10 Hammock Camping MISTAKES You're Probably Making

welcome back survivalists so when I first got in the hammock camping I fell in love with it I think it's a much more enjoyable experience than tent camping and I think I sleep ten times better in a hammock and then I do on the ground in a traditional tent but I'm not gonna lie I made a lot of silly mistakes when I first got into hammock camping and I see a lot of all the people making the same mistakes that I did when I first started because the truth is there is some stuff that you need to know and it is kind of a steep learning curve to get into hammock camping that's why today I'm gonna talk to you guys about the top 10 mistakes I see hammock campers make states in the first mistake I see a lot of people making is sleeping like a banana you are not a banana and this is not how you're supposed to sleep this is actually kind of uncomfortable sleeping like this what you actually want to do is sleep at an angle so not straight on from tree to tree weight point your feet towards let's say the right side of the tree and your head towards the left side of the other tree I'm telling you you're gonna sleep ten times better sleeping at an angle rather than sleeping straight off and fruit a tree and it's really for two reasons one when you sleep on straight on like that the sides tend to kind of come in on you and they kind of constrain you and you can feel a lot of pressure on your shoulders and on your arms to kind of get everything just kind of gets pushed in like this like you're in a banana peel so the second reason is when you're strung up in a hammock and you're going straight on like a banana all of your weight is right there on the center of the hammock so what happens that center part gets really tight because it has all the weight on it and you can feel that tightness running down your back and along your head and it becomes a little uncomfortable but when you sleep at an angle your weight is kind of distributed amongst the entire hammock and not just that Center part so more evenly distributes your weight so the second mistake I see people making is not using some sort of undercoat or insulating barrier underneath of your hammock and this is a big deal without an undercoat or some sort of insulation your bare back is this gonna be a up against this hammock and this is paper thin so what's gonna happen is you're gonna lose a lot of body heat from your back being pressed up against your hammock like this and you were going to be miserable you're not gonna get any sleep trust me I know so there's really three options to kind of fix this one is you can get in under 12 and under quote looks just like this and it's an insulating barrier that hangs underneath of your hammock the one I use by outdoor vital and what I really love about is this can actually turn into a pod system where you're under 12 will completely zip up all the way around you and your hammock and it is super warm now if you don't want to spend the money on a under quilt there are some other options as well one you can get some kind of sleeping pad or even a yoga mat to lay down in your hammock just to give you some sort of insulation some sort of barrier from the exterior of the hammock and the third option I sometimes see people use is like a really thick wool blanket that they sleep on top of but you really need something to protect you from losing heat underneath of the hammock and this is probably one of the biggest things that I see people neglect so number three is not using tree straps so what are tree straps that's what these are here essentially there's thick straps that wrap around the tree and then they have hooks on it for you to hook your hammock entail so aside from being incredibly convenient and very quick and easy they also really protect the trees right if you always use rope you can actually do a lot of damage and strip the bark off the trees and a third reason you want to use these is because if you're always using rope let's say to hang yourself up rope can stretch especially a cheap rope something like 550 cord for example that absolutely it's very easy to stretch that this direction if you hung a hammock up a 550 cord you'd wake up and you'd be on the ground I can almost guarantee you there that has tremendous amount of give in the cord and these are incredibly easy to set up and they're fully adjustable literally just like this and you can pull it down and adjust where you want it so get yourself some really nice tree straps they're not very expensive this one is from Eno and they're about 30 bucks so number four is not having a SAG in the hammock as a bit of a fine line because you don't want too much of a SAG either I have seen people pick spots with trees or just too close to each other and their hammock literally looks like a banana it's it's like just a crazy little curve and they end up sleeping like a V in the middle you don't want that but you also don't want the hammock to be completely rigid when you set it up you want just a little bit of a SAG in there so kind of a road thumb is that you want your cords hanging up your hammock to be at about a 30-degree angle now no nobody goes out to the woods with a protractor to measure angles but kind of an easy way to judge them is to make an L with your fingers like this kind of an upside down L and have those parallel to the ground and you want both fingers to make contact with the strap okay so something like this is about a thirty degree angle now if it's too severe like this you know obviously that's that's too much of an angle and if it's not enough of an angle and your fingers touching here but this is not really touching and still being parallel and that is it's too tight so when it's hanging naturally you want it to make contact with both fingers like this and be at about a 30-degree angle so number five is actually setting your tarp up too high up believe it or not but your tarp is gonna help keep you warm and a common mistake I see people make is they set the tarp up like six or seven feet off the ground and I get why they do this they do this so that they can walk underneath the tarp freely and have a little bit of space there to kind of move around what you need to remember is that this tarp is actually going to help