JMT Gear 2021 (25 lbs.)

don't work is that on film my wife just called me a dork because i do this stuff at home i asked her to come help me you know be the hand model hold the stuff up but she's gonna want no part of that anyway hey what's up guys um i decided to hike the jmt again this year so last time i did it was 2013 2013 man eight years ago so i got the permits already ready to go there's three of us slated to go confirmed already and um uh i have two more actually extra permits for some guys that are tentatively going so we'll see what happens but so there could be potentially five of us going um we're going to go the same way that i did it back in 2013 we're going to start from horseshoe and go northbound and end in happy isles so that's coming up i think we leave right at the end of august sometime 27 28 somewhere in there we're taking i think 18 or 19 nights out there in the back country to do it and i've made a lot of gear changes over the years in this past eight years and i just wanted to kind of go over some gear that i'm taking on this trip this year jmt i know it's one of the most popular uh places you can hike in the whole world really and um i just want to show people what i bring um what i've honed my stuff down to now you know here's a disclaimer in no way am i this ultra light you know hyper light kind of guy i do shed weight where i can you know if it warrants the price and everything and and you know why buy a tent that weighs three pounds when i can spend a little extra money and buy a tent that weighs one pound seven ounces it does the same thing uh i would do that to save that amount of weight and stuff like that but i mean in no way am i ultra super light i don't go you know with a hammock and i mean as you can see i have a lot of uh creature comforts here uh including my fishing pole you know um so you know stuff like that that people technically might not want to bring because they want to save the weight but me i like to when i hike these trails i don't like to go so bare bones out there that i don't enjoy it you know i i bring some of these creature comforts um you know i i carry baby wipes instead of toilet paper they're a little bit heavier but they're a little bit more cleanlier um you know i like i said before the the fishing pole i carry uh a little pillow um you know just i like to get that little bit of better sleep at night um so you know to each their own everybody kind of take what you will from this you know use my ideas if you'd like or create your own this is just to kind of give you the people that are new to the trail that kind of need a starting point for gear i just want to put this together for you guys so i'll dive into it i'll go over every piece of gear and you know talk a little bit about it why i bring it whatever and hope you enjoy okay so now i'm going to talk about each piece of gear that i take and i'm going to break them down into sections and groups and stuff like that i'm going to start with my clothes clothes that i wear on the trail first thing i'll do is start with the shoes in the last couple years i've switched to trail runners i used to wear hiking boots but a buddy of mine kind of turned me on to these and i just you know started going with them i really love the hokas i also wear la sportiva sometimes but they're just so much more light i mean they're they're durable but they're just so much more lighter than uh a hiking shoe and just more comfortable to wear on the trail you know every single day um you know less weight you have to lift up with each step is is better and so switch to trail runners love them i'll probably never go back the only time i'll ever wear any other shoe other than a trail runner is if i'm doing some type of gnarly snow trek or something and then i always bring a pair of camp shoes pretty much every night at camp i like to you know get the old hiking shoes off and i usually wash my feet and you know all that wash up and then i just like to slip on something more comfortable so really lightweight uh just you know kind of slipper things that i found at target or walmart i think but i've been using these for years what i wear on the trail basically just i bring one pair of pants you know i sometimes i wear my rei sahara pants these are i think the cool renegade pants and they're always the zip ops so that i can go to shorts if i want to whatever put the pant legs on only pair of pants i ever bring i don't ever bring an extra pair of shorts or anything because this is not needed for shirts i wear long sleeve synthetic shirts that dry quickly i started buying these fishing shirts from bass pro and and again long sleeve one thing i want to mention i don't like wearing suntan lotion or anything like that i just don't like having the oily skin especially when you're getting dusty and dirty and everything's sticking to you so i just cover up my skin with long sleeve and i went to these hooded fishing shirts from bass pro i really dig them they they work great actually has an spf rating on it started wearing fingerless gloves as well the tops of my hands were just getting worked i mean hammered i'd come home and i'd have a tan line you know on my wrist this would all be dark and then my arm would be white and you know plus it just started scaling really bad so went to uh gloves been working great uh i bring two pair of underwear and two pairs