If I Hiked the Appalachian Trail Again

hey y'all Dixie here today I want to talk to you about how I would do things a little differently if I were to through hikes Appalachian Trail again [Music] it's been over three years now since I started my through hack of eighty and actually over three since I finished it also but throughout my through hacks of the Pacific Crest Trail and the Continental Divide Trail and even here recently just before finishing the CDT perk and I had conversations about you know how would we have maybe change things up if we had the knowledge that you know we gained on those other two through hacks and so I just wanted to share some of those thoughts with y'all today in case some of y'all are planning to either section or through hike on the Appalachian Trail first things first I probably would have started the trail a little bit earlier I knew that in May I would have a graduation to go to for one of my siblings back home so I would have to get off trail travel home go to the graduation and all the festivities and then travel back and in that time off depending on how long you take off you can kind of lose some of the progress you've made towards your trail eggs so if you know that you have any weddings or graduations or any kind of things that you've already committed to you might have to go back home for I would certainly plan to start a little earlier now I actually did take that into consideration I was thinking about starting maybe the first week of April or even the second week of April but I started instead on March 29th on the approach trail but I always recommend starting a little bit earlier anyway just in case some sort of emergency happens or an injury and in my case on the 80 not only did I get off trail for that graduation but I also ended up having to get off trail when my dog sugar got sick at home and ended up passing away it was a whole big awful ordeal and and then I had plantar fasciitis also which slowed me down so I ended up not summoning Katahdin until October 19th when there was snow and asked everywhere and although it was an epic finish you know I would have liked to have not had the ending be so stressful you know and and not have to worry about finishing on time so I think if especially you know you have something to do starting even earlier than that is better if I had it to do again I might start mid-march knowing that I had some obligation and then also planning for emergencies but at least a week earlier than I did so if I'm talking about an earlier start date I want to go ahead and transition into gear because I was a little bit cold in the Smoky Mountains so if I started earlier I probably would have been even colder at night so with that earlier start date and maybe even just because I freeze and I don't like being cold I would probably go with a warmer sleeping bag so I have this Sierra Designs 23-degree bag but that rating is for basically survival so you will live down to 23 degrees in that bag but the comfort rating was probably more along the lines of 30 degrees and when it dropped down to 30 or even in the upper 20s I was pretty chilly I would also probably go with a higher fill I believe that sleeping bag was a 700 fill down and the one that I have now is 800 so I like the lofty air bags I would go with a colder rated bag with higher fill because I just like that fluffy lofty nasai went with that sleeping bag is because it was a pretty good deal price wise and I was on a pretty strict budget you know I had gotten all of my gear in a period of a couple months leading up to the through hack so if you've got time to kind of spread out your gear purchases and upgrade slowly you might not be as much in that situation but when you start at the last minute you're buying everything at once then it hurts the budget a little bit more and because I was trying to budget I went with a closed cell phone sleeping pad and by New Jersey I was absolutely miserable and I could not sleep so if I had the glass ball to look into and know that that wasn't gonna work for me then I probably would have started with an inflatable sleeping pad again it is a big price difference between the NeoAir extra light that is like my go-to sleeping pad now and the closed cell foam pad that I think I paid like 10 or 15 bucks for for a pack the Osprey that I started with was a good pack to start with it carries well for my heavier gear that I had at the time it was probably a better pack but know what I know now and now that I've lightened up my base weights um I think that a Dyneema pack or cuben fiber pack would have been a really really good choice for the Appalachian Trail because is raining all the time out there and you know on the Pacific Crest Trail and Continental Divide Trail I didn't get as much rain as I did on the 80 but it was just so nice having that Cuban fiber as another barrier of waterproofing to protect my gear so I had my Dyneema pack and then I lined it with a compactor bag I did the same on the 80 in my Osprey pack but those packs just soaked up so much water so on top of being miserable and soggy from being rained on now you've got a lot of water weight that soaks into that pack and takes a little while to dry out so if I could magically have the knowledge from the other trails and go back to the 80 or if I did it again I would go with the Z packs duplex or at least some lighter tent at the time I did not feel comfortable with a tent that had to be put up using any kind of skill it was my first backpacking trip ever so everything was new even having my Big Agnes Fly Creek ul to be a tent that doesn't completely stand up by itself you have to stake out the rain fly that made me a little bit nervous but having something like the duplex where I'm setting it up with trekking poles and all that I just it would have freaked me out so but if I magically had that knowledge I would go with that option on the Appalachian Trail or I would now because you just can't beat the weight savings now I know that there are people who are concerned with condensation and on a trail like the Appalachian Trail where it stays a lot more wet and damp in general I guess it could be a concern but I know there have been through hikers who have successfully used the Z packs duplex on the 80 and they loved it something else that I wish I had tried on the 80 in the rain is an umbrella the only reason I ever started hacking with an umbrella was to protect myself from the Sun when I was in the desert on the PCT and