Learn Bushcraft skills by videos
watch the best bushcrafters explain techniques and skills

NEW Ultralite Rectangular Tarp - Wild Chokecherries - Test Hammock Clip

Description

A quick trip exploring for future camping locations, looking for Chokecherries, testing a new clip for hanging hammocks. Also we have a new Ultralite tarp especially for use with hammocks, and an Ultralite Kit with everything needed that only weighs 3 oz.

Check out all our gear, most of it multipurpose at http://wildernessinnovation.com/

Tags: ultralight tarp,tarp setup,hammock camping

Video Transcription

this whole mountainside up here behind me it all down below me and I liked you that way absolutely covered with chokecherries and they are delicious well I'm have been eating chokecherries I don't know if my mouth is purple right here I found a whole patch of elderberry up here and a lot of these are just coming on now it's kind of late in the year really I think with the drought we've had it's kind of slowing everything down but but that right there that right there is heaven on earth whoa so stinking good hey you're delicious what oh my gosh another clump of these things those were a little a little more sour but still delicious they're just exploring kind of today oh I see over there there's a grove of pines over here it looks clear in the middle it's kind of rare normally around here the in the midst of all the pines is a lot of brambles like stickering bushes like currants and gooseberries and stuff like that wow this is nice it's actually shady in the middle of the day here that's got a dense enough canopy shield out most of Sun and I've got a kind of a nice big open area here I could hang my hammock maybe from here over to that tree a little bit or maybe to that tree back to this one to the left of me there let's try this out see we'd come up with well show you what I got going on so I've got a few things that I'm trying here got a couple little versions of this little guy here I'm gonna try but are using that to hold me up in a hammock setting with some Dyneema cord and I made up one hank of Dyneema 8 inch dynamo if I put a loop in the end of it I do it out of orange on one end so I can really see or show you be able to see what's going on got this gen Sport pack that I have had for ever I'll bet I've had this thing 20 years I don't know it's been quite a while this is the new rectangular tarp this thing here is five feet wide by 10 feet long and it's made out of our super UL fabric a premium ripstop nylon fabric and a SIL nylon so it's very nice for handling handling the elements and very strong and this thing weighs just short of 10 ounces that's not bad just short of 10 ounces okay so I'll just dump a bunch of stuff out of here and go to town with it let's tired of talking man I got to get something go in all right I'm going to use this

this one right here is going to be my this puncher here is going to be my hammock all of our punches have this chord sleeve sewn in each end of them so you can stick a cord down through there to turn the poncho into a hammock just drop that whole thing in there and just let gravity do its work you'll drop out the other end alright so here it came out the other end right there now all I do at this dynamic cord we have a built-in eye that comes we put in there now all you do is put that around there you just kind of cinch it down so that gives you a gathered end hammock so now keep in mind this is totally experimental here I don't want to cinch this down I don't want to get another sap from our people chopped up the tree but anyway so you're going to take your Dyneema this is designed to go with the Dyneema cord with I so you put the cord around the tree and then you take this piece here and I call it a key or so I don't know I have to say what to call it I need to make these holes a little bit bigger when I make up these cords I always fold the end eyes fold the end back inside of itself so it's fatter that creates a problem here so the concept is the sap is a problem I don't want to get it all over anything so anyway you cinch this up around the tree then you fold a loop you just twist it like that and see you want it to twist clear under like that then you pull on it and then the the force of all that locks this so the force of everything locks this on to there and I'm hoping I don't know what I put my bodyweight I'm hoping this doesn't slip alright here's the test hold yep welding me it's not it's not slipping in the least it's not slipping at all I think they think the concept is good I do need to refine it a little bit but so so this little knot right here does hold I actually I made it wider and I made it wider and put some shoulders on here so that this court that comes through there it's not just wrapping around there I want it to actually bite into some shoulder here I could narrow the shoulders a little bit but but that part works pretty good I think I might wind up with a little abrasion in this side right here but I think I need to make this about twice as thick so that the radius here is a little a little thicker the important thing is the concept works so now it's a matter of refining it and may I don't really even need to do this I'm just trying to use just a Dyneema cord with an eye and then I can tie a knot and that'll work by just trying to do something that might be easier to make adjustments with then tying and untying a knot so phase one of the of the test of this is successful so now we'll take it a next level next week when my aluminum order comes in and I can make make some piece out of aluminum and see what that does it this is how I stuff all the ultra light punchers tarps and everything I just use my thumbs like there we go well so he thought that we had my truck fixed

