I bought an REI Quarter Dome Hammock, receiving it in the mail on Monday and spent the last couple of nights in it. It is my first experience with a bridge hammock so cannot really compare it to any other bridge. I have been using a WBBB and a Traveler for the past few years.
First of all, and most important to me, it sleeps very nice. It was the most comfortable night I have had in a hammock. Easy to sleep on the back and side plus halfway rolled over. I move around a lot during the night and this hammock was much easier to squirm around in than the WB hammocks I have been using.
The hammock seems to be very well made and includes everything you need other than insulation and a pillow. It looks to me like a lot of thought went into its design. It is very easy to hang and adjust both the hammock and the tarp with attached lines, clips and slides. The hammock has an integrated bugnet with a zippered door opening on one side. At the top, the bugnet is fastened to a narrow strip of grosgain ribbon. At either end of the bugnet that grosgain is connected to an adjustable cord which fastens into where the hammock suspension coming from the spreader bars Y's together. Unlike the WB hammocks which have a fixed ridgeline, this pseudo-ridgeline is used only to keep the bugnet off your face and you adjust it as needed.
The hammock suspension consists of a 4-5 foot 1" strap with loops at each end. One loop is permanently attached to some kind of double whoopie sling. You wrap the strap around your tree and pull the whoopie sling through the free loop on the strap and then attach the whoopie sling via a provided carabiner to the hammock itself. It sounds complicated but is actually very easy to use and seems very elegant. The only problem I see with it is you cannot wrap around a very big tree so you would need to carry extension straps if you hang from a tree bigger than 4' in diameter.
Entry and exit are pretty simple. Zipping up the door requires two hands in one spot, but that may be because of the tension on the bugnet. The hammock has a couple of small pockets on the inside and one on the outside for storage. They won't hold a lot, but it was a convenient place to put some small items. There are also a few small loops fastened to the grosgain at the top of the bugnet. I did notice a bit of shoulder squeeze, but only because I had read that it could be a problem and was looking for it (I am 6' 1" and 180 lb).
The tarp is a bit narrow, but does adequately cover the hammock. It rained all the first night night and I stayed dry, although there was some splashup on my UQ. The second night I staked the tarp a bit wider and did not have a problem. If there is a lot of wind with the UQ may still get wet, but there was little of that when I tried. I did try my other tarps, including my Hammock Gear Cuben Fiber Hex Tarp, but none of them were quite as long as the stock tarp, although they were wider. So I will stick to the stock tarp for now and explore some kind of shower cap to put over the UQ.
I initially tried to use an inflatable pad (BA Quad Code) in the hammock, but decided that was going to be a bit tricky to stay on top of, so opted for a UQ instead. The video I had seen just hooked the suspension for the UQ to the hammock suspension (where it joins together). But my JrB Mt Washington would not reach that far. I ended up using 4 small carabiners and a short section of shock cord to attach the 4 corners of the UQ to the hammock suspension at the spreader bars. That worked well and covered all but a few inches of the hammock at one end.
All in all I liked the hammock and hope to take it out into the field next week. Unless some issue surfaces, I expect it to be my goto hammock now.
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Originally Posted by Twigs
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