My Worst Thru-hiking Habits

hey y'all dixie here today i have a confession to make about some bad habits that i've noticed i've formed while through hiking and sometimes even while i'm on shorter backpacking trips the first bad habit i want to address today is probably one that anyone who has watched this channel for any length of time could identify themselves and that is i have a bad habit of not getting up and out of camp early and then that leads to night hiking now let me say i actually really enjoy not hiking because you get to see kind of a different set of critters in the night that you likely won't see during the day and also i think it's a good application for hiking in desertous areas when you want to avoid the heat or in the heat of the summertime but getting in the routine or the bad habit of a poor schedule where you get out of camp later and later and then hike into the evening just add stress to the trip in general especially if you're doing a through hike where you're going from georgia to maine or mexico to canada on the pacific crest trail continental divide trail because you're kind of limited with time because of the seasons you've got to get to the end before winter snows on your parade so knowing that you really need to get a certain amount of miles per day it causes you to make the decision am i going to wake up early and get it knocked out or am i going to be a procrastinator like i am and get up when i feel like it and then i just have to push on through the night and finish at whatever time i get done and some people say that with not hacking you can miss spectacular views well i don't really make a habit of not hacking past points like mcafee knob on the appalachian trail for example i do plan those things out but i would say the worst part of forcing yourself to not hike is my next bad habit which is not getting enough sleep on trail and for me also in town getting enough rest is important in everyday life but especially when you're exerting your body like crazy as a through hiker so getting to bed way past hacker midnight like i normally do and then getting woken up by angry squirrels in the morning or overly happy birds or hikers walking by with their judging eyes it just doesn't work out well i usually just tell myself well it's all right because i'll get some good rest once i get to town and i have a bed to sleep in but usually when i get to town the chores start like the normal hacker chores of shower laundry resupply etc but i also have video clips to upload so that aaron can edit them and put a video out every week and i also do live q and a's with my patrons and we have a bad habit of nearly pulling all nighters when we do those q a's because they're excited to hear what's been going on out on trail and the stories from the last section or whatever and then as the night goes later the conversations just get crazy but anyway so it turns out that most of the time i'm even more exhausted when i leave town to head back out on the trail so i need to just get in a better habit of going to sleep earlier and getting the proper amount of sleep another habit i have that seems to peeve a lot of the people who have been backpacking for decades and decades is i tend to rely heavily on modern technology for navigation it may surprise some of y'all who have been backpacking since before cell phones that a lot of through hikers i would say like 98 to 99 percent probably don't even carry a compass and a map when they're out on their through hacks it's just very convenient to use apps like far out where it shows your exact location on your phone in comparison to where the trail is so if you get turned around it's very easy to navigate back to the trail also all the little waypoints to give you information about campsites water sources town stops etc some people might use guide books like on the appalachian trail many people use the awol guidebook but a lot of them still have just the pdf form on their cell phones now do i think it's a good idea to have a compass and a map especially for backup navigation yeah for sure but if you're gonna do that don't just have it on you actually know how to use those tools if you're not going to carry a compass and a map like i don't then make sure you have a backup form of navigation or a way to call for help if you do get lost i like to carry the inreach i like the inreach explorer plus because right there easily on the screen you could see the track for those longer trails like the appalachian trail pacific crest trail continental divide trail so you could use that as a backup form of navigation yes it's still a battery it's still a device that you could lose or it could die but the chances of you losing or breaking your phone and also you losing or breaking the in reach you know you could also lose a map and compass but i do like the dual purpose of a device like the inreach where you can use it for navigation and also for calling for help but having two ways to navigate yourself is always a good idea another one of my bad habits is taking longer breaks than i intend to it's real easy to say hey i'm just gonna sit down for a quick five minute break and then it turns into okay i'm just gonna make a batch of coffee real quick and the next thing you know you're having a whole second breakfast right there on the trail this isn't such a big deal on a shorter backpacking trip unless