of trail running socks and i just alternate them every day so i get done hiking i wash up at camp put the new clean pair of socks on new underwear wash the dirty ones they dry overnight ready to go um and then during the day i'll you know wear my hat mixed with the hood or just the hood or sometimes just a hat whatever you know beanie one thing i've found being in every type of situation that you can this is one of the key things you can bring out there as far as clothes go this is like the thermostat of a car if you will it um taking this on and off regulates your temperature so much um i think i'm correct in saying that 70 of the heat lost in your body comes from your head or through your head or something like that so there's a lot of times where if i just get a little chilly i'll just pull this out of my side pocket of my pack put this on and i'm fine i don't even have to put anything else on or if i get too hot i pull this off and i'm fine this thing is magic beanies are magic out there and then i take a very lightweight micro fleece these are great for layering makes all the difference in the world if you just got that kind of chill chilly wind you know that you're dealing with and i wear it around camp as well sleeping i'm kind of a cold sleeper so and then you know in the mornings when it's cold but i usually sleep in my thermal pants here and they're just basic under armour 2.0s just bring those for cold mornings and to sleep in if it's kind of chilly at night and then i like to take my dirty sweaty shirt that i hike in all day and put on some cotton so i just bring this little cotton long sleeve shirt to sleep in as well every night and rain jacket always gotta have a rain jacket uh one thing worth mentioning i don't bring rain pants i think that you know these kinds of synthetic pants dry so quickly i've been in crazy rainstorms while hiking and these things have dried like within an hour of being soaked so in in i'm not too worried about if my legs get wet it's mostly the torso that you want to keep dry so just a basic rei actually this is a marmot rain jacket uh got it at rei but works great been plenty of rainstorms with it keeps me nice and dry [Music] hardly ever use it but you know just in case you get that pop-up thunderstorm out there in the sierra which can happen definitely all the time in the summer and then the down jacket this has dual purpose obviously for the really cold mornings and cold nights at camp it uh you know puts that last layer on keeps you really warm i think it's 650 filled down it's uh the rei brand and they're fairly cheap i think they're like 60 to 80 bucks or something really good and also uh because i use a quilt to sleep in uh quilts don't have the the traditional hoods like mummy bags so if i get too cold at night this becomes like my hood and i kind of tuck it around my head you know and get in here and i can pull it over my face or whatever so um works great and then what i do is i keep so these would typically be clothes that i would wear so you know you take a pair of socks a pair of underwear the gloves like that rain jacket i usually put in the outer part of my pack but then i have a dry sack and i'll put all of my clothes that are clean that i don't wear during the day which i hardly ever hike in a down jacket it's got to be below freezing for me that hiking jacket put all that stuff in there i usually keep this accessible on the top of my pack my micro fleece just in case it gets a little chilly i can put that on and it's basically it that way it's just all contained clean clothes if a freak rainstorm comes real quick i know it's protected stuff's going to stay dry in the pack that's all i care about that's the clothes all right let's talk about probably the most important piece of gear you have and that is your backpack that carries all your gear it's the one thing that you just got to be comfortable with if you have an uncomfortable pack you're going to have an uncomfortable hike and it's going to be miserable i've gone through numerous packs through the years i started out with the exos 58 years ago basically over 10 years ago when i was getting into backpacking over the years i've tried different packs you know i've i've tried the uh levity from osprey which is like empty weight one one pound 11 ounces um then i switched to the rei flash 55. and um i have come full circle back to the exos recently it's this you can't beat this suspension that they have on these this mesh suspension back it's an internal frame it's just it's so comfortable the way it hugs every inch of your bed just molds to your back and empty weight i think they're two pounds eight ounces somewhere in there um they're they're not the lightest pack but they're not the heaviest pack either but what i've found through the years of testing new packs and different packs and stuff like that is that it doesn't matter that the empty weight of a pack to give you comfort matters how it carries the weight that is everything in a pack and the exos just carries the weight better and conforms to my back better than any pack i've personally ever tried i tried to go lighter with that levity thinking okay i'm going to save three quarters of a pound just on the pack weight but it didn't make a difference it was better shoulder straps that are hip belts i mean and it didn't carry anything over like 25 pounds it did not carry