I had everything loaded in there to come up actually to come up yesterday to come up camping and then I get I get heading out and the darn thing just started dying on me again so I don't know so it's I got home alright but it died on me three times getting back home so John tell me why just take the Jeep he said I'm not gonna need it for about another month so he's going down to Texas or something but anyway so I transferring stuff from my truck to the Jeep that I think I missed I missed a bag that had my ultralight tarp kit in it which is exactly what I need to put up the ultralight tarp I have a regular kit with me but we kind of weird the Kent weighs more than the tarp seems like I'm forgetting stuff too Huffman Oh a lot of times is because I just get I'm in a rush you know and

so

you know I just find myself in a hurry this time my rush was really because my trunk was brough down sighs hurting to every third the stuff from there into here but not everything but I thought I have it everything I need I thought I thought my little kit that I needed was I thought it was in my backpack that's still a fun day still I found me a new area to come camping and stuff exploring around so I found all those chokecherries I'm real excited about that and and the elderberries they'll be ready in a couple of weeks chokecherries I might come back next week it's Labor Day I might come back and just come spend a few hours picking chokecherries well here's another area all through here full of chokecherries I'll bet you there's bears in here I'll tell you a lot of times picking chokecherries I've run into bears cuz they're not their stuff in their face full of those things well so I got driving down the road aways and the dirt road here and I remembered last time I use my ultralight tarp tip I stuffed it in with some other stuff in my in my Oni blanket back so I stopped the Jeep I got out I get in there the dang everything I needed was in there so I just I found this kind of a camp spot here on my way out to the chokecherry there are you so I thought well I just pull back in here at this camp right here and oh I just set everything up right here I'll have to drive all the way back into there I'm tying off with Dyneema or parachute cord and especially well I'll go around the tree more than once so I started going around I cross over my cord come back around this trees kind of small so I could actually go around it a number of times then when I get to that point right there I usually just throw a half hitch in there and then throw a second half hitch I could make them slippery if I want but need a tree strap if I'm doing this right here so that's one thing to think about you don't need a tree strap even and stuff like this because you're distributing the load an inch wide through here all right we're all hung up eyes if up my hood pull the drawstring that turns my hood into a pocket I got a pocket built in for my hammock and I always use it look the color of this one is charcoal and this tarp is rectangular shaped five feet wide ten feet long and we have eight tie ups around the perimeter and they're strategically located to allow you to do some primary important things so the tarp is sill nylon one point one thirty and this is the super you L so this is the super-strong nylon yarns that this thing is woven out of so it's very premium top-of-the-line nice deal the tarp itself weighs nine point eight ounces as as we came off the production line in the bag nine point eight ounces so very nice very light for that size of a right size of a cover now I've also put inside this bag the stuff bag I've also put and this is going to be an optional item I don't want you to have to buy the the tarp kit if you don't want to I'm going to sell the tarp by itself and you can buy it you can use your own cordage or whatever you want a lot of people already have stuff but if you if you don't have it or if you want to use this ultralight kit which is really really nice then I got to do is get the tarp kit I'll shove it in the bag for you with everything and it'll be in its own little bag too but the the tarp kits only like a few ounces a few tarp gets only a few ounces so so if you do get the tarp kit you're only adding a few ounces to this so so your tents oh so say your 13 ounces tarp kit I mean everything you need to set up a shelter right here in the bag 13 ounces pretty sweet I think so here we have charcoal tarp laying in a coyote poncho we also have dark olive which has a little more just a little bit more kind of a dark green shade so it's kind of between those two so here's my here's my ultra light kit I mean that's all the bigger the kid is I really like the idea of shock cording the suspensions now you see I can I can slide this tarp back and forth

