 I was looking at doing the John Muir Trail next summer or next late August and they just did a new permit thing to try to limit the crowds and I guess it's so crowded that like some people will fly like 20 straight days in a row for a permit and not get it. So I think I'm going to do it in September when there's like no one out there so that I can get a permit and so I don't have to deal with all the crowds. Oh that's helpful. Yep. Can I? Can you run together for a little bit and you'll come out taking the John Muir Trail song? Yes. It's my part right now. I have to get a beer, thanks. You don't have to, thank you. Yeah, especially at the party. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. She's got a lot of names. Yeah? Yeah? Yeah. So scary. Okay. I run into a only person on the house that was in the bottom. She's got this out. Oh, okay. Oh, okay. Cool. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Julie's really cool. I had my first Muissai Versace because I was in school. He was like young, he was young at the time. That was really cool. He was like, I was taking out Jason Muir Trail really early. And he was like, oh my god. And he was like, he was right there. Yeah, he was here in the morning. He was tired. He was like, he was in the morning. Can you say a word? Yeah. Oh, thank you. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. What about guards? Oh, cool. That's really cool. Wow. So we started streaming everybody. So I think we're going to get started. My name is Caitlin Miller. And I'm the group of our specialists here at the GMC. And I just wanted to thank you all so much for coming. And those of you who are tuning in at home, thank you so much for viewing. We're really excited for this year's panel. We've been running this panel for over 10 years now. So thank you so much for coming. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining us on this panel for over 10 years now. So it's a great resource for people who are thinking about hiking the long trail either this coming season or in the coming years. And we're super grateful and excited to have Orca Media here streaming for us. They've done it the past couple of years and they're always great. So the permanent link will be up in about a week on YouTube for people who want to check back after that or send it to friends and family or anything like that. And what we're super excited tonight is to have awesome panelists, I guess eight with the puppy girl down there. So we're just gonna go down the panel and we're gonna have the panelists introduce themselves with their name, their trail name, and how long it took them to hike the trail and then we'll dive right in with some trip planning questions. So we can start down the panel. My name is Doug Eaton, my trail name is Gray Jay, and the shortest time I've hiked the trail is 18 days through height. My name is Jamie Rainfield, trail name is Naples, and it took us 22 hiking days. My name's Sarah Kibbe Ramble, so it's my trail name, and I hiked with her so 22 days. My name is Jim Vane Orton, I had two trail names. One was Juicy, which was a college nickname. The other was 15 for two, which for anybody who plays college, high-class grouge, knows what that means, and I played a lot of grouge on the trail. It took me 13 years to hike the trail. I'm a section hiker. My name's Caleb Parent, my trail name is Mohawk. It took me 21 days to through hike the long trail. My name's James, my trail name's Turtle, and I haven't finished the long trail. I hiked the AT though, back in 2011, took me five months of four days. My name's Amanda Stern, my trail name is Commander, and this is my deputy dog, and we hiked it together in 28 days, including our rest days and days off the trail. So, end time. Awesome. So now that we've introduced the panelists, also just heads up for people watching at home. If you have questions that pop up while we're going, we do have, we did post the link and everything on our Facebook page, so if you ask questions in the comments section, we can address those at the end of the panel. We're also going to have a question and answer at the end of the panel, just in case we don't cover something. So, we'll dive right in with trip planning. We're going to kind of go down the panel for this question. What is kind of the rule of thumb for mileage per day for you? For me? Well, yeah, let's start with no doubt. I'm disappointed if I don't do 17 miles, but that's me. I can do 20, 15 is okay when you get more and more of, because it gets a little more congested with the ups and downs of them all. I think looking back, a happy medium for me would have been about 13 or 15 miles a day. Every day for us was different. We had a timeline that we had to finish by. So, some days were as short as 5 or 6, and somewhere as long as, I think our longest day was 19, 18 or 19 miles, and that I found to be very challenging. So, I think for me, 13, if I did it again, that's probably what I would try to average each day. I would say the same thing. When we started, we made a whole itinerary, very planful, and went from, we started just, her parents dropped us off and we just hiked just to the journey's end, spent the night there, and then, I don't know, I'm going to say the first day was like me, and then the next day was like 11, and just kind of like built up, gave ourselves the first, I think 3 to 4 days of like right around 8 to 10 miles before jumping into higher like 15, 17, things like that. But once you got down past like Killington, you could have very probably easily busted out like 20 miles with no problem. So, you went north to south? Yeah. And I've been both north and south, yes. I spent 32 days on the trail over my 13 years, and it's 273 miles, so probably 9 miles on average, just dividing it out. I worked and did it on weekends and things like that, so probably the afternoon I take the afternoon off and stroll up at the trail ahead and do 5 miles through a shelter and then do 10, 12, 14 miles the next day. Average they're on 15 miles per day. Some days I did 20 miles, some days I did 8 miles, kind of slacked off a little bit, but I'm kind of a big advocate for hike, you're on hike, so don't feel pressured to push a certain amount of miles. Just hike at your own pace and do what you're comfortable with. I definitely agree, hike, you're on hike, whatever's most comfortable. I like to take short days. I mean, I've definitely pushed longer 20 mile days, but I enjoy a nice 10 to 12 or maybe 15, and you know, get to camp, have the rest of the afternoon yourself, things like that. I'm a big advocate also of hike, you're on hike, and my philosophy was hike from camp to camp, so that varied every day for me. There were some days I was able to do like a 9 mile day to an 18 mile day, and it was very inconsistent, but for me it's, I wanted to base my average on my dog, so I would be really attentive to her throughout the day, watch when she was happy, when she was getting a little tired or sluggish, and pace it based on what she was able to do. So she was my primary hiking companion, and therefore all my decisions were made for her. In the same day we're trip planning for either section hiking or through hiking, how did you get to the trail, and if you parked your car, is there a good place you can kind of leave it for the duration of your hike? And then, Jim, since you did sections, how did you negotiate that as well, so we'll start with Craig, Jim. My wife, right there, she drove me off, and every 125 miles maybe she restarted. She said, I'll be there at 10 o'clock on such a day, so sometimes you're under pressure to be there, because if she arrives there and I'm not there, she could think I got hurt out there, or something happened to me. So going back to the miles thing, sometimes you have to put those miles in, because the next day you're always constantly dealing with adversity, the weather can change on very quick. So you can't hike the next day. So how do you make up those miles? If you're doing 15 miles a day, how do you make that up? You can't. So I call it putting my miles in the bank. So if the next day is bad, I'm there. No matter what I'm there, I have never not met her. I'm always there. And she, if it was up the trunk, I'd fill my pack with food. You know, maybe a trip to the laundry mat, and I'm gone. So we relied on mostly family for picking us up and bringing us to. My parents dropped us off at Derny's End. My mom met us in Johnson and brought us into town where we had shipped our supply box there. And my aunt Kay picked us up at the Winooski River Bridge. My parents picked us back up and brought us back after a night off the trail. I'll let you tell them about hitchhiking. But then her parents picked us up at the end as well. So, but there was one section where we had to rely on ourselves and thinking. Well, yeah, I think when our parents found out that we were planning to hitchhike, especially in Johnson, her mom was immediately like, no, well, I'll come get you, even though it was an hour out of her way. And then we did, sorry mom, if you're watching, because she doesn't know this, hitchhike from the Brandon Gap down to Middlebury. People just kept passing us and passing us. Why isn't anyone picking us up? Maybe it's because there's two of us. Maybe it's because we're sitting here and we don't look like we're exerting. So let's start walking. All these different, like, what ifs, and we probably walk another three or four miles. And I was like, well, no one from New Hampshire, that's where I'm from, has gone by yet and then a New Hampshire car went by and immediately pulled over. And I was like, yes! She made us all the different hiking. She had done some of the AT at some point and drove us wherever we wanted to go, which was immediately to a gas station to get food. Yeah, 90% of my wife, she took me everywhere. We had one time when the trail ahead I needed to get to was Lincoln Gas. And I really didn't do my homework as well as I should have. But we were driving down 100 and coming in from the east side and started up to the Gap and there was still snow on the road. So she had to turn around, go all the way around to the west side, bring me up from the west side, which was full of clear to get me to the trailhead. And by the time I was hiking south and I was in the Clarendon area, and I thought I was going to get down to, what the hell's the town? Down below the Rutherland anyway. And I got soaked. The only time I got wet the whole time. She was down in Allenton with her friends, thinking I was going to be hiking down close to her. She could come pick me up the next day. I stopped, went into Delhi, called and said, you've got to come back and get me. I'm out for the day. So she turned around for a month and came all the way back. And we dropped cars. Fortunately, I live up here. I live in that exemption. So oftentimes in the north part of the area, we'd go together to 242 or 105 and drop a car. Take me to, she'd drop me to the trailhead and then I'd pick up the car where I got down to the hike and head home. But she was always there. Thank God. I was lucky enough to have my parents. My mom dropped us on the terminus and my dad took me out to the northern terminus. Throughout the trail, though, I did hitchhike a few times for months, really friendly with hitchhikers. So I wouldn't have any problem relying on hitchhiking to and from towns to resupply and everything along those lines. We'll be on the road for you. Just know that there's enough hikers. Drive around state of month. If you're out there with a pack in the back, you're going to get a ride. Very true. When you're in close proximity to Israel, people have an idea. They see some of the backpack. They know what you're doing. And I love hitchhiking. I think it's hilarious. You meet some really cool people out there. Most of the time people are like, oh, where can I take you? Let me drop you off right where you go. As far as the northern and southern terminus, I know there is long-term parking available at the southern terminus. Could you tell us more? Yeah, so I think it's the community center in North Adams. They let hikers park there far their long-term. They're really nice to use parking there a lot. We've done it before. And so you can look into that if you're going to start in the south. I wouldn't recommend leaving your car long-term at journeys and parking. So