Yeah, under-quilt and over-quilt. The Advantage is that you are not compressing the insulation under you by laying on it. The under-quilt goes under the hammock. Half of the insulation in your mountaineering bag is useless because you are laying on it and compressing it between your body and the ground. That’s why you also need the R8 sleeping pad.
No rocks in your side. No sticks cutting up your ground cloth. You could string a hammock across an actual creek and not risk a wet night’s sleep.
18” of snow? So what? You are sleeping above it.
It should be pointed out that hammock camping employs a hammock and a weatherproof tarp. That tarp can be strung such that it hugs the ground, and the ends fold over eachother to create a weather resistant closure. Wind can blow under the tarp which makes it, counterintuitively, very wind resistant. It doesn’t need to fight the wind the same way a tent must in order to stay erect. You sleep- essentially- in the peak of the shelter.
The tarp can also be kicked up so that you have one or both sides open. The ends can be left open or closed down like a burrito. And, it can be pitched so that you have a lot of distance between the bottom of it and the ground, or nearly none.
A good backpacking hammock has an integrated mosquito net.
So long as you have supports for the hammock, you are much less constrained to what makes a good camp site. Uneven ground? No flat ground? Waterlogged ground? 18” of snow? Jagged rocks? Dead falls? None of these are problems when you are sleeping suspended above the ground.
There are, however, a few disadvantages of hammock camping.
The major disadvantage is that you need to string it between 2 supports that will hold your weight. As I said earlier, Wyoming may be out. And, if you are traversing variable environments, it pays to plan for the possibility of sleeping on the ground. (I used a sleeping pad as my under-insulation on my last trip, instead of an under quilt, as I was unsure that I would have trees every time we made camp.) The tarp can be pitched using 2 hiking sticks as supports…
The other major disadvantage is that they can be less comfortable for side sleepers. You can get pretty flat and level sleeping in a hammock (you lay in them diagonal to how they are strung), but my experience is that you still have a bit of an arch in your back.
They can be claustrophobic to sleep in if you are the thrashing type.
For reference, I am both a side sleeper and tend to turn all night. I still prefer a hammock to sleeping on the ground.
They take some experimentation to pitch correctly, and getting it wrong can mean a pretty miserable night.
They are, with few exceptions, a one-person affair. And, you need enough space at you site to accommodate everyone. 2 hammock campers use 2x the space of 1 four person tent. You’re not sharing any heat with your camping partner, but you’re still hearing them snore.
I was very skeptical when my brother in law mentioned hammock camping for a backpacking elk hunt. But, the more I looked into it, the more intrigued I became. It beat fighting gravity in a tent on a slightly inclined camp site. Start the night at the “top” of the tent and wake up an hour later in a ball at the “bottom” of the tent. Rinse and repeat.
But, if you like your tent, do you.