We had a little cooler weather on Sunday....mid-80's but still a little humid. They were calling for thunderstorms late afternoon with winds shifting to the NW 15. My new Dyneema line came in last week (from ZPacks) so I needed to get them on. I visit my folks on Sunday's so after getting over there I set up the tarp and swapped out the guy lines that came with the Hennessey hex with the new Dyneema....boy they are really visible! At this point, I hadn't decided if I was going to stay the night so after making the swap, I packed everything up. Around 4pm I decided to set up and stay the night. There's a patch of woods on my folks back 40 where I set up for messing with hammock stuff or to do over nighters......Besides wanting to sleep in my hammock, I wanted to test my DIY PH (parallelogram hammock) and I wanted to test the 12-10 butt connectors with heatshrink I am using for the toggles on my CL at the hammock ends. And I wanted to try my new Dyneema guy lines. I pitched the tarp so the SW ends were close together to try and prevent rain from getting things underneath wet....I don't have doors on the tarp yet and because of the location of the trees I use, turning the tarp is not an option.
Around 7pm, the bottom dropped out and we had a thunder storm with a good bit of rain. It lasted about an hour. At nine I said my good byes and headed out to the "wild". The first thing I did was check to see if things under the tarp was dry...yes it was. I opted not to use an UQ and only used my PLTQ. It was still quit warm and the breeze had all but disappeared. Checking my weather ap, I saw that there wasn't going to be anymore rain so I got up and undid one side of the tarp and tossed it over to the other side to allow some air flow. I had my diy modified Fronkey bugnet on so I figured any rain drops from the trees overhead would get deflected. I never slept without a tarp before. It was great! The wind picked up around 2a.m. and there were a few drops that hit me, but it felt good. I was finally getting cooled off so now I took the PLTQ and slid it under me....I slept great! The DIY PH is very comfortable and I wasn't bothered with any calf ridge issues....no shoulder squeeze...I was really pleased with the results.
When I got up this morning, I checked the "toggles" and no signs of compression or bending.....
Thoughts: A small fan would have been nice. But I really don't plan on any backpacking during the hot, humid days of summer. I need to add doors to the tarp. I have everything I need to do it...I just gotta do it.
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Originally Posted by wa4chq
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