 We'll start with one by one. We're going to identify what you're going to do if you can. Could each one be good? Two, three, four. One, two, three, four. The next one. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. I think it's cool. I might have to get you guys this half of the seven. Even just this one. I'm still figuring everything out. Sorry, Kristen McLean is our members' coordinator. She's moving back a little bit. If we have any major time, she knows the system better than I do. All right. Analysts are showing up around 6.30. And everybody else on this. You were here last year, you said? I was, yeah. Did it run so fast? Did it run so fast? I don't think it did. I think it was close. I don't remember. There's some staff. How's it going to be back? Oh, cool. It's pretty rustic. Small little cabinets. But I think once the summer really gets started, I'll probably move back there. Yeah. It's definitely a nice little perk. Yeah. Kind of sucks. I feel it. I mean, it's 40 minutes. At least in like 50 minutes on busy days. What were your long distances? Yeah, from here to Burlington, my house is about 30 miles. Which is just like... Really, it's too long to be driving every day. And it's not environmentally friendly. I think like 30 miles every day is a lot. There's four other people here that are also from Burlington. So sometimes we can get together for that. Which is nice. Line and mic and headphones. Speaker out. Speaker. So do you guys work? Like, is working for Orca? Is that a full-time thing? That's so cool. Rockin' and rollin'. Look what I did. I made technology work. You did America? Yeah. Nice. That's where my position is. Where were you? I was at a local company. Doing what? Okay. Do you do electric leading and stuff? No. Cool. That's awesome. One of the women who works for us now, she was an American and her mom, our executive director of Peace Corps for two years. It's amazing how many people really connect in public service like that. I think so. Yes. Well, actually it's in Montpelier. And it's called the Mount Housing Conservation Board. And they do all kinds of conservation work and housing work and stuff like that. Okay, so I have to make the sound work. How do I do that? No, not at all. Yeah, I think I'm probably just going to show it once and then we'll stop it, because it seems kind of pointless to have it just going in the background for two hours. You know, especially if people have seen it. No, it's 80 slacks. And it's on a four-second interval. So it shouldn't last long at all. When the dog comes up, there's supposed to be a dog bark that happens. It's just kind of creepy. I could hear it now, it's really boring. Yeah, I don't know. I think that the format last year was really informal. And the crowd was on each of them. Yeah. So I don't really need the sound to work. I was kind of excited for the dog. I grew up in southern Maine, down called South Broward. It's near, you know, I've kind of gone for it in Fort Smith. The Seacoast nexus of Maine and New York. Oh, cool. Yeah, it's not a bad place. I was there until I got here at high school and then I went to Keen State in southwest New York. And then, since I graduated, I was working in New Hampshire for the Opposition Environment Center about three years. Yeah, the whites are a really fun place. And I enjoyed a lot of my time there and just got kind of tired of it and moved to Maryland. We found a really nice place to live. And I got a job in town for a couple months and then got this. I've only been here for about six weeks. Feels like longer, but it's really only six weeks. But it's working out. My job is, I'm the group outreach and field coordinator. So I work with schools and push-ups and college orientation trips to help them plan their audience People do, I feel like it's less getting lost on the long trail and more just getting lost on the outdoors in general. And mostly it's not like people who are out hiking the long trail to hike the long trail. It's the people that come up from New York City to go hike the next field and they don't bring a map where it's not their state. They don't bring a bottle of water and they get cold. And certain refugees are an increasing fact of outdoor recreation. Because as people become more and more friendly. Hey, how's it going? Are you Scott? Nice to meet you, Scott. I'm Lauren. We have a table set up for you. No, yeah, it's just not ready. And I look around and really have anybody any profits in the wall or anything. Thanks for coming guys. We're going to give you the supports then. And for the kind of support of us. He said it's of a past time still that would happen to some of them now. So back then they didn't use, they actually didn't use what it mentioned to me and that was answered today. Also one guy who did the smart thing when he got to the top he decided to soak the blankets in the lake. And they wouldn't do it? He got to achieve the system there. Yeah, because you get paid by the counter and you can pack the blankets. You did? Yeah, whatever works for you. There's all about big bags. There's not as much space as we'd like to probably. You might as well block stuff. Or maybe you might not be thinking about it. Yeah, I think it's fine. There's a lot of block stuff. Is that what we wanted to do? So people that are watching online will have this screen and this screen will be on there. So they can just type in and I can be on this. Reading it. All right, so hopefully it will fit. Yeah. People can be on there. So when we get started and when this goes live and when you guys start it then this will go live in the world. And then questions will just pop up on there. That's hard. Like if you type in I cannot type right now. Oh. Yeah, it is. Okay. Because it's not in the call. Okay. Okay. Yeah, so that's good. I'm guessing that when people want to type in and type it right now and then it will pop up. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah, it should still be possible. Everybody that registered we've been recording them throughout the day. When did that happen to you? Okay. Maybe I'm not the one I haven't been handling the whole registration. But when you register we have a whole list of that and we've sent out the online link to people. So yeah. Yeah. And I think that within a half an hour of us starting this Rob told me that it would be posted, that it would be live right away on YouTube. Yeah. I think so. Yeah, if they really want to then I can give you my email and you can like send me the text and either one of those would work. You got some hackers at home? I'll give you a little hint. Now, wherever you want to have your bag. Oh, sweet. That's cool. Come closer, maybe. You need to. Yes. Good to see you. We can get started here in just a second. Thanks everybody for coming to the Green Mountain Club's End to Ender workshop panel. This has been going on for, I think, 10 or 11 years now and it's a really great way for all the people who might be interested in ways to get out on the long trail in the summer for a through-hack or a section hike to ask our great volunteer panelists here about any questions that you might have or advice along the trail and hearing some really cool stories. And so I just want to introduce myself. My name's Lorne. I am the AmeriCorps Vermont Housing and Conservation Board Member here at the Green Mountain Club. My role is as an outreach and growth coordinator so I work with college groups, I work with Boy Scouts, I work with summer camps to help them get out on the long trail responsibly and minimize their impact on others and on the outdoors. Groups are a really important user of the outdoors and if you want to get a younger generation involved in hiking, camping and stewardship, it's super important responsibly outside. This is only my seventh week here at the GMC so if I mess up lots of stuff then that is my excuse but that's not going to happen so that's fine. And I also wanted to thank Parker Meteor who is our two guys, Zach and Matt back there, everybody thanks they came here and they set this all up on the internet so right now people, roughly 50 or 60 people are at home streaming this live on YouTube which is a really cool thing and other things to note is bathrooms are right around the corner over there, there's two bathrooms there there's a bathroom downstairs and if you need water all the water in those are good you don't have to water faucets but those things in there are really good and kind of the way that I wanted to kind of structure our panel here is first, we're going to introduce all of our panelists and then also show this wonderful slideshow that we have and then I wanted to list out a couple topics maybe topics that we all might think about if we're going on a three week backpacking trip and then we can go through the panelists and I have everybody talk about their experience with that topic whether it's water purification or the favorite snacks on the trail and then after everybody kind of gave their opinion, we can open it up for questions so we can really go through and flesh out every little thing so yeah, if we want to start if Cedric, you want to maybe mention a couple things, I was thinking if you could say your name your trail name, where you're from whether you were hiking with somebody else on the trail or by