you're on like a really tight schedule and you're trying to get in as many miles as possible but again for a thru-hike all of those little things add up over months and months so it is something to pay attention to when you get out there so that you're getting your daily miles in and there's a fine line between making it like militant and your job and also slacking off a little bit too much one bad habit that i had but i've actually been working to turn around is eating horribly while on trail i usually eat relatively healthy while i'm a normal life but i would use backpacking as an excuse to poison my body because i was convinced or at least i tried to tell myself well that's the only way you can't eat healthy while you're backpacking so you know take this opportunity to just enjoy whatever you want to eat but when you spend as much time out on trail as i do then that's really just poisoning myself especially on thru hikes for a long period of time so once i found out not too long back that i've got some autoimmune stuff going on that hasn't really quite popped out then i had a little bit more incentive to try to watch what i'm eating even while i'm out on trail so i can continue to do this for years and years to come and hopefully one day i can break nimble nomad's oldest person to hike the at record but anyway i have started finding ways to eat healthier on trail and still try to actually enjoy the food that i'm eating so if you want to learn more about that i've put out a couple of videos on that topic and i'll link to those in the video description something else that i do that makes me later want to kick my own butt is taking too many zeros on a through hike now i have successfully completed all of the thru hikes that i began but some of them were just by the hair of my chinny chin chin on the at i took over 30 zeros i did have several days where i went home for a sibling's graduation and then i went home for a week because of an emergency with my dog sugar but i still took an excessive amount of zeros and the bigger problem is probably that i wanted to stop in every single trail town on trails like the pacific crest trail or continental divide trail the towns are spread out a little bit farther apart but on the at you have town access so often and it's really hard to not hear the sounds of a shower and real food calling your name after you smell like you can't even spell shower and you're really sick of ramen noodles zeros are very important for allowing your body to rest and to repair itself but also stopping in every town or zeroing too often can lead to spending a whole lot of money and burning up some time so that's something i recommend you just keep a watch out for and kind of keep in check finally one of my biggest grabs to myself that has become a bad habit is i don't stay in shape in between through hacks or even shorter backpacking trips for that matter i've had people ask me that in real life and even people comment on videos on the channel saying hey dixie what do you do to stay in shape between all of your hacks because you get back out there and go for it again so obviously in between you're doing some kind of exercise regimen well i've tried in the past but then i just kind of fall off the wagon again so the truth is i really just get out there each time and allow the trail to kick my butt until i'm back in through hiking shape i definitely don't think that this is the best thing for my body to go so hard and get into pretty good shape and then to go so hard sitting on the couch when i get back home so since i've already kind of gotten my diet and checked this is the next thing that i'm going to be working on pretty seriously and tomorrow i'm going to the local community center that has a weight room and yoga classes etc and my mom and i are going to start trying to hold each other accountable and go work out together i do think that if i were to do a better job of staying in shape between my backpacking trips and through hikes that some of these other bad habits would kind of start to fall in line too all right so those are some of my shortcomings that i've noticed as a through hiker and a backpacker and i do want to continue to kind of work on these because i feel like through life that's what we should do we live our lives we look back and reflect and then try to make those years going forward a little bit better than the years that we just went through i do want to say though i strongly believe in hike your own hike and enjoying backpacking and through hiking but these are just some of the things for myself that i feel like if i could correct that it would make backpacking and through hiking a more enjoyable experience all around but there's only one way to find out and i'm sure some of you will be holding me accountable on these things i'd be interested to hear if y'all think you have any bad habits while backpacking or through hiking so feel free to drop those in the comments below if you enjoyed today's video don't forget to subscribe before you go thank you all so much for watching and we will see you all next time

Channel: Homemade Wanderlust

Views: 216,693

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, Dixie, Camino, Florida Trail, Pinhoti Trail, Foothills Trail, Tetons, Grandma Gatewood

Id: ihtzY-BjEns

Length: 11min 30sec (690 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 06 2022