 I really like to thank our wonderful panelists for coming as well. Some of them drove pretty far to get here, so it's great that they could be here. I'm Caitlin Miller and I'm the group outreach coordinator here at the GMC and I'll be moderating tonight's panel. We are very grateful to have Orca Media here tonight live broadcasting it for people at home. Last I checked, registered, we had like 40 people watching at home, so that's pretty exciting. I believe that this is our 7th year running this event, which is fantastic, it's our most popular workshop, and again we're really grateful to have our great panelists here tonight. So we can go down the line for the panelists and have them introduce themselves. And I was thinking we could do name, if you through hiked or section hiked, who you hiked with, if anyone, and your favorite place on the trail. I'm sure that it's hard to pick, but just kind of to give you an overview of how it runs, we're kind of kind of shocked on the questions, we're not going to go in any particular order as far as like gear, trail, etc., and it's really audience driven, so please ask your questions, we have questions from people online, and I have a couple of questions as well to keep it going. So thank you again and we'll begin. Okay. Hi, my name is Kristin, my trail name was Tater, or no, Swift. I hiked with my husband Fred, his name was Tater, and we hiked the whole thing, we did South to North. Oh, and my favorite spot was Little Rock Pond, because McKayla, if you're watching, awesome caretaker, she was the best. My name is Meredith, I hiked, I through hiked with a friend of mine, Anna, and my favorite place, there's a lot. I think I really liked Puffer Shelter. Okay, my name is Dave, trail name Evernote, and I hiked with Jackie, trail name Keyline, we section hiked, and our favorite place, a second vote for Puffer. We had spectacular sunset and sunrise at Puffer, it was just breathtaking. My name is Dick Duquette, I didn't have a trail name, but I signed all the rosters, Thor and I, so when they saw the dog, they said, your eye, that's what it was, everything was Thor and I, you took me on this trip. I went north to south in the month of September, into the beginning of October. Favorite, Sterling Pond, it was gorgeous, nice swimming, Thor loved it, but for shelters, there's a toss-up between Glen Allen, that was really the first beautiful sunrise I saw. No sunset, or Montclair Glen, it's like a thing you see out of the Hobbit, you come off Camel's hump, you go down in the shadows, and then there's this little enchanted lodge sitting there, that's what I really liked it, like a kid of me. My name is Sydney, my trail name was Hummingbird, I hiked with my dad and my favorite shelter was Montclair Glen, because we met a lot of nice people, it was very cool to stay at. My name is Ryan, my trail name was Goose, because I was Hummingbird's wingman. Hummingbird really ran the show, she was pretty much in charge, I threw up with her, of course. My favorite, I have to give a vote for Little Rock and Puffer, when you asked the question, I had two in mind, and both of those were both the same spots I was thinking of. So as far as answering the questions, if you have a specific question for a specific panelist, please feel free to ask that, otherwise we'll just kind of go down the whole road, so everyone can kind of get a chance to talk. Does anyone have any questions to kick us off? I noticed that behind Bolden, the trail is not very well marked there and I think it might be because they're the wilderness area, and so I'm wondering about places where you might have had difficulty finding the trail, and you have a tool besides a map of you. So I hiked that section one day from Mad River Glen to Mount Anfield, and it was in January, so it was hard to find the trail, but had we not had, I guess it was a path that someone had on its own, we certainly would not have found the trail, so that's a concern of mine, is that you try to get lost. We didn't get lost, so I think the markings were great, and obviously when you're with the Appalachian trail, it's pretty much like a road almost, I mean it's so packed down. The only part we thought that might be a little bit difficult, especially in the winter would be, obviously hard to see the blazes, but then when you get further north, it's not as well maintained, so there can be streams and creeks, and we ran across a person that was pretty far up there, and she was like, I was in the water and I thought I was on the trail, and then I was in the creek, and I wasn't on the trail anymore, so I think when it's pretty wet, you can probably get left straight a little bit. Yeah, I'll add to that. I don't remember where they were, but there were several sections where we were a little bit frustrated and finding trail marks, and as far as A's, in addition to the usual map, a couple of things that I found quite helpful at the time. One was my iPhone, in which I had all the topographic maps on it, so I could pull up a topo and ask it, be a satellite, where we were, so that was a big help, and also I had an altimeter on my watch, and so I could look at that, and that was also another way to tell us where we were on the map. I'll add to that. I agree with you. I went like three, four miles up, seeing a blaze in the same section, and common sense, if I hit a blue blaze, I'd stop, backtracked, I didn't see any blaze again, and kept going. I knew the general direction I wanted to go, and I had the attitude, I had plenty of maps, and if I come across a road I wasn't supposed to be at, I'll figure out where I'm at and press on, but I know I could camp anywhere I wanted to, I wasn't worried about getting lost, but I don't know what you're talking about, I was like... That was it, yeah. Like I said, a lot of times I woke up and found my crazy daydreamer, watching the dog find myself looking up blue blazes and have to back up until I started no blazes, and I said no, I was okay, there was no blazes. We, at one point, it was after Wilson's arrest, he went, there wasn't a double blaze to turn, and we kept going straight, and then he went down a hill, and then he realized we were going the wrong way, and that was really the only time we didn't find our way. I think the biggest difference in trail markings were when we were really in the National Forest, and they were trying to have really a low impact, I guess I would say, experience, you know, you see that there's a lot more down trees across the trail, trails less maintained, and the blazes are further apart, and so we had to be a little more careful on keeping our eyes through the blazes at that point. Making notes of where to blaze. All right, next question, anybody have one? One that we're getting a lot is we have a couple from online, from Starksboro is asking how often did you resupply, did you send food drops, and specifically how difficult was it to find stove fuel? So kind of how did you resupply how often? We resupplied probably every four-ish days, looked ahead at the map each time we were at a resupply, and said this is the next big town where we can get off, and that looks like it'll take us about four days or something like that, and we didn't do any food drops, and I really liked that, because then you're eating, well you're eating for four days, you get into town, and you can say, man, I really want to do this other thing for breakfasts or lunches or dinners, and it gives you that little more flexibility to decide what you want to be eating. If you see somebody else on the trail and you really like their food, you can go pick that up at the grocery store, and some of the big places are Manchester or Rutland. Some people stop in stow, but I think, where was I going with that? What was the rest of your question, Kayla? How often, oh, stove fuel. Stow fuel, fine stove fuel. Stow fuel, so we used an alcohol stove, so we tried to resupply that whenever we were around some sort of outdoor store, and a lot of outdoor stores in Vermont will sell methyl alcohol or methyl alcohol, so you can just fill up the container that you have. Similar, we resupply about every four or five days. We did do a food cache actually right at the bottom, the steep steps down to Route 9 before we get to Bennington, just like bare-bagged it, so then our first couple days in, we didn't have to carry as much, especially since we were just starting out, so we just like went out into the woods. I will say a little bit further north, it does get harder and few and far between, and we kept calling Hazen Snatch Visitor Center to see if we could have a food drop there, and they never answered their phone, so we ended up getting it. Our last resupply was in Johnson, and then we just carried like a whole week's worth of food, but we actually tried to only carry about three to four days of food if possible because we didn't skimp on food, we didn't eat ramen, we tried to eat as well as possible. Maybe our packs were a little bit heavier, but we're really foodies, so we wanted to eat well, so we tried to eat, have less days, and then the gas could be a little bit difficult. We actually ended up in Waitsfield. There is an outdoor store, but it's an outdoor store-ish. I mean, don't rely on it, it doesn't have a ton of stuff. We were a little disappointed, so we couldn't get gas there, but we had met a guy who had left some in Warren, and we were actually able to pick it up at an auto place. So, stoke can be a little bit challenging, I think, and we had trouble in Waitsfield. We got resupplies every four or five days, and the stoke rule was pretty easy because we kind of bought a couple containers, and then when we got resupplied, we just filled up the container we had, so that was kind of easy. My mom was my resupplier, and she brought a lot of different kinds of foods for us to bring. Sweet. Same here. I had four to six days with the food and my wife resupplied. She was actually checking up on Thor. She was worried about his pauses beginning with me. I'd see her say, how's Thor doing? Hey, hi, I'm doing fine, but it was nice. But, as I said, now in hindsight, we didn't have the variety that you probably had because we just brought stuff from home that we knew. But that worked for me. He was my old guy, but I didn't want to waste time going to town. I didn't think Thor would be able to get a ride, and it was really dangerous. He didn't walk on the side of the road with the traffic. Not many shoulders. I was concerned with his safety, so that's why. So, I cheated on my wife, did everything for us. It was nice. We sectioned, like I said, so we resupplied after every hike. So, and as far as fuel, the EMS store in Manchester for those little canisters we used on our jet board. Those of you who threw height, how long did it take you and when did you do it? What months? We did it in the fall, so we started right after Labor Day weekend. And then we actually spent six glorious weeks on the trail. We weren't in a hurry. We never hiked more than 14 miles in a day. Didn't have one blister. And just, if it was raining, we stopped. If we wanted to go into town for a couple days, we did. So, we finished October 14th and hiked in one half day of rain. So, we took our time. We ate well. And we ate well. Absolutely. Yep. It's a place that no longer exists in the Mad River Valley. It's called the Phantom. It was an awesome place. Yes. The proprietor even gave me a shoulder rub, which was awesome. And they had very good beer on draft. But the other place was, there's a kind of fancy place when Manchester Center, a pizza place, has like flatbread pizza, a really good beer, kind of a cafe. What was the food that you made? We brought those packaged Indian food, which are kind of heavy, but we always had them like our first day. We had, I don't know if you guys know these. We discovered these late, but these like dried, this dried banana jerky from Trader Joe's is the bomb. It's so good. And it's really sweet. And so we tried to bring kale, actually the first week. And it was really hot. And I don't recommend that, because it tasted alright. But when we opened the