yourself and then your favorite spot along the trail and anything else that you feel you might have to share with them and that is by no means this part of the fact my name is Cedric from Google I live in Essex Vermont it's a nice little camp next to the big branch river that I live up it's a really long day of hiking and there's a really nice pool to swim in and relax they're really appreciated that sweet were you hiking by yourself, did you have a partner did you ever meet up with people who would kind of frog off each other kind of stay at a very similar level meaning the same people at the same time a question I did want to ask later is what was your favorite swimming spot on the trail so it sounds like a big branch maybe you did one nice Lauren I hiked with my husband in the Yellow Lab I'm from Faceton, Vermont we trail named Blinders kind of about our trip we hiked in 16 days we could have done it in 15 but we did like one hour on the 16th day we just basically let the dogs set the pace and then tried to keep up with her he never got off the trail just had friends meet us at the road and drop off foods and never had a meal that we didn't carry on our pack that was a little unique I'm Catherine I'm from Montreal, Canada I did it southbound because the border was the easiest spot to get a ride to I never got a trail name but that's okay I was kind of just there to be myself and I was doing it solo I think it's kind of the part that you're traveling with ends up getting your trail name 23 days an overnight hike for my life somebody mentioned the trail and it sounded like a lot of fun and it was favorite spot is pretty much honestly the entire trail especially the northern part once you get north of the Appalachian Trail just has a very, very lovely vibe to it incredible experience everybody can do it Hi, I'm Scott didn't have a trail name while I was hiking the trail somebody else was to give it to you and I'm from Melissa, Vermont close by here I thought I was going to be doing a through hike but it wound up being a section hike I did it in two years in 14, 15 it took me 30 days all told hikes south to north and my favorite spot, there were so many but my favorite spot was the bridge because my family met me there and we hiked across it together I was with friends about half the time and alone the other half but you never rode alone the trail with so many people I believe I'm Deborah Leskin and I'm from New Saint Vermont and I did the trail with a friend from Alaska who I hadn't seen in a long time and we did it in 25 days from August 15th to September 8th in celebration of turning 60 and we stayed in shelters most of the time I carried a tent until our last resupply and the resupply was my husband aka the mule and he met us in Johnson and we gave him the tent and of course that night we stayed out on Larroway Mountain and that was my favorite spot with an incredible sunset, moonset and it was the Friday of Labor Day weekend and we saw a most amazing fireworks display it was really neat did I get everything it was a transformative experience which is what I was hoping for I met Catherine at Clarendon Shelter and I've been blogging about it and also on VPR I'm Eli my idea was with my friends and our real name with the two Jews and it took us 19 days and we took three rest days my favorite spot was going to top Camelshump because there was like 50 mile per hour winds and it was just kind of cool because it's not time to also put up there on just little hicks and it was my first overnight hike my friend planned everything so I went along for the ride and I was surprised by how much fun I have cool thanks everybody for sharing and here is the slide show courtesy of our fabulous panelist right here we've got, well I'm sorry I've got a course for all of you watching this which we shot two screens that's my next suggestion alright what's your name? Tenny, but on the trail she went by that's my hiking part what, no escalators? Dave's amazing Chris is slick yeah, you were cool I recently found out I've never liked that recently found out that my nickname is Vermont yeah that's part of it that was my partner for part of it that's how it's coming up around me oh my gosh actually that's where he started that's Pine Cople, Massachusetts that's where you started yeah that's where we ended because we went northbound it's still peaceful so clean the strat and fire tower that looks like Burnt Hill strat and pond that was our food drops from our buddies that could be anywhere wonderful stoves that's the right plan where's that? that's the right plan oh yeah, that's the right plan thanks for the trail you're welcome Lincoln might be over there it's even fog I cleared up a little bit that's the blaze Camels, huh? that looks kind of cold just short of the border Woodford these guys are tiny they're tiny than your fingers careful to step on them briefly that's Duxbury Road just before the Mooshki Bridge Mansfield just off the chin on Mansfield somewhere main junction and that's the view from Mansfield that's Duxbury Road an old trail sign somewhere very north Killington be careful whoa that's from Larroway in the morning Jay Peak Starks Mass at River Glen and it's open and it's a really good place to see Mansfield that looks hard for the big pack we actually had to pull our packs up by road for a long time think that's beautiful that's the old trail don't let you camp in the front yard that's Mansfield go ahead that's the old trail pepper shelter there's really neat old-time machinery in the that's Larroway Mountain I got a little crazy with the transitions there I hope you like my airplane do you want to hit the lights there Matt? thanks so thanks all of you for sending in those pictures it's really fun to watch you guys who know the trail super well look at it and just blur out oh that's there, that's there, that's there and I think that in a way it shows how many little tiny memories you make along a 270 mile walk that's pretty neat I guess we can kind of get right into some of the things that you should talk about for advice on how to hike the lingerie and the first thing is and every one of my backcountry hikes whether it's a day hike or if I'm out for four days the first thing I think about is what am I going to be going through which is a pretty obvious thought but it's also the most fun thought because like cutting dinner after 16 miles is awesome and so I was wondering if you guys would be able to talk a little bit about your favorite meals whether you went backpacker's pantry or if you prepped everything at home how something that Adam was concerned about is like I love fruits and vegetables you cannot eat carrots every single day when you're on the launcher so how do you kind of deal with that or anything that really you felt was most important regarding the meals on the trip when I started thinking about how I was going to use the launcher I took into consideration so I was going to meet my family and get the launcher out and then I was going to pretty much hike home to Essex so I was going to be supplying those two spots so I wanted to maximize how much food I could bring for a minimum weight space so I decided I was going to be hybrid I did a lot of things as I decided with dehydrating I was going to do some hot cozy cooking so real simple just boil some water throw it back put it in a hot cozy and let it sit like you set up your camp 50-20 minutes later it's really simple but it takes a little bit of time and preparation so I bought a dehydrated few months before I took off it's a child like so different things a variety rehydrated really well for me we're like taco meat now you do some beef and you dehydrate it throw in some taco seasoning and that rehydrates really well put together some soft taco shell the downfall of doing that is you kind of pigeon hole eating dehydrated meals if you're cooking that way I had an alcohol stove so it was also super super light so it's not you can boil things but you only have high when you're cooking so take it into consideration how you're going to cook kind of drives what you have to break carry about 6-7 days at a time have you ate dehydrated foods since then or are you off dehydrated? I did take a break for a little while I still fire for dehydrated some of the fruits can be dehydrated in terms of the planning weight do you have an average of food per day out maybe like one half to two you know I basically just tried to ration out a certain amount see if I could stuff it all in you know whatever fit in there a good solid meal very easy things like just grab a snack on there as a day eat it as much and sleep as well I like it the most I could do the super crust on your trail kid but by the way if you guys don't know EMS is operating as closing and everything is like 20% off and I don't know if I should include a bunch of backpacks but it was like supposing I could open it maybe I could eat two servings you pretty easily can that's the true sign of a cooking arrow you can eat more than you think you can you can eat a lot of food our food drops so a few more opportunities to get some food we were the picture that we planned it all out at times some really awesome a dry oatmeal playing every day for breakfast that kind of sucked got over we never stopped for like a lunch break we