JMT | 19lb Gear List & Post-Hike Review

hey everyone its Michelle I just got back a couple weeks ago from duty and the JMT we finished at the end of September and it was an incredible trip it was a little chillier than we anticipated because the cold front came in early this year but we got out before the storms hit and overall I was really happy with the gear that I brought we were able to save a lot of weight by sharing some of our gear but I'm going to go over my equipment today as if I had gone solo just so you all have an idea of what a complete list would be for an individual here is the full spread I wanted to line up because this was such a long distance and I am prone to injuries so we swapped out a lot of our gear this year and try to not spend too much money I over all was very happy I never felt like my bag was too heavy even when it was at its max weight okay so starting with the pack it's the Gregory opteka my partner had the same one except for men and it's just slightly larger capacity this is a much lighter weight pack than my previous one which was almost 5 pounds I think this one was around 3 pounds the functionality of their past is excellent I was really happy with this pack overall it was very comfortable yeah it was perfect up here this is the ring cover that comes with the opteka it just fits in underneath the brain there's another pocket down here worked really well no complaints there glad that they came with the pack so that we didn't have to pay any extra money down below is our tent this is just an advanced elements bag it's waterproof except we got a lot of D on it on past trips so I don't think it's waterproof anymore but this has the land Shann two-percent tent inside it's from this company called mirror it's very cheap for an ultralight tent I think it was around $100 and then we got the footprint as well which was 20 to 30 dollars and overall it's less than 3 pounds with the in it as well this is one of those tents that needs to be staked up with your poles it doesn't come with any poles which is why it's so light this is a pretty snug fit for two people I'm 5 foot 4 and psy is 5 foot 11 but we're very comfortable in it overall the tent performed great we got rained on we got snowed on we got hailed on we were in pretty windy conditions at times and the tent held up really really well it is a little difficult in a couple areas to stake it out because the ground is so hard but that was not really an issue for us because we're always able to find rocks to like just tie it to and hold it up that way so overall super happy with this tent is great price point way Schieber than anything in its category so that is a really good option if you're trying to drop a couple pounds right away this is our ZC but pads a little bit of a luxury item it's only 2 ounces I believe and this was also super great you could just sit down anywhere and get a nice cushy butt pad and here is my sleeping bag the sleeping bag is the Horacio from Mountain Hardwear it's a 15 degree down bag it's not top of the line but it's like pretty good quality it's Q shield down I think it's only 650 fill and I got it like 50% off so it was about a hundred and ten dollars which is really good I think instead of using the compression bags that it came with I'm actually using this bag from therm-a-rest it came with our thermal pads and this bag is the one that you can use to inflate your sleeping pad so I just eliminated the sleeping bag compression bag and then stuffed my sleeping bag in here and if you just like really press it down and then kinda like twist twist it and then stuff it into your bag it works perfectly well as a compression bag this is our therm-a-rest pads they're the therm X which has an R value over 5 they're really sturdy they're not too loud it can compress down much smaller than this I just tend to fold it up and stick it in my bag very happy with that it was nice and warm also part of our sleep system are these little pillows there from trichology there are only $10 find that they really help me sleep so I like to leave his a little bit less inflated so that it was more cushy these are my trekking poles they're Fox le and they are carbon fiber I think there are 14 or 15 ounces which were much lighter than my old poles and these worked great I'm so surprised I didn't shatter them every single day I would wedge them into rocks and then accidentally almost bend it they're still holding up really well so going into our water system we brought the platypus gravity works we used to have the mini sorter squeeze but I was just so sick of squeezing it all the time we got this gravity system and it worked really well I actually forgot to bring the back flush syringe but I thought of a little hack where you just cut off a little bit of the tube and then you can actually to get on to a sports cap you need a four Nagel it a little bit into there and then you can use your bottle to back flush it that way we each have it had a never knew these are two liters and it's point six ounces I believe super lightweight I love those and then our main water bottle was the classic smart water 1 liter and then I got the sports cap because using the normal cap I just feel like I would have lost it and you don't have to worry about holding onto the cap and then you can squirt it into your mouth and then it also ended up being extremely useful because we attached the tube on here to back flush our filter going into our cook system so our cook system consisted of the spidery ta stove and we bought this set a while ago I really loved the whole system that it comes with but instead of bringing the stove that we got with this we got this really light one from BRS this is also super cheap I think it was like $15 and it's so tiny the only thing is the quality is definitely not as good as our previous stove this one sputtered a couple times and the flames are just a little erratic and I was always a little worried that it was gonna crap out on us but it ended up working well for the whole trip of course we had some people and this is a mini bit lighter so a little smaller than usual and then we had some sparks from topes we mostly just boiled water in our stove but there were a couple times already picked up some food from hiker boxes and then cook them in our pot for the most part we would eat something like this they're all mountain house meals that we repackaged into