bag, we were like, oh my God, it was knocked over. We did try to bring vegetables. We actually brought peppers because they have a really hard spine. So if you're really like Jonesing for some fresh food, those are some things that you can bring to you. We hiked in 18 days. Wow. And yeah, you just want to keep going with your favorite meal. I think that's a great question for everybody. We had started doing, so my favorite meal ended up being a lunch that we had. What was the period of your 18 days? Oh, it was in August. And similarly, we didn't have very much rain. So how many miles a day did you do? Sorry. I'm just going to stop so we can finish the other two questions. And then we'll keep going with more questions. So my favorite food was a lunch. And we had started lunch eating rice cakes and tuna packets for lunch. And then we ended up deciding to go for tortillas and Nutella and peanut butter. And that was the best lunch. OK, well, we didn't section like that. I'll answer your questions anyway. It took us four years. There were some extenuating circumstances. And our favorite meal, our favorite meal was a mountain house inflatable chicken a la king followed by a mountain house inflatable raspberry crumble. It took us 21 days, Thor and I. We started beginning of September, finished Columbus Day due to math doesn't work. After my second week, my boss was screaming, I had to go to work every Monday and Tuesday for that last part of the trip. I'd hike Wednesday through Sunday but I'd lose a half day on Wednesday, half a day on Sunday. But actual hiking days was 21 days. I'm with you. My wife would drop off fresh veggies in the beginning of the week. I had carrots, onions, peppers. I know it's good for two days. I kept them in my pack. Cheese is good for four days in your pack. Keep it out of the sun. Some are soft. If you don't open it, it keeps forever. Once you open it, you've got a couple days to eat it. With pita bread, because it's already crushed, already flat. Pita is great. It's got a lot of color. Raisins. I gave up gourd about five years, six years ago. I just couldn't choke it down anymore. So now I just sell fruit. Nice to be a hamburger helper without the hamburger course. One time I used hamburger helper with a hamburger for the summertime, just this evening. Noodles with lasagna, noodles with beef stroganoff. Just leave out the hamburger. But you can add tuna fish. You can add tuna fish to anything. It's not heavy. Even though it's not a hamburger helper, add tuna fish to it. It's meat. It's protein. It's awesome. Go ahead. It took us 27 days to hike the whole long trail. My favorite food was a breakfast. We got a milkshake packet. And we put some free-shed milk and water in them and put some granola in. And they were pretty good for breakfast. And so we hiked down from late June or early July. It rained a little bit in June on us. My favorite meal was probably dinner because that was where I got my salt intake with the amount of water we drank throughout the day. And usually it was cuckoos with bouillon and olive oil or even rice. We definitely chose not to just get that dehydrated food. We were okay with the amount of the food drops we got. We were okay with some food that we could simmer and add some spice and flavor and kind of make really our own thing for dinner. So dinner was never the same, but it was always my favorite meal. I always be sure to pack an extra day. I always have six days of the food, but I might stop four to five days out. Always have an extra day. Stuff happens. I spill fuel on some of my food one time. Stupid. Thorgot it to mine one time. Or you find somebody who didn't plan to be able to give them meals away, which is a really sweet thing. That's paid for it also. But always, always pack an extra day long in that you think. It's not that heavy. Even just ramen. Yeah, right there. Did you have to hang your food? From trees or what did you do with the food? I started hanging it for environments and stuff. But I brought it out of that door. That dog never slept. We didn't have a curtain within 10 feet of the sleeping bag. Mark Clay Glenn, they had a beer box because they had trouble with beer as an August. But they had a beer box. I used it. But otherwise, you should hang it. But I didn't this trip. I started to and I stopped. We always on our food. All the shelters have various ropes or strings hanging down with little things so that the roads can't get up. We usually put our food up there. As far as being bothered, there was only one shelter. Sorry, I forgot the name when I looked at my notes. But the mice were unbearable. They didn't get into our food, but they were scoring around all night long. It was, you know, we're hanging everything. It didn't disturb them at all. It was nonstop running around. We pretty much hung our food both at the time and actually our boots and packs and everything because our first shelter, people scared the heck out of us by saying that porcupines were going to eat our boots or our poles, the top, chew on anything where they're sold. So we started hanging things and we pretty much did bear bag sometimes because it was just fun actually to try to find a branch and then try to like get it over and just to like because you forget to hike out west, too, it's a good skill to be able to have because the bears are a lot more aggressive than they are here, but definitely pretty much tried to hang everything off the ground unless we were in a shelter. We put our stuff on these ropes with a sticker on them where you would hang them and people would put tuna fish cans or soup cans or anything on them and then the mice couldn't get into your bag. So when you hung your bag on them, the fish or the mice couldn't get into it. There was one shelter, Minerva McKinney, I think. It's been eaten by porcupines pretty much. Everything has been like bitten and chewed on by porcupines and we tried to keep all our stuff off the ground there. I think last year there was well, we experienced a bear in the area where we hiked after Camel's home. We actually walked into a shelter the night before a canister was taken from the caretaker in the area and so that was kind of like the beginning of bringing out the bear boxes and being more aware of bear and so we were aware of what we should have done with our food at that point as we hiked north. We did hang our food a couple of times but we probably should have done better and I'm sure Green Mountain Club would probably say the same thing. Just a GMC PSA, the regulation in Vermont is growing so it's not a huge problem like it is in New Hampshire and that are on tax but it's always a good thing to consider bear safety and bear proof storage and things like that. I also used just the hanging things in the shelters and when we weren't staying in shelters I would just wing it but I did have a rope for bear bagging just in case which was I think the only thing I didn't use that was there but it feels like you should have it because you can hear stories going along the trail like when I was hiking in August there was a lot of bear activity on Camel Sump so had I been sleeping there when that was going on I would have bear backed or I guess they had put in the bear boxes at that point but it is something important to have I think as someone who takes nothing extra that's a good thing to have just in case. I just sort of just answered the question what was the piece of equipment you each had that you didn't really use and what did you wish you had if that was? I'll just elaborate on what I was saying the rope was the only thing I didn't use and I didn't wish I had anything else I really liked everything I took with me which I know is not a very useful answer but I'll go into depth of what I did have if you'd like I never had to mail anything home or say hey I really wish I had etc we brought gators which we really didn't need and we even brought the tall ones and most of the AT through hikers just have those short ones I will say I had this awesome Nemo pad it glows up to about that big it's a total luxury it was like two and a half pounds but I slept awesome every single night it was super thin, thermo rest and he was like complaining the whole time so if you like sleep and you don't mind a little extra weight having a good sleeping pad it just makes a huge amount of difference and I feel like that's one of the things that is worth having an extra pound I don't think there was anything that we didn't actually use so the only thing to fit into your question would be we did shed half of our boots half way through so we were wearing over the ankle boots in the southern half and then we switched to under the ankle shoes after that and so I think there was my partner mentioned a couple of things that she felt missing there were a couple of times when we were staying in the shelter in the fall that it got older that she was comfortable with her sleeping system so she would have liked something a little warmer and also on one time we stayed in the shelter for a couple of nights she forgot her crocs she didn't like getting up in the middle of the night have to put on her boots to go out and do her things so the things that we forgot were missed and other than that the only other thing we didn't have was weight anything you could do to come weight it was always under my feet I feed a parachute cord that I didn't use but that would be in case you needed something to hang bare stuff or whatever something broke I had a half roll duct tape people take a little bit of duct tape per hundred pence I brought half a roll with me I wasn't sure how Thor was going to do with his paws and my claim was I had a bunch of mole skin I wrapped up his paws with mole skin duct tape I needed to while there was a young lady who had her dog going the other direction her pack was falling apart and when she saw my half roll duct tape she just hurried by guys that go ahead and take it it was like the second week and I didn't need it anyway so I didn't need the duct tape really Thor's paws were fine purse record in need for anything else I had a pack in a long time I was pretty much spot on that ragged up pad you see here on the side here so I'll scratch out those Thor's I cut a piece of that back from 78 and she would sleep on to keep him out of the ground instead he'd scratch it up and that was his but uh yeah I pretty much had a spot on we didn't really bring anything that we didn't need there wasn't really anything that we needed I brought a pair of sunglasses that didn't last very long because you don't need them it's you know you're walking under a canopy of trees and you know and when you did see the sun it you didn't really need your sunglasses so leave the sunglasses at home I brought sunglasses and used them either in my pack a whole time right and I thought of that my partner has very sensitive eyes that she wore sunglasses almost the entire trip we've been getting kind of going back to your earlier question we've been getting a lot of questions online about casing like how did you plan your mileage is what was your average average miles a day that sort of thing so we probably went between 8 and 10 miles a day and it was mostly based on the shelters how much food we had there were a couple days that we really pushed it but we just wanted to like take our time or go for a swim if there was an opportunity or you know things like that so we just really kind of slow and steady we planned our pacing by looking at the map and deciding when we'd resupply next like I said and seeing if there were any sites along the way where we wanted so it was a really day by day thing and our miles were anywhere from our lowest day was 4 miles and our highest day was 25 but we averaged around 17 so you we would just take that into consideration and average a little under so we'd say like okay we'll make like 13 to 15 miles a day and then like Dick was saying and then we would have like an extra meal or so at the end if we went faster than that as section hikers the main consideration for us was getting on and off the trails and we had to look for side trails and the