Camping with a hammock tent can improve your camping experience immensely. For one thing, you’ll sleep better. No more hard rocks in your back.
They are also often smaller to carry and easier to carry.Most camping hammocks are made of light weight materials and have significantly smaller number of components compared to a tent, making it’s overall weight much less than that of a classic tent.
Hammock tents also take less time to set it up giving you more to enjoy your outdoor experience. And you can take it anywhere. When every pound in my pack counts and getting a good night’s sleep is crucially important, a hammock tent is a no-brainer.
RELATED: 4 Perks of Hammock Camping
General Tips
So, how do you set up a hammock tent? You’ll need the following to set it up: one hammock, rope, 2 carabiners and one foam sleeping pad. Avoid heavy braided cotton line hammocks and use those cheap pads, you don’t really need to spend much on it. Standard for rope most are using is Dyneema, or Spectra brand. Both are made of low stretch materials and are incredibly strong. Also, use only load bearing carabiners, designed for climbing, since they can withstand much more weight than classic camping ones.
The recommended distance between trees depends on the hammock you use but anything between 12′ to 25′ feet / 3.5 to 7.5 meter will do for the most. Keep in mind setting distance is closely tied to the height of the hammock from the ground. Perfect height is considered that one which allows the hammock entrance to be at chair height when you sit down. In practice the longer the distance between trees the higher up on the tree you’ll have to attach your webbing straps.
RELATED: How to Get Some Sleep in the Outdoors
For all the subtleties of setting up hammock tent we’ve scaled the net a bit and found this great video on how to set up a camping/backpacking hammock. Tips on distance, height and proper knotting from a pro you need to check out:
There are many ways to set up and tie up a hammock. We find the one in the above video is the easiest one to handle and we strongly suggest you take few extra minutes in trying it out.
With this being a quick guide on how to set hammock tent we invite you to check one of ever growing hammock community forums with tons of useful info. Also, share your experience and your advices in the comment section below.
Photo credit: Wikimedia
