My Gear For 12 Days On The John Muir Trail

hi my name is Billy yang I'm a filmmaker I'm an ultra runner and I am about to embark on my very first true hike on the famous John Muir Trail here in California as you can see there's a lot of gear laid out here in front of me and this is essentially what's going to keep me alive for the twelve days I am on the John Muir Trail it would be a total of 220 miles as we're entering in from Cottonwood Lakes towards Mount Whitney which is the official start of the 211 mile jaunt Muir Trail and we will be going from south to north to Yosemite Valley and we will be covering it in a span of 12 days I have been invited by my good friends Elan and Gabby from the Bay Area and the three of us are going to do this together now I didn't have a whole lot of time to plan or to really test out the gear because it was in a rather condensed period of time but from the minute I decided I was in I went down in the you tube rabbit hole I started watching all the videos the the do's and don'ts of through hiking of backpacking of camping I think I was somewhere in the middle road of balancing comfort and trying to also be cognizant of keeping things rather light I didn't want to invest a ton of money into this because who knows if this will be one and done if I will really take to it but as it turns out walking in the woods it's very expensive especially walking in the woods and trying to keep things light is very expensive so without further ado this is gonna be the gear that I am bringing to the John Muir Trail for my very first time let's start with a sleeping bag because this is something that I had originally owned it is a Kelty cosmic down 20 degrees fahrenheit rated sleeping bag I've had this for a few years now and I think what will be kind of fun is to actually weigh everything in real time and see what it comes out to I haven't done this myself I have a rough guesstimate of where things will fall but I thought we could put this all together in this video so why don't we start by this and for the sleeping bag we have 42.8 five ounces next up is the tent now went through a couple of iterations of this my mom gifted me the tent which was a huge help thank you mom she's an avid backpacker herself what was this called oh there we go copper spur HP ultralight one person tent okay so let's talk about the sleeping pad this is where I plunked down a bit of money because a previous sleeping bag that I had which was a thermo rest I forget the exact model but it had a very slow leak at the top and it just proved to be too unreliable and after some video research I found this bad boy it is a Nemo tensor Alpine insulated the long wide version I have already tried this out on a camping trip it is very comfortable does come in a little bit heavier but I think it'll be worth it and this one weighs 26 point 10 ounces next up I have a blow-up pillow and this one weighs in at 3.7 ounces so that covers sleep and shelter why don't we move on to some of the other items this bag is kind of a catch-all miscellaneous bag it has the bug net it has a patch kit it has some sunscreen some lube the kitchen and I went back and forth between this and a Jetboil but I recently decided to go with a it's like a seven hundred milliliter pot it's very lightweight I paid money for that I have two smaller gas canisters a spork collapsible Cup and two butane gas lighters and a lighter we need the headlamp this is my Petzel the Petzl comes in at exactly 4 ounces the bathroom kit the trowel the waste bag a small bottle of hand sanitizer and of course TP this is my bathroom kit it has a toothpaste toothbrush contact lens solution you name it this is my backup clothing or some of the longer layers we have my beanie in here we have curved gloves we have a long-sleeve shirts with the hoodie what else we have second pair of socks second pair of underwear some leggings for sleeping at night along with some sleep socks so this is a North Face version of the Nano puffy it is a little bit heavier I think a little bit bulkier but does a job also we have to realize that we are in the mountains and you never know when the afternoon thunderstorms will roll in this is an ultimate direction rain jacket it is a great investment it will also serve as my windbreaker and this coupled with the pack cover I will weigh these guys together sticking with clothing I decided to go with a Pat projects cascade tee as my main outerwear I have never tried on convertible pants but that is what I'm going with these are the REI version they're fairly lightweight and pretty comfortable actually the only knock on these is that they don't have the zipper on the bottom to be able to easily convert these into shorts without removing your shoes I don't really think about it when I bought it but it's comfortable and it's lightweight so I dig it I also have the Dry Max socks these are socks number one path project base liners I believe these are called the torch versions and I have the back up in that previous bag and I have the path projects hat I forget the model of this that is their trucker hat it fits me well and it's breathable so I will be using this I have some critter sunglasses and I will be testing out the corrals vertex for the very first time this is on loan from corals so thank you guys for that apparently it can hold up to 200 hours where the data and there function here when you're hiking to resume the activity later it'll be interesting to see what this will look like if I can actually stitch together the entire 220 mile journey may require a a charge here and there and that's going to be thanks to my battery block by rat power this is kind of a heavy sucker but I bought this before I decided to backpack and that will be powered sporadically by beagle 0 Nomad solar charger this is not light I will also be bringing a GoPro and this is my biggest current dilemma is I have a pointing shoot that a very generous supporter named Mark lent me this is a Sony I forget the exact model it's a point shoot the rx100 as you can see it's fairly compact and lightweight the only problem with this is that the audio is not that great and one of the cameras that I'm currently thinking about using is is being used right now but do I use a bigger camera for better audio and bitter picture quality or do I go smaller with quite frankly poor sound and yeah I mean this is also a game time decision but let's go ahead and weigh the pointy cheek camera next up we have the thermal rest si pad this was also a recent decision but once I figured out that this serve multiple functions including serving as a doormat for the the tent area when you're getting in and out where you could put shoes on it could also serve as blocking wind for your stove during windy or days and of course the intended use of being a seat pad and also just incredibly light I feel like this was a worthwhile thing to bring along I want to shout out my friend Sally for gifting me these bad boys these are lucky poles the cool thing with these is if you have these straps that you put on your hands and you can clip the pulls onto the gloves and it makes it so that you don't necessarily have to grip the pole as you're using it and you can easily use this to pop in and out and have that connectivity right there oh and I forgot to call these out these are loose Andals these will be my camp shoes but I thought these could be a good backup in case I had really severe blisters their intended use is actually for running on trails so thanks to barefoot Ted for gifting me these a sock food this was generously given to me by a friend of a friend this is more or less what's going to sustain me for the first six days I do have a resupply point about a hundred and ten miles in so far it's worked out pretty great I found this nice little hack of attaching some pennies which serve as the locking mechanism for this guy and this is definitely bulky this is definitely a heavy this is the backpackers cache and but even strongest grizzly is not gonna penetrate this bad boy finally all of this will be going into this guy this is the Osprey Atmos 65 liter bag it has some really nice padding here for your back it doesn't get sticky and sweaty and it can breathe really love that function and for me I mean honestly for my first time I thought why skimp on comfort even though it's going away a little bit more than your ultra ultra light bags it'll at least give you a frame and something where you can make adjustments and tweaks to keep me comfortable during my first outing so there you have it you guys this is going to be the gear that's going to keep me going for the entirety of the John Muir Trail hopefully knock on wood all the calories all the sodium and the salty goodness to give me the energy the pols to keep me upright to keep my butt comfortable as possible hopefully all the clothes to keep me warm and dry and of course my shelter to keep me hopefully resting easy and without any incident and we'll see I'll learn as I go I'm sure there will be things I regret bringing along I'm sure there'll be things that I regret not bringing along it's just one of those things you planned the best you can and you say to heck with it I'm going for it and I'm gonna try to enjoy myself as much as possible so I look forward to sharing the journey with you guys stay tuned and subscribe to this channel if you want to see future of content thank you for watching you guys hope to see you all out on the trails at some point [Music] you

Channel: Billy Yang

Views: 71,573

Rating: 4.9457626 out of 5

Keywords: JMT, The John Muir Trail, Backpacking

Id: o6A1BdMEBng

Length: 12min 0sec (720 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 05 2020