Gear I wish I'd had during my Thru-Hike

hey guys it's Darwin so today I wanted to talk about five pieces of gear that I wish that I had had when I started my thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail [Music] so as backpackers we are constantly evolving our gear and figuring out what works for us they are now writer options and more efficient pieces of gear on the trail and that's totally cool I do it all the time I'm constantly switching out gear today I kind of wanted to talk about five pieces of gear that I now use that I wish that I had known about and I wish that I had brought with me when I started my through hi could the Appalachian Trail in 2015 so there's tons of different types of gear that I wish that I would have had obviously out on the trail like maybe a lighter pack maybe a different a different cook system that I'm now using but this is just five pieces of gear that probably would have made my hike a little more efficient that I'm now using on the trail so number one is a pillow so in 2015 whenever I set out to hike the 80 I thought who needs a pillow I don't need a pillow I'll just take my down jacket I'll stuff it up or use my clothes bag and I'll sleep on that and I did that all of 2015 I actually kind of made fun of people that carry these things thought that they were goofy I didn't want to blow one up it just seemed like a worthless piece of gear to me so in 2016 when snuggles and I return to the Appalachian Trail I was just kind of interested in one of these and as much as I had bashed them I kind of figured I might as well put my money where my mouth is and I decided to grab one just to test it out on the trail and let me tell you what this helped me get better sleep than I've ever gotten so all of 2015 out on the trail I used a down jacket and the down jacket that I used was a Marmot Zeus down jacket which is awesome because it folds up in its own pocket and kind of becomes a little bit of a pillow and I got pretty decent sleep the problem with the down jacket is over time especially laying on it it starts to compress and get a little bit flatter sometimes I even used my clothes bag just stuffed a bunch of stuff on that and use that as a pillow and I got pretty decent sleep in 2016 when I picked up the sea2summit arrows pillow and took it out there I got way better sleep than I've ever gotten on the trail which obviously getting better sleep and better rest promoted better making now as light as this damn thing is and as small as it compacts down this is totally worth it to me and I will never go hiking without one of these fellows again and simply just because it gave me better sleep and when you're doing something like hiking from four to six months every single day you want to make sure that you're good and rested and that you can put those miles out to where you're not wearing your body down as hard so if I had to turn back time and start my new hike over again I'd be bringing one of these guys the second piece of gear that I wish that I had started the Appalachian Trail it was a different stove so when snuggles and I set out to hike the 80 and 15 we had been using a jet boil so what we had done was we we took our jet boil we got one of those adapter pot rings and then we got one of those big cook pots because we figured there's two of us so we're going to need this big cook pot to be able to do a lot of boiling and cook food for both of us now we also carried our snow-peak mugs and it worked for a handful of weeks by the time we got to Hiawassee Georgia which really isn't that far end we realized how insanely overkill that Jetboil system was jet boils are great they're super efficient at boiling water fast but man that is a lot of gear especially when you're using that little cook pot so what we ended up switching out to is we sent that guy home and by the time we got to hot springs North Carolina I picked up a snow peak right max so since we already had our titanium mugs that we could cook out of and eat out of we just picked one of these up shed the weight like 10 fold and made a much more efficient cook system so now when I'm out on the trail there's no way I would ever use a jet boil again jet boils are great at what they do they're just kind of overkill if you're doing long-distance hiking and just needing something super small super efficient and super lightweight but from now on I'll always just carry a small canister stove if I'm going to be cooking on the trail the third piece of gear that I would totally be starting with if I had to redo my hike of the 80 is a gravity feed system so there's tons of different filters that you can use in tons of different ways to purify your water out on the trail if you choose to use something like a Sawyer squeeze they're great they're super efficient the super lightweight you can filter a hundred thousand gallons of water through them but when you're stopping like four or five times a day every day for months on end and you're filling up these little squeeze bags with just a little bitty hole on the top it can kind of become a little bit annoying so something that I ended up doing in 2015 about a month in on the trail was picking up a gravity feed system so just picking up one of these platypus gravity bags this dirty bag and then this hose and then I was just able to connect this hose to the back of my Sawyer connect it to this and let gravity do the work for me and it was much more efficient on tons of different levels number one I could sit at camp hook this up to like a nail on the shelter and just put my filter in my bottle and just let gravity do the work and fill it up so I wasn't sitting there squeezing those bags out and taking all that time to do that and then the second big efficient thing about