I had friends drop me off both for the southern terminus and then pick me up at the northern terminus. And then everywhere in between, I hitchhiked with my dog. And I was lucky enough to meet some awesome day hikers or overnight hikers along the way and people that were super gracious on the trail and just striking up conversation with them. They'd offer to bring you to town or give you a ride somewhere. So having a dog was always a concern for me if hitchhiking is hard enough as it is, much less with a dog. But there were just some wonderful people that I was able to meet and got rides everywhere. So it was great. So for kind of planning out your meals, did you all find that you use MailDocs more or did you resupply in town? And if so, do you have any good towns that you really enjoyed? You can really plan it, right? I mean, if you can carry a week's worth of food, you can take the bus. You walk up from the trailhead to the round trail and you can take the bus into Rutland to resupply again for another week, not quite a week. Then when you cross, you can go into Jonesville, you can go into Richmond. There's a three-mile walk. You know, if you hike 15 miles a day, you'll do the three-mile walk. But you can get a ride. And there's a grocery store in Richmond. Then if you can carry enough food from Richmond, you can resupply in Johnson for the end, to the end. So, I mean, you can take care of yourself. You can. I hiked into... I was coming south one time and I hiked into... I added six miles to my day for a pint of ice cream. And you do it again. Because I mean, eating crackers and... I was dust. I'm going to jump in. I took you to Johnson. I have a camp in Lowell. I go from here to Johnson and Lowell. So, I'm going through Johnson all the time. And I see four guys with packs and poles walking. They just come off the trail and they're walking into Johnson to eat and wash. They all loaded them in my Jeep and they got in and we closed the doors. Did they stink? Oh, there's snow. That comes with it. I pick them up every time. We were loaded to the room. So, Sarah and I had all of our resupply boxes figured out for Johnson and then in Manuski and then again at my place in North Ferrisburg. And then we... When we got to Manchester, we actually went into the town and used the grocery store there. And there's also an EMS there as well which came in very handy for me because I left my hiking boots at the shelter prior and didn't realize it. My feet were very sore so I was wearing my sandals. It was like an easy two mile hike and I could not go back and get them. I was like, I just can't go back. I have to keep going. So, there's also an EMS there which was awesome. It was quite a good temper tantrum. Yes. I went on back for my $100 boots. She was like, I can't do it. Manchester and everything that we needed. There. I'll pass. I never had to do more than four days worth of food so I didn't have any trouble like through a bike or two. Yeah, I normally carried around five days at a time. I went backpacking a little bit lighter so I stopped more frequently. I think I stopped around four times. I didn't mail any resupply boxes. I pretty much just went into town, went to the grocery store. I didn't have family members but there's a lot of town along the way. Manchester Center is probably the number one that most people stop at which has everything you need at the grocery store. They also have McDonald's which is awesome. And from there I went to Rotland. Rotland has everything you need. I also stopped in Jericho which is my home but after that I went to Johnson like many other bakers did and Johnson is awesome. They just got a new grocery store there last year. So yeah, I think I stopped around four times. I have also carried around five days of food at a time. It was just a nice round number of meals to carry. I really enjoyed stopping in Rotland at the long trail. It's always a really great stop. It was super friendly to hikers. It's always nice that we could get off the trail. This might be more applicable for a longer distance but I did quite a few mail drops and if you get to a post office and you realize you actually don't want to go to the box at that time without opening that box you can then forward it onto your next point and then stop in the grocery store and change your mail plan a little bit which is really nice to be tired of the same thing you've got for me. So I did four mail drops to myself along the way because I also had to ship my dog's food so I didn't have as much flexibility with being able to get off the trail and just buy stuff at a grocery store and I made sure for her that I shipped dehydrated food as well as dried dog food to supplement how many calories she'd be burning throughout the trip. So I stopped at Inns along the way. I stopped at Dandy at the silkscrap within the long trail in. Fillington was awesome. The highway in and then the deer ride motor in always sees my boxes and it was pretty awesome. My last box didn't arrive so I did have to stop at a grocery store but it was probably a great morale boost because I got to buy cheeses, cocktails and things that I had been shipping to myself and I actually have not been able to eat oatmeal since because that's all I packed in every single box but that was a lesson learned but I love dehydrating my own food so I tried to vary it up a bit and used a big box drop. It took me almost a year to eat the meal because I didn't know how to eat it. So we're going to kind of move a little bit more into gear so everyone kind of has maybe their favorite piece or pieces of gear out on the table but what's one kind of I guess luxury item that you guys brought that you couldn't leave at home or if you didn't bring one then that's why I'm here. I'm going to start. I'm going to start. I taught a couple of people how to play privilege while I was on the trail and I sat around some very nice campfires at picnic tables and watched the evening fade away and made some good friends. That was my luxury item. My western, I bring a western because if you get to the shelter early you've got a lot of time sometimes and it helps for you to go to sleep and I bring a western, I read. I brought my phone. It was to me not only a safety piece that I could call and check in with mom and dad but it also allowed us to blog along the way which was really nice and then just to you know if we had internet service just to play friends game or just unwind with it at night but it also served as a camera too so my luxury item. I brought my iPod and used it to bring earplugs. It's probably the biggest piece of advice I could give you if you're going to sleep in a shelter because it's like a little sleeping inside a wooden amplifier of big burly men snoring like oh god, the first night well the first night there was no one there but like the next time I think we got earplugs from your mom or in that first resupply box or something. So thankfully I had an iPod and I had loaded like a bunch of podcasts on it but it was just nice to fall asleep listening to that. I probably listened to them tonight but it was just kind of drowned out any other sound that people were making. Questions? Yeah, yeah. Did you just go into town and charge your stuff, your phone and so on? I actually had a battery charger that I brought with me that didn't end up working very well at all so it gave me about a half a charge one day but for the most part I turned the phone on airplane mode because you don't need anything to use the camera and so I just turned it on when I needed to use it and then turned it back off and that actually got me four or five days. Didn't you bring a spare battery too? I had a spare battery and then I also had a charger with me so whenever we were in town or at home I plugged it in and charged both batteries. One thing that I brought which I would consider a luxury is so can shampoo and everything and if I were really thinking I actually wouldn't have brought that it was quite heavy in my bag probably around five or six ounces and you don't need to be showering and using soap every day. I mean you can wait five days to take a shower between looking at your own soap soap and water or soap and shampoo if you think about wearing that I wouldn't even bother on this. I also carry a book but you mentioned having headphones in to kind of drive me out. I carry ear plugs. It's like my number one necessity item. You could be camping in a shelter or maybe in a shelter near a road and it's just really hard to sleep so I would suggest everyone carry ear plugs. Probably wouldn't be considered a luxury item but I carried the bare minimum for clothing but I made sure I always had a set of camp clothes. So I had a dry synthetic shirt and pair of spandex and wool socks that never left shelters or my sleeping bag so they would stay in there, they'd be warm and sleep with them in there so they were always clean and then other than that I also brought camp shoes because there was nothing better than taking your boots off at the end of the day, letting your socks dry out letting your feet dry out and having something else to walk around in I mean a camel from a bear coat but I had the lightweight shoes. In the spirit of keeping dry we've had a lot of questions about what to do or kind of how to stay dry in the rain and did you kind of have like a rain gear system that worked for you? I wear these. There's rain pants, a lot of people complain that that you'll sweat in them but I always hike in September in October so I have to dress like this. These I've hiked in the rain all day long for a lot of days and these are dry real fast in maybe an hour if you keep them on do not take them off and hang them in the shelter, they're not going to dry and I'll bet you everybody here that's hung socks or anything that's wet in the shelter hasn't dried if you're not going to have sun to lay them out on the picnic table or a rock they're not going to dry so these are great because while I'm setting up my bed because I do that first even before I eat because by then I'm so tired they're dry and then I just hang them up to give them a little air and then I just put on my thermal underwear bottoms and jump in my down bag and I had pants similar to that and then I just had like a raincoat light weight raincoat that I could unzip you know in the armpits and air out if I needed to, had a hood some pockets which was nice but other than that I mean the first five days of our hike it rained and there's you know we kind of figured there's not much you can do at that point you're going to get wet so basically the same thing I didn't bring the rain pants and just a raincoat and a pack cover and then I also did bring just a big trash bag as well that I just put inside my pack rather than like spending 50 bucks for a pack liner or one of those other pieces of things and just put everything inside it and then just tie it up so with the pack cover the pack and then that inside it was fine and same thing I called plastic bands but on material they said to water and dry fast if you keep them on a big pack cover and a little hat hooked them on the back of my pack that I took out and pulled on my head waited for it to stop raining I used frog tops it's an ultra lightweight beautiful kind of synthetic material I liked it, it wasn't great I mean it's kind of cheap material but honestly if it was raining pretty hard I wouldn't even bother putting on rain gear I would just hike in my shorts I would invest in a good pack cover though to make sure everything inside your pack stays dry but I mean you're close to dry your body is going to get wet regardless of what you wear so my suggestion is to invest in a good pack cover I definitely agree I also use a pack liner you'll see on the floor of that large orange bag I was most concerned with whatever was in my pack name to stay dry even if my pack out wet it's not that big a deal as long as the continent stays dry when I was sleeping back to stay dry close to stay dry besides that I carried a rain jacket I would wear it if it was too warm I just felt like I was persuading inside of it I wanted to bring it on so it was definitely on the cooler side so I had both rain pants and a rain jacket but it was more so for the point of time where I was on a tree line windy I wanted something to a hard shell to break the wind but I mostly just hiked in the spanish because