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My Experience with the Kammok Sunda 2.0 Convertible Hammock Tent


Taking the Kammok Sunda 2.0 out for a spin in Zion National Park

This is an honest, unsponsored gear review of the Kammok Sunda 2.0 convertible backpacking-tent / backpacking hammock.


In this blog post, I'll be going through the rollercoaster of emotions that drove me to purchase the Kammok Sunda 2.0 and why the Kammok Sunda 2.0 was ultimately not for me.

 

Why backpack with a hammock?

Back in September of this year, I very excitedly purchased the Kammok Sunda 2.0 to level up my backpacking.


Backpacking with a hammock is something I had been dreaming about for over a year. I first had the inspiration to go backpacking with a hammock one night while I was in the Ohanapecosh car campground in Mount Rainier National Park. Whenever Everett and I go car camping, we always set up a hammock. After dinner that night, we cozied up together in the hammock, a hard-won fire roaring nearby, and nearly fell asleep.


"It's so much easier to sleep in a hammock than a tent," I said.


And that was that.


Over the course of the next several months, the thought of backpacking with a hammock crossed our minds passively every time we passed by the hammock section of REI. We took a peek every time but struggled to find a backpacking hammock that would support 2 people.


We spent the whole summer of 2022 backpacking across Washington State. Over the course of summer, our 2-year old backpacking pillows developed leaks and would be nearly deflated by the time we woke up the next morning. To make matters worse, Everett is a side sleeper with broad shoulders and found that he never had enough neck support when backpacking.


One night while we were hammocking, I noticed that the banana curve of our hammock naturally supported our necks while we were lying down. This realization supercharged our search for a 2-person backpacking hammock again.


In September of 2022, we finally came across the Kammock Sunda 2.0, which had specs that met all of our needs and more!

 

What did the Kammok Sunda 2.0 deliver?

The Kammok Sunda 2.0 in ground tent mode
Ground mode activated

As someone who predominantly backpacks in the Pacific Northwest, where it's rainy and often buggy, I wanted to make sure that whatever hammock camping system I settled with had both rain and bug protection.


In addition to being rated for 2 people, the Kammok Sunda 2.0 was designed with an integrated rain cover and bug net. An incredible part of its design is that the Kammok Sunda 2.0 can function both as a ground tent and as a hammock tent, which makes it incredibly versatile in case you run into a situation where your campsite doesn't have good hammocking trees or any trees at all.


Since we purchased the Kammok Sunda 2.0 as it was starting to get chilly out, we also invested in the Kammok Firebelly 30 underquilt as an additional accessory for added warmth.

 

How do you set up the Kammok Sunda 2.0?

The Kammok Sunda 2.0 hammock sleep system took a little bit of practice to make perfect. Before taking it out on its first backpacking trip, Everett and I went to a local park to practice setting it up.


The Kammock Sunda 2.0 comes with everything you need to set up the tent, including tent poles, ground stakes, guy wires, hammock straps, and carabiners.


To set up the hammock sleep system, you'll first want to set it up in ground mode before hanging it up. Setting it up in ground mode is pretty straightforward. There are 4 total tent poles: 2 for the head/foot and 2 crossbars for the roof. Insert the poles for the head/foot first, then the long crossbar, and the short crossbar last (we had found that the short crossbar didn't add any additional structural stability - more on this later!).


Once the tent is set up in ground mode, wrap the hammock straps around two sturdy trees that are an appropriate distance away. This "appropriate distance" is going to be a function of how wide the tree trunks are and how taut you like your hammock; finding this "appropriate distance" can take some practice, trial, and error.


At the corner of the floor of either head/foot, you'll find a carabiner that you can undo. Be sure to immediately clip the carabiner to the loop at the the opposite corner. You'll find that you can now pull on the carabiners to cinch the head/foot ends. If you forget to clip the carabiner at the opposite corner, you risk having the rope pull out, which can be a pain to re-thread especially in the middle of the night with a headlamp on (don't ask me how I know).


You can then attach each carabiner to the hammock straps that you had set up earlier. At this point, your hammock is super top heavy and will want to flip upside down. This is expected!


To give the hammock sleep system stability, you're going to want to attach guy lines to each of the 6 attachment points at the base of the rain fly, stake these down, then pull it taut.


The final step we took was attaching our under-quilt. Because both our underquilt and our hammock were from the same brand, they had complementary attachment points. After you attach the underquilt, you can cinch up the head/foot ends. At this point, the underquilt will sag underneath the hammock up to a foot, but I promise that once you get in your hammock, that gap will be filled.


To keep our sleep system from being filled with condensation at night, we like to roll up our tent doors and roll down our windows for extra ventilation.

 

With all the heavy duty carabiners and hammock straps, is a hammock backpacking system actually lighter weight than an ultralight ground tent?

The Kammok Sunda 2.0 with the doors rolled up and windows rolled down, set up in Zion National Park
What a beauty

Well, yes and no. It's a little bit nuanced.


