Hammock Science

So I didn’t get to have my weekend excursion this weekend. This is a classic lesson in why preparation is key. I had hung my hammock once before, months ago, when I first made it, but I had never hung the entire system: hammock, underquilt, bug net, and tarp. Thursday night I gave myself an hour before dark to hang the hammock so that I had done it once before my first night alone in the woods, miles from home. Let me tell you, it could not have been any more of an epic failure. No matter how I adjusted the hammock, every time I got in it there was a tremendous amount of sag. I ended up having to hang the hammock so high off the ground to keep my butt from being on the ground when I got in it that the tarp would then be well off the ground. Something was seriously wrong and I knew it.

Finally got it set up right.

I came home frustrated, knowing I still had several more things to do to prep for walking out the door Friday night. I posted a picture of my setup on the hammock forums and asked for help figuring out what was wrong. I also found a hammock calculator online that gave you proper measurements for things like how high your tree straps are supposed to be and how long the suspension from the tree to the hammock should be in order for everything to lay right. It turns out there’s even a book about how to hang a hammock well. Who’d have thought there was an entire science related to hanging hammocks! Not this guy, that’s for sure.

The tarp fits!

I packed all my stuff Friday morning and figured I’d make a game time decision about whether to hike this weekend. As the day progressed it looks like overnight rain was inevitable. I decided to bail because I didn’t want to start this whole journey and have my first night be one of those nights that makes you want to quit before you even start. In my mind I imagined not being able to get the tarp up correctly and then being rained on in the middle of the night. I am free next weekend so I thought I’d be best served to do the hike then, and spend this weekend setting up the hammock and studying how adjustments change the way it lays. I completed that task earlier this afternoon and I now feel much more confident in my ability to set everything up correctly.

The whole shebang.

The picture above shows the whole set up. I have to give a shout out to Joe Brewer, whose Youtube video on his setup inspired much of what you see here. He had an absolutely brilliant idea with the tarp where you sew a piece of tulle into a long tube, like a snake skin. That tube can then be pulled over the tarp effortlessly because the silnylon the tarp is made of is so slippery. The long green tube you see above the hammock is my tarp inside that “snake kin” tube. The whole thing is then folded up and hung on the outside of my pack at the bottom, allowing the tarp to dry during the day while hiking.

The bug net is hanging to the right. It was a breezy day so the tulle was blowing in the wind a bit. The bug net is simply an even larger tube of tulle that slides up over the entire hammock and is closed off at each end.

The shiny, short quilt in the middle is my underquilt. It’s long enough to cover me from my shoulders to just below my knees. It keeps the wind from making my backside cold, and if extra warmth is needed I have a down jacket that can be used as a top quilt. With the exception of the underquilt, which I bought, I spent about $100 on all the materials you see here and made it all myself. Not a bad deal and it was a fun process.

I have 30 more work days, 69 days total, until I leave for Maine!

First Shakedown Hike Coming Up

Over the past few days the last couple packages came with little things that were needed to complete my gear list. I needed a clip that will hold my umbrella in place on the shoulder strap of my pack so I can have free hands in the rain. I also needed a second pair of hiking socks so I can alternate them, allowing a day for drying. Lastly, I needed a hat with a brim all the way around to keep the sun off my face and a bug net away from my skin. Now that all those things are here, the only thing left that I don’t have is a trash compactor bag to line the inside of my pack for waterproofing.

Crikey! Let’s go find some dingos!

This weekend I’m headed out for my first overnight excursion, two overnights actually. A “shakedown” hike is a trial run with all your gear to ensure there aren’t any surprises, like inadequate clothing choices or gear that doesn’t perform as expected. I’ll be carrying everything as if I were starting my thru-hike, including some weights to simulate more days of food. Kristin is going to drop me off just across the state line in Pennsylvania on Friday evening and I’ll hike five miles south to Raven Rock shelter before pitching my hammock for the night. Saturday I’ll hike as far as I feel comfortable. Sunday I’ll hike the remaining distance to Harper’s Ferry, for a total of 41 miles. If my plan for mileage ends up being a little too ambitious I can stop at the base of Weaverton Cliffs, which will cut about 4 miles off the trip. The last couple of miles is flat walking anyway, where the Appalachian Trail joins the C&O Canal towpath to get from Weaverton Cliffs to Harper’s Ferry. I’m taking my stove and will experiment with cooking, since I’ve only boiled water so far. However, I’ll have other food so I’m not reliant on success for part of my calories.