they dried out pretty quickly and you get used to pulling damp clothes on every morning and get used to it pretty quickly because that's everyday and I would sleep with my damp clothes at the foot of my sleeping bag and when I woke up they'd be warm soon as they're damp they're still warm to pull on so it wasn't as big a deal that sounds gross but it works fine so in that same vein of keeping things dry what footwear recommendations do you guys have what shoes did you wear on your hike and maybe some tips for kind of taking care of blisters and keeping your feet always bring moleskin moleskin moleskin I always wear just trail suits some people like boots and that's fine but I like to feel what I'm touching whether I'm going up rocks sometimes like going up Mount Abraham or something those rocks can be wet I want to feel it with my feet and I feel better in this type of a shoe people say well what about ankle support okay if the high shoes are given your ankles any more support also a trick I use is because socks are very important socks get wet real quick and if you get dirt in those socks it acts like sandpaper and it's going to put blisters on your feet because there's lots of mud bags I put bags on my feet over my socks and then I put my feet in my shoes and I can get 3 days out of a pair of socks so then I can wash up here and at the end of the 4 days I still have socks I usually carry 3 pairs of socks because I want sleepy socks too so you have your socks and you put a plastic bag that's right I step right into these bags and then I put my foot in my shoes and I know you're going to think that these bags now I'd rather sweating socks than wet socks and let me tell you I have stepped into mud that's gone up to my shoes and I'll tell you exactly where going up Lowaway when you cross between Lowaway Lookout and Lowaway Mountain you're going to discover mud I don't care what time of year it is I've had through the long trail 9 times and I'm here to tell you lots of mud lots of mud and so you forget like you say about your shoes forget about keeping your shoes dry and clean and everything else that's not going to help I spend probably out of a week my shoes are definitely wet 5 days plastic bags I met this woman I'm hiking through and she still wanted to tip me off to that she said I'll put the bag on your feet and I had forgotten that because I had done that when I was a kid and I had forgotten about that I said ah yeah you're right so I tried to come south when I hit snow and stuff coming south yes it will make your feet sweat but it's a difference between taking your socks off and the rain and the mud and the water out of them then I'd rather you know you stand a better chance of drying damn sweaty socks than you do soaking wet where you're ringing them out is that something you did in the summer as well as the fall ones? no I always do it in September sometimes I go north and then south and wear the bags in the summer but I because you're going to have probably more sun so you can rinse those socks out and you can dry them on rockings but in the fall it's different I hit a lot of rain you can't count on the weather I hit ten inches of snow my first time I could watch ten inches of snow for Mount 108 it was closed but I didn't want to quit so and then you're going to be looking for the trail even in the fall you will look for that trail but leads hide a lot of things I mean the trail I was looking for brush cuttings for more people the trail crew did the trail work in the summertime to find my way socks socks socks socks keep them dry you'll see get some mud in them you'll find out most of them your name should be socks I'm telling you some boosters on my feet painful painful open sores so I purchased a nice pair of sandals that were camp sandals that had a really nice tread on them but they also gave my feet a break when my feet were really hurting from my hiking boots so I wore them for a good part of the hike as well but what I learned towards the end of the hike which I had wished now that I had done at the beginning of the hike was at every break that I had I took everything off my feet spent some time rubbing some icy hot massaging out my feet letting them air out and really just taking care of them gold bond worked really well so I put some of that on and then put everything back on again at lunch I would take them off again in the afternoon I would take them off and that seemed to help it would at least get me through the next couple of hours until they really started to hurt again and then it was like okay time for a break and then I got to do the whole thing over again so that's what helped I see I see hot yeah it's like a pain in my muscle yeah yeah I would say pretty much the same thing she said I've always liked the keen brand of shoes just love them and then I thought the ones that are attached to my pack down there they're just mural low top ones and I probably liked 90 or 100 miles of them before I went you know broke them in there was not going to be anything like weird with them but it just I got in the heart of my foot really really bad pain so I've since bought this little it's like a little tiny massager ball it only weighs like an ounce so and now when I like even if it's like a 10 mile day height of just when I sit down I'll take you know massage the ones in my feet things like that with it and it works wonders it's that big and it fits like 3 bucks and it fits right in the side of their pack and then also like what he said in socks I think I carry three or four pairs one to hike it each day and then you know they were wet at all I would just put them with safety pins right off my pack to drive and I had a pair of camp socks and then another pair for just in case something happened to the other pair and then also on like on my poles I had duct tape so I've used the moleskin before that you mentioned yeah duct tape for me just I didn't really think it was all that worthwhile and I just stuck duct tape over my blisters it's a little rough coming off but it doesn't hurt nearly as bad as the blister hurts so and then it had multiple other uses as well I know the benefit of the second hiking is you don't have to do 270 miles in boots without stopping I didn't do more than about 40-45 miles in any height I wore Merrill leather ankle-high boots with vitamin soles I'm blessed with Tita I never got a blister once and then I thought of the section hiking never twisted an ankle I think those boots had a little light with support but I think it might be more in lows I still wouldn't find my ankles just seem to be fine speaking to her point I had a pair of Tiva sandals that I strapped to the back of my pack every night as soon as I could get my boots off those sandals were on and I was like stepping into a different world do yourself a favor get something but I was comfortable for you which was more of around inside or outside on the rocks around camp and that kind of thing and I wore smart wool socks no liners no plastic bags but they served appropriately they were very comfortable I fit well in my boots with one pair or I could use smart wool socks that's all I did I liked Merrill I like darn tough sand socks and smart wool both of those were cool for me I normally carry two pairs of socks at a time drawing one pair in the back of my pack while I'm walking and wearing another pair and going back to her point every time you stop for a break getting water, having a snack take off your boots like feet hard enough and kind of air out a little bit because your feet are always going to be soggy no matter how often you stop I used the combination of duct tape and wool skin it didn't help a ton I still got horrible blisters blisters are just something you can pretty much count on I think I can so I use new balanced trail runners they're more of a tennis shoe they're I guess I just got used to the idea that no matter what your feet are going to be wet in one instance or another and they're so lightweight that if I stick them out overnight there's a good possibility that they're mostly air dry even without sun exposure I like a good wool sock you just got to take care of your feet familiarizing yourself with your actual foot size your wide size possibly getting a half size to a size larger because if you've never hiked or haven't hiked long distance before you're probably going to have some foot swelling so so I do a lot of backpacking in the whites in New Hampshire regularly so the boots that I used for the long trail were boots that I had really well broken in and didn't buy anything for the trail or anything but what I did buy were a pair of secret feet insoles just to replace those and those helped immensely just reducing some of the rubbing or any of the general foot pain that I get throughout the day I didn't blister but I would get a couple of hot spots every now and again and my relief for that was duct tape my dog actually got a rub from her pack and ended up getting a little blister so I had something a little jar called goo which is a little organic but I think it's my Sierra Sierra is the brand but it helped to clear that up right away and I was able to put that on my hot spots pretty much keep them and produce the friction on them and I sent her back home and carried her food the rest of the way so she was pretty spoiled and didn't blister or get any rubs after that so if you have to keep your feet dry the wool socks are the best I carried three pairs which was probably excessive but like I said I had one pair that never left camp so that was only for at night in my sleeping bag later on your feet are wet and saw me all day so some people speak just gauge your body listen to your feet as well so if you need to stop, if you're getting a hot spot stop before it turns into a blister yeah Vaseline works really well putting Vaseline on your feet every day and then if you stop in the middle of the day taking Vaseline and putting it back on your feet again and then any blisters at all do you have a question? yeah, it's one of your panelists can tell us a little bit about if any of them carry a tent or whether your own shelters are available do you have any thoughts on the tents versus shelters? I always shelter it I don't carry a tent although this year I think I'm going to carry a tarp what I do isn't right okay and I'm going to tell you because you're going to have what's called college orientation they are all already during the fall just before school starts I'm not even sure what it is they use the shelters too and sometimes the most I've slept in a shelter and I'm talking about one of them open face 14 people that's a lot of people they're made for what? it really depends on what shelter but most of them are made for about 8 people and it was poor I had just hiked 19 miles from root 4 now the next shelter was another 8 miles away I'm going to have that in me I begged they let me in so it's a chance you're taking for room let's first come first serve and I think the tent would be the better way to go you definitely didn't carry a tent a little privacy if you're tired if the weather changes on you set up the tent you made the decision not to carry a tent I made the decision not to you know a few times I've paid for it just to insert it officially the GMC asked that everyone when a hike brings a tent for that same reason and then you're not making other tent sites at sites that perhaps don't have impacted sites but the official blurred so Sarah and I we experienced the college orientation our experience was that they were all very respectful that they gave space to us coming in and even slept 3 to a bunk so we could have our own bunk together we were lucky enough that we slept in the shelter every single night except for the last night which we decided we haven't used the tent at all let's just use it and we actually split the cost of the tent so she it was a two person tent she carried half I carried the other half and I think it was a nice kind of just safety to have just in case the shelter is full or whatever we had that security with us we also got up really early though hiking even by headlamp you know just for the first couple miles and then stop at the next shelter to actually have breakfast or things like that so we were usually in camp really early like maybe 4 o'clock was like our latest day one day whereas a lot of people hiked till way