to get it wherever I wanted me to center over my hammock let me unpack the ultralight tarp kit for Poncho's which is actually it's actually getting adapted to the tarp setup with the additional just a couple more shock cords comes with four tent stakes eight feet of Dyneema lash it and then you get four shock cords to go for each corner and these have tarp forms on them so they'll have a tarp form or something similar like that to them you'll also have two two prusik loops made out of the same Dyneema cord you also get a hank of the cordage Dyneema cordage to use for your ridgeline alright so you can see that all the corners are gusseted this is a double layer this is a double layer of fabric sewn in and then and then double sewn around the edges and our tie out tabs are double our double bar tacked to that just like we do on our big tarps that has worked so well for the past eight years or so that we've been making those so the easiest thing is to just put the tarp warm through there then you want to put the tarp worm through the loop for and by the night I just kind of wiggle it around a little bit to cinch that up on there and you're good to go now we're ready to hook our stakes up alright so if your end gets frayed a little bit just hit over the lighter and roll it a little bit and you shove it through that hole and usually I found you only need about half the cord would give you so I just bring it back to the stake and that's that's the length of cord I'm going to start off with using I've been winding these things in the figure eight it's like we do our other stuff it doesn't really unwind quite the same but everything falls out pretty well tangle free sigh they kind of like that the nice thing about the shock cord is it allows you to set this thing up and just kind of give it just a little bit of tension to hold everything in place and then you can come back and it's forgiving so you can come back and make your adjustments kind of on a 45 really coming off of there so I'm pulling this way and this way and also pulling down so I'm kind of pulling in three different directions here and these stakes are nice because they penetrate the ground pretty easily you can get a MOS way in and then step on the tip of it like that and it holds very well I'm left-handed but I'm gonna do this right-handed for you show you how easy it is so now see can you just pull like this so you see I'm stretching the shock cord a little if I want to and then what I do is I just got to turn a loop so I just turned it like that so I'm kind of turning it all the way I hooked the loop over and pull on it and that locks it that's all there is to it they can adjust when I just pull on it like that it's loose I don't have anything to undo or anything and then to reform it I just twist that loop hook it over the end then you're kind of pulling back against the tents take a tarp kit that you can order with the tarp it gives you the basics that you need to set up so you've got your ridge lines you got your six shot cords you got your tent stakes with eight foot of Dyneema line on those and sand and all that so that basically gets you set up but one of the things I almost always like to do and you know me if you followed my videos much you know what I'm you know exactly what I'm gonna do next I love to lift up right here so I can lay in my hammock and I can look out through the countryside while I'm in there plus it gives me a little more space in here and that sort of thing I almost always do it and you know what makes it really simple is because we're shocked courted all the way around I don't have to reposition stuff all I got to do I just pull up on it the shock cord stretches I am good to go to get in here get out my pocket boy so I have the Zubat silky and I got the this is the pocket boy is in the black candle this is the more coarse - I really like that better and works really nicely so I'm gonna give me a stick to go in here there's a lot of sticks in here it is typical of clay keys clay key for us well I'll tell you what most everything up there is crookeder than a politician I gotta have something that's got at least a little bit of sweetness to it they tried to snap the end of it off and I broke a little closer than I wanted it to you but I can that'll still work just like that now you see I don't even have to tie it out because everything's shot courted if I try to push it into the middle it just comes back out there's my there's my shelter setup I just added I added two more chords to it so when you buy the kit it gives you everything you really need very lightweight deal this whole setup

everything here is ultra light everything here is Dyneema cordage everything here is ultra light fabrics so very nice little setup very compact and light and weight so so here I am in here I could probably you could probably go up a hair more if I wanted to I'm just touching just a tiny bit you're in here I'm good I really have a nice shelter I got plenty of room and even I'm even pulled up here so I can see out so Rudy does make a nice little deal so this is what it's like being in the hammock it's rectangular tarp five by 10 foot it's very nice very lightweight that it's even though this line here is all really thin it's like it's like string or twine but it holds 500 pounds so that's all plenty strong know that I'm using to hold up my hammock that's eight inch

that'll hold 2,500 pounds so I mean I got overkill all the way around here it's fantastic

very nice deal here comfortable and super lightweight

alright let's take it down no nuts done do pull the stake out just like that smooth so you just slide any mud off of there

you

About the Author

Wilderness Innovation

Wilderness Innovation

"How to" for outdoor camping, hiking activities and survival. Some unique equipment and ideas. "Simplifying Survival" is our motto. Follow us on Twitter - WISurvival

More articles from this author