Ask Darwin Q&A #17 + Announcement!

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Tags: Appalachian Trail,AT,Thru-Hike,AT Thru-Hike,Backpacking,Hiking,Camping,Adventure,Hike Trash,PCT,Pacific Crest Trail,PCT Thru-Hike,CDT,Section Hike,Patreon,Blog,Travel Vlog

Video Transcription

hey guys it's Darwin here with my weekly Q&A to answer some more of your questions if you want to leave a question for next week's Q&A you can either leave it in the comment box below or send me a video question over to Darwin on the trail at yahoo.com and then next week I'll answer as many as I possibly can all right so let's go ahead and get into this week's first question do you do any stretching prior or during a big hike also do you take vitamin I regularly so yeah I do a lot of stretching for years I raced triathlon so I did some yoga to kind of keep myself limber so yes I do try to stretch as much as possible in the morning before I start hiking and then at the end of the day when I get into camp I try to do some like basic runner stretches like pulling up my leg stretching out my knee stretching out my spine because you know if you get to camp

you've been hiking all day putting your body through stress and you go to sleep and you don't stretch typically in the morning you wake up and you're pretty damn stiff and pretty sore so I try to stay on top of that now I'm not going to say that I always do because sometimes you just get to camp you're completely wore out and all you want to do is break camp and eat food but I try to do that as much as possible as far as vitamin I yeah unfortunately kind of all long-distance hikers do take a lot of ibuprofen it's not that great for you and I only do it whenever I'm doing a really long hike take a little bit in the morning and then maybe a little bit at camp at night before I hit that just to make sure I'm getting some decent sleep in my typical of day to day life I try to stay away from it so I'm not completely screwing up my system but yeah during a hike I definitely take vitamin I how do you deal with a wet tent sometimes just to do is that very what in the morning so yeah great point do condensation if it's raining a tent does get very wet and it's kind of a pain in the ass especially if you wake up from camp in the morning and it's still raining

so what snuggles and I did both in 15 and 16 on the Appalachian Trail is we actually carried some gallon ziplock bags and we kept those in our tent stuff sack so if we got up in the morning and the tent was wet and we just wanted to get out of so we weren't sitting there in the rain we would actually take the tent and the fly both separate and put them in a gallon zip bag and pretty much just stuff it in there now whenever the rain stopped for the day and maybe we got into a nice sunshiny location we would stop for lunch or a break or water and we would take the tin out and we would dry it sometimes hanging it off our trekking poles maybe hanging it on a shelter sometimes I would even hang it and we would try to get it as dry as possible stuff back up that way whenever we got to camp that night we could set up a dry tent because there is nothing worse than getting the canvas especially when it's already raining and having to set up a wet tent crawling inside of a wet tent

it's an awful experience and we've had to do that a couple times but we try to avoid that by simply drying out the tent and the fly sometime during the day you never have snuggles with you on your YouTube videos how come so not true Chuck actually snuggles is with me a lot she is actually usually behind the camera not today but she's usually always with me during my videos she's just kind of clear machete she doesn't like to be in a lot of videos now as far as a lot of my travel videos if you've watched any of my Appalachian Trail videos from 2015 or 2016 she's in all of those she's also usually my guinea pig when I'm shooting b-roll and I need someone to lay down on a sleeping mat or a sleeping pad or crawl inside of a sleeping bag so she is in a lot of my videos if she has her blog and stuff so a lot of times she does her own separate media and then I kind of take care of the YouTube videos now later on this year when we leave hit the road and start traveling again she will be at a lot of the videos again because I'm going to start a weekly travel vlog while we're on the road on the trail so you'll be seeing her a lot in upcoming videos so if you need your snuggle sticks just hold out a little bit more know if you guys can see those on your screen but I'm getting eaten up by gnats out here I see that both you and snuggles wear prescription glasses how about providing a few tips for airing prescription glasses on the trail also have you ever considered daily contacts I know there are some hikers that use these so yet both snows and I do wear our glasses we don't do anything special home we just wear our glasses yeah they get dirty

yeah that can be kind of annoying but I try to stay away from context number one I don't want to carry extra stuff like solution and a little pack number two your hands are just constantly dirty and nasty so being able to like put a contact on your finger and kind of shove that in your eye I kind of want to avoid getting a bunch of nasty dirt and scum in my eye so not a good idea for me I have met a handful of hikers on the trail that do use contacts but for the most part people just wear their glasses I don't really have any tips and tricks for wearing glasses just kind of watch out make sure they don't drop and break and scratch yeah that I'm not very good on that topic but I've had nothing but good luck from wearing glasses

I've never broke a lens yet I've never hardcore scratched up my glasses actually the lenses that I have in these glasses were both from 2015 and 2016 on the 80 and I'm still rocking them I can still see out of them and they walk that entire length of the trail so yeah contacts not really for me snuggles is not a contact person either we just kind of rock our glasses and deal with it how much money does it cost to hike the whole 80 Joe that is a pressing question and there's not really a definitive answer for everyone everyone is different everyone's going to have their own hike hence the term hike your own hike some people love spending a lot more money stopping at a lot more restaurants staying in a lot of hotels hostels and some people really like keeping it minimalist only staying in shelters and campsite signs super cheap food maybe even sending themselves resupply boxes so that answer is totally up in the air it's going to be different for everybody I can tell you from personal experience that between 2015 and 2016 snuggles and I as a couple spent $10,000 now that was $10,000 not only for trail expenses but also getting out to the trail and for a handful of pieces of gear but in total it was around ten thousand dollars probably about eight thousand dollars total for just food resupply shelter laundry things like that and about two thousand dollars on some extra gear travel expenses getting back out to the trail and come home next year in 2018 when I hiked the PCT I'm going to try to do it solo on between 4 and 5 thousand dollars so we'll see how that goes but yeah man it's going to be completely different for everybody all I can say is if you're saving money it's probably best to save more than less and if you don't spend it all that's fine then you have like an awesome nest egg that you can come off the trail with but there are a lot of hikers that have had in their hikes cut it short just because they ran out of funds because they weren't really smart with how they budgeted their money they spent too much in the beginning and they had to end up getting off the trail because they couldn't afford to hike anymore

