Hello all - great to meet you! New to the forum and have gotten some great research here - thank you!
I began hammock camping in the Minnesota Boundary Waters about 8 years ago. If you aren't familiar, it is a canoe/kayak-only wilderness of about 1 million acres on the MN/Canada border with about 2,000 lakes (and many more marshes). So, TONS of mosquito breading grounds. At dusk they are thick as a cloud of gnats, but not in small clouds but more like an all encompassing fog across the landscape.
I began hammock camping there by throwing an OR Alpine bivy into a Wise Owl hammock - no tarp, just closed the bivy lid in the rain. Not terribly comfortable, but minimally functional, and probably still better sleep than on the ground. Very interesting trying to scoot down from the top into a sleeping bag and bivy without capsizing! After a few years of this, I upgraded to REI's Flash Air hammock kit (tarp and bug-screened hammock at reasonable price). Mosquitos bit through the bottom where I wasn't covered by a thermarest or sleeping bag. Eventually I added a cheap synthetic REI underquilt that didn't quite fit the hammock, and added a hand-made underquilt cover, mainly to cover the gaps and keep the mosquitos from biting me through the hammock bottom all night.
So here I am today, waiting on an upgrade to ship. Warbonnet Blackbird original single-ply, Thunderfly, and 20 degree Wooki. Should be a fine upgrade (buy once, cry once)! One question on my mind about mosquito coverage though...
I've read in several posts about a potential gap between the Wooki and the hammock around the left shoulder. If there is any space at all for mosquito entry in this environment, they'll find it. Is there anyone out there with experience in this same situation (mosquito cloud invasions), and whether this gap (if they've had it) has allowed the blood suckers to climb to the hammock bottom and get you? My mind is already on mods to the Wooki based on this concern.
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