just continuously ate throughout the day ate a lot of lift bars I don't know the name the Vermont company they make B-sticks like Vermont Cures those were absolutely incredible we ate a lot more of those than we expected to honestly the only fight we had my husband and I on the trail between the two of us was one day when he started eating more than I had and I did all the planning and so I knew how much food we each had each day and I like started hoarding the food and it's not good at the panic mode we're not going to have enough because we had no other options like you know our friends already had our you know cardboard box and they would bring it to us so it was those opportunities to get extra and we did a freeze fried the little whatever preparing meals every night and I that's definitely an argument that I would get into is like there's food here we should eat more of it I sort of planned but I also just kind of winged it a lot at the time I think I brought about five days with me so my first resupply was in Johnson overall I probably carried way more food than I needed but I'd like to have a lot of food on me so I like to eat a lot of food breakfast was oatmeal with nuts and dried fruit coconut is very dense and calorie rich snacks were gummy bears and milk chocolate was a huge craving and nuts because it's going to be annoying lunch was probably tortillas with either Nutella and peanut butter or cheese and pepperoni and yeah a snack throughout the day chocolate nuts what have you dinner was nice to have a hot dinner it was either looking sidekicks, ramanoodles the potatoes were really hard stomach after a couple packages but I added either ramanoodles with tuna and cheese and just as much olive oil would be good to have that's one thing I wish I'd brought with me chocolate a lot of chocolate just as long as it's dense calorie rich and kind of contacts very well which I would say go for it I admire Cedric with all the planning and dehydration I didn't have that much foresight at the time EMS was having another sale where if you bought the mountain house stuff in bulk and also got my green mountain club days so all those discounts they'll end up being reasonably cheap and I paid my cheap I didn't have a mountain house pretty much every night my favorite breakfast was peaches and cream crepe rings and oatmeal and some hot chocolate in the morning and I like kind bars and a lot of nuts as well the friend I went with for about half of the hike had a great recipe for these super calorie dense cookies he called monster cookies his children called them sawdust cookies and there was a super high energy paste that he made out of almond butter and almond oil and cashew oil took a long time to make but it was great but the second half of the trip I couldn't get together to do that myself so I just wound up the best thing about those mountain house meals is that I have like an alcohol spill an MSR reactor and it boils water really fast like in a minute and you pour it into that bag for about 15 minutes and the meals are really quite good and there's no clean up at all you just zip it up and I had to clean dishes at the end of the day so that made it very easy I did not get tired of them there's enough variety I haven't had any since I'll grant you but I believe them if I have to and I hope they were great I did the Cedric method I grow a lot of my own food I use a dehydrator anyway and Jan my hiding partner from Alaska said we're going to have the variety and we're going to have meat I thought we're going to eat rice and beans every night so I started to get on it and I used my dehydrator you can turn a pint jar of salsa into what is about an 8.5 by 11 sheet and then tear it up and you can also make tomato leather if you really want to do this tomato leather is fantastic it rehydrates into tomato sauce we dehydrated I dehydrated charred all sorts of vegetables I supplemented it with back packers the back packers sampler pack from Harmony House where I got freeze dried garbanzo beans which rehydrate really quickly our goal was to be able to cook everything in a way in two cups of water we had an MSR dragonfly with us and a titanium pot so it had to be a one pot meal it had to cook in less than 10 minutes and plus maybe since we had such variety we had fabulous coconut curried red lentils so we just made regular food but we adapted it we had a couscous dish couscous it had the garbanzo beans it had dried apricots in it everyday for breakfast we had oatmeal cornmeal no couscous we bought in the bulk at my co-op so that was the other thing I mean start by going through first the co-op then all the grocery stores this is a novel experience you go looking for high calorie food that cooks instantly this is not how I usually shop and it was fascinating I found a really good instant polenta which we ate for breakfast sometimes with fruit sometimes with cabbage makes a powdered cheddar which is fantastic for breakfast we had six different varieties of granola because it was on sale the week I went in and milk seems to come only as instant dry fat so we add cormora to it which makes it much more high calorie and much more delicious we also splurged our one big splurge was on coffee we brought starbucks vidas and we had one a day lunch was usually black bean dip that we rehydrated I carried it with me a plastic peanut butter jar whatever we had for lunch in the morning and then I'd carry it and we'd eat it with Dr. Cracker Crackers awesome I'd make a salad for fruits and vegetables I'd buy freeze dried corn and we had dehydrated cabbage and carrots and I put them everything was in a sealer I have a vacuum sealer so everything's in that in the order in which you put it into things we seasoned it with celery seed and salt pepper and we carried olive oil and vinegar for flavorings and also used it as moisturizer when we needed it the olive oil not the vinegar and so we had that great breakfast of coffee and cereal we had the lunch for snack Jans from Alaska she brought salmon jerky you add that with some dried seaweed to ramen noodles it's not so bad and then we also had this deluxe resupplier who came with cucumbers from the garden steak dinner and hot brewed coffee we ate really well we ate probably more calories during snack time we did not have enough calories but I lost my appetite I lost a lot of weight and I lost my appetite which is really peculiar never happened to me before in my life we were really tired by the end we did not take a day off and we just hiked every day we were off the trail in it long trail friends at mid-state so we had two nights off the trail and big feet and baths really nice so we for water we used a jib oil which boils water very fast but we wanted to keep it clean so we would not put any food in there so we had backpackers so we shared a backpackers pantry and each had ramen for that so that would be our dinner usually and then for breakfast we would have two packs of oatmeal and then we would have each for each of us throughout the day and always have a thing of beef jerky or something like that just to kind of snack on and we would have two lunches the first lunch would be like a peanut butter jelly sandwich and then the second lunch would always be like tuna fish or something like that and we had that every day so by the end I was a little tired of that same routine but the backpackers the pantry stuff was better than I was expecting so we made it work pretty well I like your two lunches just like real hobbits second breakfast well we had bread for the first we did three free supplies and then the other two we used tortilla like tortilla things it gets a lot easier to carry than bread so you are bringing tuna with you pack so that made what we would have been dry tuna salad really really tasty gave it that extra lot of fat stuff and that made it kick that up a notch it's pretty good like the tuna and the sweet yeah the tuna and the pack is there I had one of those and I was going to eat it sometime and then when I was there at my family I was like oh damn they don't matter I feel like 60's when you say that they come flavored as well they are like lemon pepper flavor and there is a little salmon same thing with little pouches so those were glorious you can um we had three I had six I think five I had five our last was eight yeah yeah I kind of had a half I really resupplied way too much and I got the killing and I still had a lot of food so I just raided a hiker box for breakfast that was pretty good got a couple questions on the stock that came in from online and one of them is where were the best places to send drop boxes and were there any sections from resupply to be pretty default along the long trip the easiest place was to send a box to the end of the long trail we actually didn't mail it to them we just dropped it right off on our way driving down route 100 and um you drop your box right and they okay okay no let us know when you think you are going to come through and you put your name on a chart and they go and put it in a closet and it's just a closet because you are also at this point in time you are also with all the AT hikers right and so if they go and put a closet at the bottom like boxes and they try to put it in an order of like planning where they think you are going to come