SlowBro - Continental Divide Trail Journal - 2020
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Mark "SlowBro" Hurd
City: Eugene
State: OR
Country: USA
Begins: Aug 10, 2020
Direction: Northbound
Daily Summary
Date: Sun, Mar 1st, 2020
Start: Eugene
End: Eugene
Daily Distance: 0
Journal Stats
Entry Visits: 143
Journal Visits: 5,168
Guestbook Views: 426
Guestbook Entrys: 7
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New Hammock
Making A New Hammock
If you followed the end of last years CDT hike on this blog, you know that I had switched from my usual hammock to a tent for the last few hundred miles. That turned out to be an unmitigated disaster. Not only did I find crawling in and out of the tent uncomfortable, but I also had an air mattress that didn't hold air for more than 90 minutes. So I never got more than an hour and a half of continuous sleep. The hike finally ending in a sleepless night with rain water streaming in through every tent seam. By morning I was wearing all my rain gear inside the tent to try and stay a little dry. But I was soaked. My sleeping bag was sopping, all my gear was wet, and literally nothing was dry. I have not been so miserable camping since I was a new Boy Scout on my first camping trip, 55 years ago.
Having learned my lesson, I will be returning to my hammock for my remaining treks. However, it is about time for a new one.
In 2014 I hiked the PCT with the lightest commercially available hammock called the Darien UL. It lasted the whole 2,660 miles, barely. A couple years later, when I decided to do the Colorado Trail, a new hammock was necessary. The Darien was no longer being made so I made my own version using the old one for a pattern. Sound familiar? That hammock has lasted nearly 3,000 miles, but the zipper is now only intermittently working and a few spots of fabric are threatening to tear, so I decided to sew up another one. I ordered some new fabric, mosquito netting, and a super long zipper and got to work.
The hardest part of making this hammock is cutting out the net. The shape is a parallelogram with rounded corners that must be cut taking the drape of the netting into account and match the length of the hammock fabric exactly. The hammock body itself is just a big rectangle with a channel sewn at each end. After attaching the netting to one side of the body the other side gets the super long zipper. Then a rope loop is passed through the end channels, gathered, and you are done.
Next time- taking the new hammock out for a test run. Look for it on the ides of March.
- Safe Travels my friends...