other thing that was a big factor was getting rides and getting to and from the trail so as far as distance I think we picked up one tiny piece that we missed because of Hurricane Irene that was our lowest day it was 2 miles and the longest we did was I think around 14 and the average including side trails was it was around 7 for us my problem was I tried to plan and I was horribly off just a little back on last summer I got shingles and got Lyme disease because I went through our last summer so come August I wasn't fit where I wanted to be so I thought the long tour would be my get back in shape plan don't do that get in shape before you start the long trail the first leg I told my wife 50 miles a day, 5 miles picked me up here at 75 mile mark at Johnson is it Johnson well I made a pass up over there and that was my fifth day and she had to pick me up I was the first day I did 6 miles made a pot of coffee at 1 o'clock didn't move next day at 8 miles about 2 in the afternoon made a pot of coffee I was good but then as 12-15 miles a day in my last three days were 19 mile days so the really nice flaties were going but yeah so I was between 8 and 15 miles depending on how I felt it was a nice staying pot of coffee sterling pond, coffee there's an old guy here I liked it before I went to Betty tonight I usually tried to plan the next day some days we so the least we did was at 8 the first day which was 7 miles the most we did was 18 and our average was between 10 and 15 miles smoking you embarrassed I think like Sydney said you know we really kind of planned our walk the night before but there's a lot of factors in weather and how we felt we also kind of caught the end of part of a bubble of the Abolation Trail so there was a group of people that we kind of became friends with and wanted to walk with them and wanted to be with them at the end of our day and so we started planning our walks at that point with the rest of the group and since they were through hikers they weren't fast through hikers on the Abolation Trail but they were in way better shape than we were so we found like the first couple of days we tried to keep up with them it was very difficult but we got our mates and really started to keep up with them and we're glad we kept those relationships so I kind of peer pressure kind of helped us to plan our way through as we were both I think about the availability of water but it's not finding water so it's just that water September we started off we had trouble at the first shelter was Shooting Star they said they were supposed to pump somewhere I couldn't find a pump at lunch and when I started September I thought I took September to be cool because remember last September it was so we drank a lot of water and I thought he did I brought an oxygen bottle for Thor and he drank like two and a half you know what I mean and I was pumping out of mud puddles and stuff until I got probably the first until I got past Jonestown Jonestown after that we started getting more red mud despite it was really dry up north it was like mud that's just me August we didn't have any problems and we didn't get rained on a lot but there was still plenty of water running from the summer that had been somewhat wet earlier on and then I had a friend who hiked in September and you guys can speak to this much more than I can but then because August and September were both dry I think she had a little bit more trouble finding water occasionally but not chronically had trouble with water I don't think yeah we were a little bit worried about it and there probably were stretches where we went without water for a little while in between the shelters but there's a few places like Stark's Nest after Lincoln Gap where there's a warming hut and they actually have a rain barrel and we weren't sure but some people were coming down and south and they told us that there was water in there and then there was one spot I have to remember someone had actually left some just jugs of water a trail angel so like one or two times were we concerned but it really was not bad and September was pretty hot and we were talking about actually we finished close to around Columbus Day and it was 70 degrees on J peak so it was pretty hot like and then a week later it snowed so it was pretty hot all the way up through October but really water even in those conditions water was really not that hard to find I have one shelter where the water wasn't very good it was Serendine you had to walk through the woods a little bit to get to it and then it was just a little spring and you had to filter your, you had to get up you had to like use a pump filter to get it because it was in a big pit and it was kind of hard to get it out so that was the only place we really did water do you have all that water purifying system that my favorite piece of equipment was my cateye and pump I had a cateye and a burial pump that I had for ten years and I love it that's what I used we have one we alternate but we alternated between that's the the two little bottles of aquamarine and the other one I think the one we really liked the best was the Sawyer filter that was very convenient because you could fill it up and you know you got water instantly if you were running a little bit dry when you got to the water you could get it to the right way so that was probably I made an invention on the trail which I tried to get it out I'll show you which it has a pit to it on the water anybody else have different methods we had a cateye but it got a little bit clogged the first week because we did a blue blaze to north borne pond which I actually highly recommend it's a blue blaze but beautiful we had the whole place to ourselves and there were looms and it was great but there was a lot of sediment so it got clogged then it got really slow but it gave us lots of time to relax and we know a lot of people use Sawyer's and you know it's kind of mixed results and a lot of people had it I'd be curious Mara's experience but the bags can pop and you know so yeah so we had something similar to that so here is my most important water collecting item because many places the water is only about a millimeter deep we've got to have some way of scooping it up so having a cut off water bottle was really great for that water filtration is a crazy debate I would say that you just need to get online and see what's going to work best for you to talk about bacteria now that could be in the water sources not only the big honking bugs that make you uncomfortable on the trail some filters filter bacteria some filters don't some say you should like the Sawyer does a great job of being convenient in his lightweight doesn't get the bacteria so you should follow that up with tablets really there's a debate on it some people don't filter either so we chose to use a pump system and I chose that for the health of both of us and I was willing to carry the extra weight for it because I thought that was really important other people are willing to take the chances of not doing that thank you I would not respectfully disagree we can research this afterward but I'm pretty sure the Sawyer is very effective on bacteria the thing that's not effective on our viruses but viruses I think is not a problem on the trail here the most important thing that's the problem here is the cryptosporidium and the giardia which are great big things and the Sawyer filter is great for getting those out whereas on the other hand some of the other things like the aqua mirror it can get at things like cryptosporidium but you have to let it work for like an hour or more because they have very thick shells and the chemical treatments take a long time so that's why one of the reasons we went with the Sawyer filter the most part once we found it if you've never seen a bladder like this MSR I've had it about 10-15 years I think they still make it it holds 4 liters it's awesome when you put it in your back at the end of the day you fill it with 4 liters for your terminology you have water for supper and breakfast you find you're going to have a dry spell because someone's going up in the direction saying hey there's no water for a whole day you get this doesn't take any weight you fill it up for like 7 pounds but I was going to leave without touching it and all of a sudden I needed to fill it for the dog or simply I had a couple that wanted to sleep on Belvedere on a tower, a young couple and they're going ahead of me and I was stopping and I had lots of freak and they wanted to sleep in Belvedere and they didn't have enough water so I said to fill this take this leave it at the bottom of the fire tower I'll pick it up in the morning it was great it doesn't weigh anything it doesn't take any room just another GMC PSA we do recommend that you treat all back country water GRD has been found up as high as I believe 12,000 feet in water running so it is in Vermont and it will have you firing at a full fence so it doesn't get you sick for 2 weeks until you get home and you're at a special for those of you who may not be familiar with the Sawyer system this is if it's got a little bladder fill this up with water and you take this thing and just screw it on there just squeeze give it a little pressure and how it comes is getting water and I chose to get the slightly larger filter it's a couple ounces heavier but it does filter faster and one of the big debates about filtering water is that it slows you down I met a couple of people who said they just don't filter their water because it takes some less time to have diarrhea once in a while than to actually I don't recommend that I mean I don't recommend that at all I did like having the slightly larger one because you can just you don't have to wait as long the one that I use is a platypus and I hope you've seen those before but it actually attaches to my to my bladder hose and it filters as you drink so you can just fill your bladder and that's super convenient people will connect these to just a water bottle also so I never had one of these break but if you do you can just screw it on plastic bottle awesome I carry two liters and the file is one of the I mean 64 ounces and I grab another 32 ounces for Thor but in kind of an hour I gave that up after two weeks he was drinking he would get ahead of me and just drinking the worst stuff and you never get sick because I just stopped caring about it very often get rid of his bottle but at 64 ounces it's comfortable for me what are you guys yeah well whenever we hit we're at a water source and it's filled up two liters except between maybe I'm going to declare what your fat bowl is like what if you fly it out of your nose what if you feel comfortable caring as far as not running out of water it was like I said two liters so it was either I carried either in an empty throw away water bottle which is nice and light much much lighter than that Nalgene bottles that sell in the empty stores especially toward the end of the trip was a you know bladder in the background as far as how much water that was really sort of a minimum tried to drink as much water as possible we carried two of these each they're lightweight they're pretty durable and we filled up two or three times a day that's all it really took we felt sometimes we felt like it was too much water because water is heavy it really is heavy so if you know that you're on a section that has a lot of water sources we would only fill one up and make sure that we at least had one liter that we were drinking off of all day so I'm just curious if anyone when you're hiking you know situated on a hydration hose so you just drink as you went that's helpful yeah well like I said I used that for roughly the last half or I tried to use the black and it was convenient for that because you just you know I had it kind of coming through the front and then I could just like pull it up but just one thing to be aware we got to a spot I think it was Mount Abe where somehow my pack was leaning on it and then the water actually started coming out quite a bit and that was one of the places where we were worried about water so just if you are