Just Jeff's Hiking Page

Hammock Forums Winter Campout, Mount Rogers, VA
Wise Mountain Shelter, 26-28 January 2007

Photo by Headchange4u

This was a great campout and lots of people from Hammock Forums made it for at least one of the nights. Let's see if I can remember them all...

• Jack - Peter Pan
• Jack - Smee
• Top
• Blackbishop
• Hog on Ice
• Me
• My 7 year old son...he just decided his trailname is gonna be Joker
• Doctari
• PandaMan
• The Breeze
• Slowhike
• Double B
• Bird Dog
• Headchange4u
• NCPatrick
• Please email me if I forgot anybody!

I didn't get there until late Friday, but I heard the Jacks put on a good demo of their new pad-NS coupler, complete with a demonstration of the head hole ventilation/access system. Saturday night was the gear raffle...lots of happy folks there. Thanks big time to the Jacks for donating all that new gear...the proceeds went to ATTroll for running Whiteblaze.net and HammockForums.net.

Saturday night was also the hot dog dinner...we had so much food that someone took home a whole bunch of hot dogs on Sunday. Lots of good stuff...thanks to everyone who brought something (and sorry I didn't realize we needed marshmallows until it was too late).

And we were going to have a show-and-tell with everyone's hammocks on Sunday, but MAN it got cold. Almost everyone left early...it was forecast to keep getting colder throughout the day, so some folks wanted to get out before the roads got worse. I only hit one patch of ice on the way out.

The vitals...

• Friday Night:
  • Low of 22 F by my Brunton ADC
  • Crazy high winds...like 50 kts. It sounded like a freight train in the treetops. Our site was pretty sheltered but it was still cold.
• Saturday Night:
  • Low of 14.8 F by my Brunton
  • The winds weren't as bad so it didn't feel as cold that night, but Sunday morning was much colder than Saturday morning after we got up.

Yeah yeah - I know we said it was -3 on Friday and -6 on Saturday...but I said that was the "agreed upon" temperature...not the measured temperature! I bet it would have been close if we added in the wind chill, though!

The Gear

• Mine:
  • Regular homemade Speer-type hammock
  • New descending ring, webbing and carabiner support system
  • Exped Downmat 7
  • Target CCF torso pad...just used it for my shoulders
  • Sierra Designs Wicked Fast
  • JRB No Sniveler top quilt
• Joker's:
  • DownHammock
  • 15 F Big Agnes kid's bag
  • 1/2" CCF pad (just to keep the BA's shape, really)
  • TravelPod
• And we shared the MacCat Standard
• I brought the JRB 8x8 as an extra windblock but didn't need it

Click Here to discuss this campout on Hammock Forums, and don't forget to check out the pics everyone else posted to the HF Gallery. Also see Headchange4u's Photobucket Page and Jacks 'R' Better's Page for this trip.

Friday, 26 January 2007
We didn't get on the road until way later than I wanted to, so we pulled into the parking lot near the campground at 11pm. The thermometer said it was just over 40 F but it felt much colder...and it was VERY windy. Since it was so late and he was asleep when we pulled into the parking lot, I was going to stay at the campground and hike in on Saturday. The campground was gated, though...and he woke right up and said he was ready to hike, so we got started...
But of course we couldn't get started without a snowball fight first! And while we were taking these pictures, the wind dried out my contact and it popped right out...so the rest of the weekend I had to wear my glasses. Grrr... We rolled into the campground at midnight and set up right next to Slowhike.
	Pic of me in the hammock...it's kinda creepy, like that movie where the ghosts come through the computers...
Saturday, 27 January 2007
	He carried this ice all weekend, eating it when he needed a snack and putting it in the shade so it wouldn't melt while he fulfilled his Fire Commander duties.
Frozen river where we got our water and where his ice chunk came from.
	Here's home - I slept in the homemade hammock on the left, and he slept in the DownHammock with the TravelPod on the right. We both fit pretty well under the MacCat.
	JRB Self-Tensioning Lines on all four corners. These things are great. Unlike the Winnemucca trip, one of the STLs froze extended like this. It returned to almost-normal once it warmed up, though.
	This was the first time I used the descending rings...they worked fine. I just ran the webbing around the tree one time and clipped a biner onto it, then tightened the buckles. Setup took about 30 seconds, adjustment was very easy, and it didn't slip a bit. See the Ring Buckle page for more details.
	My neighbor Slowhike.
The JacksRBetter tarptent based on the 8x8 tarp. No wind under the hammock with this baby!
Model 2 of the JRB tarptent. Looks like an A-Frame barn!
And version 3...everybody seemed to like these, so JRB is considering manufacturing them.
	Doctari was one of my neighbors on Friday night. This is the SG 9x9 "Neo's Tarp" pitched as an A-frame. He pitched with so the wind was coming right into the end of his tarp, though...and it was a pretty vicious wind that night. So Saturday afternoon he moved sites and said he was much warmer.
	This memorial was in the field on the other side of the river. It was even next to a big mound of dirt...not sure what was under there. Kind of a neat find, though.
Photo by Headchange4u	The hot dog cookout on Saturday night. Joker was the Fire Commander.
Photo by Headchange4u	And he got to draw the tickets and announce the numbers for Saturday night's JRB raffle.
Sunday, 28 January 2007
	I woke up to a rat-tat-tat of an icy snow falling on the hammock at about 3am Sunday morning. I listened to it for a bit, then fell back asleep. I didn't knock it off the tarp b/c I thought it would make a good picture...but I woke up an hour or two later and the tarp was almost on top of me! So I knocked the snow off and the tensioners pulled the tarp back up to where it was supposed to be. The wrinkles on the back side are where the STL froze in the extended position.
	Top went to get water at about 7 or 8 in the morning...and got co-opted into taking pics of peoples' hammocks so we didn't have to get out ourselves...what a guy! I really like how this one came out, too...Thanks, Top! It was about 24 F in this pic...
Cooking in the shelter Sunday morning. I'm wearing the No Sniveler underneath the Packa...not much for fashion, but it saved me from carrying a heavy coat. The NS is one of the most useful pieces of gear I've ever seen. I used the JetBoil, but I tried the BPL trick about wrapping a copper wire around the cannister and putting it into the flame. It's supposed to keep the cannister warm, but I'm not sure it really made a difference. The JB worked just fine, though.
	It was 24 F when we woke up Sunday morning, and immediately started to get colder. The cardinal rules to hiking with kids are to keep them fed and keep them warm, and it was 21 F by the time I got everything packed up. He wasn't warm...and he started to get pretty grumpy.
I guess everybody felt about the same, though...instead of having our show-and-tell, most of us just packed up and jetted out of there. My boy was pretty warm except for his feet, and it was a pretty miserable hike back to the car. But I promised to get him warmer boots and thicker socks next time, so even at the worst of it he still wasn't turned off to hiking. But as soon as we got to the Jeep I had to turn the heater full blast onto his feet!
	And on the drive home I found the street I want to live on...

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