through so we like want to come through like July 2nd or whatever and so they put it in that shelf but it was just like eye-opening to watch them put it in there and that was the easiest drop closet full of backpacking food that's cool anybody else in terms of sections where resupply were difficult or places that you sent the boxes that was pretty easy Johnson was really easy to walk into and as an aside there is a really good swimming hole behind the church across in the market if you want a bath that was easy to walk into and everywhere else it was easy it was pretty easy I feel like the mantra passes through our tongues pretty regularly there are crossings every 12 miles or so some were easier than others I would suggest mark on your map where possible resupplies are plan ahead a little bit here not fully planning it ahead of time like I didn't do one thing that I actually use is better than the map was like the long trail app and it can actually say that you can like mark point A and point B and it can show you the distances between shelters and so you picture the shelters that you want to stay at and it just makes life a lot easier for that day and it just makes everything a lot easier than using a map I think that especially people here know Vermont probably but people watching might not and the one thing I didn't have and wish I did have even though I didn't need resupplies was the Vermont road map because the end hikers guide is really good but for people from away you need to know that a big black dot in Vermont might be a town of 2000 and there might not be a grocery store there anymore so a combination of knowing which are really big towns how far they are the size of the roads that get you there at the end guide because I live in southern Vermont and hike Stratton all the time and I met some people doing the long trail and they left and they they hiked into Ward'sboro it's a 7 mile it's a 7 mile hitch and then there's a store but it's not a road that anybody drives on so I don't know how they were going to get back I don't know what they were going to get what they were going to find I didn't think it was a really good resupply place but they were out of food so we got them there we did like 16 16 or 17 on average and we did 21 mile a day and we regret doing that it was a long day for us it was probably like 16 or 17 was comfortable our first day was 11 miles 15 mile a day it's like the easier days at first made it very much much easier to get used to I had a different take it depends also if you're going north or south so I started in the south where it's flat sort of we did a lot of miles in the south because the north the elevation is really hard there's a lot of elevation up and down when you leave Apgap and you go over Molly Stark and General Stark and Baby Stark and that was the end of the day that I had already done a Lincoln and Ellen so it's a lot of elevation and then you get to White Face my least favorite mountain in the state it's really hard there's a lot up and down and you saw one picture of the roots and stones so I have friends who've done the Pacific Crest Trail I've friends who've done the AT they've done the Long Trail they have failed at it before they succeeded because the Long Trail is short and difficult the footing is hard the elevation is relentless it shouldn't be underestimated but I did anywhere, Mt. Mansfield was our shortest day of 7 or 8 miles but we did a few 16 mile days in the south we did 13 miles out of the gate we did 14, 15 mile days in the south and then we slowed it down until the end of the day this is another topic here for you if you're climbing 300 miles anywhere is really on the Long Trail map we have an elevation profile on the top of it and it's the main reason why all the elevation trail theory start in the south is because it's easier and because you can build yourself up so that when you get to Vermont and you're able to do the tough elevation I use that elevation little tracker thing you can walk to it and I hated going downhill we would look for the uphills and it was like if there was a steep descent I was like I don't even want to do it and it was like oh I got another uphill I either want an uphill or I want a flat I was not a fan of the downhills but similarly we started in the south and we cranked it out from the beginning in our first 3 days with 20 plus days and our theory was flat now ish we got to go while we get the energy we worked over a minute yeah I don't really have anything to compare it to it was definitely by day 3 it was an 8 mile day 1 o'clock came I hit Talax and Shelter that was it it is kind of it is a lot more rocky it's a lot more fun too so that's why I kind of had to push myself a little I don't like to paint your skin it's still a lot actually do you love his pizza? I think another thing with how long you hike is we hiked around the summer solstice so we had 13 hours plus a day of sunlight and so it's easier to crank out a lot of miles when you have until 7 o'clock at night and even then you get it at 7 and you still have an hour plus of daylight versus hiking in October I'm sure would be quite different actually I think that's more important than the number of miles the number of hours you want to be on the trail and we were on the trail for 11 hours a day doesn't matter how many miles we did we were always on the trail for 11 hours and by September it was noticeably darker sooner we would often eat by headlamp and sometimes we hiked it by headlamp not by headlamp but by dark you can tell from the size of our backpack I wasn't into traveling light so I was aiming for smaller amounts and I averaged 10 miles a day I had 150 miles per day and that was more than I wanted to do and since I started in the south where it was easier I got into better shape so it was okay to do 10 mile days even in the north I only hiked for 7 miles a day and I had plenty of time to relax for lunch and set up my camp early I had this wonderful hammock which was so comfortable and I really enjoyed long afternoons and getting to bed early I spent 21 nights on the actual trail and not staying in a tack lodge or a long trail and I found hammock sites at 19 of those two of them I had a problem so I went inside the shelters in front of the raptors the shelters that's okay or not but it didn't do any damage the raptors can try and accommodate things we've asked people to not set up tents in shelters because when you set up a tent in a shelter it really just shrinks the shelter immensely but you know if they didn't want you to do it then they would have told you well there were no caretakers there but it didn't seem to be an issue because I didn't have a sleeping pack because I wasn't going to use the hammock in the shelter it's going to be on the hard since you guys were talking about my I was just wondering if you could say what your pack was for 30 pounds under 25 pounds I just stopped saying that for my husband but his was a little more and if it's okay if I share a little story throughout the trip I didn't do it on purpose but I started like you know resupply you pack back up in the morning and day by day I'd like put one extra thing in his pack one extra thing in his pack we got to Ira Allen and uh is that a melon? terrible but he was actually dying couldn't figure it out he went to go pick up my pack and go pass it to me he felt it it weighed about 15 pounds and his was about 45 at that point and he's like yeah okay too far so I got back down to my 25 pounds he went back down to his he carried about 30 I carried about 45 yeah don't be that do you guys are still together? can I ask what was your dog's pack weight? yeah give a little shout out to roughware I don't know if you guys can see the pack so roughware makes these like real like hearty hearty packs that like a dog can wear like all his extra weight like hydration pack it's not we never filled that with water though it's not supposed to carry a ton but she carried four days of food in that we doubled her up on her food we had to vet what to do it was great so she carried all her own food in the pack all her own treats she was a champion we didn't touch her food one spot difficult going up over Mansfield there's a few ladders and so the beauty of the pack is you also have 50 pounds and I was going to pick her up and he climbed the ladder with her in one hand and hold it on the other and one tricky spot other than that she was a champion she went on leash when we were on a on the top of a peak that had the vegetation so on the top of Mansfield on the top of Abe I think those might have been the only two Camel Sump she stays right with us no people loved her like she sticks with us and actually every night we set up our tent and we set most of the night because I think we wanted to with the dog you don't often want to stay in a shelter because you never know who does or doesn't like dogs and we would set up our tent and before we even like pull out our cook stove to get things started she would be sitting at the edge of the tent ready to go in for the night and so she was like the minute we got there she was in the tent so yeah, no problems with the dog people absolutely loved her everyone we met wanted to meet her more than they wanted to meet us if I can mention something a lot of our employees