Its summertime, and we are all dealing with heat issues, but I tried something today I have not seen. I was in the process of cutting up a down coat and fitting to make an uq. During this, I slid the coat around my hammock, and it fit, jumped in the hammock and slid the coat down around me. The coat covered my legs and waist. So the wheels got turning and I grabbed a vest and wrapped it above my head, around the hammock and zipped it on. Now, I lay back, reach down slide the jacket up to my hips, reach up and pull vest down over my head, totally covered. I spun the vest around to align the hole for the sleeve directly around my head. I could stick my head out, allowing more breathing room, and reducing any problems with condensation.
Now maybe someone has already tried this, but I haven't seen it during my short time here at HF. Seems to me that this would eliminate the need to pack extra sleeping bags, uq, and top quilts. Plus you have a functional piece of clothing to wear during the day.
So, then I took it one step further and grabbed my north face mummy sleeping bag, unzipped it a few inches at the foot end, pulled the hammock suspension through the opening, hooked the hammock back up and jumped in. After getting all situated in the hammock, I slid the bag around me and got complete coverage from the bag, feet to head. Now this was just slighlty snug around my knees, but certainly doable. About the only drawbacks I could see were it might limit how much leg spreading room I had and possibly bag dragging on the ground when I sat up to push the bag back towards my foot end. I would just have to be careful at this stage to insure I picked up on the bag as I sat up.
I could also remedy this problem by hanging my hammock a few inches higher.
Then, I pulled the vest down around my head again, creating a complete wrap around me, head to toe. I also had my blue ccf in the double layer, so I'm thinking that this would give me excellent warmth.
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sorry about the bad picture quality. you can only put so much lipstick on a pig...
I've looked around HF and didn't see anyone with this type set-up, maybe its been done before?
A couple of things I liked about this was the fact you can wear the jacket or vest during the day, foregoing its not wet with rain, then wrap it around you at night, no need for topquilt or uq, less pack weight, and the price. I already had the sleeping bag,vest and down jacket. I didnt get any pics with the jacket. These were both XXL jacket and vest, for obvious reasons.
The bag was not compressed when in position, so I think R-value would not be comprimised.
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