a well at all it was just very uncomfortable and just digging into everywhere um and with the flash the it had like these little pod cushion things you know like it's six or eight of them down the back and that's all you felt on your back it didn't this is just like one solid kind of mesh feeling on your back and it just care to me in my personal opinion this carries the heavier loads the the normal loads that people are going to have between 25 and 35 pounds on the jmt the excess carries them the best for me um so that's my take on packs moving on to my cooking system food storage and so on bear cans they're required on the jmt i used to use the bv 450s have recently switched to the barricades you just get more volume and they're actually lighter than the bb 450 so they cost about as much of as one car payment but uh it's worth it they're just so light um and like i said the volume you get almost double the volume for you know maybe a quarter pound less weight so just seemed like the logical way to go for food storage on the jmt uh one liter bottle let's talk water here real quick uh you will never have to carry more than one liter of water on the jmt in my opinion there is water everywhere on the trail i i do a lot of off trail trekking across the southwest desert so i understand water carry you know there's hikes where i have to carry you know sometimes eight liters of water so i know what about water consumption and what you need in the desert stuff like that on the jmt you do not need to carry more than one liter of water you're wasting your time and your energy there's water everywhere on the jmt you know if you run out use you're going to have water within the next mile guaranteed pretty much everywhere along the jmt so you just stop and filter more water fill up i know it's time consuming but water is the heaviest thing you can carry the longest stretch on the jmt i believe that doesn't have water is the stretch between purple lake and deer creek just south of mammoth it's like six miles um but it's fairly level um you know you're not gonna you could still fill up a purple leg and be fine all the way to fish creek with with one liter not that bad uh water filters i've been using the platypus gravity filter for years um it has never let me down not once i know there's other uh lighter methods uh but this this doesn't compare to anything else because in my book being able to take four liters of water in the dirty bag and setting up the inline filter with the clean bag and everything hanging it from something and walking away and letting it do its job on its own is is gold i love not having to sit there and squeeze into a bottle you know for 15 minutes or sitting there pumping out of a creek while the mosquitoes are kicking your ass i just i love this method it's a look it's not the lightest one but again it's just a comfort thing i don't have to think about it i can walk away and go do other things while i'm filtering water or this is filtering water um cooking so i've been using jetboil for years again in my opinion there's no other better method of boiling water the quickest most efficient way other than using a jet boil i mean a cup in under two minutes of water ready to go for anything i've recently switched to the stash the jetboil stash it's kind of like a like a pot method here i really six days i can get on one of these little cans of feel this is the 100 gram can of feel it says it gets about 24 burns which lasts me six days easily that's burning three times a day and what i like about the new stash is it's kind of got the old like pocket rocket type of stove here so it's got this going on and basically you know you screw it on like like the old ones and it does kind of lock in in there and boil water in less than two minutes what i like about it is is that i can take this off and i've started cooking kinds of different meals so i can put my normal pot on there and cook like a couscous or or something else you know some kind of uh nor pasta or something like that because i can't do a dehydrated mountain house or backpacker pantry every night i just i can't do it i'm out in the back country too much to eat that every night so i have to have an alternative method of cooking so this is what i like about it is it allows me to do this and this does regulate there's not a regulator on it but it does regulate it and sometimes you just just kind of lift it up you know hold it over you know so it doesn't burn the out of the bottom but it works and another thing i love about it is [Music] all this compacts down into this little saxo put the stove in there got the lighter for sparking it in case the well it doesn't have a piezo so and then i usually carry a quarter tube this locks and unlocks my bear can for my barricade so all that goes in there everything just goes right in here nice and easy this folds over locks it in and actually this fits into there boom um one thing i want to mention about my jetboil 2 i never put anything in my jetboil other than water all it's used for is to heat water either for tea coffee rehydrating a meal whatever i'll either eat out of the bag that i'm rehydrating or i'll eat out of this pot and wash this cup for tea coffee whatever and then my spoon that's basically my cooking gear and then all of this stuff i keep in an old uh you know sleeping bag just to keep it kind of all nice together