 Give me one of these bangers and I'll... I saw it go. There you go. Back to lower base shadows our stay. Come here you guys. Come with you. Come with you. Here we have contact for three point sizes. Come with you. Come with you. They glow in the dark. It's got tritium in it. So at night it glows and until you sight in at night. It kind of looks like it's in the dark. I just took it all over the place. There you go. My name is Secondly Tenant Connor Wilkinson. I am with 3rd Battalion 6 Marines and I am the Executive Officer of Headquarters and Service Company. We are in Mountain Warfare Training Center in Bridgeport, California. MTX is a mountain training exercise so it's bringing Marines out to the mountains in high elevation and getting them accustomed to training at high altitude in a mountainous environment. 2nd Marine Division is from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. So Camp Lejeune does not have that many mountains or high elevation. So we bring 2nd Marine Division out here to get accustomed to training in the mountains and at high altitude so they are better equipped to fight wherever the next war might be. Whether that's North Korea or China or Russia. They all have some kind of mountainous terrain. So bringing 2nd Marine Division out to Bridgeport, California. It really gets them ready to basically fight in any climb or place. Out here we have 3rd Battalion 6 Marines. We have 3rd Battalion 8th Marines. We have 8th Engineer Support Battalion and we have 2nd Combat Engineer Battalion. This type of training helps Marines be more expeditionary because back at Camp Lejeune we are training on flat land where it's not quite as cold. Coming out here we are embracing the elements, getting out into the snow, walking in snowshoes and we are basically learning how to operate in a snow covered high altitude environment. Marines exemplified physical and mental toughness. Well first of all physical toughness. Some of the hikes out here going up and down the hills are very strenuous on the Marines especially for Marines who are not accustomed to the high altitude. And then you add on the elevation factor. Hiking is very difficult out here. Not to mention the weight that we are carrying. Hiking can certainly be something that needs to be considered when doing a movement with a company or a platoon of Marines. First and foremost mental toughness is essential out here. This land is very unforgiving. It's the high altitude, it's the cold weather, it's the snow and it really tests the Marines leadership to be able to lead Marines that are not highly motivated that don't want to get out of the bag in the morning and don't want to go on that snowshoe movement. So the NCOs and the staff NCOs it's up to them to motivate their Marines. So they need to be especially mentally tough to get the Marines to do what they need to do. Certain things for me that were focused on during this training were especially mobility, how fast Marines can move in a mountainous and snowy terrain and that just goes into time space considerations. How fast can you get your platoon or company to a certain position because out here everything's a lot slower. So you need to take that into consideration when you're planning a movement or you want to get your company from one place to another. So coming out here I was supposed to be the maintenance management officer but I soon found out that I would be a porter squad leader and when I was told what that was I really had no idea what I was about to get into. But as I started to understand the mission that the companies wanted to do I understood how hard logistics would be in this mountainous and high elevation snowy terrain. So the porters were tasked with resupplying the companies and out here we use tuckers which are snow vehicles and they can't always get to the companies where they're positioned at. So the porters would load up the tuckers with supplies and then we would hike the supplies from the tucker to the company where the tucker couldn't get to. One thing in particular about this training is it's very hard to get water resupplied to the companies. So what I didn't realize when I came out here was that we would be boiling snow to make water and in a winter like this where it's especially warm and mild climate it's very hard to get that snow to boil the water so sometimes we would have to go into a snow covered area just to get water. I'm Sergeant Brian Labiosa. I'm with 3rd Battalion 6th Marines and I'm the Armory NCOIC. We're in Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center, Bridgeport, California. So MTX stands for Mountain Training Exercise. What it is is basically a training exercise that gives us the opportunity to as small unit leaders build one another and learn about the terrain that we're operating in. MTX stands for Mountain Training Exercise. What it is is basically an exercise that allows us to Marines to learn how to operate in colder climates. Being that it's in the cold weather we're just learning how to deal with frostbite and operate in these temperatures. Second Marine Division does these type of training events to prepare us for any type of terrain and or adversary that we're going to be fighting against in the future. The units participating in this exercise are the Battalion 6th Marines 3A and 8th ESB. This training prepares 3-6 to be more expeditionary ready by allowing us to get used to the climate and just understand what we're getting ourselves into if we get that call to come to a climate like this. Marines have displayed mental and physical toughness by learning how to operate in these temperatures and understand their bodies and the Marines. Some of the things that we're focused on in this training were frostbite, learning how to wear proper clothing and how to operate in this type of climate, such as trail breaking, learning how to patrol throughout different areas of these mountains. I got tasked with the job of being a porter. What a porter is is basically a pack mule for the Marines. It allows the Marines to do their leaders, recon, and be as mobile as possible. Once they reach their checkpoints, we will then go in and give them their gear. That way they can operate with their actual combat load and or existence load, whatever they have for that mission.