have dog and I love dogs the policy on dogs in the long trail is leashed on summits and under voice control all the rest of the time so essentially what I would judge it is if you wouldn't bring your dog over to a neighbor's house for dinner or something your dog probably isn't well behaved enough to be hiking with other people sleeping in other people's shelters you really want to be consider of others and consider those kind of things on the summits the reason is because of our ecology and that there's plants up there that have been growing for 75 years and even a small dog parent will destroy them so staying on the trail on the summits is really important it sounds like your dog is awesome yeah, I love being dogs on the trail my pack weighed about 40 pounds I guess that was the only time I ever weighed it in a long trail I had a scale and I resupplied so 40 pound was definitely heavier climbing camel's home because I got too much food again and my peelier so try and time your resupplies after a giant peak if possible but just it'll make your knees happier I'm a little embarrassed my pack started at 60 pounds and I got down to 45 at the end I carried a lot of water and I thought I was going to try to maintain some personal hygiene so I was misguided that way and I even carried some electronics and the hammock was no more heavy than a tent on a sleeping pad I'm not sure what else made it so heavy but I carried as many as 8 days of food at a time no it could be open but it had a mosquito netting and then a tarp over it so it was actually toasty dry even in a driving rainstorm and never a problem with bugs I actually have it set up in the downstairs when we're done you can try it out if you want I was very skeptical of the idea of it one of my students was reading about one and I said how can you sleep like that on that one you get a terrible backache if you lie diagonally you're lying perfectly flat and it's very comfortable I slept almost better there than I would even in my own bed and it was great to be right at ground level so you could turn it into a chair and be able to sit up and cook your whole meal you could do the whole thing under this tarp including pack your entire bag and the last thing you did was take that wet tarp and keep that from getting the rest of your pack wet and so it was just a dream and you got a couple of nice comments on our YouTube link ooh, 40 pounds, well done and somebody also feels a lot better about their pack weight now I think I have about years two bullets Debra? so with two and a half liters of water when we left home my pack weighed 35 pounds and I'd never done anything like this before so we got out of the car and we both put our packs on and staggered and quickly put the packs down and took out our hiking poles which made a big difference so it distributed the weight a little bit more for some reason I don't really know why when we packaged up our dinners we weighed them all and marked the weight on each package and we quickly figured out that we would eat the heaviest food first and it was really, it was terrific I don't know why we did it but I'm glad we did and we also jettisoned stuff along the way we didn't need sunscreen or bug dope didn't weigh a lot but we got rid of everything we didn't need and after our last resupply we ditched the tent I had a two and a half pound tent that we borrowed and we used it about 25% of the time and just for the last 8 days of food for the last for the last trip so we got rid of the tent and that was fine so my pack weighed about 15 pounds and my friends was like 16 or 17 because we split up the food I took the tent he took the stakes and the poles even the stakes and so pretty much everything we shared I didn't bring a change of clothes or anything like that so I made it as light as possible and I had no really extra things that I brought and the only extra thing I brought was a phone charger in my phone because I guided this podcast the last two hours of hiking when you just don't want to be hiking anymore yeah top of peaks there usually are is more than I was expecting but the thing that I was worried about was the phone battery because we could only charge it for like 400 days but we also brought a little portable battery pack there's no electricity yeah, we have a little battery pack and then we just charge our phones the battery pack when we get to places not at the shelters but you can find outlets like if you're passing by the summit of Killington and it's between the hours of 9am and 5pm or whatever they've got a base lodge and you can go plug your phone into the base lodge and so you can find places with electricity but not a shelter so one of my heavy things was a solar charger that's why I had northbound because I always have the sun in my back it turned out not to be very good it's mostly in the shade you're only in the open sun for a short period of time it worked a little bit but later on I used one of those battery packs it worked better it could recharge the iPhone about 5 times and there are enough places for you to pull off and charge it up it's probably the best but I think the only reason we even used our phones was for the map and that's like that so I'd like to put in a plug for unplugging actually I carried a cell phone because it's my camera and I just kept it on airplane except when we thought of something else we needed Tim to bring us and then we'd text him at night where we were and where we were going to meet him which was pretty determined I took really I started to take satisfaction and every time I would turn it on to text him that little red number with all the emails would go up and when I got on the trailer it was 600 and it has changed it's changed how I deal with email instead of sort of being jerked by every time it comes in incoming and responding to it and having my whole concentration fractured one of the reasons I went on this long walk was to regain my concentration I did carry a battery for the cell phone, I bought it at Staples it was a cheap little thing I never needed it because I didn't use my cell phone very much and I also confess I'm not purest I carried a Kindle and I read two books cell phones cell phones in the back country are really great for you know they've saved a lot of people in rescues you can now take better pictures for the cell phone than you can with any other camera but it's definitely something to think about if you're on the top of the summit of Kamelshaw and you're screaming hey dad guess where I am like other people are going to be bothered by that so it's one of those being considerate of others in the back country kind of things you have a question sir one was when you don't have any cell phone cell phones around the world no more yes what's the name of the app or a I don't remember it's called you can just look up the long trail in the app store and it will come up it's like five bucks and it's pretty great definitely one of my favorite luxuries on the trip I use an app called GAIA which basically has all of the original us hop on that in the highest resolution and it puts you right on it and you can download the entire step of the long trail you don't need a cell phone signal at all and you can all see exactly where you are on the best top of the app so it was great and find your GPS and put you on there exactly, exactly, yep it gives you a lot of power, it's great the alt-share design is actually pretty good as well and you can bring out how it can have a satellite over the views you want so this is still the best app it's amazing it's great math it's waterproof the batteries don't run out good reading material at night if you're caught in a storm on the summit you can cover yourself with like 10 waterproof maps we never had, we never tracked where we were at the GPS or anything and I was never concerned about where I was on the trail or where I was going pretty much north or south she followed the way you get pretty good this many miles I should see it sometime it's kind of fun looking at the map but I still recommend we get a compass also I mean if all type of map and compass is a skill that anybody doing this should have you may never need to use it but things can fail, your cell phone can break the signal can be gone, it gets wet and being able to use that great map there and a compass is really all you need something that you probably have heard of or if not then you should it's the 10 essentials for outdoor recreation and a map and compass are two of the 10 essentials and I guarantee you that every one of you had all of those 10 essentials or close to all of those 10 essentials if you are on your 3x because you need them when you're outside we didn't have a compass I wanted to say that one place where a compass doesn't help a cell phone doesn't help every time the trail intersects civilization it gets hard to follow the tops of ski ski areas and in towns the guidebook is helpful and if you're taking the guidebook which I think is a good idea I broke mine in 3 and carried and only had the section that I needed and then took the next section for the resupply we didn't figure that out, the first third I carried the whole thing and then I thought this is silly, we don't need this anymore and then we don't need this last part yet so my books now are