THE TACO Inflatable Big Wall Hammock! Videos, tutorials and review link in description.

Review and setup tutorials for the High Mountain Gear Taco Inflatable Big Wall Hammock 

THE TACO  is now available, no preorders, you buy I make in the USA! Fresh from the FA of Taco Tuesday on Mt. Wilson in Red Rock! 

$159 gets you the lightest (1 pound 13oz!) most reasonably comfortable Big Wall sleep system. It incorporates the ability to fit any commercially available inflatable pad from 20”-25” Wide and 60”-76” long. It features durable urethane coated fabrics, simple and EASILY REPAIRABLE and field serviceable construction. Tough nylon webbing, and an adjustable side to account for slabs, sloping ledges, or fully hanging bivies.

The design is similar to single point hammocks, but adds the rigidity of the inflatable pad to keep the sides away from your body, and also to flatten the bottom instead of an actual tight and curvey hammock. 

The pad is fully captured in the harness system if the length is 76” or below, narrow pads such as the Neo Air Thermarest have been tested and provide the best support and comfort, and pushing out the sides. Horizontal baffles will perform better than vertical baffled pads, but are still functional and usable. 

Two Tacos and Two pads barely fit in a standard stuff sack(not included).

The suspension does not need to be individually adjustable, and finely adjusted for comfort. Only one adjustable cam buckle is required to set the height depending on any conditions, and the lack of dangling straps is awesome. The adjusting strap is a webbing handle, which allows for clipping off gear. 

The Taco is also capable of becoming a recliner by using two carabiners to pull up the head side of the Taco. 

A wall side zippered pocket is also available, and a wide variety of colors to suit your fashion needs. 

It does not come with a pad!

There is a portotype in development with dyneema fabric for ultralight objectives. With an ultralight full length pad, your total sleep system would be a staggering 1 pound 8 ounces! Cost currently is around $279 for the TACO SUPREME! 

https://highmountaingearandrepair.com/shop/ols/products/taco-inflatable-hammock

Hudon sports something similar for his el cap ascents. and you want 160.00 hooves?! You been drinking Kyle?

Edit: you know what? Upon more thought about the design and idea, i think it actually has potential. A poor mans G7. Good for you Willis!

jcs

Spreader bars. The MountainTools hammock is great, but comes with 1 pvc spreader bar for your shoulders (which is very important for improving the experience.) Why on earth it doesn't come with 3 is beyond me. Make yourself some bars that come apart in the middle and are leashed together. Best 247 cents you'll ever invest into a good night's sleep.

Rprops wrote:

Real talk, as someone who has spent a few nights in a wall hammock recently:

Spreader bars. The MountainTools hammock is great, but comes with 1 pvc spreader bar for your shoulders (which is very important for improving the experience.) Why on earth it doesn't come with 3 is beyond me. Make yourself some bars that come apart in the middle and are leashed together. Best 247 cents you'll ever invest into a good night's sleep.

No spreader bars needed, the captured pad spreads the bottom, thus making it less “hammocky”.

Everyone who has spent a night in one of the old hammocks will not budge on this.

Here is Sam Boyce’s review:

Quick review… Lani Chapko and I have had a set for a bit and have been playing around with them at the crags and recently took them up an FA in red rock. They are way more comfortable than anticipated. The taco is not a rigid ledge and shouldn’t be treated like one. horizontal baffles are key. We had neo air pads and found them extremely comfortable. They are a step down in rigidity to “other” inflatable options but are lighter, repairable and way way cheaper. They seem to work best on a vertical wall, slabbier pitches seem to compress shoulders more. With the pad captured, it does not feel necessary to have a spreader bar. To “mount” a taco you have to enter from the foot side like a chair, then slide in to a laying position, this is unique but easy to adjust to. At hanging belays you just rap in with a gri gri then “take” to get out. The hammock itself is burly but you must be careful to the durability constraints of the pad you use. Standing, jumping or other horseplay should be reserved for framed ledges… The adjustment is easy to do in the ledge, trickier to let the air side back down if you adjusted up to much. There are no adjusters on individual straps, this does not seem necessary, and in product testing it became apparent this shouldn’t be an option, if the straps are adjusted to far up or offset the taco will try to smash you. As is, they are light and maneuverable enough to extend, tension or otherwise position as needed. The perfect application I see is routes like rnwfhd, nose, salathe, na wall, many routes in Zion. In these there will be natural ledges that maybe aren’t the most comfortable. Another big thing like on the nose is having options when your intended camp is full. This should open doors for folks who can’t fire to big sandy in a day but don’t want to haul half dome (and kill someone with rockfall).
-Sam Boyce

Flava Flav wrote:

The suspension does not need to be individually adjustable, and finely adjusted for comfort. Only one adjustable cam buckle is required to set the height depending on any conditions, and the lack of dangling straps is awesome. The adjusting strap is a webbing handle, which allows for clipping off gear.

