Is Hammock Camping Really That Bad

Danny, you think I could like maybe pay you to like just sit on this pad all night and just kind of rock me? There we go. Oh yeah yeah I'm gonna get good sleep tonight for sure. Yeah I like that. All right that'll work. Out of all the camping, backpacking, and through hiking I've done over the past 10 years, I've been a tent guy. A ground dweller as they say. At the end of a long day on the trail I love being able to easily put up what feels like a little home to me in the backcountry. Hammocking on the other hand is something I've never really got into. Something that I've honestly never understood the appeal for and something that just seems overly complicated for getting good sleep out on the trail. Hell, the last time I attempted to use a hammock was over 10 years ago and I might be sort of known for publicly talking trash about hammocks and why I think they're sort of silly. Well, early last year I met this guy, Danny Warnock, the owner and creator of Superior Gear, a hammock company. And for about two days he tried to convince me that the only reason I didn't like hammocks was because I had never used the quote right one. And if I ever used one of his hammocks, I'd fall in love with it. So I decided to call his bluff. In September, I flew up to Minnesota to visit Danny at his shop to not only see how he makes his hammock systems, but to also hit the Superior hiking trail for a few days to find out if I can get better sleep in the backcountry and more importantly, if I've been wrong about hammocks for the past 10 years. How's it going? Good, welcome to the stuff. I feel like I'm going down into your like bat cave or something. It's a sewing dungeon. A sewing dungeon. Excellent, nice. This stuff. Right on. So give me a tour. Well, first, this is the hammock that I'm going to let you try. Excellent. This is a 45 degree Superior hammock. The lightest version of a hammock. The lightest version. Ultra light, bro. Very ultra light. Yeah, you've got the comforter, your top quilt, you've got a shelter here for you. So we're going to get you cozy. Excellent. So we've got a lot of sewing machines. Yeah, so explain each station. This is our double needle machine. Okay. Most of our products have some double needle stitching. Okay. Which obviously gives it more strength. And you can sew two rows of stitches and they just look really nice. Sure. Perfectly parallel. Use that on a lot of stuff. We've got our snap. Okay. Plastic cam snaps on a lot of stuff. And we've got a little foot pedal system. That's smart. You put in your thing and you really get it accurate. And then shipping and everything over here. Yeah, we've got a little desk, kind of our shipping station here. And this is usually where we stack product that's ready to go. So are you guys doing everything here then? We did for many years. We did make everything here. Okay. And then we do, we still do all our prototyping here. All the final quality control goes through here. But a few years ago in 2020, our sales were really picking up. And so we hired some local contract sewer help. And this lady did some great work for us. But then about a year after that, her business picked up again. And she's like, I don't have time to help you guys anymore. But I have all this family in Cambodia who are awesome sewers. They have a tailoring shop. They're like, why don't they just do the sewing for you? So I was like, that would be really cool. As long as I can go there, I want to meet them. I want to really show them the products, make sure things are right. So I went over there in April of 2021. Got them set up. Just walk them through really important stuff about our product. Cranked out a batch together. And it was really good. How are they sewing there? They sew all of our tarps. They sew all of our different hammocks and comforters and cocoons. Oh, wow. All those. And what it lets us do here is we can still fill it to the temp ratings that we need. OK. So we can keep as much variety of different temp ratings and stuff. Sure. I haven't showed you the down room yet either. Oh, oh. Got to be in a separate room, right? Yeah. How annoying is down? It's very annoying. Yeah. One of my favorite things about the outdoor industry are all the small little mom and pop cottage companies that are really driving innovation and gear design and development. These gear nuts that are constantly tinkering and changing things to fit their personal needs in the backcountry, scratching their own itch and making the gear that they want first, then sharing it with the rest of the world. Usually run out of people's houses, garages, basements. There's always something special about buying and owning a piece of homegrown gear because you feel like you have more of a connection with it when you're out using it on the trail. I love Danny's setup. I love Danny's company. Hell, I love Danny. I just don't understand why he prefers to use hammocks over tents. Why do you hate tents? I slept horrible on tents. I never, ever slept good on the ground. I tolerated sleeping in tents, but I never woke up feeling good. I had the right gear. It just didn't work for me. And I sleep so good in a hammock. I just wake up, my back feels great. I just feel rested. You think, is there any hope for a tent and pad person like me to actually farewell with the hammock? Yeah, especially if we get you up in here in Minnesota on the Spear Hiking Trail. I mean, there's trees everywhere and I would say much more of the time there's great spots for hammocks than there are, you know, finding perfectly flat spots for tents. There's a lot of roots up there on the Spear Hiking Trail. So I think you might like it. All right, we'll see. We'll see about that. After finishing up a tour of Danny's shop, we packed up our gear and drove four hours towards the north shore of Lake Superior for a three-day, two-night section hike of the SHT. We dropped his car at the trailhead that we intended to hike back to and utilized a shuttle service to head a little further north towards the Canada border and into a more remote part of the Superior National Forest to start our