held together by a rubber band but in towns it just thought it was a really interesting phenomenon that when there was heavy human civilization the trail was a little harder to follow in the woods it's pretty clear because it's very worn and there are white places great we used the Sawyer as well but also had iodine just in case if the Sawyer broke or whatever we didn't have to use the iodine at all and the Sawyer worked really well and we really liked how it worked no we did an old-fashioned Katahdin pump our dogs are extreme on earth all the time, no problem T-hikers who joked that they hadn't filtered their water in weeks and that when they got to Vermont they were like, water looks good to us they had no problems so it's a green mountain full of interjection we suggest filtering your water there's lots of water plants in Vermont and they create lots of genes and runoff that you might drink from but the writers make their interests I did go ahead I did drink it unfiltered on top of Kington and it was the best water I've ever had in my life but it was just one handful but yes, filter your water but didn't come out of a pipe there it was definitely a spring I went for it it was high up enough there's no beavers above it so you're okay but the top of the sun it's not going to be bad it's kind of groty but it's not going to be can you guys talk about what you used for your water filtration I used a steric pan that's what we used we carried one wide-mouthed Nalgene and we'd do the steric pan and then we'd offload it we carried these kind of bottles I have a leader one and these, they're really lightweight they're just the throwaway plastic ones and you can replace them really easily when they start growing mold in them which they will do so I mean I just would trade it out the steric pan we bought it, it says, oh it's good for a thousand uses but they forgot to tell us that that was not on one battery we had a backup some sort of iodine which we had to use once and then we got new batteries to start resupply it worked really well whenever there was spring though when the water was coming out of the ground through a pipe, we didn't bother to filter and we didn't filter the water that we boiled or that we cooked with we just boiled it, we didn't boil it for 10 minutes we boiled it until we could pour our dinner in it and then we cooked it and ate it and that was fine I can't speak enough about this this is a plastic filter when I started I had one of those sometimes I got real sick of pumping and this tip you just fill up one side and hook it into this filter chamber and you just let gravity in in like 10 minutes you have 4 liters of water in the clean bag down there all of the AT Huckers were using these that were filtering their water probably you have to have a way you have to have either a thing you can scoop it with or use a little scooper that's going to be dirty to fill it up for the first time but that was almost never an issue and this is, I'm at all comfort, this is great never had any problems I really would advise folks to filter their water, I'm a physician and I've seen too many people with nasty back country diseases you might be lucky but you might not and you want to be in the middle of nowhere having to go to medical care when it's hard to find you're a doctor at UVM right take your medical thing in strongly but you don't have a filter it's coming out of the spring no springs, they're not guaranteed it's whatever it is for moving into the water, it's probably okay but I take the chance it's so easy you wouldn't get tired of filtering your water that's why you take a chance that's a great product lightly do you accept what we need to do? yeah, I don't know what your guys' experience is I used Dr. Muir for a long time and then I got just a little bit tired of the taste and so now I use a little Sawyer filter and carry Aquamir as a backup because always the backup is good something's going to break on you at some point but Aquamir is a good product yeah, I had a little Sawyer Sawyer Mini and whenever I got to camp I'd filter 4 liters of water so I had it for my breakfast in the morning and I used 2 Gatorade bottles 2 liters I would leave with in the morning because the Gatorade is really tasty my first diet and then the bottles are very light they're lighter than the Nalgene and I have the little aqua tabs sometimes you just don't want to stop filter water just about anything is lighter than Nalgene those smart water Gatorade bottles throw away Nalgene's are pretty heavy yeah, we run Nalgene's and we should yeah, but we noticed that not a lot of people dead and we wish we hadn't been so heavy we had these things that are collapsible I was loved you just pop it like that and you would get a bottle that was quite quite durable and you could collapse it to nothing but you didn't need it, it was lighter than the Nalgene and unbelievably durable it's ellipsed made by, it's called a Hydra Pack and so one of the problems in carrying water in a hydration bladder is you can't tell how much you got left I'm not sure, I'll carry one this one full is my reserve tank you can actually stand on this when you close this it's super tough I went in June and we had a shelter every night we brought a tent just to get used to the bush camp and we did that once or twice but every night we had a shelter and there was plenty of room next time you're going in June and you're going northbound you will have your first stretch with all the AT hikers your first stretch is going to be a lot more busy in June and then once they fail off and go to New Hampshire you're quite out in June yeah we also had these like Kevlar bags so that mice couldn't bite through them so we'd hang it up and then so nothing can get into them mice are a much bigger problem in the shelters than bears what places do you have bear boxes though so at the GMC at caretakers staff sites and at a range of back and tree sites without caretakers the only bear box was big enough to carry I was on a trip last week there was eight people we were out for four days and we were able to fit all of our food into a bear box so when you think about that that's a good amount of food in the back and tree and if there's not a bear box and looking up how to do a bear hanging and practicing as you're planning process it's really fun and yeah the biggest problem that I think you face is varmints and so keeping like Eli said that they make some really good like over proof bags that you can just seal over and if you can't find a bear box or if you don't have enough stuff bear hanging in those bags are like the best thing ever bring up a very good point practice like just buying gear and going out and saying this gear is going to be great without really knowing how to use it or never tried it before it's not going to work out as well it's good to take things out and practice sites I kind of shift my gear down almost all of my gear down quite a bit before I even go out and try out a lot of over nuts everything from footwear to my pack to my sleep system to my quick system every time I went out I wouldn't be on the chair it's about brain protection I didn't bring a whole lodge bro big old poncho I went out one day before I went out I thought I was nuts I was like you were hiking this I'm like that's great and tested my out of my ring gear see if it worked but little things like that are important I'd like to second that even if you don't get to take it out so we borrowed a tent there were 21 people in a 12 person shelter and we set up our tent late at night and it was great and it was a stormy night we were dry but we were really so grateful we had set it up beforehand tents are nice we never use stakes and I figured I'm in my tent two of us and a dog was not blown away we never staked our tent at once for me I saw stakes as extra weight I never slept in this shelter as much as I absolutely had to just because people can come in in any hour of the night and I'm older and bothered by people snoring and I'd like to have a little privacy and if I'm going to be snoring I'll be bothering anybody else and mice are a huge problem in the shelters I would hang my food there they have these great little hangers that have little tin cans over the top so the mice can't go down the string so I often hang my food there but I would sleep maybe in peace and quiet so you owe a little something I'd say 19 to 21 nights just some distance away usually within sight but there's never any disturbance or noise and no animals earplugs are really good to bring if you're going to stay in a shelter is your a question then bear spray yeah one of those things where you need it you need it but I mostly take it so my mother can sleep at night sorry I mean I don't like your I didn't you do we brought sunscreen and never used that once you're pretty shaded usually so it's not gonna be deal I carried a lot of first aid stuff I never used and I'm not complaining yeah bring it a little since you can't I never used my bug spray once yeah August then always September yeah August oh I also brought like a like a bug net that you could put over your head I didn't use that once either I used it once for catching minnows but that's not it but it's something you don't know where you're gonna get depending on when you're good I did