Sharing just to give this community a little bit of content. This December has been temperamental with snow – we've gone from tons to nothing and back several times. I do prefer it like this, last winter was just tons and that sucked XD
Three of us took to the sticks to make some good food, enjoy some homebrew beer, sleep soundly in the fresh -5 °C conditions and perhaps get up before sunrise to take the shotgun for a walk. Did all that save for the early walk, everyone chose sleep instead :)
Tried cooking with a 'jätkänkynttilä' / log torch for the first time. It was a revelation. A single log that would make four pieces of firewood lasts long enough to cook a whole meal if not two. This was cut from fresh pine that had been felled by wind two weeks earlier. The log torch is going to see a lot more use in our future adventures, for the winter it's perfect!
My sleeping arrangements consist of a self-made monofil / silnylon double layer hammock, an Enlightened Equipment short down underquilt rated for 20 °F ( -6 °C ) and a Carinthia Defence 4 synthetic sleeping bag, I think that promises comforts down to -10 °C. Forgot to pack a tarp, so I had to use my ground cloth in it's place :o) I did also put a string up across some trees and put some pine branches on it to make a windbreak towards the lake.
Wow cool you made your own hammock, how hard was it? Did you do that to have any special design elements?
It was indeed to have a few things my way. First thing is that any store-bought double layer hammock fails to actually utilise the layering: on mine, the outer layer (windproof silnylon) is 7 cm longer ridgeways than the weight-bearing inside layer (static & breathable monofil). This way there is an air gap between the layers, so the wind doesn't chill my back. The monofil is also great in that it doesn't gather condensation in the winter, since the material is practically mesh.
Second thing was that there were no hammocks in the shops that would use the awesome monofil fabric in the first place :D It's well worth making a hammock just to get to use that stuff. I was worried it'd be brittle in the winter, but no, just perfect :)
One tip: use Gütermann Mara 70 for the thread and you have a hammock for life. Had my two hammocks for four years or so, nothing has broken.
I've made two hammocks so far, and both turned out very nicely. Not difficult at all. The other one is for the summer months, it has a zippered bugnet.
Is it cheaper than buying? I love hammocks and hammocking. I own far too many hammocks as it is lol and probably can't justify playing with making my own unless it's cheaper.
I'm pretty satisfied with my current main hammock, but that could change.
It's not going to be cheap, technical fabrics are pretty expensive at least when shopping at specialty online shops. One might get lucky with Chinese cheapo outlets. Materials for my hammocks cost around 120 € a pop.
Hmm, neat, but yeah I'm too cheap. At least for the cost/benefit ratio, since I'm happy with what I got.
But that's super cool man, thanks for sharing 👍