Ask Darwin Q&A #3 (Answers!)

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Tags: Appalachian Trail,AT,AT Thru-Hike,Thru-Hike,CDT,PCT,Paciic Crest Trail,Long Distance Hiking,hiking,backpacking,Bikepacking,AZT,Arizona Trail,Vintage Trailer Restoration,Vintage Camper,Q&A,Traveling,Full-Time Rving,Off Grid Living,Minimalist

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hey guys Darwin so last week I had you guys ask me some questions for my third Q&A so I'm going to try to answer as many as I can what I don't answer this week I'll answer next week from now on I'm going to try to do one QA a week so keep the questions coming you can either leave them in the comment box below or send them over to Darwin on the trail at yahoo.com I send a video question and I'll feature it here in the video and I'll answer your question so I'm looking forward to following along with the trailer renovation

I'm curious after moving in what adventures specifically are you hoping to take in the trailer so good question Christine actually the reason we're actually buying the trailer is not only to take adventures in it but we're going to be moving into a full-time and living a minimalist lifestyle to where we can save up more money so we can do further adventures as soon as we move into the trailer will be heading further west actually headed for Southern California and trying to get a job at Joshua Tree National Park we're going to work seasonally for the Park Service hopefully and then six months that we have off from working at the Park Service we're actually going to be doing some traveling we have a lot of things in mind for the future but no specific adventures yet I'd like to know what you do about your eyes when you're out backpacking or through hiking considering you're clearly a glasses where do you wear contacts sunglasses etc ask me because I lost the genetic lottery with my horrible eyes so I wear glasses all the time I wear them when I'm hiking I wear them every single day I'm riding I don't ever wear contacts and for most people that I know that have bad eyesight and need glasses wear their glasses when they do hike or do that packing mainly because your hands are constantly dirty you can get a lot of dust and dirt on there and then whenever you're trying to put in contacts and that's solution it's really easy to get that in your eye so just having a pair of glasses a lot easier snuggle does the same she's also a glasses wearer and she wears her glasses all the time whether we're through hiking backpacking hiking all the time and it's mainly just for a convenience thing where are my favorite places to hike and backpack and New Mexico so as most of you know if you've been following my channel for a while I do live here in New Mexico currently here in Albuquerque there's tons of great places to - backpack around here you know not only do we have the Sandia Mountains that are right at the base of the city that we can just drive a handful of blocks and boom Ron drills this we do a lot of hiking at but also the Haman's mountains that are just north of here between here and Santa Fe that's probably my favorite place to do any type of backpacking our long-term hiking it's absolutely beautiful it kind of reminds me of being in Colorado it's not very desert II like what you would say New Mexico would be so that would be one of my favorite places would be the famous mountains

I'm through like in 80 starting on April 3rd on my diabetic the type 2 diabetic have never heard anybody talk about diabetics on the trail I have to carry aged roughly 14 to 15 ounces worth of medicines with me got the approval from my doctor but have you ever had anybody talk or known anybody who's diabetic on the trail and how did they handle as far as the medicines and the trash from the medicines while they were on the trail your input would be very helpful and I'd appreciate it alright so good question um that's one that I've actually never thought about unfortunately I didn't know anybody between 2015 or 2016 that was a diabetic at least none that I knew of so that's a great question unfortunately I don't really have a solid answer for that would think so that you could just pack out your trash like anybody else just keep a nice zip lock bag and then whatever type of trash that you use from your medicine you know every couple of days you come somewhere where you can throw away trash and empty your trash bag over things in just every couple of days you could throw that stuff away again I don't know specifically what type of stuff that you need to throw away and I didn't know anybody on the trail so good luck with that also good luck with your thru-hike that's awesome that you're starting in April if you have any more questions or anything feel free to ask me and enjoy it man the 80 is a really really really amazing thing that hopefully will change your life forever all right so who Bowie Indiana has two questions number one which is better for the long haul an old pair of Lucky's or a new pair of carbon fiber trekking poles that's actually a really good question that I can kind of touch on number one I bought a brand-new pair of carbon trekking poles the reason I bought them was actually I wore out an old pair of komperdell trekking poles so it's kind of a question on how hard you are on gear I used the same set of trekking poles for about three years it had tons of miles on them I use them in 2015 on the 80 and in 2016 on the 80 and just replace the tips the tips will wear out faster than anything aside from that it really just depends on how hard you wear down gear snuggles actually went through two pairs between the two years that we were on the trail so she's a little harder on gear I would say though if you have a nice pair of Lucky's and aren't too crazy heavy and they still work well go ahead and use them use them until they wear out and then maybe think about getting a nice set of carbon trekking poles and number two which is the best in your humble opinion on water filters I personally love the sawyer squeeze not the sawyer squeeze mini because i think the flow rate is a little bit too small but the regular sawyer squeezes my favorite water filter that i've used over the years super lightweight

small compact and then I actually use a gravity feed system that I hook up to that if you want to check out the video that I did a while back on my water system I'll put the link up here so you can go and click that check that video and see how I use my sawyer squeeze as a gravity feed system have you ever hiked the Sierras and the PCT the JMT or am i planning on doing so cool question so I have actually never hiked in the Sierras the PCT or the JMT I always wanted to this year I was supposed to start a thru-hike of the PCT but I'm actually pushing that off till next year