quart size freezer bags they can pour water directly into you yeah we just boil some water put it in here we each have one meal and then we would put that into this cozy this one is from Big Sky it's pretty large so it easily fit both of our Ziploc bags and we can just bring one of these so that was our cook system and you know what goes in must come out so we had our portable bidet it was only several ounces and I love this I was very dubious about it at first but this ended up being really nice you just fill it with water and then you give like even each use about like half of this bottle after we went number two and it just leaves me really nice and clean the only thing was there was a one morning where it was so cold that the water in these holes froze up and they couldn't use it but most the time goes by and then for toilet paper we use these quaint issues these are not biodegradable not that you're supposed to burry anything politically anyway you just pour a tiny bit of water on it and then it expands into this like 10 inch by 10 inch piece of paper towel that's like a little more durable than a normal paper towel and we use this not only for bathrooms but at the end of the day we would wash our bodies with this which is the best way to keep clean these were really nice and compact pretty light we carry like a full bag of this for each leg of the trip oh and then also we got the deuce of Spades this also seemed unnecessary to me at first I usually just use the heel of my boot or my trekking pole but man when you're in the High Sierras it is hard to dig in some areas and when you got to go you got to go this thing is just like boom boom boom you have a hole so I highly recommend this it is really hard to date cat holes in some of the areas and this helped a lot continuing on about our toiletries and this way is my main cup this is a kulikov I tried this for the first time on this trip I love this it's lined with silver so it's antimicrobial don't have to bring any toilet paper for number ones we also brought contact case an extra pair of contacts and I actually did drop one of my contacts which is why my right contact is not here contact solution and this tiny little thing of hand sanitizer we have this body Glide because we did our little bird baths every night we didn't have much chafing overall it's possum sauce in this ziplock bag and I got clumped up pretty fast this is the blue lizard sunscreen that I just squirted into this tiny Lucien bottle this was plenty for us because they are mostly covered and we just had to apply sunscreen to our faces toothpaste toothbrush earplugs I lost one of them but these were useful for when we see a more crowded campgrounds chapstick I also had some safety pins I usually kept those attached on my pack so I'd put it like you know right there or something just so that I could hang clothing that I had washed that was super useful but I did notice a couple times on one of the pins would pop open and I would just find it in our tent which was really scary he could just be wearing if you bring safety pins to keep track of them and make sure they don't poke any of your things some other things that were useful was this carabiner we just found this at a garage sale at REI but it's pretty cool cuz has a bottle opener which we did use and it also has this tiny blade in here which we also use to cut some rope and then it's a carabiner it also has a fire striker which is really not that useful but you know you never know and this tiny Gerber knife this is what we used to cut the tubing on our water filter so that we can MacGyver our back flushing system and I sharpen to this right before we left here is our repair kit it just has some repair materials for paths and tents some duct tape and extra smart water cap this was the little piece of tubing now we cut off some other repair seals sealants buckles that goes in there this is our first-aid kit zinc oxide it acts as a diaper rash ointment I'm gonna have some ol stems in here some Lugo tape which I did use pellet all this is actually tylenol with codeine because I got that from my dentist last year some cool things in here and some band-aids and antibiotic ointment alcohol wipes we picked up these nail clippers at one of our V supplies it's really shitty though and some imodium electronics I also picked this up this year from a garage sale buck diamond spot light way better than the other headlamp that I got on sale it has really great features on it nice and light - so this is our quick charge I think it's from anchor as two ports in it good for resupplies not too expensive I find charging cable anchor power pink that's I think 20,000 milliamps this was just way overkill I thought because most people will bring the 10,000 I thought for two people then we would need 20,000 but it turned out that sigh just did not use this phone at all and everything else we had really didn't need to be charged that often so even though I use my phone a lot to take videos every day I barely used half of this over six days this is the Garmin inReach mini which pretty much everyone we saw on the trail had some people had the larger older models but this was super handy it's an expensive piece of equipment but because the weather ended up being kind of crazy this is really nice to have so that we could get weather reports and then we also texted our moms with it so they were happy that we could update them and then we just had this little the moisture absorbing packs and then we also had our territory maps which were great I used the gut hook app a lot and having both of them was really useful and then this is our permit and then we also had a crib sheet with emergency information like bailout points and contact information for Rangers and hotels and so forth okay so clothing here's the hot I wore it has this X on it because I got it at the REI garage sale and I stuck in this blue bird feather that I found on the trail but yeah I love this hat it's crushable it has a nice brim so I'm operated protected from the Sun never got too hot but it kept me a little warmer on cold days because my pack was pretty compact overall the back of the Hat was not hitting it otherwise I would not have brought this hat I would have just brought something else yeah this hat was awesome these are not the classes that I brought the ones that I brought not really scratched but these are something similar and