going to use one of those just make sure because maybe you're tired we just like hiked up Mount Abe we were hungry I just put my pack down then all of a sudden I looked and there was all this water on the ground and I was like oh god so you just have to be a little bit careful but it's so convenient my husband had a Nalgene and if you're trying to move it's hard to just like keep stopping and taking it out I'm sorry the only disadvantage of the Black is that you can't tell how much you have left so you have to that's what I was going to say I'm old school I use Nalgene, I'm old school I get thirsty, I need to need to take my pack off for five minutes and my shoulders will break drop it and I know exactly how much I have I'm taking fast, I'm taking slow put it back on and go sometimes it'll go an hour and a half, two hours I'm old school in our bags had bottle holders that were situated basically right here on our hips so we could just reach back grab our bottles and drink as we go and I carry my bottle post in the side pocket because then you can tell how much you have and it's way easier to grab it when you need to fill it back up you don't have to go inside your pack or un-string a complicated system yeah but were you all in good shape when you did your treks and I'm going to ask a bunch of different questions that I'm fascinated did you do any exercise while you were hiking, in other words did you limber up or anything like that or stuff like that and did you all just ever feel like dying did you feel like you were always strengthening your legs or did you ever wonder when you were hurting yourself well I told you I had shingles and lung disease thank you last summer from May to August when I got over that I said wow I didn't have any sprek from my mountain I'm going to go rolling hills it would be nice hike to get in shape the first three or four miles you go from Canada down nice and rolling and you stop Dall Peak Halfway up from my pack off what am I climbing that's kicking my butt there's only like a 2400 footer but it was straight up my glutes are hurting my legs are hurting but after you guys three or four days you get to hiking lakes maybe five days it takes to get to hiking lakes and just press yeah but you probably shouldn't do like I did you should put a better shape well one benefit going from south to north is it's a little bit gentler I mean that's why we decided to do it it definitely gets steeper and you have higher elevation mountains when you get higher some of it really is just straight up the trail is built in 1910 so there's no switch backs there is almost like a low level of rock climbing where you kind of have to get your leg up on a boulder and then grab for a branch and then heave yourself up so I think those are some challenges there's just a lot of elevation gain and loss I mean you're just constantly going up and down and then especially in the southern part you get to the top and the only reason you got to the top is you're going down there's no view there's just a random ice fruits trees and it's great but sometimes you get up and you're like really there's not even a view I just did all that yeah there's no sign it's not like you you have no idea and you'll cover many peaks in a day definitely after I think probably the first couple days you really kind of get into the groove we when to get ready we we have a lot of short little day hikes that we can do right after school and after school we would grab our bag, put a rock in it and then go hike up the mountain and then come home and eat dinner important things don't wait until you're going to get in shape to do the hike just do it, you'll get in shape as you go you start slowly up a four mile day a six or eight mile day otherwise you'll never do it don't wait until you get in shape, just do it but go small and bring food and water just do it well as the senior crew here we had to get in shape and the way we got in shape was doing a lot of hiking so we did most of our hiking in August and September and July we were hiking not quite as intensely and so on but that's the best way to get in shape because it's not just stamina and going to the gym it's your footing and so on the thing about the long trail especially the northern half is that you're constantly walking on rocks and mud or tree roots and it's just that's what you need the train on to say I've got good cardiovascular it's all of it was there a time when we thought I wanted to die actually there was there were two occasions the easy one was coming up the forehand when I didn't thought I might die a couple of times if I couldn't find something to grab on to the one where I wanted to die was we were we did a planned three night backpack from from Appalachian Gap at Ducksbury Road and the first two nights went well except that the hut or the shelter we stayed in before we were about to take on Camel's hump unfortunately it rained all night which we dreaded because it meant everything was going to be wet so we went ahead we went up Camel's hump as we were approaching the summit we ran into a thunderstorm so we decided that we were not going to try to go up on top while it was lightning we took the summit round about which was a very difficult trail in itself and coming down that trail my partner was just a little bit ahead of me we were coming down a fairly steep slab and it was slippery she got about halfway down and did a head first dive down to the bottom and I watched her and said gee the next thing I did I took ahead I dived down she landed in some bushes so there was no problem I was stopped by a tree so I was feeling a little bit worse but anyway we continued on it was very difficult because it was slippery and it was it wasn't really pouring but it was raining the thing that saved us we ran into trail angels including two young men who not only offered to guide us down the last half to get down to Bucksburg Road but they actually carried our packs for us still and all we were on the trail that day for 13 hours and when we got down we were walking with flashlights and at night and when we got back on the way down there were times when I felt like and I probably wouldn't have felt worse if I had known what I found out two days later which was that I had a minor concussion and a broken collarbone it might encounter with the tree so it's really was very fortunate that we ran into these trail angels because I think if I had finished that hike you know with a full pack I probably wouldn't have done my shoulder much better we hiked Baker Peak and it was really cold and it was starting to snow and hail and we got up there and we were freezing cold and it was just a slab of rock and then we walked on the ridge and it was really cold and then we got down to the shelter when you tried to like tie your shoe or something you couldn't because your hands were so cold what month was this? end of June end of June there was a storm last summer that blew through at the end of June and it was there was a wind storm and there was a cold front that followed that right behind it and we hunkered down most of the morning to wait out the rain and it finally cleared out and we didn't realize that there was a cold front coming down and along with a cold front there's also rain or participation when it comes down and when we got up to that peak we were exposed and it was sleeting sideways on us and we kind of had to like work together and get through this really uncomfortable situation of being cold and have the idea of working together to get to the shelter that night and that's just kind of the trail and being partners and teammates when you're hiking with someone one person's not going to have a very good day and the other one has to be there to help them out and that was one of those times wasn't it? we ended up going to lower out that night it was much warmer amazing we swam in the pond I think Baker has the bypass doesn't he? but we didn't realize that it was going to be snowing so they get up there but it does have a bad weather bypass but we were we were already combined just just in terms of while you're on the trail I think I would just reiterate everything they said that you get in shape while you're going my partner and I run a lot but it's totally different it's about being on your legs all day on rocks and mountains so do your first couple of days at four miles or whatever works for you but limbering up on the trail I really liked sitting with my legs against the side of the shelter or up against a tree or something every night just to let the blood drain out of them for five or ten minutes before I went to bed and then it feels good to do a couple jumping jacks and like stretch a little bit in the morning I think stretching in the morning can set your day off right and it helps your body feel a little bit better but that being said not everyone does it but I do think that elevating your feet a little bit at night helps them from getting very swollen the next day using an avalanche bar to throw all your calves that kind of thing can get Charlie Horses at night I use this to just roll up my muscles and stuff and they helped out a young lady told me to do that because I was having trouble with Charlie Horses that I wasn't getting enough salt I'm floating salt on my food and she's like take a thousand bottles just roll up your muscles awesome brilliant so we've had quite a few questions online asking let's see Becca from Concord asks what type of shelter you use and also did you use your shelter did you mostly stay in the shelters on the trail so we're dorks we calculated how much we did so we camped for 10 nights shelter for 21 nights 3 nights we stealth camped in our tent and then 8 nights in various hostels and B&B's and stuff so we probably did like a mix but as folks have mentioned the northern part has Montclair Glen Blair Taft just really lovely four sided lodges so we felt like we could have ditched our tent for like the northern part but we did stay in some shelters and sometimes we just decided not to or sometimes they just weren't very inviting so it was a mix we didn't bring a tent so we stayed in shelters and then sometimes we just camp on our pads with nothing it was going to be nice we brought a tent on the first couple of backpacking trips but we found the shelters were readily available so we ditched that was 2 pounds that we ditched for the rest of that and the only we never had any trouble getting in the shelter and the only thing we did is one precaution was when we were hiking in the fall when the kids come back to school up in the area of UVM and so on we checked the Green Mountain to see where there were any groups signed up for the shelters that we wanted to use so we did avoid that intentionally we any time we stayed on the trail was in the shelter can I just follow up with that do you guys have how groups do that tell you that they're going to be there I'm so glad you asked that groups of tents close to register right yep so we have again not all the groups because we capture all of the users of the trails some people just don't contact us but there's www.greenmountainclubgroups.org and you can click on a shelter that you are thinking about staying and see when hiking groups are staying there as well one plus about some of the groups across Princeton that was camping in a couple different places and they had some extra food so sometimes if you have a big college group they have leftovers which is much appreciated and we actually were they were all really great we just didn't stay in the shelter with them but they were awesome so don't be deterred if there's a group just maybe know that the shelter might be filled but you might get free food I brought a tent we just got over land life disease we camped at the trailhead in Canada she spent the night with me and I kept the tent in the car because there wasn't any bugs I had this, I used it for nights one shelter, somebody was lurching the dogs one shelter, they just didn't like dogs so when that happened I thought I could throw it outside and sleep in the shelter I threw out my old car threw it to set it