because we did buy the trailer and we are renovating that so we can live in it and then next April I'll be starting my northbound through hype of the PCT so make sure that you follow along because I will be shooting videos from the trail all next year question for you is me and a couple buddies are looking to hike the northern end of the Appalachian Trail from Monson Maine up to the peak of github we're going to be doing that over the summer and while I'm training really hard get my body in shape and getting the right gear one thing that I'm not really sure about is but offers they can be pretty hellacious up there in the summer time between black flies and mosquitos and those themes and probably 20 other variety right so I wonder if you had any suggestions on how to handle that I've read a lot of different things about what percentage of deep you need how much is overkill if you should use these at all I think there's some new thing now called picaridin sounds like I know you can spray some stuff on yourself I've seen other things you can like spray your gear beforehand to kind of bug proof to your gear and repel them better that way too but I was wondering if you had any advice I know you guys have been up through there before so if you could give me any input on what you think would be the best way to help keep keep me and my friends getting eaten alive is I'd be really greatly appreciated thanks that so fortunately whenever we were going through that section of the 80 we didn't have bugs as bad as other people do we were actually pretty lucky and didn't get a whole lot of bug action in that section however we did have our fair share of bugs throughout the entire trail mainly in Massachusetts and Vermont Massachusetts is horrible with mosquitoes so we dealt with mosquitoes a lot if you've been following me for a while you know that last year in Pennsylvania I got bit by a tick and contracted Aliki osis which is a form of Lyme disease so obviously we dealt with ticks and then in Vermont we actually dealt with black flies again not as bad as some other people have it but we did have black flies which bite like crazy they draw blood and they kind of hurt so the handful of things that kind of helped us combatant the insects on the trail or number one we treated a lot of our deer like our tent our packs our clothes our hiking shoes with permethrin permethrin is a bug deterrent that is really good against ticks especially but also mosquitoes and some other noseeums and stuff like that so we didn't treat our clothes in our gear with permethrin and that really helped keep ticks kind of off of our pack so then they weren't crawling up on us at night in 2015 we treated our stuff twice with it and then in 2016 we actually just treated our gear and our clothes once with it before we hit the trail again net lasted that last 600 miles so how it works is eventually it wears off but usually it wears off of clothes and stuff through wash cycles and it's usually a handful of wash cycles obviously we didn't really clean our gear the two years that we were out there but obviously that stuff does kind of wash off with rain so it is good to treat your stuff every couple weeks so I would suggest before you do that section treat all of your stuff with permethrin you just spray it on everything you let it dry and then it usually does the trick aside from that we used 100 percent DEET there's kind of a lot of controversy and talk back and forth with how dangerous DEET can actually be it does mess with your skin you want to keep it away from gear so about once a day especially when we're going through Massachusetts we just sprayed a little bit deep in our hands kind of rubbed it around

and rubbed it all over ourselves kind of our exposed on arms the legs around our neck and face and then the other thing that we used was we actually picked up some head nets while we were in New Jersey and that really helped keep the bugs out of our face and keep the mosquitoes from like eating our face alive and also keeping noseeums out of our eyes so those were really helpful so you might want to pick one of those up too depending on what time of year that you're going through there but like I said we got really lucky and threes 100-mile wilderness for moms in the Katahdin we didn't really have a lot of bug problems so hopefully you'll have some good luck like we do and enjoy your heisman do I have a finalized gear list for the PCT and if so what's on it not really

I've been picking up gear from the past year that I think that I want to use on the PCT like I said I was kind of close to what I needed because I thought I was going to start this year but since I'm pushing it off for another year I have some different gear choices to make I have recently started doing some gear shakedowns for a section hike that I'm going to be doing next month in April on the Continental Divide Trail so I'm trying to get I'm kind of using that hike to kind of dial in some of that gear that I want to use next year for the PCT since it'll be kind of similar I'm going to be doing some desert hiking so that's the main thing that I'm really worried about is that first 700 miles of the PCT and what gear that I want to use for that section so this Continental Divide high quote totally helped me decide what I want to dial down but as far as a finalized gear list not really I still have a year until I start my few heck of the PCT so I still have some time to think and I'm a big gear geek so I'm sure that I'll find a better tent I'm sure that I'll find a jack that I like I'm constantly switching out gear so no list yet and then the last question that I'm going to answer today is from Drew and drew asked when will your bike packing video come out from Arizona Thanks so what he's talking about is in October I was attempting to bike pack the entire Arizona Trail from Utah to Mexico I had some problem with my knee and had to pull off the trail after 200 miles so I am making a short film on my 200 miles on the Arizona Trail and drew I just kind of put that on the back burner I am still working on that can you guys want to check out the trailer that I made for that short film I'll put the link up here so you can go check that out and I would say within the next few months I'll be releasing that I just kind of put it on the back burner since snuggle and I have so much going on especially now with the trailer renovation this section axe that I'm going to be doing at the CDT next month a lot going on but I am still working on it so don't lose faith in it it will come out very soon alright guys so like I said I'm going to be doing one of these Q&A kind of weekly I'm going to try to do them as best as I can about once a week so keep an eye out for those so keep sending me some questions you can either leave them in the comment box below or you can send me a video question over to Darwin on the trail at yahoo.com and then next week I'll try to answer as many of those as I possibly can and some of the ones that I didn't get to this week so keep those questions coming and I'll keep trying to make videos if you haven't got a chance yet go over and check me out on Instagram of them posting a lot of new photos but some of the things that me and snuggles have going on throughout the week go ahead and like or dislike this video subscribe to my channel if you haven't already as always guys thanks for watching

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