have a bug net yeah I changed my shoes from hiking boots to these sneakers you can't see them they're pretty worn out now but they're just I call them sneakers that's great I went from hiking boots to Solomon Trail Runners and should have done a whole thing in Solomon Trail Runners yeah how many of you hiked in boots versus trail runners I used boots because it was my first time actually hiking so I was like I should probably try some support just in case so I used boots because the pack was so heavy I didn't think it would be safe something to think about if you're going really light then shoes simply can do the tricks sometimes but if you're going heavy or if maybe you don't have that much hiking experience you can support it and they'll feel better things with boots is breaking them in plus there's obviously about shoes you can break in a lot of these one of the reasons to use boots is that it keeps the rocks after falling into the shoes but I saw a number of people who were using these cute little gators that are called Dirt Girl that basically were a little elastic very lightweight cloth that covered from your sock down and covered the shoe they weighed nothing and they kept all and made it possible to wear trail shoes rather than boots if your ankles were strong and everybody I talked to really loved them they dried out fast for a bunch I used the Gatorade Super Feet Insoles were a light same size right at the top of my foot so if I don't maintain my arch I was sure I was going to be able to stay wet one of the footwear things is to wear crocs to wear when I was at the camp because you don't want to have to hang out in your hiking boots or sneakers because it's just not comfortable and it's good to get a break from them so actually are you interested in hearing about hygiene on the trail at all? there's a lot of topics like all of this so whatever we can bring up so there are four rules backcountry hiking living hydration, hygiene, hydration, hygiene and if you can only remember the first two you're okay so you need to drink a lot of water and you need to really take care of your feet and for ladies my hiking partner taught me about the pee rag which is a great way to dry off without using toilet paper that you have to pack out and you just rinse it out every night when we got into camp we went to the water source filled our dinner bowls with water took our bandanas and cleaned off and put on camp clothes so we wore the same clothes for hiking every day and we had a pair of lipo shorts a t-shirt a pair of cotton socks and crocs and I put those on after my washing off and I would put on my long pants and shirt again but then I'd that's what I would sleep in I'd sleep in the short t-shirt and the sensation of just ease and comfort as well as maintaining hygiene that way and of course that's when we would rinse out our pee rags I wore sock liners I had another pair so I would wash my socks out and I also did that with a pair of very fast drying underwear and I carried out a sort of clothesline in the back of my pack we would hang up clothes we would put up a clothesline if we needed to Catherine has the best cleaning system I'll let her tell you about it you can actually stay quite clean, comfortable and healthy on the trail but unless you're 16 years old you have to work at it yeah so I did exactly what she had you have one change of clothes you hike in and it gets disgusting and then you have one change of clothes like your good clothes from when you get to camp you change into those but for the washing down beforehand I had a short sleeve t-shirt dress take everything off put that on and you can wash off in front of everybody and nobody will know what you're doing like a little privacy tent that you're wearing can use it as your nightgown too and leaves leaves is toilet paper I don't know what the plant is called but they're about like this they're kind of like a large heart shape possibly but they grow everywhere about waist high they're the best toilet paper you don't need to bring toilet paper I found I wasn't needing toilet paper leave no trace injection into that it's it's amazing toilet paper but picking from far and distant places and making sure that you are wherever you're doing that you're disposing of your waste because if everybody in the world you wouldn't have any toilet paper but it's really good someone who hikes with a dog like dead fish you can imagine one of the grossest things she would roll in when she would find like cover up after they've come to the bathroom so that was a real issue with us with the dog of her finding places of that all the time so that was a little annoying for us take a little hole Dr. Brauners I brought some Dr. Brauners and we used it for our dishes a little bit just to kind of get the smell out so animals wouldn't want it but we didn't wash ourselves at all yeah hand sanitizer but I left behind my soap after three days I used my tea bag from the morning to kind of wipe out my pot once a day and I have a little spatula so you can clean it off really well but tea bag I love the stuff I used a fair amount that covers the whole thing it actually works quite well that's why my pack was heavy I had a fair amount of hygiene stuff my simple thing to do was I had a full down nylon bucket that would hold maybe almost a gallon water that I could scoop from a small stream and take 200 feet away from any stream and I used just a little bit of that and used like a loofah to scrub up and I felt great and if I could I would boil some water and make it even a hot shower but many times I would just do it cold it wasn't that bad and it was great to do it a bit clean every night and fresh socks fresh herb socks that you keep only for the weekend I stayed off trail at all I didn't hear you I stayed off trail three times and it was kind of nice with my three rest days also so it was kind of nice having like real food once a week and those were the days my parents would come see me and I made it I really enjoyed it I don't know if it was really necessary but it made the trip a lot easier I stayed at the Inn at Long Trail day 8 I stayed with friends in state day 19 I think I can't remember and yeah it was nice to have someone else cook but I also had these wonderful meals brought to me on these supply days so that was great I mentioned I took six breaks from trail and then I also stayed at a couple places that weren't in shelters just that in between shelters I worked as well as Cape Lookoff Mountain which had a fantastic almost on the summit easy to string a great view all night long that was great another beautiful spot I spent one night in Montpelier and at the Inn at Long Trail I came to their front yard they have really good food and beer and live Irish music Friday and Saturdays check that out and Manchester Centre there's a hostel I forgot the name it's Green Mountains they'll pick you up for you Ben and Jerry's ice cream and they'll drive you back to the trail and laundry, showers I'm not sure we have a couple of coffees downstairs take a little clean get out take some of this give me some paper medical tape I believe it was and I was also reading a listening to a podcast from an instructor who was talking about hiking tips and things one of the things he said that kind of stuck with me is if you feel a hot spot coming on what I do is if I felt like an area that would start to feel a little bit like a blistery I would stop everything off and I would put some of that paper tape on it just act as a little bit of an extra barrier I did pretty well and I got really one blistery back on so I had a foot covered in tape it definitely was not painless Scott you got some moleskin right there moleskin is great for prevention if you're trying to fill a hot spot and I was hiking in Alaska I discovered this incredible stuff called Compede which is if you do get a blister it's like you don't have a blister anymore it's that complicated bandage that covers in multiple layers has a little bit of vasculine on the inside of it and it was a lifesaver for me in Alaska and I never needed it on the trail never got blisters it was called now Band-Aid has taken over it I think it's called Compede it has multiple layers it kind of comes you put one layer on from below and then it's different than usual bandage you can see it from where you're sitting and pass it around I won't do it in both sides I'm going to see it it also is clear and even if you have an open blister it completely takes the pain away and it can heal up I just lucked out I just kind of felt a couple hot spots on my ankles put band-aids on them for a few days and then they calenced over pure luck I even bought my shoes online I bought them but I just kind of went on a gut feeling and it worked things chafe that you wouldn't expect to chafe back of the arms I did a tank top it was hot you get little hot spots everyone always talks about the feet being a place where you think you need to put all your attention but there's other spots of your body like if your shirt rides up in the back and your pack rubs on your lower back those little places that you wouldn't think of that you need to pay attention to those feet that kind of caught me off guard it's called Glide it makes it so you don't you just put it anywhere you feel chafing and it