Hammock adventures

[m_stroem]

Hey everyone! I’m just getting into hammocks and curious, what’s the most unforgettable spot you’ve set one up? And bonus points if you’ve braved some wild weather in a hammock… like snow or a downpour. How did that go??

 

[SaturdayNight87]

On a backpacking trip in Oregon, I strung up over a riverbank. Rain came hard, but with a tarp pitched low I stayed snug. That trip sold me on hammocks. Good times!

 

[LowTech]

Probably on the edge of a hill in Costa Rico. I had to remember to only get out on one side of the hammock to avoid a long climb back up. Either that or the hurricane where the only camp ground our kayaking crew could find space in (all the nomads were going to ground at every campground in the area) was an RV resort. There was not a tree to be had and we ended up hanging from a couple 8"×8" posts that were being used to support shade cloth over the concrete slab they had a couple picnic tables on. Of course that meant there was only earth to one side of our hammocks (early hammock camping kayak trip for my partner) so I had to seriously rig up ways to keep the "concrete" side of our tarp anchored. In addition to that the park had left the shade cloth up so the wind whipping that up and down yanked the supports around so much that it was like laying on a trampoline while all the neighborhood kids jumped around on it . . . for many hours! At some point the shade cloth had more water on it than it could drain and the wind whipped it off the side in one mass amount . . . the side we were on. It hit our tarp like someone had just dumped a bathtub. Of course we were using one tarp over two hammocks so the water hit right between our two ridgelines. With no way for it to shed I knew it was going to keep going until it hit the ground and would pull both sides w/ it leaving us totally exposed. I have no trouble responding quickly and jumped out of the hammock and pushed up on the massive tarp lake successfully emptying it into my partner's hammock . . . not exactly what I was after.
The adventure continued on after that w/ guy lines being held w/ both hands and one foot, getting drenched, while my partner figured out how to get into her poncho, . . . my top quilt managing to find a puddle to chill in while I tarp wrangled, . . . etc, etc.

Bad weather, or "Super Adventure" in our terminology, . . . Snow, freezing nights, hail storms, monsoonal downpours, lots of high wind situations, a hurricane in the Florida pan handle. . . I suspect there's others I'm not thinking about.