OK, so I just returned from another trip down West Coast Trail, pics and report to follow soon, but Thought I'd write a little bit about what I took for shelter.

I had been eyeing SGT rock's ultralight hammock setup for a while over the winter, and took the opportunity to aquire a grand trunk nano-7 hammock, and some whoopie slings withe a whoopie sling ridgeline. I made a couple of west coast trail size tree straps out of some old tiedown straps.

So pondering where to take this, WCT is perfect - no bugs, and lots of beach camping. What place does a hammock have in this you ask? well, nothing! and that's exactly it. About half the sites I stay at I want to stay on the beach. I didn't want to take my full on wbb blackbird for a walk down the trail and only use it half the time - so this looked like a great place to try the nano. I paired it with an integral designs silwing tarp, with good lines and tighteners. I also had my ID silponcho that I use as a "garington insulator" type underhammock "taco" for windblock/insulation. and had a blue pad (wide, 27") in the hammock.

So I ended up taking it relatively easy with my newbies in tow - I camped at Thrasher, Walbran, Cribs, Tsusiat, Tscowais, and Michigan - Of those I hammocked at Thrasher, Walbran, and Michigan - I could have hammocked at cribs but chose not to.

The nano performed like a champ. it is a much *smaller* hammock than my others (speer, hennesy, blackbird) and while you can sleep a bit diagonally in it, expect a bit of a bend - This is not a problem for me, because I *like* a bit of a bend when sleeping, but flat sleepers may prefer something larger. As a small hammock- it fit under the silwing, which is also not a very big tarp - and handled a couple of WCT rainspews just fine. The nice part about this was - really, I was going to take the silwing anyway - that was intended to be my "primary" shelter - adding the nano added a mere 300 grams or so of weight and let me hammock in comfort where it was possible or desirable

All in all I was pretty happy with it for this trip.