With what I know now, there is no way I would go above 30lbs. I can live out of my pack for months at this weight, other than buying food, and am comfortable down to 15 degrees. I’m happy with that.

Like you said, there are no winners in the heavy pack competition.

I’m with you, Ed — hammock camping is great all year (with the right gear). I hope one day to catch up with Shug and do a hang. Actually, since I know he hates hot-weather hammock camping, maybe he and I could do a sort of “switching places” video where I invite him out here to Arizona in the summer and do Havasupai and then visit him in the winter. 🙂

The coldest I’ve slept in my hammock is -5°F (-20°C). It’s rare to get that cold here in Northern Arizona; most of the time it is in the teens.

A friend of mine took the Hennessy Super Shelter system down in the -20s°F (mid -20s°C) and was toasty. I’ve not had the opportunity to try that system so I can’t speak directly to it. However, you can experiment with pads and reflective bubble wrap as a low-cost solution. If you have pads used with tent camping (e.g., Thermarest, etc.) those work great for staying warm in the cold. I like the extra width of the green military closed-cell foam pads, or I use a half pad, turned sideways, to give me full shoulder protection. Folks have used pads into the teens (myself included) and been fine.

Bill, thanks for the great information on your experiences! We do things fairly similar to you in regards to meals and responsibilities.

As for my under quilt, on this trip I used a down-filled 20°F Phoenix from HammockGear.com.

The Monsoon tarp is from Hennessy. It is smaller than I expected from the description on the site, but I’m very happy with it. It fits my philosophy of having just enough and not more than necessary. All of the Hennessy tarps are meant to “hug” the hammock for maximum protection. This means that, for a “winter” or full-coverage tarp, it isn’t exactly spacious.

Derek:

Great article–thanks for being the lab rat for this painful experiment. I too am a Scout leader who has accompanied our scouts on yearly week-long hikes on the A-T. I’ve been a Hennessey Hammock hanger since 2002 and will never go back to sleeping on the ground. I am something of a warm weather weenie, however, as I’m not fond of sleeping in a hammock in cold temps.

What underquilt do you use for the HH? Does HH make the monsoon tarp, or is it from another company?

As far as cooking for groups on the A-T, our troop follows this meal plan. For breakfast, everyone is on their own. Breakfast for the boys is often Pop-Tarts or granola bars. Some of the adults do the instant oatmeal. Lunch is on your own too, although we encourage everyone to have a “lunch buddy” so that you don’t have to eat an entire 8-ounce Crackerbarrel cheese or a 6-ounce Beefstick in one sitting by yourself!

Dinner is a hot meal. We typically have about 6-8 participants for these hikes, so each participant is required to prepare and dehydrate a dinner to feed 8. We have a Whiperlite or Simmerlite stove and a lightweight pot set consisting of a 2 and 3-quart pot for the group. With this setup, everyone in the group need not carry a stove and fuel. Each night someone takes their turn to cook their meal. We typically have the newest hiker cook the first day, or the day of a re-supply. If we have a larger group of say 12 to 16 participants, we have 2 dinners each evening.

We typically don’t do any baking, although I have made Jiffy banana muffins in a kind of a double-boiler setup with our 2 and 3-quart pots. I have made scrambled eggs from egg powder and boiled them in a freezer bag, so there was no mess to clean up.

We’ve seen other groups who have each participant cooking their own dinners separately, so each has to bring a pot, etc. Even if you’re sharing the same stove, this just seems wasteful to me because you have to run the stove a lot longer to cook all the individual meals. Besides, there is just something about enjoying a meal together at the same time that adds to the camaraderie of the trip.

Scouts travel heavy for a number of reasons. First, lightweight gear can be expensive, regardless of what many bloggers might say. Not many troops have the budgets to be able to afford $500 Tarptents and there are plenty of Scouting families that have a hard time justifying a $250 down sleeping bag. Secondly, lots of scout parents have this “just-in-case” mentality about packing for contingencies. They needlessly fill their boys’ packs with extra clothing and other gear that they think they might need. As adult leaders, we try to jettison as much of this extraneous gear as we can, but some of it still trickles through! Sometimes the boys let their machismo get the better of them. If they got a new K-bar survival knife for Christmas, they’re determined to carry it (or the weather radio!) on the trail.

Thankfully, just as you have noted, you only make these mistakes once…

YIS,

Bill Sheehy (aka Merlotrin, P.M.)
ASM, Troop 75, Mentor, Ohio

I’m currently testing a few if the new Hennessy models so I took one on this trip. Was this the right hammock for this trip? Sure, but a number of hammock configurations would have been just as good. The monsoon tarp was great. I really like it. Although it is small compared with other winter/full coverage tarps, it provides plenty of protection and packs well with the hammock.

I did use an under quilt and I think the bubble pad as well. The pad doesn’t warm up as quickly as the down under quilt but I liked the extended foot and leg coverage since I was using a 3/4 under quilt.