up and we slept outside a few nights I had my own pond, my favorite one I got the one in the afternoon the rain was coming in, I wanted to get over Mansfield before rain so I went down a smuggler's notch get to the picnic area think I was sleeping underneath the picnic table no camper allowed so I went back in the quarter of an hour and we spent the night and I was able to make over Mansfield before it rained and stuff like that so it was a great park, it was about a pound you never know what you needed we didn't use a truck like this we used an actual a different type of tarp a ten kind of a bug net and we used that twice we used it one day because we got to the shelter at one and we figured we could go three or four miles we got below Shratton Mellon and then the next time we did the last day we were on the trail the last night the shelter was full because a softbound bubble was coming through so we set up our our tarp right behind the shelter right behind the shelter luckily enough we didn't get rained on there was a couple of times where the shelter was full by the end of the night so if you know you're going to be if you anticipate showing up to a shelter around dinner time you might not find a spot especially when the Appalachian Trail bubble was going through for my to understand this year it's a record year for the Appalachian Trail so if you're expecting to do south to north expect to have company at Patilla Killington and it might be a lot I would recommend bringing a tent or some sort of shelter because of that if anything also through hikers couldn't stay at the long trail in and they get a discount and it's really nice it's you can get a nice form of shower shower and a beer that's right talking about shelters is there any shelters you would not come in the one with the mice you don't know what I can tell you North section north of the Appalachian Trail they're all lodges and they're awesome really awesome so if you were just a section I would do the north section and it's just awesome but other shelters are nice rainbow shelter, no sunrise shelter if you're going to go to the sunrise shelter and expecting to go there if you don't want to get a sunrise there's no hope of getting a sunrise it's not even a position toward the sun I don't know what they call a sunrise shelter it's a nice spot it's a nice spot but I don't know where to call it it's a shelter where it's close by the city and sometimes people walk into the shelter JP there's one on the road JP Alice Valley and they will say that a boy shelter is closed right now by force because of structural things but we're fixing it that's the only way I can think of it yeah Alice Cooper Lodge this is on Pillington has been trashed by the skiers so it'll smell of stale stale beard there might be beer cans but there is a tent of a site up above Pyco is having porcupine problems I was going to stay at Pyco Peak and I passed it up because it had a porcupine problem that was a word about my dog so we pressed on so if you were to stay they should have all buttoned up we loved Pyco there were signs up there in September about porcupines a place I wouldn't go is Story Spring Shelter it's really buggy there it's just really buggy right next to a pond I was just going to say on a non-shelter note we stayed at the Manchester Center Hostel which is awesome the guy who runs it lives in Ohio but he has through-height the whole trail he'll pick you up from wherever in town he has a pint of Ben & Jerry's that you can have free soda washer and dryer clothes that you can borrow has breakfast stuff that you can make in the morning he's just like the nicest guy so that's probably the best place we stayed the whole time and he's just a super great guy and you can just pretty much eat as much as you want to so I recommend the Hostel in Manchester Center for sure and we caught him like one of his last days he goes pretty much until like about mid-September maybe maybe September what about on the trail you stopped there you liked it and at the long trail I stopped there just for a burger and a beer and I kept going and there's also a bus that stops right in front of the in at the long trail so you can catch it like we caught a ride down into Rutland there's a coffee shop, a brewery a big grocery store a co-op where we got like a lot of fresh fruit and stuff so if you stay there you can also catch the bus pretty easily into town excuse me, in the long trail is that like Sherwin-Bess yes, Killington, yeah yes, Sherwin-Bess for history of the long trail that used to be the same same course and the trail used to go right through the building I believe right by it yeah there's actually it's built on some rocks so you have like huge rocks inside the building because right where it is it's really cool and if you're not a purist you can hike down straight to it and it's a blue blaze trail now it used to be the AT a pretty nice trail we counted it it used to be the long trail at the end of the trail where are you able to just walk in and get over a base or you have to reserve we reserve, but I think if it wasn't a super busy time you probably could just get a room we just walk in and they do have a hikers discount yep, and you can also do food drops there and also laundry Meredith I don't know if you got a chance to say do you have any recommendations of shelters to stay at or not to stay at? um I had a lot of shelters that I loved and a few of the ones that folks have said this or that may have happened there I stayed like I stayed at Pico and I stayed at Story Spring and Sunrise and I liked all of those so I think it really depends what's happening and what's going on and there may or may not be some mice I don't have any to dissuade you from that being said you might have a crappy night in a shelter sometime I don't know is there any party issue with either Clarendon or Governor Clinton shelters I stayed there nope they're very shelters to stay at they're very beautiful government has got a fireplace in it nice fireplace in it they closed the road there was a road that you could get to to get to Governor Clement that they closed yep so now the Governor Clement gate is closed I believe until mid-October after that it does open up for someone who lives in 18 years but outside for 19 years there's also right on the road near the government common shelter if you go straight down the road there's also a secret shelter and it's really cool it's a couple that hyped the AT and they made this shelter because they live right near and that shelter is also really nice because it's near a river and the fireplace keeps shelter really warm at night just a couple of comments first of all Spruce ledge was where the mice were living last fall that doesn't say they're going to be there this fall I'll just say one other thing I don't know if this applies to you or the listeners but as the seniors on the trail why we occasionally needed some rest and one of the few advantages of getting old is that you've managed to save up a few dollars and so you can afford to stay in a nice place and there were two that are in the and book that we stayed at that are just we're just marvelous one of them is called Thies Green Acres that's actually quite popular with pardon that's where it is and the other one is a place called Phineas Swan which is a little bit further north and they're just wonderful places to stay and in addition to which the proprietors will help you out with things like showing back and forth the trail and whatever else you need to I know Dick you brought your dog any tips in terms of hiking with your dog I'd also like to add on to that we've had a lot of questions online asking about are there any sections that are too difficult for a dog to do you want to stop that one first I forgot to mention you said you thought you were going to die the forehead at Mansfield I thought when I was going over I hoisted them up didn't realize as steep it was he was doing stuff I've taken my mom's watchtower he got scared and as I hollered over my head he turned around and said he came back toward me I don't have much purchase at all and one hand grabbed a rock I don't know how I didn't go over so I got to the top of the caretaker and we're talking to him and I said the other end I don't know how I'm going to do it and he said we took the winter route there was a bad weathered winter route on the backside of Mansfield again I looked at some other trails that was the only section how did he do on ladders because we saw some dogs struggling on ladders he if there was only one ladder he couldn't find his way around but he would look at it and he'd find his way around it he'd go off the rock his paws would stick he'd come back and look at it and he would go along the side of the ladders we'd go pick off in the woods and the devil's calls with the lumen ladder we'd go through a valley or something and we'd sit there and there's a 25 foot lumen ladder bolted to the side of the cliff sheer cliffs nowhere around the door stopped whining sitting around I stopped him and tacked it off he'd look at it I had to put him on my shoulders and carry him up he's had to score him in but then he settled down to carry him up tied him to the tree he's 65 pounds I had 10 more pounds so I had to pat myself in the back for a sit down oh yeah I still got it but he was good but yeah he always found his way up and around and stuff I went to the vet first this is my first hiking dog I've had I didn't want another dog my wife talked to me twice so we got a white one mountain dog and the vet said what do you do he says feed him one third more than you normally do so we usually give him a cup in the morning a cup at night give him a cup of food for lunch the other thing is he says he can carry one third his weight so I weighed 65 pounds but I never gave him more than 10 or 12 pounds I want to go under one third I know he was good he was still jumping over logs he was still running after squirrels and fleshing pheasant with the 10 to 12 pound pack on and he was just having a grand old time the two things that dogs need to learn is they need to stay and come only you don't need a smart dog they need to do those two things because he knows when somebody is coming the opposite direction and you look at him he stops come because not everybody is like dogs people could be allergic and sometimes he gets over exuberant and he has claws or if it's day packer and if you're on a day trip nice pair of white khakis and a clean shirt and they come to muddy god okay those are the only two things you need stay and come and you're good to go most places you need to keep on the verbal command you don't need a leash you need a leash above alpine Mansfield Campbell's Hum Abraham Proleesh I read the books I had them on and argued with a guy that guy was like great like what you want a few guys and argued with me you know what I mean but we got it out of that it was leash free and the long trail was much more dog friendly than the application trail it really is it's nice well I wish everybody who brought dogs on the trail would listen to your advice because we ran it several times we ran into dogs that were yipping and yapping and fighting at you and chopping up and knocking over your food and so it's they can be a real nuisance and I just don't understand why people who can't control their animals even think about bringing them on to a place like the one trail there's gonna be a lot of people his pack had food fighting for the food in it which it has now it had a leash it had a temperate tepid that would leave the ramp like the person who was allergic at the hot throw it up to everybody I teared them to a tree away from the hot arms temperate leather tepid he didn't like it it is what it is he had a brush always brushed the mud out we had an old skin where things wrapped his paws wouldn't show how his paws were gonna do but ahead of time he went on a lot of walking we went on local mountains at home tried to get his paws a little tougher once again it's a gentle forest a long trail it's shady pine needles a lot of rock it's very gentle on his paws and