Most of us who enjoy hiking and camping would agree that one of the harder things to achieve on a backpacking trip is truly comfortable sleeping and seating arrangements.

Sitting on the ground, either with your legs splayed out in front of you or crossed, isn’t very enjoyable for very long, and often the only support for your back that a wilderness campsite provides is a tree trunk.

The ground is also a hard and often uneven surface to sleep on, with a sleeping bag not adding much padding. However, comfortable chairs and sleeping pads can add a lot of bulk and weight to your backpack, and often hikers choose to do without them for this reason.

If you take some time to do some patient research, however, you will find that there are some remarkably light weight and compact products available that will make sitting and sleeping at your campsite a genuinely comfortable experience.

I have always been happy that I have brought these along on camping trips, despite the slightly increased weight and bulk I had to deal with. The best of these products, because it is so extremely light and compact, and because unlike a pad it can be used in all kinds of terrain, is a portable camping hammock.

The key to buying a really good portable camping hammock is to make sure that the ones you see advertised are intended for backpackers rather than car campers.

Products designed for car camping are only rarely very light and compact and are portable only in the sense that you can easily carry them a few feet from your car trunk to the campsite. So when you search for a hammock online, be sure to include words like “lightweight” or “backpacking” in your search phrase.

The Hennessy company makes what I think is the best portable camping hammock on the market. One of the best things about it is the unique way it is shaped, so that it supports your back almost as well as a mattress does.

Actually, there are several different models, which vary mostly in how much weight they will support, and how heavy they are. One weighs less than a pound. Nevertheless, they all have the same basic design, with mosquito netting and a rainfly that enable you to even do without a tent.
Without the need for a tent, you could bring along a super-comfortable chair and still have a light backpack.