much longer after that so we didn't really aside from what was at the Tilliston camp I think there was a bunch of of the college students we didn't really run into too many problems being a second hydro I didn't carry a tent at all I potentially plan on staying in shelters and I have a college orientation story I hiked from the Massachusetts border up to Stratton 3 nights for todays I stopped the first night in South Warner Shelter I got there and nobody was there 10 students from Williamstown Williamstown College on orientation weekend I keep looking to stay in the shelter a family of 4 from the Albany area rolled in to South Warner Shelter this is all between 4 and 5 o'clock in the afternoon and then 3 through hikers on the application trail came out so it was 18 people I wound up sleeping in the shelter by myself all the orientation people went under a big tarp about 100 yards down the road a long tarp and strapped it up to the trees the through hikers all had tents and the family of 4 also had a tent it was the strangest family shelter experience I had the whole time but if you're early September Dartmouth Middlebury Williams they all go out the UVM they all go out on a trail they go out on a trail big admins lightweight I love my tent that I have right now I was definitely carry a tent if you think about through hiking I had a couple of more experiences up north there was a couple of times where I ran into summer camp groups of like 8 to 10 kids and they just built a shelter up and they were kind of intrusive and a little bit rude so I decided to tent out most of the nights that I had other people in the shelter like that sometimes certain shelters just weren't appealing Cooper Logo on top of Hamilton was pretty horrible so I said it to a couple of other nights shelters were full so I had to tent out so never really count on having a spot in a shelter there's always going to be people on trail whether the groups or families or other through hikers but the other thing is there's tent platforms and actual campsites that lack shelters that some have great beaches and great water sources things like that that you miss out on if you have a tent or a tarp or a hammock I've used a hammock before I really enjoyed that it takes a little getting used to I currently own a tarp and just got rid of a tarp tent and I'm really interested in doing it's just always good to carry some sort of shelter for yourself also there's an emergency middle of a rain storm you want to spot somewhere it's a good thing I have to worry about I also carry a tent and I used to do it only once but I carry it mostly because having a dog you don't know if people in shelters are going to be comfortable with your dog there and unfortunately you need to have an alternative or you're sharing space with a large group of people you do have to defer to how the majority feels but luckily we were able to stay in shelters the whole way and she actually seeks really well in shelters and goes inside my sleeping bag at night so she's not very invasive to other people and it's my own personal space heater but I did bring a big Agnes tent I used it once on the summit wrongly and that was pretty awesome because we camped out in the open and woke up in the clouds but other than that I would say carry it just for emergencies and just in case but you might fuck out and not have large groups there were a few nights where I had shelters all to myself especially towards the north and later in September I stayed at Willingby Douglas all by myself I stayed at Cases Notch with one other friend that I had met along the way but when we hiked together we had several shelters pretty much along I just probably up on the dog I had the same experience I was at Birch Glen just south of Campbell Slum and ran into a group of six women who were hiking and had one dog and then two guys who were hiking had a dog also we all showed them a Birch Glen and the dog that the women were hiking with was not friendly to the other dog and had she not had a tent just don't be surprised that that situation does come up she stepped out with the dog and the tent and they were fine and the rest of her group stayed in the shelter it does occur and kind of staying in the dog Amanda did you find any other challenges you need taking with the dog or any other things you had to kind of adjust or yeah definitely there are a lot of ladders on that trail I would say if you're going to bring your dog absolutely have a harness for them whether or not it's a pass harness that your dog is able to carry or just a harness with a strap on it something that you can rub on and guide your dog down ladders with and always have a leash as well because nobody wants a dog going through a camp cook site and you don't want her going in begging for other people's food so I had a leash, I had a harness I was very attentive to her feet and made sure that she wasn't getting any cracks in the path of her feet or anything and like I said she did get one rug from her pack because she was carrying her food for the first couple of days and as soon as I saw that she was getting a rug I actually took her food and carried it myself and I sent her pack home so I carried her food for probably one back days my pack is definitely on the heavy side but it was totally worth it because my hiking partner was happy and a very healthy looking dog on the trail she's really restless right now so sorry I've done that it's been a long time I should interject the long trail goes over a handful of very sensitive alpine zones and so carrying a leash for your dog is very important because any trash or any stepping on to those alpine zones not just that porcupines too there are porcupines and I don't think to know your dog I think it was her pretty much every weekend as it is and we had been hiking together since she was four months old they need to have strong recall so if you're on the trail and they take off after something it could be a group of people it could be a critter, it could be anything you want to make sure your dog is going to be attentive to you and come back so I would say if you're considering bringing your dog make sure that you've been working on that and that's something that's reliable and there are road processes as well sometimes there are small forest roads but people fly down them so you don't let your dog darting out into the forest road and you're not having a leash and that's where your recall is thank you so this is back to everyone do you have any stove recommendations or preferences for cooking that you use? I used to use a MSI Whisperer because it heats things fast but by the time you carry the canister or fuel which is heavy the stove itself is heavy you can pack it in your use of titanium cup and eat out of that I found that after this last time I did it I went to a pocket rocket to uh butane oh the butane canisters yeah and now I find I don't eat a hot meal I eat out of my pockets all day so I don't have to stop uh every night I make myself a little bed of stuff for my breakfast my lunch and while everybody's because I'm old so it takes me longer to get there but the young guys can get there and uh you know 8 hours will take me 12 so I zip lock up some chocolates and nap crackers and these jerky and that's my breakfast and my lunch and I get hungry you know I feel a little I grab something out of it and I walk and eat and I keep my bottle of water right in my pocket and I drink and I do stop but very rarely if there's a view you know just to look at something like airport lookout or to look at a moose I have more time I do not stop there's people that'll stop well if I have 2 hours I'm going to break and I want snack and then they'll stop and they'll break out their stove and they'll have lunch and everything else and that's fine whatever is going to work for you we're all going to tell you what we do but you're going to find what works for you so that was me and Sarah we kind of got into this really nice routine that we wake up in the morning and we get the hot water going we have coffee and then we would stop about 2 hours later we'd have oatmeal and then we'd have something dry, quick and easy for lunch but then in the evening we'd have a hot meal as well so we used that stove quite a bit and mine was similar to the MSR you know had the fuel cans that you carried and we found that we didn't use nearly as many of those cans as we thought we were going to considering how much we used it so I still have like 10 cans of it in my spare bedroom how many extra that we bought just being so over prepared and when her mom came out and met us at the trail was like bringing us four more like we don't even need them so it was surprising how little fuel it actually burned and it was nice, it was just really quick and easy to set up it heated water up super fast and it was easy to kind of pack away too really lightweight to have like a nice hot meal at the end of the day that's just what I thought on it and I absolutely love oatmeal so that's what we ate every single day and we still love it we pre-bagged like all of it and got it all ready you know I put double batches of oatmeal in every bag she gets extra cinnamon I just get like one shake with like walnuts then I dehydrated my own bananas dehydrated my own strawberries all different things and it dehydrated mangoes so like every day there was different types of fruit in it at least but we were always eating oatmeal just because I felt like you know it's a good like carve up for everything that you're going to be putting, exerting for the rest of the day so if you you thought you were eating a lot more people then you ended up using a lot less how much did you use on the end then you know I bet you that we probably we each carried a canister of it just like this that he has not even six between the both of us I was going to say four or five maybe and when we left originally we each took one of those and then also the small size one just like as a backup of just in case but then I think when we stopped at her house like midway through it was kind of like well we don't even need this and we just took just one small one each I would I would never carry just one of these just because I can't really tell how much is in there so there's always a backup in the pack even for you know my three overnights I love this thing I had the pleasure of carrying a little more weight and some of the peripheral stuff that these people did they had a lot longer to go and they were a lot more sensitive to what the weight in the pack was but you know this guy goes on here and then the burner goes on top of it and it was very simple to use you pack it away in a little carrying case and basically did the same thing and I sat about this high had a little mantle in it and allowed me to play cribbing or solitaire or read a book at night or whatever I wanted to do and can't he did my oatmeal in the morning and my meal almost every night was a combination of cup of soup, minute rice and white meat chicken and a little tuna fish type can and I mixed the three of them up either tomato or vegetable and so I got some protein I got some rice and all of those and power bars all the time this little alcohol stove it's you might know that it's like a pop can stove it's just a lightweight kind of thing you put isopropanol or some sort of alcohol when you do it it will just strike a little spark into it and it catches fire it's a little thing that goes on top of it I put my cup on it it worked alright one thing I had trouble with was wind I had this little windscreen that I made up to put around it and it didn't work as well as I hoped so I used quite a bit of fuel trying to boil water and it took me quite a bit of time to start boiling water so for my next trip I actually bought a chap oil those worked really well and I think they worked the weight a couple of guys I hiked with during the long trip had water going in two minutes and I was sitting there with an alcohol stove kind of five minutes later getting a little bit of bubbles coming up so the weight it's good it's four ounces probably compared to half pounds to 12 ounces on chap oil but I definitely think if you wanted a lightweight alcohol stove it was a good option but that would suggest something other like a jambola or something if you're going to be curfew so it depends how hungry you are how fast do