I was monitoring him constantly because I didn't want to have to carry him he split his paws whatever shelters I put around my if there's somebody else in the shelter he'd love to he'd want to go crawl against you once again not Curtis I had our six foot leash around my wrist that night he stayed with me and as soon as he moved I knew it and he kept him away from other people some people say it was fine but you know just Curtis if I didn't bring a dog do I want to smell like a dog some people didn't care some people do so those are the things he carried everything in this pack I had nothing in my pack except it was pad grab it right now that is it's four days with the food and that is nine pounds you want to pass around go ahead this is a so I can track him when he gets dark that's all I didn't try to track him when he gets dark but you want to pass around that's a comfortable one and he loved it he was just he never did not want to put it on he knows he puts it on he can chase Curtis and do wonderful things he just loves it the road's a tough and when I could hear the traffic I put the leash on because he chased the motorcycles that would be awesome horrible actually the shoulders and stuff and I had the leash on to cross the road and got a quarter mile back into the woods he always kept me in sight and like I said come and stay sorry you need and treats keep treats in your pockets lots of treats any other questions oh sorry I'm going to go over here first yeah just I'm curious this is from everybody about how many people you saw taking alone and what do you think about that and your thoughts about doing it without a dog or without a friend or a partner do you mind if I add on to that we've had several questions online as well specifically maybe the women on the panel can attest to this how safe did you feel we've had a lot of women ask that online so to build on that Meredith and I are actually just talking about this I'll just speak about her experience and she can speak from hers I saw a lot of young women solo hikers and they seemed great and a lot of the caretakers were actually women there was a fellow at Story Spring who ended up being escorted out but you know you just most people just split or I was there with a group so it wasn't a big deal but that was like the only time over 270 miles that we ran into anyone who seemed a little fishy but all the women packing had no problem and there were quite a few when I was on it yeah we were talking and oddly my friend who was a woman and I who hiked together we didn't see very many women who weren't with a male partner but that's sort of a side from the point we felt very safe and as far as being alone I think your experience is going to be really different depending on the time of the year so if you're going to be May or early June the trail is going to be a lot lighter traffic also with play at October we went in August it was booming so we ended up hiking every day with a couple of guys who had started by themselves so it's a very social experience I think if you're going during the time when a lot of other folks are hiking maybe July, August, September and if you want that it's a great thing we had a lot of fun meeting plenty of other people and they were hiking alone by that point I did like having a partner because we planned together and I think like Sydney and her dad said we could lift each other up when we were having a hard time and it was just it was a great shared experience to then take away as well like I still see her and we can talk about it together but we never felt unsafe that being said I've gone backpacking on the long trail in October and May and haven't seen anyone for four days that solitude I would plan for the shoulder season I would say as a guy who grew up in an era where young women never went any place alone and unescorted much less out in the middle of the woods I was really surprised at the number of single women on the trail we ran into a lot of them it's just we're just comfortable and much more at ease about it things have changed in the last 60 years oh it's my daughter if you feel it we saw a lot of solo hikers either going southbound or walking with us for a while I I felt safe did you feel safe mm-hmm any more questions I did the long trail in 74 when there were no cell phones and I did it with a friend this time I'm doing it solo in my 60s I feel totally fine about it I'm not really keen on I have to have a cell phone but that's what people tell me anyway I do have a flip phone just for emergencies and hiking and it rarely works particularly in the Adirondacks never had it work you know it could be a single so I also had AT&T so I understand that on tops of mountains that are not wooded I can hope for resection I have AT&T no marmalade reason to it that's Lachlan Creek you're in a valley where you can see JP but I have signal there sometimes on top I didn't have signal no marmalade reason but they do say that you can send a text message and you don't have signal and I had my doctor that had been a charger I didn't want to look at I turned on once a week or every three or four days to text my wife change the food drop or whatever but you should bring it for emergencies oh yeah I can answer but I have AT&T I had signal to spy but I had at least once every three or four days we also used ours a lot to check the weather because if you're out for a couple days and it can just change really fast there was one day it was supposed to rain in the morning that it shifted to the afternoon so we could like move based on that but I also had mine and I didn't have it on unless I needed to turn it on but I didn't chargers are really heavy so it just didn't really seem worth it keep on at a spot device or you reach a spot device oh a spot device spot device I've had some experience with those things and the problem is it's a wonderful concept but they don't work with the darn in the woods if you're going to have an emergency when you have nothing above you they're fine they do work they will send out a signal but if you're under a tree they're useless more like out west or something better off and the thing is the thing I was curious about was why don't they work and yet my iPhone will pick up satellite signals and let me know where the thing is the satellite is big and it sends out a pretty strong signal but when you use that spot device you have to communicate up to the satellite and then back and that takes a lot more radio power and if you're under trees it just doesn't work you're under so many people and everybody's helpful you know so I wouldn't recommend a spot device in this part of the world you know but it's out west great anyone else want to touch on something? I would say that the worst service would be down on the southern end of the long trail we were not able to contact Beth until we were two days in on our hike and we had Verizon we couldn't get a text message out to her but we did run into someone who sent a text message for us and they had AT&T so if you are the most southern extreme part of the state you might run into some communication issues but you got all sorts of great ski resorts once you get to Manchester North and there's great service for them all the way up to JP what did you guys find what was the best? I like these vests this is my third pair I've done a genre trail the the approach of Montrenere I really like these vests I've worn them for VASQUE I've been wearing them forever this is my third pair we wore trail runners like the ones that I'm wearing and the ones by the bag here because your feet are going to get wet no matter what because either the trail is wet or you're going to sweat so the sneakers dry easier than the boots and that's why we chose the sneakers just to piggyback on that for Sydney it was difficult for us to decide whether we were going to spend the money four pair of boots for one summer that might not even last for a summer I think that was the biggest thing but I think our argument was is yes our feet are going to get wet so we need to take care of them and we had a dry pair of socks every day to replace those shoes some people say they're lighter they're less supportive but we seem to be we seem to we just find along the long trail we prepared before we went we made sure the ankles were strong enough to go before we just threw on some sneakers and hit the long trail but we also did get some to help our feet and that helped we started out with as I mentioned earlier we started out with traditional over-the-angle hiking boots but as we were looking for ways to cut weight we decided that since we saw a lot of most everybody you see on the trail was wearing shoes really young boots at least that was our experience and we were a little nervous about having ankle support we tried it out and it was it was fine I bought myself a pair of solid men I think they're called equipped or something like that and they were great my feet were perfectly happy my partner had trouble finding a hiking boot that would fit so she ended up taking a pair of very light sneakers so they were very very light but unfortunately her feet were wet all the time whereas I didn't get involved with these things one of those things? yeah I think it's called it's a Solomon boot and I think it's called equipped let me just say where is it yeah here we go oh I'm sorry not equipped it's escape spelled E-S-K-A-P-E and then GTX which I think stands for vortex and I've seen quite a few of those on the trail which is why I decided to get here I'd say they were great to have I wore the running shoes that are right up there and I thought they were great my feet felt good I didn't have blisters or really like a break in process still plenty of support yeah they felt supportive they're lightweight like Sydney or Sarkoni they're just random shoes I didn't get these for any specific purpose a lot of people wear Solomon running shoes out there I hear they are more just a little sturdier they're they're like the intense long distance trail runner type shoe but my partner just had Adidas trail running shoes so I think I actually started with a different pair of running shoes that I'd had for like three years and they kind of already had holes in them and then the holes got bigger after like four days so I stopped in Roland and got those at the shoe store oh no yeah too much weight what pair how many days of running shoes and a lot of people take camp shoes cross cross are pretty heavy they're not they're not lightweight shoes yeah these are probably a pound for the pair which is which can be great like some people love them I didn't take camp shoes you didn't need to rest your feet the end of the day I think I'll just rest your feet I should rest my shoes off what about barefoot yeah so if it seemed like rude or uneven then I would just throw my shoes on barefoot if I needed to go far away but just one pair of shoes well I can't remember what brand of my shoes but they were just low hikers one tip that I got from someone last year I think Gray J who's done it many many times recommended plastic bags if it rains and I've actually done that before and especially if it's not really hot just put it over your socks and then it keeps your socks dry and then it's just good to have like a plastic bag I don't know for trash or something anyway and then for just something to wear that's like just taking your shoes off at the end of the day is awesome I guess you know I really should talk about our system we knew that our feet were going to get wet and we knew we had to take care of our feet Sydney and I carried three pairs of socks one pair of socks were our camp socks they stayed in a bag they were always dry we always knew we had a dry pair of socks when we got to camp and then we had two other pairs of socks one was on our feet of course and the other pair was always washed and hanging on our bags to dry so every day we at least had a fresh semi-fresh pair of socks compared to the other ones so you know that was really our system when we got to camp we threw the crocs on we had dry dry feet dry socks and then we washed our other