Hello all. I’m hoping some of you can help me further diagnose a mystery. I am a relative newbie to hammock camping.
I have a Ridgerunner hammock and a 13’ UGQ Winter Dream XL tarp. I have spent numerous backyard-woods fair-weather nights in it but wanted to give it a hard rain test to make sure I could stay nice and dry under the tarp before I actually took it out in the “true” wilds. They were calling for really hard rains during the evening and night. So during the day I set it up the way I always pitch it and went out to climb in after midnight when it had already been raining pretty hard for a few hours. I found the bottom layer of my DL Ridgerunner hammock to be pretty much totally soaked and the inside top (sleeping surface layer) to be slightly damp as well. At the time the rain had totally stopped so I couldn’t detect any leaks in the tarp. I decided to go ahead and climb in for the night because the sleeping surface wasn’t too wet and a insulated inflatable mattress kept me from coming into contact with the soaked bottom layer. I knew multiple storms were supposed to move through during the night and I wanted to see where this water was coming from. About an hour later I woke up to a very hard rain and I could feel fine spray on my face – like a light misting. I shined the flashlight all along the tarp interior and ridgleline and couldn’t detect a leak anywhere. After playing around a while by holding my arm out the right side of the hammock, I noticed the spray was mostly detected along the outside edge of my arm but not on the top where it would hit if it was coming through the tarp. The only explanation I can figure is water was hitting the ground and bouncing/spraying up against the bottom and side (and over the side) of the hammock. The amount making it up and over the side was minimal – not enough to keep me from sleeping - but definitely enough to wake me every time a storm rolled through. Is “rain bounce spray” a common problem?
My tarp is a really wide one. The way it was pitched the outside edge of the hammock was about two feet in from the edge of the tarp. The tarp edge was about two feet off the ground and the hammock was about two feet off the ground. The hang is on a slight slope so the upper right side of the hammock is about a foot closer to the ground than the lower left side. This slope actually causes the edge of the tarp to be about on the same plane as the hammock level. All the “spray” seemed to be coming in over that upper hammock side that was closer to the ground. Is ground-bounced spray something others have experienced? How high above the ground do I need to hang to avoid it? On my two favorite trees I really can’t raise the hammock anymore because I wouldn’t be able to get into it due to the slope. I could lower the upper tarp edge down to the ground but I’ve read so many posts of guys weathering out hard storms – even in porch mode - that it seems like it shouldn’t be necessary to have the tarp edge right down on the ground. Maybe the main culprit is just the sloped angle of the ground in relation to the hammock and the fact that water bounces off the slope and is directed directly onto the hammock bottom/side.
Anyway, the whole thing really surprised me. I figured with such a wide tarp and ample coverage on the sides that rain would have to blow in totally sideways (which it wasn’t) to reach the hammock. I never even considered something like rain bouncing off the ground on a sloped surface. I would be interested to hear if anyone else has experienced this and what you might necessarily avoid when picking your hanging site/trees.
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Originally Posted by TrailSlug
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