you want it this will be the case I also use a whisk they're just super light you can buy the smaller size the larger size I'm sure it was a big one those were great I've used these alcohol stoves before they work fine too and there's also not all the campsites have designated fire rooms that some of them do and if you're filling up to it you want to collect the wood so I used the MSR pocket rocket as well and a nice thing about it I take my time with cooking and making my meals I'd always do tea first and emergency packets are awesome as tea I find they're not palatable but they're in cold water but they're a lot better if you drink them as tea because they dissolve more so I'd always do an emergency packet in the morning maybe an emergency packet at night and then cooking I'd be able to cook slowly because I'd be tired of my food so I'd do black beans and rice and I'd try to be like a little back country chef so I need something to control the flame more than just like an alcohol stove I'd use them, they're fun, they're awesome but it didn't really work well for me so for the trailer I got this so you touched on some of the menu ideas what are some other menu ideas that you want? freeze dried food is good too because freeze dried food I mean I'm sorry, dehydrated food what I usually do with my dehydrated food is I put it in my mouth take a little bit of my water and leave it in my mouth as I'm walking it turns back in the food because I think it's delicious oh, where is it going? so that's one of the things I've done I'll say the same thing I carry jerky a lot I'll sip off the camel back with the jerk in your mouth chew and walk and taste a lot of flavor so it's good make your own though absolutely what about pasta? so Sarah for us was a dehydrated queen so I made for example like a turkey chili type thing and then gave it to her and she dehydrated it but you could do that for anything you could do that for beef stew it was a turkey stew potato like black bean chili and then other things that we ate were pasta type thing it's like a tube I get it at Market Basket but in New Hampshire there are it looks almost like a tube of toothpaste and it is concentrated spaghetti sauce and then I had dehydrated mushrooms and red peppers other things like quinoa and salmon tuna with sunflower oil we tried to eat as healthy as possible and at one point we had another like a trail in New Hampshire and we ate all those backpacker backpacker meals and I just became like after like two days of it I felt like bloated and like puffy and I think all these did not go well so for this we're like that's it we're going to do all of our own stuff so I mean it took weeks and getting up at like 2am to take things out of the the dehydrator to put new things in and a lot of planning but it was definitely worth it because we had some trail mix with you know use like macadamia nuts and cashews and almonds and all purposely seeking out like higher calorie things so it's definitely not expecting to feel as hungry as possibly did by like day 5 it was just like oh my god and we went north to south so we were doing the harbor part first and it was just like I don't think I've ever felt so bad in this in my life and so just seeking out higher I mean pretty much whatever works for you and all things like that you're going to lose weight you will be able to eat anything you want to in 7 weeks I lose 35 pounds every single time I do it why do we lost 7 that's 550 miles 550 miles both ways the other thing we did is we created a little spice kit I took a little M&M container I cut some straws and folded each end but I added in it salt, pepper, cumin some Montreal steak seasonings garlic powder onion powder and so it just kind of spiced it up a little bit tuna and rice can get kind of bland garlic or onion powder on there it makes a world of difference you can find it there's like a directive on the YouTube of how to make it I think is what I found at the center part it's like well I'm dehydrating all this stuff I can't make these but it was fantastic even just have salt I wasn't as ambitious as my daughter I didn't freeze-dry any amount of things I used a lot of pasta sides and tuna a little mashed potato dehydrated mashed potato things one thing I always made sure I had was olive oil I had a little bit of olive oil that would make 100 calories it's a great way to add extra calories into your meal just a little bit of olive oil on it whatever it is, it tastes really good but for lunch I would normally do like a tortilla with cheese and summer sausage roll that up, that would be a good cheese it's hard cheese to stay well in your pack for a week or so really good to be on a mushy it gets mushy but it tastes really good hahahaha anything with civilization is good so like everything tastes good I ate a lot of candy so Snickers bars I had probably a Snickers bar a day really good calories I mean like he said earlier you can eat whatever you want I lost 15 pounds so I wasn't as nutrition conscious I kind of just I've seen 18 hikers with a pound bag of sauerkraut kids so I mean you can eat really whatever you want and you can still lose weight on the trail so it's up to you whatever you like to eat you can go that route or if you want to spy or if you're in a store we definitely craved like fruits and vegetables though the minute that we got like an opportunity so it was like her mom was coming and was like what do you guys want bananas please just like fresh bananas or anything like that which was awesome to be able to guess I didn't dehydrate I really don't want one but you can buy dehydrated vegetables you're going to go up and things like that those are really great additives I ate a lot of ramen over five months and they like the pouches of tuna not canned pouches the pouches of chicken breast there's a lot of additives you can bulk up your meals with I also have a case of I get hungry I get hungry and then I get hungry and then I just don't know how to deal with it and so I have to like there's good felt pouches on my bag and I keep them loaded with food and candy and just putting that in my hand now so just make sure you eat this yeah you will lose weight so for me I definitely had to focus on food that was higher in protein content so I had to carry protein more it's definitely a lot of nuts a lot of peanut butter I get crazy with my oatmeal so I really started to test that after like a week so I mixed my peanut butter in my oatmeal and you know just anything that would have melted in like cocoa packets in a different texture in a different taste and try to vary it up I did a lot of the pasta side as well I splurged and carried salmon packets and tuna packets and adding like a good protein or meat into those for my dog I carried dehydrated food in addition to her dry food so I wanted to make sure that she had a well balanced meal and all the extra calories as well and she needs recommendations on breads for that but I also yeah let's finish so earlier you mentioned emergency packets yeah so they're the vitamin C packets that have all thousand degrees of energy emergency sorry, yeah they're pretty awesome and they taste great as a tea so it's great in the morning great in the evening and it gives you that energy boost um keeping in the vein of food we had a lot of questions about uh food storage so do you need to hang a bear bag and also what do you do to keep the critters and mice out of your food I used to just a regular bear bag um and what I do is you really the longer you're out there the more tuned you become you hear things you hear somebody walking 100 yards away you'll hear them coming well same with mice that's your biggest enemy people aren't going to talk about bears they're going to talk about moose it isn't it's mice and they only want one thing your food so don't think this is a nice little shelf like it's storage spring shelter that you're going to put your shelf and it's going to be fine it's not um so what I do is I take I'm a I guess I'm a bag person I take a plastic bag and I put it over my bear bag and I tie a knot in it and then I hook it on the mouse hook and I can hear that mouse crinkling on that bag before he starts chewing but I have to admit I got hit one time and thankfully you got my guard but you didn't get my food it's like a one-time condom shelter so that's my little trick do we have the shelters hard moose hangers? oh no they all do but most of them are the tin cans don't think that that's a foolproof thing I've watched the mouse what it'll do is it'll drop off the can and then hook on to the side of your bag and it'll choose anyways and those mice they'll keep doing it all night long yeah exactly the tent is the better way to go because you can hang your food in the tree mice live in the shelter they don't live by your tent so yeah let's put it online and see if anyone answers that and then we come back so I just used a bag that buckled at the top and we used the mouse hangers in the shelter I never had any issues with mice the last night that we were on the trail we rigged it in a tree because we were in a tent and the first night we put it up in a tree because we were so concerned with bears and following everything the little guy and then the two other guys that were there were like oh you don't have to do that but we did and then a chipmunk got on my bag that night even though it was like 12 feet out we spent probably 20 minutes out in the rain throwing sticks with the rope tied over until finally we were like yay then mine got eaten and then the rest of the time I just hooked it inside too and I think I got one other time that she was on the mix but other than that it wasn't too bad I didn't go as long as they did at any one time but I spent 15 nights on the trail over my section hiking experience in shelters every time and one aside is that I never saw a large animal in 32 days on the trail I never saw a deer, moose, a bear there's a couple snakes a lot of frogs but I didn't have any I would put everything I had before I went to bed went in my pack my pack went up on the hook off the floor and that's all I did and I never had any trouble with anything so mice were pretty much the band in my distance that's how we got three or four times mice had burrowed a hole in my food bag and I just hooked up tape and put it over it and hope they wouldn't come the second night I don't know if any of you can see but I had a hole in the front of my pack there where a mouse paged through even when they're on the hook so just be mindful of that I didn't throw it up in a tree for a bear I took it out of my bag at night and hung it on the hook even if I was tenting out and hanging my food in the shelter but other than that this mice are they're in every single shelter you have to count on mice being in every shelter you can't really do too much about it I mean if you hook it up and they eat to your bag I remember one time it was two in the morning and I heard a little bit of crinkling and I was wondering what was going on in the middle of my bag and I saw a little mice scurrying up out from the inside of my pack I have another funny story an AT Hyder he was hiking and he heard a little dork he was camping out and in the morning he heard a little crinkling in his pack and he turned his pack upside down dumped it out and a mouse and four baby mice fell out of the pack and so the mouse that night was gone so he can't really escape mice anywhere he's trying to escape they had a different domain they had a different domain I wanted to get you right he's right but I've never had any trouble with mice I've always just used the little hangers and my singers they're my most every shelter they're mice anywhere but that's a perk to having a dog they're awesome, that's deterrent so I've never had any problems with mice in my food bags or mice in my pack or anything she's an awesome mouse hunter so if I wanted to have another operation she'd just chase them around and if you terrorize the shelter for a couple hours before going to bed they don't really have the confidence to come back that night so it's pretty awesome but other than that using the little mouse hands definitely helped and then I go back once and you've done this shelter because I was the only one there and there was nowhere to hang my pack or anything about it leaning against the wall so they had nails and whatnot but the more