whatever i keep my platypus on the outside pocket because you know you got to pull it out i just want easy access to be able to pull it out real quick to filter water at any given time that's basically my cooking system my sleep system um start with the tent i used to use one p tents all the time they were just you know lighter faster whatever uh after spending numerous days now in the backcountry and having to deal with weather and rain i have switched to 2p tents um when you need to get into a tent and you have to outlast a rainstorm it just allows you to get everything inside and you have more room on the sides to where you know your sleeping bag is not going to get wet on the inside because the 1p tints are just so narrow and you're always fighting the moisture in a rainstorm and plus i just like putting all my gear inside my tent not having to worry about it minus the food obviously but it's just nice to have that extra room especially when you have to be in your tent for hours in a rainstorm it's just it's worth the little extra weight that it is not that much i use the nemo hornet elite tint is my go-to the 2p and then my other go-to that i have is the big agnes tiger wall platinum two teeth neoair sleeping pad again this is you know they make half pads just torso pads you know real thin whatever again this is a comfort thing for me i use the the full length one it's the not the long but the regular length but i use the wide i used to use just the regular regular and i got sick of my arms hanging off the sides and my elbows you know just i just again it's a comfort you get a better night's sleep you're going to have a better day the next day so i use the regular wide neo air pads from therm-a-rest um my little pillow see to summit you see how small that thing is and it weighs nothing uh blow-up pillow again just a comfort thing it doesn't weigh about maybe maybe two ounces um this z pad here i bring just for sitting and then at night when i go to bed i'll kind of put it underneath the kind of underneath my butt and my torso for some extra protection from the ground from punctures for the neo air pad but this is accessible all day to me on the outside of a pocket on my pack so that i can sit down during breaks or whatever not have to sit in a dirt or a hard rock or whatever so i bring just i just bought the full length one and cut it into sections and i just bring a section of it with me on the trail now sleeping bags i used to use mummy bags um it took a lot for me to switch over to a quilt but once i did i can say that i will never go back the enlightened equipment um 20 degree revelation these quilts are badass i mean it's a true quilt you know it's just it can be just a blanket and what i love about it is the bottoms you know you can turn the bottoms into basically a mummy bag um the bottom like 18 inches zips up and then that cinches up and basically makes like a mummy bag foot box and keeps your feet pretty warm it's got all these you know zip that up and then what happens is this goes around the pad so you slip this around the sleeping pad and then these clips clip on the side and it holds the sides down around the pad because you don't need sleeping bag underneath you the warmth that comes from underneath is the air that your body keeps warm in the sleeping pad once you compress this and you're laying on it it has no insulating value whatsoever so there's no reason to have all that extra material these only weigh 17 ounces again this is a 20 degree revelation with the 950 down tech so real down in here and it's only 17 ounces and this thing keeps me warm i also have a 10 degree one that i bring on you know uh early season treks and late season treks just in case i want that extra added warmth but yeah these things and these uh at the top here you know you can snap that up so your head's coming out of here and then you can cinch this around your neck and it just it's cozy and then again down jacket if i want a hood to pull over my uh my head so awesome quilt never go back to a regular mummy bag that's my sleep system okay on to my first aid and hygiene stuff um hygiene you know basic lightweight toothbrush dollar store special you know nothing nothing fancy small toothpaste um i put one of these in each resupply because you know they only last about six to eight days you know if you're brushing your teeth every day every night a very concentrated soap that i get at rei from sea to summit it's a biodegradable and it's very concentrated one drop of this i mean it's it's so concentrated so you don't have to carry much of it very small bottle this this one bottle will last me the whole trip i don't have to resupply soap that's how concentrated it is um baby wipes i don't use toilet paper i use baby wipes pretty much exclusively i just like that extra clean feeling you know after you go and then a trowel these things are awesome um just i mean i got sick of trying to dig cat hole and the stick breaking or you know you can't find a big enough rock and the rocks just don't work this is this works perfect i mean i'm ready to go real quickly it is so light i think it it weighs 0.6 ounces i mean come on for what it gives you always not having to find a stick and having it break and all that is just worth 0.6 ounces so um this toiletry stuff i usually just keep it kind of all together oh didn't mention the uh bins wipe so i again