Hammocks & Lightning

[Valmet]

Has anyone here heard of any issues with lightning hitting a tree and a hammock attached? It seems to reason that in a bad electrical storm that this could be a potential problem. I have been in storms when a tree very close has been hit, so to me it is not uncommon to have tree strikes and I don't know if I would have liked to be attached to one.

[SGT Rock]

The fastest wak to ground would not be through you or the hammock even if one of the trees did get hit. I think your biggest concern in that case is going deaf. a good rule of thumb anyway is to not pick the bigger trees not because they aren't as tall and therefore more likely to get hit, but because the bigger trees have more old branches and are more likely to loose one during a storm. Falling old branches are always my biggest safety concern when selecting a hammock site during storms.

[Kerosene]

The girth of larger/taller trees probably means that you won't try to wrap your tree huggers around them, but you also need to look out for diseased or dying trees. My second night out in a hammock I found ideally spaced trees at next to the Tye River but didn't realize until the next morning that one of the trees was basically dead. What wind there was overnight ended up swaying the tree's trunk which made my hammock swing.

My first night out in the hammock I was ready to set up and just happened to notice that another big tree with dead branches overhung my trees. The wind gusted to 60 mph that night, so I'm glad I'm moved.

[tanichols]

If you're trying to do risk accessment by asking about lightning and hammocks I think the risk is a moot point considering basic ground principles.

There's a much better chance of a tree falling on you then worrying about this.