you can keep stuff off the wall and let it just free hang the less likely a mouse is to be able to get into your ear and I met a couple along the way a condom shelter that was super obsessive about protecting their gear from mice and they had this Kevlar wire mesh material for a bag and the worst thing about it is the mice still got into it there's really nothing you can do but it was probably a super expensive setup as well and it was heavy and they were carrying it the whole way and mice still get into it so if you can somehow secure your food within your food bag within another food bag that might be the most effective thing to keep mice out but it happens just make sure you don't leave any trash like in a hip pocket or something like that and I would leave them at some point to leave them on zips like at night so that way if a mouse wants to get in at least it's going to go in and see there's nothing in here that's going to go back out rather than chew a hole then answer your bear bite question sort of I mean I'm thinking I'm interested in a tent for sure and I figured well okay so I have a tent then maybe I can just put everything in the tent with me I should tell you is though the lighter you go the more it's going to cost you those big agnus tents it wasn't no $100 a tent was it the lighter it is I don't care if it's a rain jacket you're going to pay for it because it's some technical well I'm not REI when they do their gear sell off if you go in the spring when it was like 2014 that was like $400 or $200 still $200 and I think to use it if you're alone in a shelter I would say definitely bear bag just because you're the only one there but usually if there's a large group of people if there are other people there if there are dogs present you're very unlikely to encounter any large animals just the presence of people and enough of a deterrent in and of itself so I thought along the way that I would need to bring 50 feet of care cord so I could bear bag in every shelter and it just turned out that we were able to sleep with our food right there with us so it's much less of a concern than you think it would be did you hike along? solo hike? and you saw nothing? awww too bad that's true our cord for like what we were planning for the hike in two nights that we used it for the bags the cord became like a clothes hanger which was nice to like put your stuff out in the sun just another thing to consider too is a lot of our shelters especially further north can be at higher elevations where it's kind of impossible to hang a bear bag because of the size of the trees so if you try to hang again just kind of have a sense of your surroundings like Amanda was saying because if the trees are too small then hanging a bear bag is going to be one and effective and it's going to leave it prone to other critters but you can't store the string you never want to be the thing in between the animal right so again protecting ourselves from things water filtration systems what did you use, what worked best let's go down there I do not use drops aquamera that does not filter your water okay it might purify it for bugs but it does not filter the stuff out of your water I don't believe in one of the sticks there the glow lines I don't I carry a filter it's not that heavy maybe it's a little bulky but this I can get into places that you might not be able to scoop your water to get your little things this can I show it to you? probably seen one before but MSR sweetwater the filters are expensive if you keep it clean which I usually brush mine out I'm good for about 10 waters a day water to me is the most important thing on the trail because do not believe that you're going to find water where the book says maybe you will depends on the time of the year do not count on it pass it on okay you come to water and you're carrying three now lead bottles and you got one lead bottle and you know this supposedly water or the next shelter which is five miles away fill it this is how this works you just pop this open and you put this part through this part will keep the sticks and stuff out drop it in the water you can put a flow down there too I don't so I can go deeper and then I stick this into my soda bottles I do not carry now Jean bottles I think they're too heavy you talk about going light way I carry so by the generic bottles of water in the supermarket you can step on those you can throw them up in the air and when they come down those aren't going to break now Jean bottles can crack I have to carry I carry a climbers pack there's no pockets on my pack so everything I carry is inside my pack it's from bushwacking I carry it down back it sounds so warm I can't get it wet if you get it wet it's not like synthetic it's going to take some time to dry so again going back to my bags my waters are all in bags if my water pops the water is going to go inside the bag and I do what you do I carry a garbage bag inside my pack too all my water stays between the pack and the garbage bag I carry it down none of my gear gets wet but this is where I go they make a little brush here that you can take this off and you clean the inside see there's a little cartridge in here and all you do is brush it out and I don't know it takes me probably about 10 minutes to fill 5 bottles maybe people carry these big bags and they scoop water there's a filter attached to the end of it they bring it back to camp and it drains that way but to me it's about being on the long trail it's really not about being at camp you're going to hear about it's just not about being at camp for me it's about the hike and being out there and seeing the beauty of the trails but this is what I use there's better ways to go I guess so Sarah and I also used a filtration system similar to that we carry the drops as like a backup just in case something happened to that filtration system but it was just a small attachment to the bag we just squeezed the bag through and purified the water and we carried a couple of I think they're actually now gene bags attached to my pack so we would take the I think it was a Sawyer we both had and so we would fill up those bags with contaminated water and then we would filter it into the now gene which was our clean bags and that's what we would drink out of and I think in hindsight there's a syringe that comes with it to clean out towards the end it started to get pretty clogged and it was just taking us longer to filter the water we probably would have one of us should have carried it in hindsight now but I thought it was a great system and it was quick and easy it's wicked light too and it also has mine in my bag I was trying to crawl over the table to get it but I could take it out to the end if no one else has one but it comes with like a series of like one like the backpacker of the year award a few years ago is how I came across it like studying all these different things like what to use and comparing of what he had versus these so it comes with these little pouches too so sometimes if we knew that there was 15, 20 miles we would fill up the now jeans as well as the little pouches and just keep them on the outside like an outside pouch of the backpacks but one of them did puncture at one point and so we had to really get rid of it but we had I think two each so it wasn't too bad because there was a backup so when I started hiking in 1999 high tech was the pure hiker for water filter basically the same program probably a little heavier but reliable as you could guess I I enjoy getting water, that sounds crazy but I love stopping pausing this thing, it's like fishing throw it in the water and it's like I carry two now jean bottles and outside outside of my pack plus I wore a camera bat and fanny pack to help another leader of water so I tried to have a little water on me at least at the start as soon as I got down to close to the last leader to break into I was looking for water but you know you're just again the same program and this has a little float on it you throw it into the water anywhere plug this into the top of the now jean bottle pump your heart away and in no time at all I filled it up I never had any health issues and the water looked like a lot before I used aqua mirror Bridget was talking about it earlier it's a two part system chemicals you just make with this little cap and you just add it to your water 15 minutes later it's clean I did run into an issue where the only water source I had available had a ton of floaties in it and that was the water was disgusting I'm not going to lie and the filter would have been awesome to have because this doesn't filter the water so I went to this option because it was light and it was cheap this was $15 and it lasted maybe an entire trail and I still have more that I use on battery trips in the future I would change also your main filter the little squeeze as well as these it's lightweight you can attach onto it pretty much any sort of bottle you can drink right out of the filter which is nice normally I carry about 2 liters of water at a time if I drank no water bottle I was looking for water the next time I found water I filled up so I always try to have at least one liter on me at all times there are times I don't know where water is pretty scarce one time 50 miles or so about water you kind of got to be able to prepare for that you kind of carry probably 3 or 4 liters a couple liters more than you would normally carry to be able to get to that point but I had every one of them I would carry water truly for the long trail you can use it but it's not suggested to use it for such a long period of time I use it on the mirror for a few years and it's great but again you can end up with some pretty sketchy water I recently got a source squeeze now I don't always get the best water source or pull because I'll use a smart water bottle which is a good settle top bottle you just screw the thing on and sometimes the water source is only that big it can't get your water bottle in there but those source squeezes are great I also have a source squeeze system the only thing with that is because it's a plastic pouch you actually need running water with pressure behind it for it to be able to fill up fully or at least not spend 4 or 5 times trying to dunk it in stagnant water to get it to fill so the pump filters are awesome if you're like a drilling pond I actually use the curtinger's filter to fill up my little plastic couches and they just would not be enough for so much use so that's a drawback to the source squeeze but it got me through most of the trail and it was just a point in time where the water was scarce I was carrying 2 meters to me and a liter for my dog so I always had at least 3 meters of water on me and late in the season there are a lot of spots that do dry up where they should have run water but I didn't always work in those areas and the pump would have been great for that and I just bought a pump now so for my future hikes I have a pump system so the source we set up comes with an attachment that goes to the top of your bottle and that is the filter and then it also comes with a syringe system where you take the filter off you back float into it and it also comes with the bag you fill up the water and you're supposed to put it into another bottle I've never done that I was just carrying 2 smart water bottles and then just switch the top and I should drink right out of the filter I'll just squeeze it right in So do those chemicals kill the giardia cysts? Yeah These kill 99.99% of all the cortisol and everything giardia everything like that proprosperity I didn't have a single issue on trails with any anything like that and some people complain about the taste because it does have a little bit of chlorine taste but I think it's kind of good it kind of distracts you from some of the horrible tasting water sources so Bring pixie sticks Yeah It ranges off to kind of flavor your water a little bit emergency there's a light shabby but don't put them in like a 2 liter bladder in your pack because if you drink from the hose you will never be able to have a gatter everything you drink will have a green taste to it or it will taste like food So it looks like most of you have bottles and you brought a cow back so there's other reasons why you wouldn't want a cow back to size I'm just afraid of it They're heavy I just find it a hassle so I have to where