by AlmostThere » Fri Oct 28, 2016 4:23 pm
If I were to sum up conversations with every non-hammock-user ever it would run something like this.
Them: I can't use a hammock because of cold/rain/motion sickness/bad back/don't want to be shaped like a banana/too claustrophobic/bugs/animals/side sleeper/active sleeper/stomach sleeper.
Me: I get motion sickness so easily I can't ride in boats on the ocean, or back seats of cars, or sometimes front seats. I get cold so easily I am the first person to put on a jacket. I can't go to sleep on my back. I'm so claustrophobic I am unable to sleep in a bivy, or a very narrow tent, and I had to stop using mummy bags. I've been using a hammock for a decade and I have been warmer, slept flatter, on my side, without feeling claustrophobic, been drier than I ever have in a tent -- and my gear stays cleaner, too. I can sit up and make dinner (can't do that in a tent) dry clothes on the ridgeline of the hammock (tents don't have ridgelines and are too poorly ventilated to dry things, usually they get condensation where hammocks/tarps rarely do) sleep in any position including on my back (I absolutely MUST be on my side, if I am in bed at home or in a tent on a pad, not so with a hammock) completely isolated from bugs (full bugnet, off the ground, permethrin treated hammock suspension, double layer hammock) and able to build a house around my hammock (tarp so big that it qualifies as a six person tent, staked around the hammock -- friends whose tents have leaked have been able to bail out and sleep with ME).
I have eight foot straps and long whoopie slings -- the trees would have to be more than fifty feet apart to defeat my knotless, effortless setup.
The things that hammocks can't do: hang where they are prohibited (parks with redwoods and sequoias don't like stuff hanging from their trees) or hang where things are completely flat without rock faces or trees, and you have no hammock stand. And it sucks to be in a hammock with someone. So if the significant other doesn't like hammocks for some reason (mine is just too big for most and too cheap to spring for a custom made version of a good hammock) you get stuck on the ground. And that is why the camping gods have blessed us with Exped Synmats, Big Agnes Q Core, or similar 3-4" cush insulated ground sleeping gear.