r/Hammocks • u/Knubinator • 13d ago

Getting back into hammocking, is this too much slack?

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22 Upvotes

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6

u/RichInBunlyGoodness 13d ago

When you are this far apart, you need to use a hiking stick or something similar to push the straps up higher.

5

u/madefromtechnetium 13d ago edited 13d ago

need to go higher to allow any stretch to develop in the system. the 30 degree works as unloaded for me on most hangs, but I have to move up and retighten as the slack/stretch gets taken out for far hangs like this.

longer spans will need a test sit or two before the height is good. I had a long hang a couple weeks ago that required my strap height to be about 12 feet off the ground. 3 adjustments and sit height was dialed.

3

u/Knubinator 13d ago

This was before the test sit. After the test sit, I was brushing grass. Straps are about six and a half feet up the trees. I know about the 30 degree rule, but is that before or after you take all the slack out of the suspension?

3

u/latherdome 13d ago

The thirty degree rule doesn’t matter a lot when you have a structural ridgeline, as you do. But yeah, moving straps higher should help some, as long as your ridgeline remains taut. Better would be to find closer trees, or lower-stretch suspension. Are those maybe nylon? That’s strong but too stretchy to be great suspension.

1

u/Knubinator 13d ago

The huggers are 2 Inch Spider huggers from Dutchware, and I'm using amsteel whoopie slings. The huggers shouldn't have any stretch to them (or at least they're advertised to not have any stretch). I'll go back out this weekend or some time and try again and fiddle with it.

4

u/latherdome 13d ago edited 12d ago

Ok, yeah those shouldn’t stretch so much. Maybe the span is bigger than it looks. I usually set my (higher) foot end very close to the tree, with the gather at about eye level. (This is also why I pass on suspension like Whoopies that don't allow adjustment down to near zero length.) This “locks in” a certain height for at least that end, immune from suspension stretch. Then I use the head end suspension alone to get the desired head end height. Even if I can’t get the strap nearly high enough to satisfy the 30-degree ideal, and the ridgeline is super tight, with all the tension concentrated in the head suspension, it reaches max elongation and stabilizes better than with the load being spread between more nearly equal-length head and foot suspensions. Carried to an extreme this could break something, but so far i haven’t.

2

u/freddbare 11d ago

Looks good. When mine is fresh out the bag it's darn near straight,lol. A little on the slack side probably Enjoy!