it would be stored in my pack my pack is compatible with the candle back system and I have one for it and I tried it and tested it beforehand but I just prefer to have them out and then also I know I can see how empty my water is whereas when it's on your back I mean obviously you can feel by the heaviness of what's in there I'm a more visual person I guess So is there anything that you wish you had that you wish you had when you hiked and also is there anything that you wish you had and fraught when you hiked I wish I had my wife when I hiked Good answer No I don't think there's anything That's what I didn't know The what? The guy that carried the bucket You're going to run into all kinds believe me you are What's that got to do with it though He wanted to bring something so that's what he brought Oh the bucket This AT Hiker carried this bucket a five gallon pail all the way from Georgia and I met him in the Lye Brook wilderness and I asked him what are you doing with this you know he says oh I can do a lot with this bucket I can do my laundry in this bucket I get tired I turn the bucket upside down and I sit on it and rest and I just didn't think it was worth carrying I think he said drain water and then drink it Yeah you will meet all different kinds of people out there you'll meet some wonderful people so believe me I met wonderful people a couple of them were in this room We met a guy carrying two guys carrying a rubber chicken and they had signatures all over it they were collecting This is when you want to carry the tent So two things that I found that I didn't use very often at all and I actually ended up believing them at home sunscreen which may be a good thing for you to bring but you really under trees the majority of the time I didn't feel a need for it because they had sunglasses they sat on my head or in my pack more than they were actually on my face so those are probably two things I would have left behind or really didn't need to bring This here was a tip that we picked up from another hiker it's just part of a much longer sleeping pad but I carried this with me and this came in really handy for just breaks I would sit on it for those rocky or really dirt covered areas and then at night I would put it under my sleeping pad I had like a Nemo blow up sleeping pad and I put it under like the back part and it just gave a little bit more support for sleeping on the wood shelter floor so this was something that I was really glad that I looked along with me and it's really lightweight too so I definitely didn't need a bug net that I have brought it's like a quarter of an ounce and I bought it for like 50 cents for a gear exchange oh there's so many mosquitoes so many different people, all the different blogs but we went on August 16th through about August or September 10th so I think the time frame also I didn't need my sunglasses same thing I left them behind once we stopped at her house midpoint but there was really nothing that I wished that I had pretty much had everything and then we had run an emergency blanket as well that could fit two people just like something happened and it was like ultra light and I guess it was nice to have but the other time I used it was we stayed in the hotel and our last night like in North Adams to celebrate so I wore it for a photo out I carried it the whole way for no reason what I wish I brought along was a warm shower that would have been very nice I started carrying initially which went by the wayside very quickly was a three-ring binder and a pen I found that keeping a journal I got notes from the first two hikes that I was on and they got less and less as time went by my journal is in photographs I took lots and lots of pictures and I relived my hikes all the time to get home and you go through the bag and say what's in here that I didn't touch and I would say with your security blanket if you believe you have it I brought that single along it's light weight, it's easy to carry don't second guess safety features at all make sure you've got everything you could possibly need and then a couple more if you never know the last thing I would say is I was hiking somewhere in the Rowland area I came past a shelter that has the old sliding barn door to it rather than swing open those I can't remember the name of the shelter I didn't have lunch time I decided to take a break so I went up the steps and went inside and there's a 60 plus or minus year old man sitting there with two macy shopping bags I don't know how I don't know if he's homeless I didn't have lunch there I moved on quickly I felt very uncomfortable he didn't acknowledge me when I walked through the door I don't know what it was about so just work through what be prepared situation I was going down the trail I don't remember where this was either talking about large animals that I didn't see and I just cruised in the area and all of a sudden the trail up ahead of me about 50 yards takes a sharp left and coming this way ahead of his master is a black dog that was either a great dang or as you know what I had a bear coming right after and I took my breath away boy and fortunately the master then came around the curve about 20 yards behind and I decided a big sigh over I kind of had an opposite experience with a mosquito I had a horrible experience I hiked in the mid-July time so right at the peak of summer so I really wish I brought something protecting me from bugs I never had an ancient shelter I didn't sleep the entire night I was trying to hurl my sleeping bag you know put it over my head I was buzzing with my ears it was horrible I couldn't sleep the entire night so it's definitely something I was worrying something that I brought that I didn't need is all my hygiene stuff don't need soap I never used my toothbrush I don't think once I was like a minute if you're going on a longer hike the long trail is sub 300 miles so it's not a wicked long way to go you're going to be showering between every 70 miles to probably out off the trail but for the long trail I didn't really use any of my hygiene products it's called Dr. Bronner you can use for dishes tea body anything and you can use this much of it only on your whole long trail trip if you're more into high hygiene than Dr. Bronner I would use that my favorite one is the peppermint hemp one they have eucalyptus and a couple others wish I had a pillow I didn't have a pillow it was special if you use your clothes bags I could give you that yeah I wish I had a pillow I met this couple I can't remember the names of their shelters but my knees were kind of sore that day and they had this little glass jar of tiger balm and I have never heard of tiger balm but oh my goodness it changed my life I had just been able to carry that little jar the whole way it would have made a world of a difference from when I was sore it also made you smell really good super powerful my sleeping bag smelled awesome afterward I smelled awesome so I'm not very tiger balm with me on all my hikes I'm going to give a cliche answer and say that I also wish I had more time because I got the journey's end and I felt like I was just getting started out of the group I think I took the longest it was 28 days for me but I was pretty much ready to double back and hike the whole thing south again so whatever your piece may be just really make the most of your experience and give yourself as much time as you think you'll need or want to take I had a friend that did the trail in 18 days and he said to me that he wished he had slowed it down again it's a different experience for everyone but for me I could have been out there for another couple of months just going back and forth on the water super happy but yeah so tiger balm was definitely a good one for a year oh just a quick kind of note on soap a lot of people try to limit their soap use as much as possible in the back of the tree and if you are going to use it please don't use it in the water source and try to take a hundred big steps away from the water source and kind of wash yourself or your things over there can I ask another question on the bugs because we're going to be hiking at the same time I was wondering if a bug head net would be enough or if you wanted more trouble I would suggest some sort of bug spread I know they make like an organic bug spread or something and I heard that works pretty well I had that definitely you're almost carrying no weight with that and in June and July that's going to be probably one of your biggest issues on the trail of these bugs you could also treat your clothes with permethrin I've had little buff head scarves that had permethrin in them and they have been soaked in it and that works awesome I've been bitten by mosquitoes at all along the trail and then I carried bugs probably with me but I found I never used it so as I went along there were little things here and there but I was able to take out of my pack and just ship home it each of my little resupplies yeah are there any shelters or campsites that we should stay at like must stay great question, yeah let's go down I'm not the one everybody's going to tell you is Governor Clement Shelter okay I had a good experience with Governor Clement Shelter did you say Governor Clement Shelter? yeah I had a good experience it's a beautiful stone shelter but I guess they had problems there at one time I guess somebody caused this problem not all Vermonters you can't rub everybody in the scene I met wonderful people on the trail I mean I had two Vermonters and these were born in Vermont work in Vermont and are going to die in Vermont I gave me steak I'm out on the trail it's my fifth week out not steak, what's this rice peel off Governor Clement I don't like Glen Allen Lodge I'm a water person water is important Glen Allen Lodge it's a beautiful shelter beautiful views water it's iffy I stay away from shelters that are less than a mile from the road because you're going to have the kids on the weekend Seth Warner is real bad on weekends Friday you'll hear the mud boggers and with the big four wheel trucks and coming up the side roads and stuff because they're having fun in the mud with their trucks but you're not going to get any sleep they're not going to bother you but you're not going to get any sleep I think a better question good shelters go ahead I really enjoyed Taft Lodge on Mt. Mansfield there's a caretaker that stays there and he was awesome it's a fairly large shelter it was very spacious when we were there there's a really nice large table there so we never felt really cramped it was just a really nice spot especially after what I thought was probably one of my most challenging days was getting up to that lodge and so it was just really a really nice stay I would say if you're into ghosts Cooper and Goddard are supposedly haunted so we didn't stay either of those and I really like the is it round top it's an absolute well that's where I had a mouse encounter but they're everywhere but it was just an absolute gorgeous sunset like the view was spectacular and like fireflies outside of it it was just a really nice one oh and Clareden is awesome like the sound of the river and there's a really nice fire pit first of all a question about Cooper Lodge we're sitting here talking saying it's disgusting inside I found trash in there is there some specific issue with it that you're I don't mean to put you on this one but I was surprised that I was there five years ago and he was there last summer it rains because it's like a spaghetti strainer I mean you will dodge all night so the tough thing with Cooper is that would you want to tackle this one you look great eager yes you can so I'm also a GMC character and Cooper Lodge is a high traffic spot it sits two tenths of a mile below the killington summit and the god below runs year round and so you'll get day markers come up you'll get years to come over the other side and place a piece of trash it's we do our best to try to take care of it especially at the privy in the back to try to do our best to maintain but the place over the years you'll notice it used to have windows it used to have shutters those have been since and things like that so it's a very hard site to maintain I don't like to stay there myself it's cold it's very cold and if it's raining and windy because the windows are all gone all that rain and wind comes inside with that stone shelter