gets rid of there pretty well and I used and was absolutely saved by a product that had calendula and lemon balm and it made by the good company I was at the strolling of the heifers and brow brow and this guy was talking his way I told him I was doing the long trail he said take this put it on anything and I did and it was fantastic and I had some real serious I lost a toenail I had blisters I ended up buddy taping two of my toes together for most of the trip and my feet once I changed out my shoes my feet really healed up and then I found out how much my knees hurt so I used the tent almost every night underneath my knees when I slept on my back and that just helped a lot I had non-steroidal anti-inflammatories with me we also carried really restorative bourbon and chocolate I highly recommend it we decanted the bourbon into a small Gatorade bottle and we had one square of chocolate and it was so incredibly satisfying and now that I'm off the trail I say I'm just going to have one and I eat so much more chocolate on the trail there's one square of chocolate every night chased by a little bourbon really was a great thing yeah my knees my knees hurt a lot I started the hike with one knee in a lot of pain so I just bandaged them with ace bandages and then the trail magic happened and I found a second one but definitely if anything aches bandaged up a lot of Advil a lot of Advil helps my knees were hurting and very splabby I had my parents from hiking poles and hiking poles were probably the best thing I brought they make a huge difference especially going downhill you can put your support on something and it makes a lot easier underneath yes and they keep getting better and better hiking poles are more reliable you said that you started off with some heavy ones that you dropped Deborah? no I did the whole trail with really heavy ones and Jan my hiking buddy as a thank you gift sent me these really terrific ones which I've only used in the winter so far I've been back on the trail three times once Christmas New Year's and in the fall there were really lightweight poles and I would say that Lucky and some of the pole makers have the best outdoor gear warranty that I've ever seen so if they break you send it back and they'll send you a new pole within a week Lucky L-E-K-I also Black Diamond I just had a recent warranty issue with Black Diamond because they use them, they have a Z pole and then they bend forth like 10 pole technology I also use them skinning and they just broke and Black Diamond was absolutely awesome and stood on the product and I had never hiked with poles before and I've done a lot of backpacking I don't need poles, who needs poles someone was like get poles for the trip so I got poles and I was like it's all glad I got poles something else you can put on the bottom of your poles which the GMC has a lot of chair work we have crews out all summer long but you can buy these bottomed little pads for them so in most poles now they have sharp steel points but if you put a pad on there you're not going to be poking through every little piece of vegetation that's on there and the pads are much less impactful so I would encourage you to look for those L-E-K-I I just use the ones that I found in my basement that my dad used 38 years ago and they worked well and if I do it again I definitely look into lighter poles but like cheap poles worked no clue no we're coming down it's a really big thing and I was talking to someone who was talking about this time a lot of times you have to break them out so they're central here maybe someone trying to get as much as possible it's an awesome fact that they carry here it's really nice it has a sling for your poles so if you're walking on a flat and you fall and you just drag a pound and each hand or whatever you can sling them on the side just let it sling it up just keep walking it's really nice just to free your hands up for a while because you're walking 277 miles but it's nice to not have to have them in your hands and still get some knowledge one thing I always say when we hike on weekends and arms sometimes but the other one too since you guys are talking about trekking poles don't you think about something else with those tents and we got a Nino tent that uses the poles trekking poles for the states so I was wondering what kind of tent do you guys use I use this borrowed tent I think it was called I don't even know what it was called it's a two and a half pound tent that's two people with plenty of room for our panics but you couldn't sit up in it I wanted to say about the poles and the weight of the poles I use Romeo poles, they were the first poles I bought and I bought them because they were $20 each and they're no good anymore but they served fine you can get really into gear you can spend a lot of money on gear and I decided that aside from food maybe 150 meals it's not so bad not counting the bourbon and so the only the most this is for the people some of the people in here the most expensive item that I bought for the trip were these glasses because I usually wear I usually wear progressive lenses but I and I thought about contacts and then I thought well then I would need readers and then I'd need different readers from when I have my contacts in and then when I have them off and I would need sunglasses and prescriptions I'm just going to have a whole trailer just full of eyeglasses so I bought bifocals and they have a magnetic sunglass lens and that's all that was a pretty good thing I wanted to make one quick comment just regarding tonight it's about 8.30 now I think that we should talk for maybe another 10 or so minutes and then gave you guys all a chance to you know talk to people and if you guys have anything that you really want to show off in your packs so we can get a little bit more interactive for the last 15 or 20 minutes or so these people packed up their packs exactly like they would hike I think that's a really great resource for everybody so we should be able to explore that for the 10 we used we used a big Agnes I don't know two or two and a half pounds around there and it was like kind of cramped to people but since we're friends it was like not a big deal and like we kept our packs on the inside we put our shoes outside and we could sit up in it so it was really comfortable about about yeah ours was heavier ours was more like four and a half just what we had it was fine for him yeah I don't know it was a little calty 10 I used to go for it I'm sorry, my hammock was 3.4 pounds and I would use the 10 poles to open up you had to talk so you could like have a porch when it was nice out when it rained you put that down so you were really cocooned but they used the poles and it was about the same weight as my 10 plus sleeping pad to get it I used a little Zempire just kind of like a New Zealand REI brand maybe two pounds one pole so you do need the stakes but it's tiny but cozy it's kind of like a glorified baby sack I used to NSR Hubbub but it was kind of stripped down I just brought the rain fly in the pole so it got down to about 30 ounces so I've had friends that don't launch they didn't even bother with the 10 matter of fact one of them was I used to save the weight well I can get down to 30 ounces and save the weight there's so many shelters and there was never a time that I didn't that the shelters were overflowing where it would be, you know, where enough people was uncomfortable but I found that funny when it's nice and close you're not like stuck in the mummy but I got one of those commit static bees it's just a inflatable kind of cheaper but that pack don't really really smell too so it's a good system my daughter is on the AT right now and she bought a kit and ate a quilt that zips in half and her partner takes one half and she takes the other and it weighs nothing and they've been pretty warm although they hit some snow they didn't expect I had a 20 degree synthetic bag which after five days I realized was too hot too heavy so I shipped it home and then for a few days I used my tent fly it's like a little human burrito wrap until I borrowed one in Montelier a lighter down version and I just have one of those kind of flat inflatable pads that blows up to that that thick gives it a little extra cushion my pad's at the bottom of my pack there and I didn't buy a new I have a very big heavy sleeping bag but that's what I use, it's comfortable we're looking into investing in new ones but next trip southbound so I think right now seems a good time if you guys, if we can if you have any questions I am kind of interested in Scott's hammock and in your ruffwear thing because I want to get a dog and take a dog hiking so yeah I think that can conclude kind of a question and answer session and if you guys are willing to hang around for another 20 minutes or so so we can talk some more but thanks everybody for coming and I will be downstairs at some point and so if anybody wants to produce we can sell stuff from the store and if you have any questions the long trail guide will be coming out at the end of the month, new edition of the long trail guide with all updated trail information and a new edition of the end to enders guide will be out very very shortly so those are two things to keep your eyes out in planning your hike awesome, thank you