i don't like putting stuff on my body you know lotions or or spraying deet on me so i bring these wipes and actually i don't wipe it what i do is i take the wipe out and i'll put it in between my shoulder and the shoulder strap in my pack kind of up on my neck if those mosquitoes are really bad and usually mosquitoes you know if they're biting my legs big deal i'm moving i'm walking usually it's not a problem it's when they're flying around your face and your neck and this that really helps just doing that so that's what i'll do for mosquitoes and i usually just keep this stuff in a ziploc baggie and this will go in the top of my pack in the in the pocket on top along with this stuff always always accessible in the top pocket just in case i need to get to it first aid stuff um knee brace so this is just you know the slip on over the knee kind of thing keep your knee in place i was dropping into the grand canyon years ago and got really bad knee pain from just jarring the knee all the way down and ever since i've always carried one of these if i if i know i'm going downhill for 3000 feet or more and i got a lot of weight on my pack i'll just slip this on just to keep the knee good even before the pain starts and it usually always works and then i always bring another ace bandage just in case for a sprained ankle or something like that my air pad patch kit i bring that with the instructions and some alcohol pad i've had to do a couple times whole repairs on my so i never go without those because sleeping without an air pad sucks i've had to do it i always bring a sprayer lighter just in case of emergency if i have to start a fire you know if my other one runs out from my stove at least i got a sparker whatever a little roll of duct tape here that is if i get a hole in my tent you can sandwich two pieces together on the hole and it also will work in if you break a pole on your tent the repair sleeve you have to tape it in place and so that's what this comes in handy for a little survival kit in here i have tweezers i have some thread a needle some fishing line and i think there's waterproof matches in here as well carry that extra batteries for my headlamp headlamps are very important uh some neosporin you know antibiotic cream in case i get an abrasion or blister that i want to heal up real quick pepcid you know sometimes in mountain houses you know what they do to you so just carry a couple of those for safety uh ibuprofen is very important uh i don't it's not like this is full of ibuprofen there's other stuff in here like vitamin c vitamin d stuff just to keep healthy on the trail but ibuprofen is proven to cut down on mountain sickness by 30 so at the start of every high altitude hike that i do whether it's in the sierras or wherever else i will always pop one of these just to give me that edge of not getting ams ams is very serious it'll bring you down quick i've been hiking in the sierra for over 10 years now probably about 15 years and i went out last year just did the ray lakes loop with uh you know a couple buddies of mine we got to arrowhead lake and it was like the third night i think and mountain sickness hit me hard i mean hard luckily i was able to i popped one of these and i just forced myself to eat and drink a bunch of water and i literally within a half an hour popped out of it but man mountain sickness is no joke i a girl did die on mount whitney in 2010 when i was up there um it's nothing to joke about she died at trail camp at 12 000 feet but anyway uh band-aids you do not need to bring a big giant box of band-aids people you know just bring a few assorted ones just a regular band-aid couple of the knuckle you know little tiny ones and then you know that's it if you need more than that for band-aids you need to get your ass off the trail because you're falling too much and you're just clumsy all this stuff fits into this pouch that's what i dig about it and most of it does so i'll put the band-aids in there the cream the pepsi the batteries the first aid kit the tape and the extra lighter and i think i no that doesn't go in there and that's basically all my emergency stuff hopefully that i never have to use you know that's my first aid in hygiene okay electronics and uh you know miscellaneous things i'll start with the inreach um you know having a wife and three kids i just like to be able to be in contact and um i really got this because i've been doing in recent years a lot of off trail kind of trekking across the southwest desert and it just kind of gives my wife a piece of mind gives me a piece of mind and it pairs up with the earthmate app on my phone so i just hook into this with my phone bluetooth even an airplane mode and gives me maps i can text anybody through this two-way texting it's awesome device to have head lamp of course everybody needs one of those don't need to really talk about that much my battery brick so this is a 30 000 milliamp battery brick this will charge it'll keep the inreach and my smartphone charged for the entire trip without having to recharge this and then the cords that go to that and uh my phone are in here as well uh keep it in the bag because it stays in my top pouch and then just just in case a rainstorm comes through just keeps it dry but that keeps everything charged up for the whole trip fishing again another comfort that you don't need um i love fishing along the jmt