then I fell in love with it and later in the Cascades I wish I had had an umbrella and at the end of the CDT I was really glad to have an umbrella when I was getting rained on and sleet Adhan and snowed on so I I wish that I had started the Appalachian Trail with an umbrella I think just not the reflectix deal that I used in the desert on the PCT or CDT but just a keep collapsible umbrella from like Walmart you know just a latticed one that you can find just because I think saving yourself the mental like annoyance with being just poured on and just being able to take a break under your umbrella and eat a snack if you want to I just think it would be priceless know when it did finally get colder in New Hampshire and in Maine I do wish that I'd had a little bit better gear for the freezing cold rain and when it started snowing I wish that I'd had a base layer to hack in so I have my sleeping clothes that I would hack in if it wasn't raining and it was cold but I do wish that I had had another base layer - to be a little bit warmer in while I'm hiking in the rain in addition to that base layer I think having the neoprene booties that I discovered on the CDT and the waterproof gloves those blue shell gloves I think having those on the 80 in New Hampshire and Maine would have been wonderful and would have just made things a lot more comfortable and finally I thought back then that hand warmers carrying those on trail just seemed like a ridiculous weight you know you use it one time and then you've got a tote the rest of that dead useless weight all the way to town but when I finally use some of those on the PCT and the CDT I realize what a huge morale booster they are and I think that they're definitely worth it when you're freezing like I said hopefully if I redid it I would have started sooner and I wouldn't really need this cold-weather stuff but I wish that when I found myself in that situation that I had added those things and had them sent out to me the final piece of equipment that I hoped that I would not need if I redid it but that I should have used on the 80 or micro spikes I didn't even know what mike respects were and I climbed Katahdin in snowy freezing cold icy conditions I think the high for that day was like in the lower 20s I think it was like 21 when we summit in Katahdin and I was on thick ice sliding around didn't know what I was doing but I got out there I got down was successful but it would've been a really good idea to have some Mike respects let's talk about food and water now first of all I would not have carried as much food and water as I did starting out my first day on the 80 and that's something you just learned with time because it's like well Dixie how much is enough food and water and I would just say that you're probably gonna over pack on food and that's okay I mean it's really your preference would you rather not pack enough and be hungry or would you rather pack too much and and think you know it really shouldn't pack too much and you know I can't even eat all this if I want to so we pack our fears so whatever you're afraid of you will find yourself packing and as you get more and more comfortable and more and more seasoned you'll start to adjust some of those things but I had two liters of water starting on the approach trail and there's water everywhere on the Appalachian Trail so after that first day and it required two liters again until a pretty dress stretch later in Pennsylvania and that was the only time because there there really is so much water that if you're thirsty out there you've you've somehow made a terrible mistake if I did the 80 again in regards to food I would probably try to be a little healthier I started off on a pretty good note on 80 I had foods that I had dehydrated sent to myself so some vegetables so I could throw into some ramen noodles or pasta sides and I dehydrated ground beef to get some different protein in than just jerky and tuna and all of those things that eventually I was very sick of so I would probably do more of that and I talked about how I don't really like to mail myself resupply packages for things that I can buy in a store if I'm going through the town you know like why buy something from the Walmart near me and mail it to myself in a town that has a Walmart right but some of those things that you can't get on trail like some good dehydrated vegetables then I would probably dehydrate more of those and try to send them to myself I'd also attempt to avoid as many carbs so just the straight junk food and sugar and powdered Donuts and all that and try to eat a little bit more protein again this is difficult to do because towards the end of it thru-hike I found myself just not really wanting me anything that you can take backpacking as food I find myself just wanting to eat from restaurants and to cook my own meals you know like in a normal kitchen so towards and anything that I can look at and go that's any sort of appetizing I'll probably pack it out but this is something that I'd like to work on as a hike more and more is just trying to be a little bit healthier while I'm on trail and I've thought about doing some videos on some of that so if that's something you all would be interested in let me know for water-filtration when I was on the 80 I started with Sawyer squeeze but I was using the bags that come with it the little bladders and I honestly did not know that they had replacements for those but I busted some of the bags and I don't know I just got tired of all the squeezing and I didn't realize that you could just screw I saw your squeeze on to a smart water bottle collect dirty water you know in the smart water bottle put it on and then drink straight through it because that just takes out that extra step and it doesn't seem like it's that big of a deal but when you are filtering all of the water that you use to drink and I usually cook with filtered water too that way I don't have to worry about you know boiling it for a certain amount of time it really does add up you know you just take all of the minutes of the day that you do that and it's like it becomes kind of tedious so I ended up with a platypus gravity filter and I really did like that system for the 80 because there's so many trees you can just hang it up and let it do the work for you but again I didn't know how easy it was to put a Sawyer on a water bottle and just drink through it so if I were to do it again I would probably do the smart water bottle with the Sawyer squeeze if I was