they're also raised crushed up don't wear these this is my bandana I also have this buff and this kept my neck warm sometimes I wore it around my head sometimes I used it to dry off my feet if we cross some water very versatile this is our bug net just the first week we had some mosquitoes since we were all covered and we treated our clothing with permethrin we just needed the bug net to cover our face and then we never used our deep we brought these fleece gloves because we thought that the top of the mountain so we're going to be really cold but these ended up being really useful every single day when we were packing up our campsite because every morning is just so freakin cold and the gloves that we wore while we were hiking wear the Outdoor Research some gloves I also got these at a garage sale these were super clutch one of the surprising benefits of using Sun gloves is that they would absorb a lot of the sweat from my hands and so I just had better grip on my trekking poles and not as much chafing between my fingers if anyone else gets that and then I also had this beanie a cheap beanie that I got at Target its fleece not bad at all in talking about lease this was my lightweight fleece that I got at REI a long time ago sometimes I sleep in this but I mostly just wore it at night and in the morning definitely got a lot of use out of that for outerwear I also had my new Mountain Hardwear down jacket really freaking expensive even though I got like a huge discount on it but I love this and I wear it everyday now so I was really happy with it and then we also got Outdoor Research helium two rain jackets really lightweight only six or seven ounces his zip stuff although it's really hard to unzip from the pocket like this it was good as a wind jacket and a rain jacket these are shorts that I brought it's North Face they're really nice I love these shorts in general but I didn't use them on the trail there nice to hike in once in a while and also nice for laundry days these are like my favorite hiking pants I'm short so I had to I have to roll the bottom up even though this is petite I sewed on this extra button just because it tends to get a little loose after I wear it for a couple days so then I would just switch over to using the other buttons that it's a little tighter and that worked and then for thermals just to Uniqlo and thermals I think they're like 10 or 15 dollars each use them for a long time they're really soft I probably would have liked slightly warmer there are malls wool thermals would have been nice some lightweight wool thermals this is the shirt I sleep in every night anyway and I just it's like really comfortable so I won't that this is my hiking shirt it's from Colombia it's the Omni shade I loved this shirt really comfortable it's really nicely I never got too hot it's not very warm but that's what your layers are for and it gives really nice sun protection and the collar is also nice to have to protect your neck this is just the lightweight sports bra I have I have had this for a really long time the label has kind of worn off so I don't even know what brand this is some like no-name brand and then I got the ex-officio give-and-go sports briefs and these work really well I would wash them and then hang them on my pack to dry for my socks I had two pairs of these PhD smart wools my feet just get kind of sweaty and when they're sweaty to get blistery I often wore these and gingi liners with the individual toe socks I would just wear these by themselves the moisture would evaporate from my feet more easily and it was nice to have that toe separation I did feel like my feet weren't cushioned enough in my shoe but I ended up doing that a lot these are right socks my feet would just get sweaty in them so I ended up not using these like at all for water crossings and for camp shoes we brought the a liter water shoes found them on Amazon they had like thousands of good reviews and overall we're really happy with them the only thing is gravel gets stuck in these fools ended up just leaving the rocks in most of the times but overall very good value for the money that you spent on these so these were my my hiking shoes there the lower renegades very popular heavy-duty hiking boots not the lightest I don't have to say I think I'd really like these shoes but I have the and joint problems one other thing that's not pictured here is our bear canister we borrowed ours from a really nice man who actually is one of the Facebook admins for the JMT groups and he had a custom 16 inch barricade which is made of carbon fiber with 16 inches we had a thousand cubic inches of volume to fit our food in we were doing six to eight legs maximum for the two of us we were able to fit all of our food for those six days into that bear canister and then of course one day you can leave that outside of that bear can the barricade is so much better and it's much lighter it's also incredibly expensive which is why we were super grateful to be able to borrow it there was one piece of gear that I really wish I had brought I was debating about this for a long time and then decided not to bring it but it ended up raining for the first three days raining and hailing and we also had snow and we were in a windstorm at one point and there are many many freezing nights and mornings so I really wish that I had brought rain pants it was the only thing that I felt like I was really missing everything else that I had worked great I was really happy with it so that's my gillis for the JMT 2019 it was a little chilly this September but I think everything that I had worked out pretty well I hope that this garrulous helps you prepare for the JMT so that you can hike it comfortably and safely as well happy trails [Music]

Channel: Valiant Vu

Views: 21,096

Rating: 4.9746299 out of 5

Keywords: JMT, mountain hardwear, ghost whisperer, lanshan, tent, foxelli, trekking poles, gear, gregory, octal, optic, thermarest, xtherm, z-seat, heratio, trekology, exofficio, rei, lowa, helium, rain jacket, phd smartwool, aleader, platypus, gravityworks, water filter, primus, brs, bearikade, bear canister, toaks, diva cup, moon cup, kula cloth, garmin, inreach, tom harrison, map, columbia, tilley, sun hat, hat, outdoor research, sun gloves, hiking, lightweight, ultralight, backpacking, long distance, woman, john muir

Id: xwAg7Qqra1c

Length: 21min 25sec (1285 seconds)

Published: Wed May 20 2020