Can you explain this concept a bit? Lack of independent adjustability of the straps is the main issue I've found with the G7 Pod. Though on flat vertical hangs, I agree that adjustability isn't essential, but once you're looking at corners or bulges or other non sheer surfaces for your hang the lack of adjustability to create a flat surface to sleep on makes the whole system essentially worthless in terms of actually getting the rest needed to fire the next day and the next day and the next day. Looking at the picture from the website, I'm concerned that unless I'm looking at a perfect hang, this system is not going to yield the adjustability that the variety of bigwall situations demands. 

Also it doesn't appear on the website that one can select to add a stuff sack AND the zippered pocket options?

That pic does make it look pretty open/not too hammocky.  Looks pretty good Kyle. I think the bigwall hammock is an awesome lightweight option, personally, and should be more popular for those doing the occasional bivvy, solo routes and FAs, and routes where an unexpectedly crowded ledge may be a bummer and 2 more lbs in the pig wouldn't be a tragedy.  Not to mention those long naps some people call belaying.  

Damn, what was old is new again! It’s Forrest single point hammock. I’ve spent a dozen nights in one several decades ago. 

Fail Falling wrote:

Can you explain this concept a bit? Lack of independent adjustability of the straps is the main issue I've found with the G7 Pod. Though on flat vertical hangs, I agree that adjustability isn't essential, but once you're looking at corners or bulges or other non sheer surfaces for your hang the lack of adjustability to create a flat surface to sleep on makes the whole system essentially worthless in terms of actually getting the rest needed to fire the next day and the next day and the next day. Looking at the picture from the website, I'm concerned that unless I'm looking at a perfect hang, this system is not going to yield the adjustability that the variety of bigwall situations demands. 

Also it doesn't appear on the website that one can select to add a stuff sack AND the zippered pocket options?

The reason this and the g7 don’t allow for independent adjustability is the limitation of a floppy platform. We have found with testing of this design that if you offset the suspension or adjust it much shorter than this it drastically increases shoulder smashing and tacoification. This and the fully adjustable suspension harness adds almost a half pound. I don’t see this as a replacement for a traditional “night after night” ledge. That would be a misapplication of the tool. This is a blitz tool akin to more alpine terrain, where natural ledges are abundant but not comfortable (half dome) and climbing with the bags on is sometimes necessary to move fast. 

Mark Hudon wrote:

Damn, what was old is new again! It’s Forrest single point hammock. I’ve spent a dozen nights in one several decades ago. 

Playing around with hammocks and various iterations of this design we had trouble getting an inflatable pad to “stay put”. We haven’t seen any photos of anyone using a wall hammock with an inflatable pad. My theory is that the era of wall hammocks didn’t overlap much with the era of reasonable weight inflatable pads. Maybe we are missing something. This design is certainly nothing new, just a single point hammock with retaining flaps for a pad. 

Can confirm. Normal wall hammock does not play well with sleeping pad. Kyle's design seems like a legit improvement. 

Sam Boyce wrote:

The reason this and the g7 don’t allow for independent adjustability is the limitation of a floppy platform. We have found with testing of this design that if you offset the suspension or adjust it much shorter than this it drastically increases shoulder smashing and tacoification. This and the fully adjustable suspension harness adds almost a half pound. I don’t see this as a replacement for a traditional “night after night” ledge. That would be a misapplication of the tool. This is a blitz tool akin to more alpine terrain, where natural ledges are abundant but not comfortable (half dome) and climbing with the bags on is sometimes necessary to move fast. 

Perfect. Would you consider this a worthy addition for situations you presented if one already owns a G7?

Fail Falling wrote:

Perfect. Would you consider this a worthy addition for situations you presented if one already owns a G7?

I’m not going to sit here and tell people the Taco is superior to the G7, but the base model packs down smaller and is lighter. From people who have used both, the G7 is more rigid, but $700 for a single sleep system is not a good price point for a lot of people. I appreciate the massive amount of quality design and cleanness of function.

