Ask Darwin Q&A #8 (Answers!)

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Tags: Appalachian Trail,AT,AT Thru-Hike,Thru-Hike,Backpacking,Hiking,Camping,Adventure,CDT,Section Hike,Surly Bikes,Salsa Bikes,Kona Bikes,Surly ECR,Bikepacking,Bikepacking.com,T-Shirts

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hey guys it's Darwin so I'm back from my section hike of the Continental Divide Trail and here to answer some more of your questions if you'd like to ask a question for next week's Q&A you can either leave them 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 guys let's go ahead and get into the first question do you have plans to hike the American Discovery Trail um not really that being said there's a lot of trails I don't really have plans to hike but I could see myself hiking in the future now I have actually hiked a couple sections of the American Discovery Trail it runs through southern Illinois and southern Indiana and I'm originally from southern Indiana so I've actually done a lot of hiking on that trail when I was getting kind of my hiking legs and getting into backpacking but as far as doing a full through hike from what I hear that's a pretty hard trail super long no support really hard to resupply actually in 2015 levels on the 80 I watched a documentary of a guy hiking the trail and he was like one in like 20 people to ever through hiked the trail so there's not a lot of people out there there's not a lot of support and from what I hear there's a lot of sections that don't have water so it's a really insanely tough trail to hike so maybe but probably not so it's on using a two liter gravity feed water filter thinking of using the sawyer two-liter gravity system except only using the dirty bag and gravity feeding into one water bottle so i actually used a gravity feed system in 2015 and 2016 on the appalachian trail you haven't seen that video yet I'll put a link up here in the corner and you can go check out kind of how I put mine together I used a Sawyer regular filter and a platypus

dirty bag and hose and able to use a little connector piece to turn my Sawyer squeeze into a gravity feed system and that worked really low now I know there's a handful of cats that are doing some other types of mods with the regular bottle and I know that some of the new Sawyer kits come with kind of a gravity feed system with it with a small tube so there's a handful of different things that you can do but as far as my thoughts on having one they're phenomenal it definitely takes that annoyance

at the end of the day of having to squeeze all that water out of the soil so again check that video out and there's a lot of other great options out there but I highly recommend a gravity feed system I have backpacked but I am interested in trying bike packing I feel comfortable with sweeping out cooking and navigation what should I look for in a bike and what would you suggest for a first-time multi-day trip are there any accessories you feel would be helpful so awesome that you're thinking about getting into bike packing I personally really love bike packing as you've probably seen on my channel some bikes that I would actually suggest looking at are really anything that surley makes the ECR which is a bike that I ride I'll put a gear review of that up here the Krampus is a phenomenal bike the knew karate monkey is a phenomenal bike the new ogre is a phenomenal bike so definitely check out some of the bikes that Serle has in their lineup also check out some of the bikes from salsa and some of the bikes from Kona right now a big thing and bike packing is a plus tire so either a 27.5 plus with a 3-inch tire on there or even a 29 plus which is what I ride so there's a lot of really great adventure bikes out there so definitely give all those companies a try and check out their new models that they have this year as far as a good suggestion for a multi-day trip to get started it kind of depends on what part of the region that you're in but a really great resource for that is bike packing.com you'll find tons of different trip reports on there that have GPX files and everything you can download straight to your GPS and go out and do anywhere from it one overnight to a multi-day trip to really get some experience in bike packing there's a lot of really good resources on that website I highly suggest checking it out have fun getting into bike Pacman it's a super super fun thing to do it's really great to be able to make bigger miles during the day have your bike carry the weight and have an adventure and see the world off of a bike hey Darwin I guess this one's for snuggles i journaled daily and was wondering if waterproof Engineers notebook is necessary on the trail if not how did she keep her journal safe dry Thanks so snuggles actually didn't use any type of waterproof journal or write in the rain journal because they do have some waterproof stuff out there she actually just used a regular journal a regular little small notebook kept it in a big gallon ziplock bag and then whenever she had filled up all of her notes and all of her pages she would just send it home or sent back to her mom's house and then just pick up another one on the trail from a Dollar General or a Family Dollar or a Walmart or something like that so she didn't keep any particular water proof she just pretty much kept it in a ziplock bag and that worked for her and then just a regular pin so nothing fancy nothing expensive just a good dollar notebook we'll do you just make sure you put it in a ziploc bag and keep it dry any advice for hiking south on the 80 I don't really know what that questions pertaining to but uh as far as I'm concerned whether you're going south north or flip-flopping just get out and hike on the 80 really you know it's up and down both ways so one way is not easy or harder than the other it depends if you're talking about a weekend trip or it through hike from what I understand doing a thru-hike it's a little bit more challenging starting from Katahdin and coming down where with a northbound hike it seems like whenever you start out kind of the way that the terrain is formed and how the trail is it almost lets you get those hiker legs and get ready for Vermont New Hampshire and Maine those really hard States plus that's kind of a big payoff of the northbound hike so as far as hiking southbound go for it just get out there and hike enjoy the 80 I'd like to know more kind of about what your question is though like I said if you're talking about through hiking it's a great option there's not as many people doing it but it's starting to grow bigger and bigger in popularity but regardless just hike man did you meet many different nationalities while hiking the 80 it seems that most through hiking vloggers are American did you meet Canadians on the trail and do you know of any Canadian through hiker vloggers maximum because I'd like to know if these hikers have any important insights about hiking in the u.s. such as extended travel insurance great question I met tons of different nationalities how many people from Canada people from Australia people from Germany people from Japan Sweden all over the place tons of different nationalities that was a bug I know there was a couple that is on YouTube I can't remember their name but they are from Canada to hike the PCT last year and they do a lot of videos about the PCT as far as 80 vloggers on YouTube that are from Canada I don't really know of any then again I don't really check what people's nationality is and I haven't ever heard anybody talking about travelers insurance but that is definitely something good to look into but tons of different nationalities all different types of people in the end though when everybody's out there everybody's just hiker trash regular 80 hiker trash no matter where you're from the color your skin your sex your sexual orientation whatever we're all hiker trash out on the AG and then the last question that I'm going to answer for the day is Darwin do you have any logo gear that we can buy to support you and snuggles moral patches etc actually snuggles and I just launched our Spreadshirt website so if you want to check that out I'll put the link in the description box below and that is a link to the website where we right now are currently just selling some shirts that have a couple logos on them but coming soon there'll be some hats with my logo on there some patches stickers buttons a bunch of other stuff it's something that snuggle and I have been trying to put together for a while then kind of slow on it's kind of been on the back burner because of all the other stuff that we have but we just launched that website so go check that out and get you some swag really appreciate the question the opportunity to tell you guys about it and thanks for the support man alright so like I said if you want to ask a question for next week's Q&A you can either leave it in the comment box below or send me a video question a video of you asking me a question over to Darwin on the trail at yahoo.com and then next week I'll answer as many as I possibly can if you haven't chants yet go over and check me out on Instagram when posting a lot of new photos I posted a lot of photos from my section hike of the CDT so if you haven't got to change it go over and check that out go ahead and light or dislike this video subscribe to my channel if you haven't already and as always guys thanks for watching [Music]

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