socks a pair of ready to go the next morning hopefully they were dry not all days they were but most of the time they were so that so really if you're going to use the trail runners non-gore techs route you really kind of have to plan ahead and have a system and know that your feet are going to get wet and that you're going to have to you know take care of them and you get used to having wet feet I got a good trip for you works hundred percent wet burning gloves like a wet and you would have been a night they'd be trenching wet put them up against your skin tuck them into your bottom up against your torso skin to skin it's cold for a few minutes spend the morning your socks we toast to dry everyone they ever dry bad it works toast to dry when we hiked we used the darn tough socks because they they were really good for hiking because they kept our feet most of the time helped to keep our feet semi-dry and they're also made in Vermont which is really good here you go hey Brian you mentioned that you worked on your ankle for your trip you strengthened your ankle we made sure when we were when we threw a rock in our bag that we were wearing our sneakers and we were hitting the trail we were getting our ankles prepared for the long trail like they said before if it's not ready if it's if you don't have you know roots on the trail it's rocks or most of the time you're walking in a stream bed so if it's raining you're walking in a river money money I mean it was a treat to walk on flat even ground you know you spent a lot of time looking at your feet because foot placement is really important on the long trail it is brutal not an easy walk for sure there was a lot of times when we were walking in mud on roots and with rocks through tripping and falling into just mud pits of mud so I guess to answer your question is use your equipment before you go on the trail practice with it get in shape for it because you're going to have to rely on it once you're out there yeah one thing I mean don't believe the nickname which is a path it's a jungle and not gentle rolling hills either classic were you did people come and ask me about ticks was it oh yes so we did have a couple questions online asking about ticks did you guys do tick prevention did you tuck your pants in your socks see any ticks anything like that I can shorts the whole time never had a single tick on 30 there September October you want to eat it probably we didn't see any ticks at all any other questions on average you know how much weight was that including the water almost 30 to 35 pounds with 5 days 6 days of the food 35 40 of the food closer to 30 you can check your food 2 pounds a day eating enough food I had 10 between 15 and 20 pounds on average that's how you do it I had I had 35 pounds when I had all the food and water so fully loaded I was 35 pounds walking down the trail for us the upper limit when we were backpacking was about 25 pounds and basically we were which was about half the days when we were in daylight we had about 12 pounds my bag was usually 15 to 18 pounds wow you know camp shoes or a tent a tent but everything you need absolutely everything you need ours was well and taters were around 33 35 but we also had a lot really good food so do you wish you had at the end of you you were at 35 would you have wanted to bring it down lower I wish I was 10 pounds less yeah same 10 pounds less absolutely 35 good weight for me I don't even feel like I have it on I did a lot of work camping I didn't have 50 60 pounds when I got on the 30 35 that's awesome I really had a lot of work for me and myself so resupply was a lot of extra weight on the bag and I could really feel the difference when we're heading back up into the woods yeah same I mean we wish we would ditch the tent for sure and some other things because low 30s is pretty heavy well I used to hump around a 60 70 I looked at that pack and said what can we leave behind the way I like to think about weight is comfort so if you have a lot of pack it's going to be more comfortable and if it's more comfortable you're going to have more fun and I never dreaded putting my backpack on or anything like that that being said though if you're going to be really uncomfortable without something that weighs a little bit more you should take like ultralight all the way isn't necessarily the answer if you need this one thing that's going to make you more comfortable but the just in case attitude of like well maybe just in case I'll be more comfortable adds up over time and then all of a sudden you're 5, 7, 10 pounds heavier so think it out and like Ryan said test your system probably for an overnight or a really long day hike beforehand and see what you use and what you don't use and my advice is eliminate the things you don't and you'll have everything you need but like I always bring a sleeping bag because I get really cold my partner doesn't bring a sleeping bag he just uses a bivvy sack which is like there's nothing to it yeah yeah it's like a small sack that sort of insulates your body heat and keeps out the wind but he doesn't get as cold so that's just an example of what makes you most comfortable after 5 pounds but it makes the trip worth it for you then go for it but in general a lighter pack in my experience is more fun yeah did you all bring pads sleeping pads or anything I guess I'm similar to her it's a big agnes it's a three inch thick it has no insulation value can't use it at one time but it's really really comfortable and I can take my blue tarp all the time sometimes you're on the wood shelter the wood floor the shelter which is not super comfortable so I think having some good padding is pretty key if you want to try to sleep yeah we needed something soft under it so we used it's a thermal rest product called Leo Air and comfort lies they were great but they have two big disadvantages one is that they're very noisy crunch and fragile I don't know why they're any other is that you keep sliding off so they really don't we really didn't come up with a good solution for the comfortable pad issue a lot of people online have asked about rain how did you deal with rain and what did you carry to keep yourself in a jacket cause a lot of times if it's really down pouring you're gonna get wet anyway but my favorite thing is the rain skirt which goes you don't have to like put it on the pants or something but if you're just wearing a jacket sometimes the bottom half will get wet and my partner wore a black one so she didn't even have to wear shorts underneath when she was wearing it but I did did you like 18 times yeah but these are really fun to make and keep your legs dry do you have a YouTube video showing how to make it when we did rain we had um I had rain in the hands that I only used once we had our rain jackets that we used not very often and then we had our to keep our stuff on the inside of our bag dry we took garbage bags and wrapped our stuff in it so we put one big garbage bag in and then we tightened it all together and rolled the top and then we tightened our bag together and we wrapped our sleeping bag in its own and then it kind of helped so I I didn't what we did is just taking compact bags and we would line the inside of our bag and put stuff inside that compact bag and roll it up to keep the rain out um you know here with the sleeping bag um just wrap the sleeping bag on the inside of the bag it might be add a little weight um but we found that when it was time to really get ready for the rain the rain cover with the bag wasn't always effective um and when you're walking with a rain jacket um you're walking with a rain jacket you're sweating on the inside anyways so I felt like I was always overheated I've always taken my jacket on and off and so I did not really enjoy walking in the rain very much at all because of that I was never dry anyways either overheated or I was trying to find that fine balance of staying warm um I someone could find a perfect system for walking in the woods in the rain and be comfortable and dry I I see I saw a lot of through hikers with umbrellas and I think that's probably the most effective way to do it I don't know I couldn't see how that was an umbrella but I have a rain jacket everywhere when I was done hiking I always had a word hiking so I usually had a hat uh keep my head dry shorts pair of gaiters to keep my feet dry uh I know gaiters have to go with choppy booze put this on after I'm that hiking kind of dry shirt throw this on if I could make my meal give my wife what I have to do while it's still raining but I want to wear a garment and uh yeah kind of dry my feeling about rain I don't mind getting wet that wasn't my concern the thing I don't like about rain is that it makes a rugged difficult hike on trail treacherous because now everything is slippery as well as uneven and difficult and in fact that's what contributed to our accident and after that we decided we needed a foolproof that sort of situation and we came up with a wonderful solution which worked for the rest of the trek which was you listen to the weather forecast and if there's rain in the forecast you don't go hike and work perfectly I also like line my bag like they did just with a trash bag just to enter and then I put everything inside that it's important to note shoes white I use white shoes white guys if you use black you can't say anything in your bag and the compacted bag is thicker but you can use white definitely you can't find anything and the trash compacted bags are different from the garbage bags they're bigger they're bigger yeah the other questions yeah trekking poles what was your comment my husband I started out with two trekking poles but I noticed that I needed one to be able to grab onto stuff especially when you're going down like a tree you know a branch so we ditched them and then we each just had one that we used which is kind of just like having a walking stick but sometimes it was really helpful just to have that extra leverage when you're going downhill and there's just a rock slab and there's nothing to grab onto I use one pole I've never used them for 30 years but I'm 56 and my knees are going I use one pole for going down I love it like I like having an extra hand and I don't use them for going up that's it we used the trekking poles we didn't use them when we were on the flats or when we were going where you didn't really use them when we were going down unless it was very steep and that helped us from not falling and we used two and then we all and then um he ended up great one of his broke so he ended up with one um I still had two at the end and we found that it was much easier to use them going up than it was to go down good job yeah I would say if you're over 70 don't go on the long trail without poles because it's not just less wear and tear on your joints but it's balance balance is the first thing to go and having those extra couple of contact points with the ground in some cases it's just essential I'm not 70 and I love hiking poles I take two and I really like them for going up and also going down as nice balance I always put the wrist straps on so if I need to grab something I'll just sort of drop it and like grab it the pole will hang from your wrist um and I also I use them all the time just because I think it helps you get into a really nice flow but they're not necessarily you don't have to have them unless you get any blisters you don't know I think you're ripping it really hard maybe but probably wouldn't be any other questions? yeah I have two not really questions what do you do for story food do you get night? do you hear me? story food at night story food at night and then what kind of cold weather layer did you bring you know like in mornings which are then all day cold weather and food story? my cold weather is also my sleeping um when it's warm outside so if it's like June through September I have one outfit for hiking which is shorts and a t-shirt and then one outfit for sleeping which is um tights in a long sleeve and then I have a thin puppy jacket like this so when it gets cooler I have my sleeping clothes um because