so definitely save as much money as possible do as much research as possible and find out what type of hiker you are and what type of hike that you want to have in your trips have you met many who were on the trail alone for the first time is it better to take your first time extensive trip for someone else who's experienced there's nothing like learning from first-hand experience but I'm curious if most people just dive right in alone or not so yeah I've actually met a lot more people out on the trail who are out there alone for the first time than people that are with someone else there are a ton of people that hike long distance trails by themselves and a lot of people that are out there for their first time on the trail it's totally a learning experience and I think the best way to learn something especially a thru-hike backpacking something like that is getting out there and just learning as you go now obviously before you get out there you should try to do as much research and learn as much as possible hence why there's so many hikers and so many through hikers that do YouTube channels to be able to share some knowledge with you guys to kind of help you get prepared but the only way that you're really going to learn is to get out there be on the trail and learn all that stuff as you go because even experienced hikers or experienced backpackers and through hikers still have a lot to learn every time you go out on the trail you learn something new about what you're doing that's the beauty of it is it is a never-ending learning process so every time I go out and do a trip I learn something new and I figure out something that I thought that I knew is right and it's not or something that used to work for me and doesn't work anymore so hikers and backpackers are constantly evolving so that

best way to learn is to get out on the trail and let the trail teach you all right guys last question of the week and then I'm going to get the hell out of all these bugs eating me alive you completed the 80 section hike to the CDT why did you choose the PCT to be the last of the big three to tackle Minnifield maybe the most beautiful overall trail in the world I live in the San Diego area and have section hikes much of the PCT in my area and it's amazing

so Mike it is not the last trail I'm going to tackle there are a ton of trails out there and a lot that I eventually want to be on the 80 the PCT and CDT are just the main big three as far as it being the last of the big three I've only really done a handful of small sections on the CDT so I don't even count the CDT and I'm sure one of these days I might look at through hiking the CDT in its entirety so the PCT is not the last step for me as far as why the PCT next coming from the 80 I just want my next trail experience to be completely different from the East Coast and the PCT the West Coast is obviously the best way to do that now I would have jumped on the CDT next but I do live here in New Mexico so I'm pretty used to these types of conditions but the PCT is just one that I think that a lot of people when they get off of the 80 the PCT is just next in line people tend to save the CDT for the last trail that they do now as far as I'm concerned after doing the 80 I want to go do the PCT and then after that I actually want to tackle some smaller trails so not necessarily the three thousand two to three thousand mile trails I want to tackle some of these small seven to eight hundred mile trails and knock a lot of those smaller long distance trails off my list and I think you'll see a lot of through hikers doing that in upcoming years mainly because the big trails are starting to get kind of overpopulated and people want a little bit more of a secluded trail experience so I think a lot of those smaller trails are going to get a lot more use regardless I cannot wait to get out on the PCT next year and share that whole trip with you guys the plan as of right now is to completely the log that entire trail and share that whole trail experience with you guys I tried to do it a little bit on the 80 where I was doing weekly uploads but I'm going to try to do it a little bit different this time and want to bring you guys along on my journey alright guys so if you want to leave a question for next week's Q&A you can either leave it in the comment box below or send me a video question over to Darwin on the trail at yahoo.com and then next week I'll answer as many as I possibly can so I wanted to take a second to thank you guys so much I just recently hit 14,000 subscribers which is nuts to me you know two years ago when I started this channel I never thought that I would even get a thousand people who would give a damn about what I had to say about hiking and backpacking and travel but lo behold there's 14,000 of you that actually care what I had to say and I really appreciate your guys's input so my question to you is what type of media do you want to see me make more obviously I have the tips and tricks videos I do a gear review most every Sunday and now have the Q&A what do you guys want to see me make more what type of videos have I done you want to see me cover more on that topic in September snuggles and I will be hitting the road again and living in our camper full-time we're going to be headed further out west and spending from September until I start the PCT doing a lot of traveling so the plan as of now is to start an adventure travel vlog to share with you guys on a weekly basis it's something that I've been wanting to do for a while and I've kind of teased with it a little bit with preparation to the 80 last year and in some of my hiking videos but tell me what you guys think about that so recently I started a patreon account if you're not familiar what patreon is it's essentially a way for you to help support my channel to get better camera equipment better lighting more gear to do reviews on and to also help with travel expenses so if you want to check that out I'll put a link in the description box below of our patreon account you can pledge like a dollar or more a month and essentially what that will help me do is not only do my hike of the PCT next year which I really want to focus on bringing that trail to you guys but also on helping us get new gear and then in return I have some really awesome rewards you guys should check out giving away some stickers so Darwyn on the trail patches which if you've been following me on instagram you'll see that picture that i just posted yesterday I'll be doing a Members Only private Q&A session on Facebook live so that's really cool some Pat check downs and some other stuff so go check that out if you're interested in supporting the channel there's no obligation to going and supporting my channel I'll always make media for you guys it'll always be free I love sharing videos and QAS and my trips and stuff with you guys that's why I started the channel it's why I love to do it but if you are interested in supporting grow this channel moving it a little bit farther and producing a little bit better media definitely go check that out if you found any value in this video go ahead and hit that like button subscribe to my channel if you haven't already as always guys thanks for watching now I'm going to get the hell out of here tired of these books [Music]

you

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