hike. Speaking of National Forest, I am super excited to announce a huge backpacking giveaway in partnership with the National Forest Foundation. You guys know that I'm a massive National Forest geek and if you enjoy getting out into these beautiful public lands for your backpacking trips or even hammock trips, I have a good feeling that you are too. So in order to support and help raise awareness for our National Forest, you can enter the small donation to the National Forest Foundation for your chance to win a ton of awesome prizes, including some National Forest swag, backpacking gear, and even a grand prize of a brand new Evolve Supply Co. Space Ranger 50 liter backpack along with a one-hour live session with yours truly to help you plan out your next backpacking trip, through hike, or any other grand adventure that you have in the works. So check out my link down in the description box to find out how you can get extra entries into the giveaway. Go sign up, good luck, and let's get back to the video. Alright, so it has probably been about 10, maybe even 11 years, maybe even 12 years since I have went backpacking with a hammock system. But out here with this fine feller and we're going to do a section of the Superior Hiking Trail. Seems like a decent place to try out a hammock for the first time in 11 years and this guy is convinced that, uh, you're going to love it. Want to like it? Love it. Not like it, love it. So, here's hoping. Imagine that you are camping with someone that doesn't know shit about hammocks. Alright, so what am I looking for as far as a good spot? You want good solid trees and you want them far enough away for the tarp. Oh, I might go from this tree to that tree. Looks to be about 12 or 13 feet, say 10 inches or bigger. Make sure it's not a dead tree. Also check for widow makers. Four or five steps. Two, three, four. So is there any particular side that you start from? No, and I go about head height on it. Head height. Yep, yep, that's good. Good and snug. Same on the other one? Yep. Now some hammock people like to go even with the hammock and some people will go like a foot higher on the foot end. Just kind of tighten it so it's, yeah. Okay, nice. Just give it a shake. Looks like a quilt. There you go. There it is. Before I get in it, I'll always put a little weight. Yeah, make sure you don't. I like the system. I like how it's kind of all one piece. Yeah. How this is all zipped in. It seems fancier than the last hammock I used. Eno? E-N-O? Eno? Is it E-N-O or E-N-O? What do you call it? I call it E-N-O. Okay, this is, oh, so this is the snake skin. You guys like keep it all like nice and tucked. Nice and tucked so it doesn't get dirty and shit. Yeah. All right, all right. You can decide, do you want to do A-frame mode or do you want to like do door mode? I think you just kind of stick it. Yeah. Like a damn tent. Bungees. Yeah. Clip it in there. Clip it on the other corner. Oh, okay. I got you. Now it's just out of the way. Oh, shit. That's nice. I like that. All the way to the corner here. Yeah. Put a porch in. Porch. Isn't that snazzy? Now we're talking. Now this is a tent. Well, it'll be interesting how I actually sleep tonight. Real interesting. So what do you think? As somebody that's a side sleeper like me, move a lot while I sleep, how do you think I'm going to fare in a hammock? Well, first I'll say there are a lot of people who are normally slide side sleepers. Yeah. Slide sleepers. Slide sleepers? Side sleepers, except when they get in a hammock and then they actually don't mind a back lay. Okay. But you can still lay on your side in a hammock and the trick is to lay at a diagonal. What's funny is at home, I sleep on my back. In the back country, I sleep on my side. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how I actually sleep in this thing. I toss and turn. Well, there we go. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm going to get good sleep tonight, for sure. Yeah, I like that. All right, that'll work. Perfect. Good morning. So last night was the first night in the hammock and sleep was interesting. A little wishy-washy. I was up a few times trying to adjust back and forth and this morning I actually woke up to some water drops hitting the top of my hammock. I gotta figure out how to adjust to this thing. Well, now I'm expecting sled dogs. I might be disappointed. An awesome and beautiful 18-mile day on the Speer hiking trail and we got ourselves a pretty kick-ass camp spot for the night. So about 30 feet that way. I'm sure you can hear the waves. It's Lake Superior. So it's really cool to be camping like this close to the lake. Absolutely beautiful. Good morning. Night two in the hammock was a success. Got great sleep. I think I finally figured out how to lay in this thing. So slept pretty good. No tossing and turning. That could also be because we did 18 miles yesterday or because I'm next to a giant ambient noise machine. The lake out there. Such a good campsite. So pretty. And pretty good sleep. Really nice. Today is the last day on the Superior hiking trail. I think we got like 15 miles to get back to the car where we parked. And then it's back to the southwest. So really nice up here though. Minnesota. Bravo. Yeah, buddy. All right. Done. 39 miles. Pincushion Mountain Trail. So how many miles? 39. 39 miles. Am I officially a hammocker? I think so. A hammock guy. A hammock hiker. A hammock camper. Yeah. I think you can see why they work really well out here. Damn well. A lot of trees. Too many trees, I would say. All right. Well, it wasn't bad. Not too bad for my first Minnesota excursion. Shall we? Yeah, get some food. Get some food. Yeah. So did this trip change my mind about hammocks? Am I now converted? Am I going to start making more hammocking content here on the channel? No, probably not. But I did get a new appreciation for hanging culture. And I guess, I guess I can see why Danny likes these damn things so much. Because once you figure it out and actually learn how to lay in it, you get a pretty good night's sleep. So who knows? Maybe in the future, I'll do a little more hanging around in the backcountry.