insulate you all the error inside this tarp is going to heat up from your own body heat and this is gonna help like kind of trap that heat it up air around you so when you have a tarp to high up it can't really help keep you warm and help insulate you and if you also have it too high up you may allow too much air to come in and flow over your hammock as well as underneath your hammock so I really recommend that you have the tarp pretty close to you once a wind can't blow overtop of you but to so that your body heat will kind of heat up that air inside of there and help keep you insulated so the same concept is also true of every building a survival shelter like a lean-to or a debris Hut if you make it too big that's a more space that your body has to heat up hey real quick I'm kind of curious do you prefer hammock camping or tent camping I'd really love to know leave your answer down in the comment section below and tell me why you prefer one over the other number six is take your dang boots off or you get into the hammocks there's nothing that drives me crazy er than seeing people put their dirty feet inside the hammock what's really bad is when they later on forget which side was their foot end and which side was their head on and they end up putting their face right where their boots just were so number seven the truth is that there are some drawbacks that hammock camping and one of the biggest one is that your gear is not protected like it would be inside a tent and this is especially true with your shoes and you may be thinking well nobody's gonna come and take my shoes I have them underneath my hammock and yes sure that's gonna be true but it's not gonna stop things like spiders and snakes and slugs from going inside your boots and that's not something that you want to wake up and find in the morning so generally what I do is I have an extra pair of socks and I just make sure to stuff them in that boot pretty well and then I try to open them up and kind of wrap it around the mouth of the boot as well and you just kind of got to play with it a little bit just to keep critters and bugs and whatever else from crawling inside your boots at night so number eight just like you want to have your tarp pretty close to you so you can create an air gap to help insulate you your under cloak should also have a pretty big air gap and a pretty big gap between your actual hammock and the bottom of your under quilt and I've seen people really get frustrated with this and they want their under quote right up against them and that's not what this thing's designed to be you can kind of see how deep in there and how far the bottom of this is from the bottom of the actual hammock and that's designed to be that way so that you have an air gap that's gonna heat up from your body temperature and provide further insulation from the outside temperature so number nine is not protecting your gear from wet weather so again since we don't have a tent to protect our boots and all of our gear you really need to have something to kind of protect us from any condensation a moisture in the air and my backpack is from outdoor vinyl so actually has a rain fly that's built into the very bottom of it so I can easily cover up my bag just like this and if it were to rain in the middle of the night you know my bag up be mostly protective but just keep in mind that your bag is most likely gonna be sitting on the ground close to you so you want to bring something to cover your bag up whether it's a trash bag or a proper rain fly your bag you may also want to consider hanging your bag up in a tree just like you do for a bear bag just to protect it from foxes and raccoons and rats or anything like that the scurrying around in the middle of the night so number 10 brings me to another challenge with hammock camping and this even though you may have to protect it from the rain from your tarp and your hammock may be fully protected so the tree is not and the straps attached to the tree are not protected as well so it is very possible for rain to fall down the tree run down the tree go on the strap and then go down the strap and go into your hammock and this is a very real problem that campers run into so there's a couple common ways to address this issue and one of them is known as a trip mine so essentially just take a scrap piece of rope and you tie it around your strap here and the idea is the water of flow down hit that rope and drip down rather than continuing down to your hammock personally I think that with the tree straps this is not as much of an issue for me because my hammock attaches to this with a carabiner and that carabiner does take care of a lot of the water so another common way I see people addressing this issue is using a carabiner and you can do that actually use two different carabiners to attach your hammock to your strap and this alone a lot of times the water will drip off the first carabiner and not really follow through the second one and go into your hammock and really a third way I see people addressing this issue is if you don't have straps like this or aren't using any carabiners if they have the ropes that are built right into the hammock in touch of the tree is you can create a toggle like this and you kind of wrap the rope around the stick several times and that way the water flow down hit the stick and drop off there rather than continuing on to your hammock so next you're gonna want to learn how to pick a proper camping site and I just happen to have a great video all about that click right over here to watch that and as always I've got links down in the description all of the equipment I use today don't forget subscribe and I'll see you over in the next video [Music]

Channel: Survival Know How

Views: 606,606

Rating: 4.7942395 out of 5

Keywords: hammock camping, hammock camping tips, hammock camping for beginners, hammock camping basics, camping, hammock, hammock camping gear, hammock camping winter, hammock camping essentials, hammock camping hacks, pros and cons of hammock camping, hammock underquilt, hammocking, hammocks, hammock camping setup, eno, eno hammock, Camping Hammock, Eagles Nest Outfitters, Hammock Straps, Hammock Underquilt, Camping Tarp

Id: JL5Dd5Qb30A

Length: 10min 29sec (629 seconds)

Published: Wed May 15 2019