going to the system was just collecting water so whenever you're using those soy your bags you just kind of have this little bitty tiny hole at the top to be able to get it under a water source and sometimes it's kind of a pain in the ass because you just had this little bitty trickle for sometimes you have a really shallow pool and trying to dip that down and collect water can totally suck so by having this big-mouthed gravity feed bag but has this big collection hole on it I was actually able just to take it and dip it down into water collect all that water at one time and get to filtering much faster so not only is it more efficient at filtering water but it's way more efficient at collecting water which definitely saves you time and aggravation when you're out on the trail so I would definitely be taking a gravity feed system or something similar if I was going to be doing that through hike again so the fourth piece of gear that I would definitely take if I was doing another to hike of the 80 is not necessarily a piece of gear but something that you definitely need and that is a guide so in 2015 we carried the AWOL guide which is a great guide for hiking the 80 it has really good information on towns water stops elevation shelters so definitely suggest getting that if you want to use a paper guide but if I had to hike that trail again I would be using my phone so now we have tons of different apps that you can throw right on our phone and for carrying our phone anyways there's no real need to carry a big thick paper guide anymore so what I now use when I hike a trail what I'm going to be using for my 2018 PCT through hike is the gut hook app the get hook app is great so it pretty much takes that big paper guide and it puts it right on your phone and it uses GPS so it's much more accurate than that book you know the thing with the book is whenever you're hiking you kind of have to figure out exactly where you're at looking for certain landmarks like a shelter or maybe a certain water spot to know exactly where you are on your mileage we're on the app it's precise because it's using GPS and since you have your phone anyways you might as well put it on there now not only is there the gut hook app which is a great app and it's the one that I use but from what I understand a wall has actually made a PDF file that you can load right on to your phone as well so instead of carrying that big bulky book you have to tear pages out they have to find a place to put and keep waterproof the app is much better all the way so if I had to do a thru-hike of the 80 again I would definitely be using the get hook app or an app like it on my phone versus carrying that big thick book the fifth and final piece of gear that I really really wish that I would have had when I did my through hike of the 80 in 2015 is a camera now snuggles and I carried a cell phone which are great too and now cell phones have like amazing cameras in there but I wish that we would have had a better camera like the GoPro or something like what I'm now using the canon g7x mark - just because shooting footage is kind of important to me number one not only to make these youtube videos but also just because I love looking back at amazing video from the trail now I'm a big-time cinematographer I love shooting video and that might not be for everyone and most people can do most of their video shooting on a cell phone the cell phone that snow goes in icaridin 15 wasn't that great so we didn't really want to shoot video with it just because it couldn't really capture that I just really wish that I would have had a standalone camera that could shoot good footage so I had that to look back home and not only to look back on but also whenever I make videos for you guys and I back to look at my footage to find b-roll to insert that into my videos all I have from 2015 are still pictures and they're great still pictures but sometimes I just want to show you guys video I don't really have that so having a good camera and shooting that trail is definitely important to me again even if you don't want to carry a standalone camera you can at least shoot some good video on a good cell phone if you have one which most people do but if I was going to be through hiking the eighty one more time I would definitely make sure that I had a really good camera on me so I could get some smokin footage obviously that's gear that not everyone's going to want to take with them that was just a list of the things that I wish that I would have had whenever I started might do hike of the 80 and if I was going to do it again I would definitely make sure I had with me at the start of the trail so what are some pieces of gear that you wish you would have had at the start of a trail leave it in the comments section below and let me know your thoughts if you haven't had a chance yet go over and check me out on Instagram I've been posting a lot of new photos lately of some of the things that snugger than I have going on throughout the week plus some pictures from some past hikes so go check those out if you found any value in this video go ahead and hit that like button subscribe to my channel if you haven't already and as always guys thanks for watching [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Darwin onthetrail

Views: 944,931

Rating: 4.8491421 out of 5

Keywords: Appalachian Trail, AT, Thru-Hike, AT Thru-Hike, Backpacking, Hiking, Adventure, Camping, Hiker Trash, UL Backpacking, PCT, Pacific Crest Trail, PCT Thru-Hike, Long Distance Hiking, UL Gear, SnowPeak, Lite Max Stove, Guthook, Awol Guide, Gravity Feed System, GoPro Session 5, Canon G7X Mark ii, Aeros UL Pillow

Id: RRi2IyxoNTg

Length: 10min 53sec (653 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 13 2017