it's you know i love fishing in general and why not do it along the jmt and some of the most beautiful spots in the world so and the fish bite and they you can actually catch fish on the gmt uh telescoping rod just a basic 20 from big five or wherever the smallest micro reel i can find mounted on there and then i use two pound line with just little jigs a little one sixteenth and one thirty second jigs and then i bring a little tackle full of jigs and stuff just to uh make sure i got some entertainment out there fishing i can't bring a trash bag this is in case it really starts coming down and what i'll do is i'll put my my quilt in here and then also the dry bag that i kept all my sleeping and clothes in everything will go into this trash bag and then the trash bag goes into my pack i do not use uh pack covers for rain they just don't work it's basically if you think about why a tent the fly and the body of the tent are separated you know with about an inch gap is because when fabrics touch the water will bleed through and come through it's the same thing with pack covers and rain covers for packs you guys they bleed through and it doesn't work this is plastic water's not getting through this no matter what so i put my quilt which is the most important thing you want to keep dry over everything is your sleeping bag or your quilt put that in this put it in my pack safe to go so that's everything all the gear all right guys i'm gonna now show you how all this fits into my backpack um top lid a lot of the smaller stuff goes in here again the ace bandage you know that i hopefully don't ever have to use goes in the bottom part along with the first aid kit my therm-a-rest sleeping pad patches stuff like that goes underneath and the ibuprofen and the pills all the stuff that goes up on the top that i need accessible throughout the day uh my toiletries i'll push the trowel in there baby wipes um i actually put my tint sticks up in there as well um tackle from fishing gear my battery pack and all that cords and stuff like that head lamp and the inreach that all goes in the top and i think that's it for for there what i'm going to do is separate out what i would be wearing just to show you guys so that won't go in the pack a pair of socks pair of underwear and my shoes so that's the stuff that won't go in the pack now packing the pack i always put the sleeping bag in first um i don't know if this holds true or not i can't tell you guys but i heard that you want to put the lightest things on the bottom with heavier stuff on the top i heard it carries better that way i don't know um another thing that i don't do is i don't i mean i i do to some things but like you don't need to put your sleeping bag into the stuff sack that it came with your pack is a big giant stuff sack so i just cram this thing in it fills out the bottom nicely you know it gets all the the bottom down there really good then slip the pad off fold it and i actually put my sleeping pad in with the dry clothes in this dry bag but i actually want to mention i'm gonna get a new like a dyneema bag that they sell they're a little bit lighter and they're still waterproof um so i'm gonna get one of those as well and i believe that's all that goes in the dry bag and then the dry bag goes down here kind of sideways right on top of that sleeping bag that's in there push it down then the bear can is next i usually put that just up like that right on top of that dry sack and then i'll take the fly from the tent stuck down on one side kind of around then i'll take the body of the tent put it on the other side stuff that around and then i take my cooking gear it goes right on top with my mid layer to be accessible and i think that is it cinch it up and the main compartment's done i forgot about my pillow my pillow goes in here too as well and the trash bag i put underneath in that pocket that's that okay then this goes inside here like that got a water bottle goes in right there this i put alongside there and i fold the footprint up for my tent roll it up or whatever you want to do that goes in that pocket it's dirty so you know it's always on the ground i like to keep it out same with my slippers sometimes during break i'll take my shoes off and put these on just kind of let the feet breathe you know rain jacket again goes on the outside just for fast access that's everything there water filter right inside there above the water bottle attach that to the top and i'm ready to go hope you guys enjoyed the gear you know this is for people that just kind of uh are lost with packing or gear selection uh need a little bit of a head start to figure out what they want to bring what they don't want to bring again i'm not an ultra light packer but i like some comforts but i try to shave weight where i can so i'm somewhere in the middle this is not for everybody and i know there's lighter methods and lighter ways of doing things but again this is my personal preference that i've honed in over years of backpacking in the backcountry and things that i want while i'm out there that's what it comes down to guys so hope you enjoyed hope you got something from it and stay tuned for range of light part two coming up see on the trail

Channel: John Amorosano

Views: 9,386

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Id: V6bplkcB8-8

Length: 45min 15sec (2715 seconds)

Published: Sun May 30 2021