Our scouts camped at a farm near Gettysburg this past weekend. I was thankful to find two trees just the right distance apart to hang on Friday night. Well, right around midnight, it got windy. Like 30-40 MPH gusts and some less severe, but sustained winds. Unfortunately, I was hanging perpendicular to the wind, so it was a long, mostly sleepless night as my poor WB Edge kept slapping my head and flapping furiously on the leeward side. I gotta say, I was seriously impressed that it didn't get torn. On the corners, I've got line-loc Vs on a 3/32 shock cord loop and 6' of micro cord with 6" j stakes holding them down. I had the hammock as low as I could - the UQ was only inches off the ground with me in it - and the windward side of the tarp (without wind) was pulled down to about 8-12" off the ground.

Knowing which direction the wind was consistently blowing, I scoured the site on Saturday for other trees, but they were all massively too far apart (30+ feet) or too close. I did have my turtledog stand, but even inline with the wind, I wasn't sure it wouldn't get toppled over with me in it. So, I grabbed one of my scout-proof loaner tarps (a 10x10 Unigear cheapie) and thought if I pitched that in a diamond with the point into the wind, and extra guylines on the mid-tieouts, that it would help. It didn't. In fact, the point (where I just drove a hook stake trough the grommet) came unhooked and proceeded to whip the underside of my UQ all night long.

So, in situations where you can't pitch a tarp inline with the wind, what else CAN you do to get a little extra protection? In hindsight, I thought if I had pitched that 10x10 like a lean-to (one whole side staked down and the other corners tied off to the trees) that might have been better.