is it cold sorry I didn't mean to oh no that's a great question I was very surprised four or five years later it was still the same issue Governor Franklin Shelter is by far there is a stone fireplace inside the shelter it is awesome when I got there I was alone and I got there probably three in the afternoon after doing 14-15 miles and I collected firewood and got it inside the shelter and about four o'clock it started raining and I started a fire I watched the chipmunk play out in front of it and it has since been I was just there this fall and it's been even fixed the supports are straight again and the decks are rebuilt that's really in the nice shape now there's a great stream down behind it for water also there I talked about other good shelters they're all nice they really are Tillison is a mile from my camp I have a camp up in Lowell the Tillison camp is way up on the top when I got there I was on the trail and I'll come and get you but that's a nice little shelter it has great views it overgrows on but it's a nice spot I'm at Bowland Mountains looking north towards Mount Mansfield it was probably one of the best views I've ever had for any of the shelters to see the peak of Mount Mansfield the sun set coming down over it it was probably my favorite night on the trail and I woke up around 5 in the morning and saw a blood red sun coming over the Mansfield so a proper shelter is definitely somewhere you have to stop Cooper Lodge again a place I didn't like I believe Whiteface Shelter beautiful was it Madonna Peak it was great there all the shelters have kind of scarce water sources so it's tough to be aware of that you can't always count on a water source so if you're planning on stopping at a shelter and there's no water there you gotta push on or go back leaving some water I really love the rock pond I'm glad it's partial cause I got to live there for 3 months and I also love Tath Lodge which I'm working with too I met Gregie at Tath Lodge a couple years ago I also love Glen Ellen Lodge it's got a beautiful view to the east and you're like the shelter just set up on these rocks and you walk right out big dome rocks right at the main entrance and great place to lay and you have a four-sided shelter that's some of the Monroe skylines in between Mount Ellen and Mount Abraham Glen Ellen Lodge isn't that the one you used to do I didn't care for the water source water source is kind of it's not that it's bad it's just like anywhere else sometimes it's just not enough get water where you can sometimes they'll tell you there's no water like in between Route 4 and Brandon Gap from Mount 73 there's no water but there is last time I went through there was three streams running so you can't say that all the time I also really like Clament because the day that I happened to stay there it was raining, it was cold I got really confused and disoriented at the reroute section so it was kind of hard to follow that and wandered around for a little bit so I'll look back and forth and when I got to government Clament the caretaker had fire going so that was pretty awesome you're a farmer? you're a rich farmer sorry I'm a rich farmer because I used to stand there for a couple days and then I also really loved Mount Blair Glen I used to love the summit of Candleshum and the one thing that I wanted to do throughout my whole hike was be on the summit of Candleshum for sunrise so I was able to wake up at Mount Blair Glen at 4am and just hike two miles up to the summit and it was just perfectly situated really great shelter I also really loved Buchanan it's one of the viewer ones actually there are ten platforms and fire pits out there and one of the sliding door barn style ones so that was really cool and then William B. Douglas is nice too that's a quarter of a mile off the trail so it was really quiet so I had that with all of myself all the AT through hikers by accident because it's too far off the trail good water source so just a quick note about our shelters too so we're always really happy to hear feedback from people so if you're out hiking and like Cooper for instance is a really hard site to maintain working really hard with some of our great agency partners to try to mitigate some of the use there but if you're ever out and you see a problem with the shelter please let us know I think since we only have a couple more minutes we're just going to go through really quick and have each person give a piece of advice to new hikers or maybe a piece of advice they had known when they started and then we can open up the rest of the time to questions it's not a camping trip adversity you better be ready I hiked through Hurricane Irene in 2011 eight and a half miles I hit Vermont 118 I hiked from Spruce Ledge Camp to Tilston Camp I had to go through Devil's Gulch and Hurricane Irene and I got to 118 there was nothing there wasn't a sole out anywhere that wind was just blowing and what do you do? I mean you start to think a little different animals have nowhere to go either so you have to either go back or you push on well I was halfway to Tilston I had to go up over Belvedere these are things you really have to be ready for I came south last year I'm trying to beat Winter in October I went north and then I came south and I didn't quite make it I got to Griffith Lake and it was snowing I had to go up to Stiles Peak and Poo Peak and Stratton and Brownlee and snow it wasn't down below that's what fools you just like now there's nothing down here but go take a look at Camelsoft right now just you normally don't recommend people hiked through Hurricanes I I do not carry a cell phone I have never owned a cell phone okay when I go into the woods I'm a solo hiker unless I hiked with my wife we'll talk we'll be friends at the shelter this is nice conversation when the day comes I go by myself because I like to see things I see bear I've seen many moose out your day and oh isn't this great isn't this beautiful and you're going to scare all the wild life away I want to see it that's why I'm out here I didn't know the hurricane was coming okay until I saw your science post just another thing good people is that we don't maintain the trail for winter so if you're going to be out in those conditions just make sure you're out I did not plan on being out there I figured well it's easy you know second we got over now I wasn't just like the first time I did it I didn't know anything about the long trail the first time I did it I didn't read any books about it I didn't come to one of these I had to follow the blazes I was constantly looking for white blazes and I didn't quite make it I got to tap lodge was the first time it snow but then it disappeared by the time I went to Johnson there was no more snow sorry could you just cut you off because we're actually running out of time oh sorry I ended up hiking out in ten inches of snow so you're going to be uncomfortable out in the trail it is a given so be comfortable with being uncomfortable and do as much research as you can around your gear test your gear bring it out try it we did a four day hike the fall before to test out our gear you know there's nothing worse than having a pack that's going to be uncomfortable or having shoe wear that's not going to work for you or having a system for stoves or water that just isn't going to work so really take the time to test all those things so that you can try to minimize the amount of time that you're going to be uncomfortable I think just have fun and no one to laugh at yourself like when you're knee deep in mud and you want to cry and you're wondering why are you doing this I mean you're not going to get this opportunity most people unless you're retired do not get the opportunity to just take 20 days off or 28 days in Harvard long it took everyone and just appreciate it because you have no idea what the next day is going to bring and you'll ever get the opportunity again so I had to make notes my memory is nothing good anymore fires if you get that's one thing about shelters there's designated fire pits I don't know for sure if all those fire pits are legal or I know the federal forest lands I think don't permit fires but it was cathartic for me to get in and get some firewood if it was dry and I have an ice camp fire and sit around that that was wonderful there is a secret shelter just south of Governor Clement's shelter I was hiking the trail I was southbound and to come out about a mile below Governor Clement I had to clean it by a long piece of paper and a clear plastic sleeve laying on the ground and it said if you want to if you need a shelter go out to the road turn left walk a half a mile go straight across the road and go into the woods it's an out and back style three sided lean tube it has an octagonal outhouse it has a stream running by it has a fire pit it's private land it's not part of the Green Mountain Club it's very nice I can show you pictures of it if you want to see it has anybody ever seen that paper on the ground does anybody else know about this I've seen it online carry the boat carry the boat don't go out without directions I don't know what current technology and the club tell you to carry this has been in my hip pocket for 15-14 years and I have to put a clip on it and it falls apart if I don't I actually left it behind on a rock when I stopped for a rest it fell out of my pocket I didn't know it I got two miles down the road to the shelter realized I didn't have it I had to retrace my steps to find my book try section biking if you go out for the long trails you go for the whole thing and you don't make it full of the section just go back and do the rest of it and one or more trips if you're employed and you're working you have a 30 or 35 days to do it I got 13 years of memories planning for these hikes I thought about that coming up that's my big thought these people did this very envious of what they accomplished but they've got 27 days of memories I got 32 days but I got another 150 days sitting in my chair at home going through this book saying let's see where can I go now and how long it will take me I'll do it as fast as I can a piece of advice would be through hiking isn't a rocket science here you don't have to be in super good shape you don't have to be as high as in the world just go out there and go hiking I saw an article in February of last year about through hiking and five months later I was through hiking a long trail with minimal hiking experience and no backpacking experience and I was able to complete it in 21 days so just get out there and never doubt yourself through hiking a long trail isn't as hard as it seems you just go out there and you have a blast and the time flies you guys smelled it as well the life they were saying you will be uncomfortable getting used to it getting used to it it's a mental game then you have to wake up in the morning and you have to start walking you're going to be sore and wet you're going to be cold but you'll warm up and you'll dry out you'll work the kinks out you just have to keep going and the miles come next thing you know you'll be at the end one of my favorite quotes is life is 10% of what happens to you and 90% of your attitude and how you react to it from a positive perspective like always find something to be grateful for that day even if it's one of your worst days you didn't put enough miles in or your feet there's always something to be grateful for I had a friend that had zero backpacking experience that I met on the trail and he was carrying 18 days worth of food with him with a 55 pound package and you have people that are ultralight hikers that count every bit of their gear to the ounce and they don't make it but then you have people that have a good attitude a good perspective that maybe they're slower maybe they carry heavy gear but it's all about your mindset it's not necessarily about the gear that you have or don't have it's about how you deal with it and how you move forward from it so again I'm a huge proponent of hike you're on a hike it's a great experience and I'm very much enjoyed the trail well thank you all so much for your advice thank you so much for the media for coming and broadcasting this big thank you to our volunteer panelists for a while after the panelists are welcome to stay as well if you'd like to ask questions and I'd just like to thank everyone again for coming thank you Arca