When Everett and I were doing our initial research, we compared the weight of a hammock backpacking system against our usual ground shelter system, and this is what we found.


For our hammock backpacking system, we considered the weight of:

  • 1x Kammok Sunda 2.0 hammock tent (including all hammocking accessories)

  • 1x Kammok Firebelly 30 underquilt

  • 1x REI Co-op Magma 30 sleeping bag

For our usual ground shelter system, we considered:

  • 1x REI Flash Air 2 (not including tent poles, because this is a trekking pole tent)

  • 2x Sleeping Pads

  • 2x Nemo Fillo Pillows

  • 2x REI Co-op Magma 30 sleeping bags

We found that our usual ground shelter system was about a pound or two lighter. However, the hammock backpacking system takes up considerably less volume. Because it takes up less volume, you can conceivably swap your backpacking packs out for lower-volume ones which can potentially net you lower weight overall.


Keep in mind, that if you utilize the lower weight strategy with the hammock backpacking system, you lose the versatility of being able to comfortably sleep in your Kammok Sunda 2.0 in ground mode in case there are no trees around.

 

Our Impressions

The Kammok Sunda 2.0 hammock tent in The Narrows of Zion National Park
Test driving the Kammok Sunda 2.0 in The Narrows. Notice how sturdy it is on such a thin tree!

We ended up sleeping in the Kammok Sunda 2.0 for 4 total nights as we were backpacking through Southern Utah in October:

It ended up being a mixed bag.


At Canyonlands National Park, the ranger at the permitting station had warned us that we would not be able to hammock in the park since many of the trees had fragile bark. We respected this, and opted to use the Kammok Sunda 2.0 in ground mode. The Kammok Sunda 2.0 worked as an excellent free-standing ground tent. We were happy with how spacious and roomy the tent was. Our only qualm was that we wished the rain fly was separate from the bug net so that we could enjoy how brilliant the stars were at night.


Our second night of using the Kammok Sunda 2.0 was in hammock mode in a car campsite located right outside of the entrance of Zion National Park. Unfortunately, the car campsite had a tough time accommodating the hammock. It didn't have trees that were perfectly spaced apart, so we needed to compromise, and the ground was too hard packed to easily pound stakes into. To make matters worse, we had arrived at the campsite after dark after lingering at Bryce Canyon to watch the sun set at Sunset Point. Setting the tent up in the dark was unpleasant at no fault to Kammok. The hammock ended up being a little too taut due to improper setup which made the night slightly unpleasant.


We spent the third night in our Kammok Sunda 2.0 while backpacking through The Narrows, which surprisingly had plenty of trees from which to hammock from! Because we started setting up camp with plenty of daylight, we did a much better job of setting the hammock tent up. The feeling of the underquilt under the hammock provided much needed warmth after a full day of hiking through knee-deep water.


Unfortunately, in the middle of the night, we experienced a fatal design flaw with the Kammok Sunda 2.0. The long cross-bar going across the roof of the rainfly buckled and inverted into a U-shape, which made the space under the roof very claustrophobic. For a future redesign of a Kammok Sunda 3.0, we recommend having the short cross-bar tucked underneath the long one rather than vice versa to better stiffen the roof.


Despite that design flaw, we ended up sleeping like babies throughout the night and slept more comfortably than we usually do in a ground tent.


Our final night of sleeping in the Kammok Sunda 2.0 was while we were backpacking through La Verkin Creek in the Kolob Canyon area of Zion National Park. We set up our hammock tent by noon and went off on a long day hike. A pair of teenage girls hiking in the area complimented how cool our hammock tent looked! When we returned to camp, we settled in for the night by listening to the Game of Thrones audiobook for over an hour, waiting as the stars came out. As I started to fall asleep, I discovered the second fatal flaw of this particular hammock tent: no personal space.


The shape of the hammock forces both people towards the center of the tent, and Everett rolled over me in an uncomfortable way. We had to shift positions for over an hour to nest comfortably together then hold perfectly still throughout the night.

 

Closing Thoughts

Ultimately, we decided to return our Kammok Sunda 2.0, but we'd be excited to try out other Kammok products in the future.


The overall design of the Kammok Sunda 2.0 was well thought out with a selection of special hardware features that we loved (the ends of the tent poles pulled out for easier disassembly!). However, there's inherent risk of an uncomfortable night any time you opt for a hammock sleep system, especially if you're unsure of whether your planned campsite will have appropriately sized and spaced trees. Be sure to check with park rangers before using a hammock in National Parks to ensure that the straps will not be harmful to the park's natural ecosystem.


In addition, many hammock sleep systems on the market only support solo sleeping, and we learned that there's a good reason for this. If we return to hammock camping in the future, I think solo hammock sleep systems are the way to go.


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Hi There!

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I'm Sarah, and I'm a backpacker based out of Washington State.

 

I started this blog in 2022 to share the best hiker-oriented destinations for others to enjoy one weekend at a time.

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