One thing that I read about in the late 1950s has stuck with me. I don't see it used or even talked about, which is surprising. It's immensely useful for backpacking.
What I read about was how to moor a boat using a real rope and a piece of rubber rope.
Rubber rope is a thing I've never seen, but it's the idea that counts. The same idea in the world of backpacking shelters works out to be what's called "shock cord", which is just an elastic core wrapped in fabric.
You tie some of this into the middle of a guyline for a tent, or a tarp, or a hammock tarp, and leave a little slack in the real guy line, and this lets the tent or tarp move a little, give a little in the wind, like a flexible tree bending a little, but not snapping off.
The thing is, it's hard to fasten a length of plain shock cord so it stays tied. All knots in the stuff eventually work loose.
Well, you can run this stuff through a little soft metal tube and then crimp the tube, but where do you get super lightweight metal tubing about 1/8" in diameter, in like 1" segments? (3mm by 25mm) There are things like this made for exactly this purpose, but you don't see them just sitting around in every store, and it's baffling what a guy could use as a substitute, so I've been stumped.
Yeah, so today while buying groceries and letting myself be open for ideas about whatever, and also to kill time, I blithely wandered through the women's doodad section at the supermarket and had a nice bingo moment.
Goody. Goody Ouchless Hair Elastics and Goody Ponytail Holders. Yep. Them's things, and they were there. Just about what I wanted, and all ready-made. Cheap too.
Goody.com doesn't have details. You have to follow the links from there to Walmart or Target and check them, and that's where I stole the images you see here. Too good not to steal.
I made a dumb graphic (right below) showing how to use elastic with guylines and it shows way too much slack, but I'm not going to do it over, so use your imagination. And what looks like a knot on each side should be in red. Or something. The graphic should be clearer, but I'm not a pro, hey. (Another D'Oh! moment, brought to you by me.) But it's the idea that counts, and this is one idea that is really fine. Think about it. I believe you've even caught on already. The elastic stretches just so far under heavy stress, and then the actual guyline takes over. Brilliant, as they say.
Guy line with elastic tensioner, showing way too much slack.
Ouchless hair elastics.
Ouchless hair elastics showing thickness.
Ponytail holders.
One ponytail holder, showing "welded" ends — no knots, no crimping, etc. Woot!
Updated tensioner graphic. More schematic but possibly no clearer. At least I tried, eh?
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Me? Still trying after all these years.
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Can a weird loner guy have fun in the dark with a piece of plastic?
Smaller is lighter. Lighter is usually better.
It was a dark and stormy night. There I was on the ground in the dark, under a transparent sheet of plastic, wrapped in a home-made backpacking quilt, all alone at Christmas, in a hail storm.
Perfect. I am nuts and this is my story.
I used to visit the beaches of Olympic National Park at Thanksgiving, when I had four days free of work, when it was just the tides, the storms, the birds and me. And maybe some dead things on the beach.
X is for Xmas.
One year I tried Christmas instead, and pushed the limits a little by taking my first shot at tarp camping. Ray Jardine's "Beyond Backpacking" (now out of print) covered the subject pretty well, but he had a newer book available, just about tarps, and I bought it. It inspired wild thoughts.
I pitched an 8 X 10 foot (244 by 305 cm) piece of 3-mil (0.076 mm) transparent polyethylene, with another 40-inch by 7-foot (102 by 213 cm) sheet to go under me as a combination floor and ground sheet. Cost: about $3.50. And though crazy I'm not stupid, at least not in public if I can avoid it, so I took another shelter as a backup.
This tarp setup was a bit heavy at 25 ounces (709 g), but much lighter than even my single-lonely-guy's lightweight tent, and nearly as light as my Hennessy Adventure-Racer hammock. What was missing was netting to keep out teeny creeping critters or biting flying nighttime nippers, and any ability to zip it shut and make the world go away.
Howdy, world.
What I gained was a full-sky view of the world through a transparent roof, and 360-degree ventilation.
First-night's impressions: Drafty. The temperature was barely above freezing, the walls ended a hand's width above the ground, and the air was unsettled all night, changing direction frequently and finding all my unprotected spots.
Take two.