I'm not going to be sweating anyway and then um just change once it gets warmer um I um when we got to camp we had fleece pants a long synthetic shirt um and then we also had a fleece which kept us very warm because it gets cold at night in the summer it gets pretty cold you can wake up and you can see your breath so cold um and then you um then we used our rain jackets a lot for the wind but we didn't really have anything else yep you pretty much hit it on the nose we had synthetic um t-shirts and then if we needed um some fleece and if we needed something to break the wind then we would use our rain jackets to break the wind um and that's really all we needed um we didn't even bring pants we brought some pants for camp clothes but we hiked in the rain in the wind with just shorts because you're active and you stay pretty warm that way layers I would like to make one comment on clothing one piece of type of clothing that I discovered is merino wool it is the most marvelous stuff because it wicks well and it dries quickly but most importantly it doesn't stink it's unbelievable I'm a heavy perspire and I've tried a million different materials I'm on the trail for an hour and it's unbearable okay and merino wool I can go on the trail for days it's fresh as a rose it's just amazing stuff just amazing that's my socks made out of they're awesome the socks I use a down vest I like it when it's six ounces my torso always gets cold so at the end of the day we're on a dry shirt I only bring a second shirt shirt I'm wearing another short sleeve shirt and this thing so at the end of the day we're on a dry shirt put this on and it's really cold I throw in my raincoat because they condense it and this thing's awesome and my torso gets cold at night I'm in my sleep bag I go I do 10 or 15 miles I'm asleep by 6.37 p.m. and the dog wakes me up in five in the morning so I'm in bed for a look when it gets cold and you know after around the night I'm sleeping in my bag I'm old not a little of you but I'm old yes so my sleep bag my primary plan is 20 years but yeah but the best six ounces I don't weigh anything and it's awesome the only other thing I'd add is a lightweight winter hat and if it's cold at night then you know maybe your head's popping out especially like you don't have a mummy bag or you don't want to put it on and it's nice in the morning too and then you can easily just like stuff it in your pocket so and obviously a lot of heat escapes through your head so I would definitely recommend that even in the summer for the evenings too what about mosquitoes, black flies don't hike in May and June that's what I wanted September yeah there wasn't anything in September or October July, August, September, October the bugs are not existing yeah it was not bad for us we hiked in June in June and during July and when we finished and by the whole time we we might have gone a couple mosquito bites but we didn't get much we've had a question online and feel free to not answer this if you don't want to but can any of you touch on personal hygiene on the trail like cleaning up at the end of the night I get no shame sure I get no shame too fresh too paced don't need soap don't need stupid deodorant don't need anything like that because everybody smells the same and I get a problem you know I mean yeah I guess and I got a favorite pair I've used like I've used on the John Muir trail a lot of 10-day trips under armor underwear just pair under like $40 for a pair black you can wear them for 2-3 weeks solid you can get them on it's not a problem it'll have to change we brought our toothbrushes and toothpaste and we brought them in so you put the bottom you flip ones or you can you get the ones where you take them out and put them into a case thing that's part of it those are what we used and then we used a small little tube of toothpaste and then we brought like other stuff like for him his contact things and we brought some Dr. Browner soap which is you you can use for almost everything it's really good and you can get it really nice awesome after that's hand sanitizer little bottles of hand sanitizer you put one in your cooking pot so when you go to cook you can't sanitize your hands you put one in your little toilet paper so you come out of the tree and sanitize your hands always sanitize and you don't you don't forget the things everywhere I actually just brought those little wet wipes which even if you don't care about hygiene sometimes it just feels nice to wipe off your face in the morning before you start hiking get all the salt and the grime off you can use it after you use the privy as well so I mean like Meredith is saying the comfort it's a little bit extra weight but it's amazing how good it actually feels I really like rinsing off your feet and your face at the end of the day in the stream downstream of the water source feels great and because it was warm when we hiked we swam every chance we got and that makes you feel pretty clean and I take a little barf so for the same thing like wash your hands after you go to the bathroom because that's the biggest thing that's going to make you sick over a lot of water contamination issue yeah just just splashing your face in the stream as you pass makes you feel good and brushing your teeth yeah and just another GMC PSA please don't you soak in the water sources walk it away and also wet wipes tampons trash anything other than toilet paper does not decompose in the privy so please don't throw it in there and toilet paper doesn't really decompose in the woods either and that was one thing unfortunately I saw a lot of people pack it out if you're going to do it put it in a plastic bag and pack it out especially if you find it by the water source you're just like oh god and for women so if you're on your period and you're using tampons what I do is take a plastic bag of baking soda and you can put them in there and so they're sort of in something it neutralizes everything keeps it contained and then if you want you can put that in there and it will decompose it the next time you're in a town and if that's something you have to deal with which is the reality of being a woman on a trailer I don't know about anything you talk about everybody smells the same and I'd say that's true most of the time there was one time when a guy came into the shelter it was a closed four wall shelter and he says I hope nobody is offended because I think I smell a little bit You'll find people at different, like, hygiene levels on the trail. I mean, we all do. We all do smell. Sydney and I were, you know, we were using our little toothbrushes, and we heard this buzzing. And a friend of ours, Bacon, if you're out there, yes, we're talking about your electric toothbrush. That was his luxury item. He says, everyone gets one luxury item, that's one thing he felt like he couldn't live without. So, you know, you'll see all sorts of different levels of hygiene, some non-existent, and some bring it all. I'll tell you, one of the things that amazed me was, especially the young women on the trail, not only that they were there, but they always looked like they just came out of the shower in a beauty shop. They were spotless. And here I am all cake with mud. I've only been off for an hour and I'm all muddy. And they just look spotless. I don't know how they do it. I lead hikes for the Green Mountain Club, so I have a fairly extensive, perhaps too extensive, first aid kit, and I keep culling and culling. So I'd like to know what are the essentials that you take and maybe what are the things that you feel when you realize you could ditch the behind and conversely the ones that you said, or what should I add? Just to keep an eye on time, if you keep your answer fairly brief, that would be fantastic. Yeah, I'll take a shot at that. I think for me the two essential things are, one, an ace bandage, because ankles are probably the most common thing I've run into, not for myself, but other people. So having an ace bandage is, any other one is the likes of everyone, is something to deal with serious cuts. So, sanitary pads, lots of flaws, stuff like that. As far as other things, I do carry a tick-remover, but I've never used it. And other things, maybe something, a few tablets for constipation or diarrhea, probably a couple of things. Other than that, if it's pain, you know, you can deal with pain for a couple of days, but it's really the life preserving stuff that you need. Well, if you're going with a group, you need moleskin. Not everybody is the same, a couple of you. You have a bigger kit, you have a group with a smaller kit. It was a skull mat, I bring six-boy scouts, they got a big kit. If it was me and the dog, I had a couple of these moleskins, duct tape, a band-aid, and I have a girlfriend, and an ace bandage, you know? Oh, Vince, what size? Sydney had a fall. On camel's hump. And she split her knee open to the point that maybe she should have had sutures. What I did have with me was hand sanitizer, toilet paper, duct tape, and super glue. Those are the things that I brought. I knew that if we had spray ankles, if we had anything like that, we could manage with not having them. But I knew if we had blood and we needed to control some bleeding, this is some of the stuff that we needed. We needed to sanitize and close it up so we can get to where we need to and assess at that point. And Sydney was able to, after we got it cleaned up, we realized that she was okay. A little bit of super glue, a little bit of duct tape, and she was able to move on from that. Ridge runners, they are very helpful. They saw Sydney's injury, and they had first aid kits, and they were happy to help her out with that. And they realized that it was pretty clean, and we did a pretty good job, and they let us move on. So think about the worst, and think about the least amount of stuff, because a first aid kit is something that you hope you never need, but if you bring too much stuff, it's a lot, if that makes sense. It took them a lot of space in our bag, but we obviously used it, so it's important. Yeah, one thing we did that I would recommend, which doesn't add any zero weight to your pack, is we took the one of the Solo Wilderness first aid courses, two-day course, before we did the track and dose. You'll learn a lot of useful things on those things, mostly prevention, and how to recognize the really serious life-threatening problems. So, sorry I don't mean to hurt you two after bringing the first aid kit, but we're basically out of time, so to close, I just want to thank everyone. Thank you guys so much for coming, and if you could go down the line and just say, you're one quick, best piece of advice you'd give for someone wanting to end. I need some nice people to hike with, because it's about who you meet on the trail, and that's most of what happens, and that's really a huge part of it. Just do it. It took me 30 years to get out, to make the time to do this, and I wish I had taken that. Actually, not five times by now. Just do it. Get out there and make the time to do it. Yeah, mine would be simply stay zoned in all the time, especially when you're walking in wet rocks and tree roots. Yeah, I would say just do it. You figure it out, and in Vermont, it's always important to be safe, but you're never very far from other people, from safety, from like, just figure it out. Just do it and be flexible, I guess. I would say don't be free to take your time. Sometimes we got caught up of like, oh my God, they did so many more miles than we did. It's really not about that. Everyone says hike your own hike, but you look at the registers and they're like, I did 30 miles a day, I did 50. You start feeling like the competitiveness, but we just really wanted to enjoy it and to take time off and to go swimming and to notice the trees and the views and go that extra point one to Killington. I just would say if you have the time, take the time because it's a beautiful trail with so many little hidden features and you want to enjoy every minute of it. Well, thank you guys so much again for making the drive. I really appreciate it. Let's give a hand.