making a tent? If so, how has this worked in these kind of winds?

This is a great forum for my new found hobby. Thanks,
Regards,
Paul

[nuttysquirrel]

no need to make a winter tarp wider than fabric allows, just pitch the hammock lower than normal, or pile snow around the perimeter. and do you mean bigagnes?

[body942]

Read this after your sale thread. I'll bet we were out in the same wind in the same wilderness, it was pretty rough. I didn't lose any stakes in the night though. I knew I shoulda called you. I second the earplugs comment, but I've been working shiftwork forever and have been sleeping with them exclusively for about 15 years. I gotta say, I slept like a baby in that guster. Keep the faith buddy.

[Redpath]

I've been using a set of Tato adjustable tarp tie outs. One or both on the wind side of the tarp keep things tensioned and reduces "flap" dramatically. The shock cord also allows the tarp to give a bit under strong sustained gusts, sometimes coming into contact with the hammock, but the cord returns it to position, as soon as the gust drops a bit.

Really helps to open the tarp up on the inside w/o having to mod anything.

+1 on this. Some fierce winds plagued me the other night and one of my guylines slipped the large stake I had made. The Tato side pullout kept the tarp from totally blowing over my hammock, keeping everthing dry until I got the guyline reattached. I was really impressed how those Tato pullouts held tight through the night. And I mean branch breaking winds. (I heard some nearby)

[Wraith6761]

As has been said many times before, site selection rules for dealing with high winds...however, the OP has already said they don't have a lot of choice most times in that there simply aren't a lot of trees available.

I admit, I'm a fairly new-ish hanger, and my gear kinda reflects that (though I just got the notification that my new Superfly is in the mail ). Back in March, I went on a trip that ended up with some pretty crazy wind gusts (I'd estimate easily in the 50+mph range, as a gust flipped a lawn chair with a person still in it). I had a lot of the same issues, though I was using my ENO Pro Fly tarp. At first, I set up like normal, static guy lines, single stake at the end of each. The wind not only ripped these up with no problems, it turned my tarp into an improvised trebuchet and launched my stakes a good 20 feet. Upgraded to single stake with a heavy rock on top...same result. Upgraded again to 2 stakes per tie-out, with heavy rock on top...no stakes flying through the air, but they still came up out of the ground. I decided to re-think how I had my set-up. Instead of having my CRL run straight down the middle of the ridgeline, I angled the tarp into the wind so that the CRL was at more of a 70-30 position than a 50-50. I also tied the leeward "30" side up to a couple of nearby trees in porch mode (these trees were too small to hang off of, or my whole setup would've changed to a better angle). On the windward "70" side, I swapped the static Niteize guylines out for pure shock cord, and added a pair of the clip-on pull-outs from Dutchware that I borrowed from another hammocker to the bottom of the tarp. Double stakes, with heavy rocks and shock cord guylines running to 4 points on the tarp's windward side seemed to help tremendously. Yeah, it was still crazy windy, but since the shock cord allowed the tarp to move some with the wind, it wasn't as loud and it didn't keep launching stakes anymore.

I feel like writing this out is probably confusing...hopefully this MSPaint creation will help explain it better (yes, my Paint skills suck)...
Untitled.jpg

[sliver]

It seems like the most obvious solution is to use a hammock sock. If you need to stabilize your hammock, you might want to try attaching cord to each side and staking them down to minimize rocking.

Having so much surface area in strong winds will not work. Either your stakes will come out or, if you load them so they won't, your tie-down loops will rip out.

There are mountaineering tents that will handle wind effectively but you will pay a lot (>$500) for that kind of ruggedness. I've slept in 3-season tents in 40-60mph and it is no fun. I had to double stake each tie-out and ripped out all of the loops on the windward side of 2 of my tents. Neither of those tents had as much surface area as the tarps I normally use when hammock camping.

A hammock sock has a lot less surface area exposed to the wind than any tent. Only a bivy sack would have less.

[mrmike65]

On windy nights, I peg my tarp tight to the sides of my hammock. The foot end of the tarp is pegged so the tarp lines are actually crossed underneath the hammock. The head end is pegged so that I can still get in and out. For colder weather, I have a modified SOL Escape Bivvy that I run my hammock through. That is my first line of defense against the elements. The second is my tarp (I have a few choices). The windier the night, the closer I hang my hammock to the ground. I sleep just as well with 6" or 3' clearance. At 6" off the ground I can peg my tarp directly to the ground, like a pup tent, and still have the comfort of hanging.

Another tack to consider, is using a one-tree setup. With a couple extra lines and four nail spikes, you can make just about any pole/tree limb/sapling into a second hitching point for your hammock, giving you choice of which direction you want to hang your hammock.

[Rolloff]

+1 on this. Some fierce winds plagued me the other night and one of my guylines slipped the large stake I had made. The Tato side pullout kept the tarp from totally blowing over my hammock, keeping everthing dry until I got the guyline reattached. I was really impressed how those Tato pullouts held tight through the night. And I mean branch breaking winds. (I heard some nearby)

Yep. I hit some very bad weather early in deer season this year. Cold, very high winds/rain most the night. Down in Clark Co. Two tornadoes spawned out of the front the night before. We were in between the two, and it wasn't bad. The next night pounded down. Go figure. Tato gear really did their work w/o a hitch. Up until then I'd used them exclusively just to open up the tarp more, and thought, "Oh how nice." Once I saw how they really went to work in high winds, it locked them into a full time slot in my kit. They don't weigh anything anyway, and have to cost less than any other Mod you could throw on a tarp to marginally do the same.

They just do the job.