I lowered the sides to the ground for night two and stuffed my open umbrella into the drafty end. There was only a lick of condensation right above my blow hole. How about rain? Yes, it rained. And sleeted. And hailed, for hours on end. Lightning and thunder too.
Second-night's impression: Not too bad. Because of the weather it was a whole lot like sleeping inside a snare drum during a parade, but the tarp held.
No wet, no splashing, plenty of room to move around. Lots of room to wave my arms and swear, to curse various things, and wonder if I'd ever make it home again. But camped back in the forest as I was, away from the open beach, there was no wind, only a steady gentle draft that kept condensation at bay.
Teeth and claws.
Critters? Everything with wings and blood lust was already dead for the season, so mosquito netting was irrelevant.
I had a bigger worry though -- what if one of the larger, more clever locals felt like having a midnight snack, felt like moseying on over to eat my face, for example?
My first two backpacking nights in 1980 had been inside a plastic tube tent where I kept panicking all night, dreaming I'd wake to find my scalp full of teeth and my face full of claws, hearing a distressing munching sound. Ray Jardine insisted that was safe to sleep wide open. So, I figured, it must be, and went for it.
But I had an idea. As a test I tried leaving three peanuts on the ground near my head before saying my prayers.
The next morning in their place was half a cheese doodle with tooth marks on it. Hmmm.
Second night: I left a couple of raisins and a pretzel. Got back half a stick of chewing gum and six sesame seeds.
So, OK.
Then, third night, I laid out a broken wristwatch and a $10 bill. On the final morning I got the watch back, in perfect working order, 43 cents in change and a receipt from Mikey's Fixit Shop saying that it was a pleasure doing business with me, signed with a minuscule paw print.
Hey. I'm cool. You?
So, no complaints on this score, either. All mellow.
Now let's review. The plastic tarp was heavier and noisier than a silnylon one would have been, but much lighter than a tent, and is an easy way to try this way of camping. Hey, anything is noisy in hail. Besides, I could see the stars through my roof, and make a decision about the new day as morning approached without having to leave my nest.
Pitched low, the tarp was a awkward to enter and leave from the narrow end, but cleaning the floor was easy -- just sweep things off the ground sheet. I stowed my footwear inside without making a mess, because my shoes were out on the ground, but still protected from rain.
Ventilation? Great. I guessed that this setup would be much more comfortable in warm weather though. But in warm weather there would be bugs, so I couldn't complain.
Easy to set up and easy to repack. Cheap. Lo-tech. I was sold on the experiment. Pretty soon I ordered a bunch of fabric and designed a smaller, lighter and much more expensive tarp that ultimately worked out pretty well.
So this trip was fun for me, but I'm kinda weird anyway, so use your own judgment. Mikey was sure nice, though. Gotta say that. I'd like to meet him some day.
I just completed a four day backpacking trip to Mt St Helens. I wanted to go have another look at a place I got to last year. Which I did, sort of, but with snow pack at two to three times normal, the end of June this year is not a third of the way through backpacking season, but pre-season.
A few years back, I drove in on April 30 and went hiking anywhere I wanted. The only snow then was up where only climbers would go, not anywhere that sane hikers would have trouble with it.
And so it was for the first several years that I spent exploring the area.
No longer. This is the fourth year running that heavy snow has pushed the hiking season out toward autumn. It looks like the window for real backpacking will again be only two or three weeks long.
Lumpy and snowy and foggy.
Bummer.
But it wasn't all bad this trip because I was expecting to deal with snow. Not so much, but some.
I also knew that where I'd be going I'd have no chance to use my hammock.
In places there are trees tall enough and thick enough to support a hammock, but those trees grow in only a few spaces. They are bushy, hard to hang from. And their trunks are covered with blisters that pop open under pressure and ooze a thick, sticky sap that smells like turpentine.
Transparent. Nice in the moonlight. A real dew-catcher.
The smell is fine. It's a strong, clean smell, but the stickiness isn't.
Get this stuff on your hands and it won't come off. Get it on the suspension of your hammock and it's worse. It hardens and though alcohol will remove it from hands, and spots of it from clothing, if your hammock suspension gets saturated with it, you have to let it harden and just live with it.