hacking with a group so say I had a husband and children that I was hacking with you know then I might go with that platypus filter just because it'd be easy to do kind of like one-stop get everybody some clean water and move on I know I have talked about this several times but with footwear I would definitely start the 80 and trail runners instead of starting with boots like I did because it ended up giving me tendinitis in my Achilles the boots were the proper size they weren't too small or anything like that but a lot of times folks think that they need ankle support that they don't necessarily need you know if you're starting slow and you let your ankles build up and strengthen you might find yourself not really needing that ankle support so for me that was a case and it ended up actually hindering my progress and caused injury to my ankles so I ended up transitioning to Solomons and then later the PCT went to ultras so if I was to start the 80 today I would start them in ultra trail runners to add to that I would also stretch more and that is not to say that on the PCT in CDT I did a good job of stretching but the Appalachian Trail is a much more physically intense trail than the other two so there are times where you're doing some hand over hand climb in and up hills and the down hills and everything are just a lot steeper and more intense so I would just try to do a good job of at least stretching the plantar fascia and my Achilles tendon and just all of that stuff in the feet and legs all right let's talk about navigation so on the 80 I used a walls guidebook and it's a wonderful resource it has different mile markers to look for it tells you what to expect at each shelter area and campsite and access points into towns and the amenities in town and it's a wonderful tool but it's heavier than just having a cell phone so if you have a smartphone I would recommend getting the gut hook app and you can even get a walls guide also on your phone as a PDF or you can have a walls guide book to have some sort of physical navigation in your hand so you can you know look at it if your phone is dead and then also have gut hook but it's hard to say because I really did like having the paper to look at but knowing what I know now and after not having any physical paper maps or guides on the last two trails I would likely get a wall's PDFs for my phone and then also get GUG its just gut hook shows you exactly where you're at when you're there so if you walk away from the trail you can like navigate back to it you know immediately whether you're on the right trail or not you don't have to wait like a tenth of a mile to see if you you know reach some mile marker or some landmark some water source or whatever on a walls guide to you know wonder if you're in the right place or not as far as some sort of emergency device of all three of the through hikes I've done I feel like the 80 is the one where you don't need until you need it right but a personal locator beacon or spot device or Garmin in reach if if I had to pick one then I would say you the safest without those it would be the Appalachian Trail however just for my family to have some peace of mind I do wish that that had been in my budget because just to let them know you know I'm okay my brother was getting ready to go on a backpacking trip this week and I was like hey why don't you take my inReach with you you know I just worry about you what if something happens and he's like I'm with three other people you went and hiked h-he alone for your first backpacking trip and how do you think we felt as your family you know knowing you were going out there and didn't have something like this and I was like okay you know fine point taken so just for that peace of mind for yourself and for your family it really is priceless I think some other general tips that I think it's important to remember it's easy for me to say now what I would have done because hindsight is 20/20 right and I'm talking about if I could go back I would use all this fancy or more expensive gear than what I did use and that's simply because of comfort and convenience that is not to say that if you're planning the 80 and you were looking at my old gear list and you're like but I was aiming to get some of that same stuff that you had before and you know now you're saying like you would have rather had all this nice better gear and the thing is you don't have to have the most fancy perfect gear to be successful at thru-hike in Appalachian Trail you just don't my friend rebel yell which I've mentioned several times had a hundred liter pack and all of his gear was not ridiculously heavy but heavier than the average through hikers base weight probably and he completed it just fine so yes going lat can be easy on the joints but you also have to look out for are you going to lat and now you don't have everything that you need and you're uncomfortable so there is a fine line somewhere and that is different for everybody I'm sure if any of you all have backpacking experience and you look back on your first trip you probably have made some adjustments since then you probably are like you know yes I would have done things differently but that doesn't mean that your first trip was miserable or unsuccessful but I have been asked the question you know how would you change things so these are some of the things that I would have changed or would have done differently or would do differently if I were to thru-hike say ET again anyway that is all I have for y'all today if you have questions about something specific that I did not mention in the video today like hey Dixie would you still have Dillon XYZ feel free to leave that in the comments and I will try to answer all those questions or if any of y'all have three hiked Appalachian Trail or section hacked it and you've made adjustments from you know that first go of it I'd love to hear what some of those changes were and those might also help other folks but thank y'all so much for watching and we will see y'all next time

Channel: Homemade Wanderlust

Views: 272,903

Rating: 4.9474216 out of 5

Keywords: travel, hiking, backpacking, hike, gear, adventure, fun, story, Appalachian, Trail, PCT, CDT, thru-hike, Auburn, Alabama, epic, climbing, canyon, national, nature, mountains, update, park, lake, trail, tents, camping, summer, University, Aubie, River, stream, Mountains, National, Scenic

Id: sQqVcivBI4w

Length: 18min 29sec (1109 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 19 2018