This trip will be a rigorous test for the hiking shoes I bought. There are several miles of incredibly rocky trail along my route. I attempted an ultra-marathon a couple years back that included this section of the Appalachian Trail and I remember wondering how people ran through there without breaking their ankles. One misstep at that speed and it would have been game over.

The weather looks like it will be perfect hiking weather, highs in the low 70’s and overnight lows around 50. This will be a good chance for me to gauge how warm I am overnight with the gear selections I’ve made. The underquilt I bought is supposed to be keep me warm down to 15 degrees Fahrenheit so if anything I should be hot in it. Those temps will also give me a chance to better judge how well my clothing layers will work.  If I find anything is way off the mark, I’ll have almost three weeks to fix it before heading out for my second shakedown hike, a six day trek, in May.

I have 33 more work days, 74 days total, until I leave for Maine!

Stomach Flu and Water Boiling Success!

Tuesday morning I work up not feeling quite right, kinda like when you have indigestion. By noon I had to leave work because I felt so bad that I was borderline useless. Plus, I knew if it got much worse I might have difficulty driving myself home. I’ve had little 24 hour stomach bugs before but I have never had anything like this before. My whole body ached, and it felt like my limbs weighed 1,000 pounds. Just walking up the stairs to the bedroom took tremendous effort and left me winded. My wife brought home a digital thermometer that night and my temperature was 101.7. I know it had been higher earlier that afternoon based on how hot I felt. I didn’t eat anything for 24 hours and for the next 36 my diet consisted of applesauce and toast. I was home from work the rest of the week and it took until today for my eating to get back to normal.

Some internet research tells me I likely have Norovirus, a type of “stomach flu.” Norovirus is also the most dreaded bug to come down with while on a thru-hike. Unfortunately, it happens fairly frequently. Hiker culture is all about helping others, and that means sharing food. That’s not to say hikers alternate bites from the same slice of pizza but someone who is contagious can pass it to others a couple of different ways. People who follow poor hygiene practices can also contaminate water sources.

My experience these past few days has been very eye opening. I couldn’t fathom being in the middle of the woods, 30-50 miles from the nearest town, and feeling like I did that first day. I imagine I’d try to book it into town as quickly as possible out of fear of not knowing how bad it would get, but if I had several mountains to hike over I don’t know if that would happen before reaching the point where I couldn’t go any further. On top of that, you’re not able to eat hardly anything so that’s doing you no favors when you’re still a day or two from town and your body is burning 4,000+ calories per day with the mileage. I now have a first hand account of why it’s so important to make sure you don’t drop your guard on hygiene. I’m considering adding iodine tablets to my pack. There will come a time when I’m walking south, passing the heaviest concentration of northbound thru-hikers. That’s when my risk will be the greatest for contracting a stomach bug due to sheer numbers.

In other news, I’ve moved up my last day or work to June 10th. Originally, it was June 30th, though we’re going to Jamaica for our 10th wedding anniversary from June 11th to the 18th. Honestly, I wasn’t all that thrilled with the prospect of coming back from vacation for two weeks of work (9 days precisely!). I think those last two weeks were going to be very rushed, trying to make sure everything is in order before I leave and that’s not really how I want my last two weeks at home to be. A bonus to this new date is that my last day at work is immediately followed by a week long vacation! Barring anymore illness, I have 37 days of work left.

Today I also successfully boiled my first cup of water! I made some changes to my cat food can alcohol stove, and eliminated the soup can pot stand I have made, because it was affecting how the fire wanted to burn. The stove I have now actually uses two different sized cat food can to create vents on the sides that feed the fire and the flames come out the top like a chimney.

Custom stand made by me!

Third design is the charm!

The Now that I’ve discarded the soup can there are no sharp edges to catch on anything and the stove and stand both fit nicely inside my cup, meaning easy storage in my pack! With two short duration hikes still in my near future, I should have a good handle on operating all my gear by the time I step foot in Maine.