So anyway, I had a piece of plastic I wanted to play with. I used it once as an 8x10 tarp, then cut it down to make a sort of tent-like shelter. I took that.
As a backup I took my home-made Brawny Shelter, a.k.a. Dancing Light Gear Tacoma.
Seemed to keep the werewolves away too.
The short of it: I missed the hammock. A lot.
I'm way past the days when I can sleep on the ground comfortably. A couple of years ago I talked to Ron Moak of Six Moon Designs, who said that he doesn't even use a sleeping pad. Apparently just a waterproof sheet beneath him, and he gets by OK.
Could have been pitched better though.
Go, Ron.
I have enough wrong with my back, plus a heap of years piled on top that I can't sleep more than two hours on the ground without awakening from the pain. In a hammock I can just snore my way through the whole night.
Night two. Slight clearing.
But hammocks aren't perfect either.
A big hammock tarp will catch the wind. A smaller tarp catches less wind but gives less protection from both wind and rain. Being above ground level you're up higher where there is more wind. This is colder, and hammock insulation is tricky.
You are also tree-dependent. You need the right size and type of trees, and need two that are just far enough apart, and oriented right so you can protect yourself from wind and weather.
Hammocks are places to sleep, not homes. You can't wait out a day-long storm in a hammock. You can't really change clothes in one, and can't spread out your gear for convenience or for anything else. You also have more limited sleeping positions. No sleeping on your stomach, and though sleeping on your side is possible it isn't that convenient.
Not as lumpy. Almost grassy.
But there are huge positives too.
A hammock is independent of the ground. You can sleep over rocks, mud, logs, or trickles of water. You are above the night-dampness. In tree country you have many more potential camp sites, even on severe slopes, and you stay well above critters like ants, spiders, centipedes, mice, wood rats, ground squirrels, snakes, and skunks.
Setup is simple. As is takedown.
I have a fabric tube (which Tom Hennessy calls "snakeskins") that I carry the hammock in. After stringing it up, I slide this off the hammock, and unfurl the tarp. Takedown goes the other way -- I just slip this tube back over the hammock and tarp, and I have all the loose ends magically contained in a long, loosely packed bundle that's easy to arrange in the pack.
You can't be this messy with a hammock.
Using single-wall tents the last few days I had a chance to refresh myself on dealing with them.
Setup is annoyingly complicated. If I had to use a tent all the time I'd get a freestanding tent or design one. Fumbling with stakes and line three nights running made me crazy. Keeping track of the pieces too. It's really easy to lose one or more stakes any time. The lines always get tangled.
Finding a place to pitch a shelter is insane. The ground is either lumpy or at too great a slope or both, and if you find a place that works, it may be too exposed to weather or too crowded by trees and shrubs, or you have to orient the shelter facing the wind rather than away from it. You usually end up sleeping on some odd slope, either sliding or rolling downhill in your sleep.
Tent on lonesome flat, at top right.
Critters can just walk right in.
And it's damp. I had extremely heavy condensation all three nights. The ground was damp, the air cool and damp, dew collected on everything, and I was right in the middle of it. Ventilation was no help.
In the morning I had a dripping, slimy, grit-covered shelter and dangling stray lines to fold and pack away. By the next evening I had a still-dripping, slimy, grit-covered shelter to set up again, except that all the lines had gotten tangled.
For those who like sleeping on the ground, though, a carefully-chosen shelter can be the lightest way to go by far. You don't depend on finding the right trees in the right area. You have a wider variety of shelters to choose from, and you can get one at almost zero cost if using plastic sheeting, though that option is heavier than modern fabrics.
Slight clearing that later became more mist.
Tent-like shelters are easier to understand, and more familiar, and can sleep two, or three, or four at a time. They are also easier to repair, and to work around in case there is some kind of catastrophic failure. Rip the bottom of your hammock and you're screwed. Rip your tent and you can at least use the remaining part as a waterproof blanket.
Ultimately it comes down to what a person likes and can deal with.
I've done both. I'm glad I've had the experience of using a hammock and look forward to getting back to it on the next trip.
That's me. Other people like other things and that's fine too. I'm glad we have choices.
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