I think the Taco fits the category better with big approaches/small packs, but there is some overlap in usability. First off, having both would allow you to loan the taco out since you already have the G7 without incurring a huge cost, just bring the pad. The dyneema model ~1lb 10oz total will be stupid light. You could bring it in case the G7 got a hole in it for yourself.

Fail Falling wrote:

Perfect. Would you consider this a worthy addition for situations you presented if one already owns a G7?

I think they are similar but different. There are two distinct niches that we have identified… 1: the cheapest way to get a reasonable nights sleep on a wall and 2: the absolute lightest weight sleeping system possible. The nylon version of the taco is designed for the first person. We are working with Kyle right now to prototype a dyneema version that should weigh about 1 lb plus or minus. For someone who owns a g7, the weight savings to the nylon taco maybe don’t make too much sense, but the dyneema taco ultimately has the potential to cut weight more than in half. Using myself as an example, there number of objectives is like to do that I don’t think would be possible without a tool like this. I’m thinking an alpine style repeat of the diamond on bear mountain, fa of a direct line on hard mox, some stuff in the howser towers in the bugs… some stuff deep in the sierra also comes to mind. All this said, I’ve started to avoid comparing a g7 to the taco in my head. The g7 is the floppiest ledge on the market, and the taco is the most rigid hammock available. In that way they are distinct and though their applications overlap, they do fill deprecate niches. 

Rprops wrote:

Can confirm. Normal wall hammock does not play well with sleeping pad. Kyle's design seems like a legit improvement. 

We are still in Vegas if you wanted to check one out, play with it at a crag or borrow it for a climb.

Sam Boyce wrote:

I think they are similar but different. There are two distinct niches that we have identified… 1: the cheapest way to get a reasonable nights sleep on a wall and 2: the absolute lightest weight sleeping system possible. The nylon version of the taco is designed for the first person. We are working with Kyle right now to prototype a dyneema version that should weigh about 1 lb plus or minus. For someone who owns a g7, the weight savings to the nylon taco maybe don’t make too much sense, but the dyneema taco ultimately has the potential to cut weight more than in half. Using myself as an example, there number of objectives is like to do that I don’t think would be possible without a tool like this. I’m thinking an alpine style repeat of the diamond on bear mountain, fa of a direct line on hard mox, some stuff in the howser towers in the bugs… some stuff deep in the sierra also comes to mind. All this said, I’ve started to avoid comparing a g7 to the taco in my head. The g7 is the floppiest ledge on the market, and the taco is the most rigid hammock available. In that way they are distinct and though their applications overlap, they do fill deprecate niches. 

Thank you, any idea when the Taco Supreme will be ready to retail?

Fail Falling wrote:

Thank you, any idea when the Taco Supreme will be ready to retail?

I mean if you ordered one I would make it, I am already making two for Sam. The red Taco fits pads up to 76”(that’s how long it is, but also the adjustments allow for it). The Taco Supreme is going to fit pads up to 72”. The reasoning behind it is DCF is expensive, and 72” is exactly 2 yards. Also, we assume that you are doing this for the weight savings and not using a massive pad. The Uberlite Thermarest is 8.8 oz, Supreme will weigh 10-12 ounces. Thats a total weight of about 19-21 oz which is less that half of a G7.

What's the height from the anchor point to the ideal hanging position?

Sam Boyce wrote:

We are still in Vegas if you wanted to check one out, play with it at a crag or borrow it for a climb.

Did you guys make a double yet? Sam, are you more of a big spoon or little spoon? 

P.S. Since I assume you literally live on Mt. Wilson when you're in town, there's no chance we'll see each other. 

High Mountain Gear wrote:

I mean if you ordered one I would make it, I am already making two for Sam. The red Taco fits pads up to 76”(that’s how long it is, but also the adjustments allow for it). The Taco Supreme is going to fit pads up to 72”. The reasoning behind it is DCF is expensive, and 72” is exactly 2 yards. Also, we assume that you are doing this for the weight savings and not using a massive pad. The Uberlite Thermarest is 8.8 oz, Supreme will weigh 10-12 ounces. Thats a total weight of about 19-21 oz which is less that half of a G7.

And so I did. Can't wait to see it and test it out as an addition to my portaledge quiver.

Christopher Chu wrote:

What's the height from the anchor point to the ideal hanging position?

It’s about 5ft.