Ask Darwin Q&A #15 / Giveaway Winner Announced!

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----- Gear/Stuff I mentioned in this video! -----

Knott's Facebook Page! - https://www.facebook.com/dan.binde

ThermaRest Z-Seat (Ass Pad) - http://amzn.to/2nVVNOM

HydroBlu Versa Flow - http://amzn.to/2sA5EMG

AT Gear List - https://darwinonthetrail.com/2016/05/03/darwins-2016-at-gear-list/

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Canon EOS T6i - http://amzn.to/2kACQOU

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TakStar Shotgun Mic - http://amzn.to/2kMsAnM

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Tags: Appalachian Trail,AT,Thru-Hike,AT Thru-Hike,Backpacking,Hiking,Camping,Adventure,CDT,PCT,PCT Thru-Hike,SOBO,NOBO,Hiker Trash,Pacific Crest Trail,FKT,Speed Record,Section Hiking,Z-Seat,HydroBlu,Versa Flow,Giveaway,Gear Giveaway

Video Transcription

hey guys it's Darwin here with my weekly Q&A to answer more of your questions if you want to ask a question for next week's Q&A if you need to 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 alright guys so let's go ahead and get into this week's first question Darwin may I ask on the bear bag or bear can is one better than the other this might seem dumb do you hang a bear can so it all depends on where you are hiking so on the 80 there's only about one section maybe two sections where you actually have to use a bear can mainly the reason you have to use a bear can is because of high bear activity typically on the East Coast the Appalachian Trail there's not a lot of places that require you to use a bear can now on the west coast

whenever you're hiking say the PCT and you're going through certain national parks like Yosemite or some of the more northern parks you are required to use a bear can because of higher bear activity now I have yet to ever use a bear can on my hikes but next year whenever I hike the PCT I will have to use a bear can in multiple sections so for most of the sections I'll be using my regular bear bag hanging kit and then other sections I'll be trading that out for a bear cane that I will have mailed to me and then bump it ahead along down the trail so I can pick it up again as far as hanging a bear can I don't think there's really a need to hang a bear can the whole point of having the bear can is that you can keep it on the ground

it's nice field a bear can pop it around messing around and can't get into it so you might have to kind of go looking for your can but a bear should not be able to get into a bear vault but as far as on the Appalachian Trail I've only ever used a bear bag hanging system make sure that I hang it in a tree and I've never had any problem with bears or any type of critters trying to get at my food aside from the occasional mice do you ever drink beer or wine on the trail every once in a while snug and I will pack out like a can of beer and maybe just have a beer the first night that we're out smash it and then pack it out there are a lot of hikers that like carry a lot of beer whisky wine a lot of alcohol out into the woods that's not really my style I love to drink beer and wine when I get into a town whenever I'm doing a resupply maybe staying at a hostel or a hotel especially beer so I can up my carb levels my glycogen levels in my legs but as far as drinking on the trail it's not really what I'm out there to do if I'm doing something like car camping I will have beer in the cooler and drink beer while I'm sitting at camp but when I'm hiking it's just not really my thing one of my pet peeves is actually people drinking too much out on the trail getting loud and it turning into sort of like a frat party and that's not why I go out and hike the trail but occasionally snuggles and I will carry out like a can of beer just to have a beer with dinner smash the cannon and get rid of it the first time we have a chance to dump our trash what annoys and bothers you most on the trail are there any advantage or disadvantages on doing a thru-hike with a partner so one of the things that actually annoys me on the trail is kind of like I answered in the last question is people drinking and partying too much there's a big thing on long distance trails especially the Appalachian Trail people love to party on the trail that's all good and fun and fine and sometimes I also like to kind of cut loose maybe have a beer stay up late talk but what really annoys me is people taking it too far being loud partying smoking weed drinking a whole lot and turning it into a frat party again that's not the reason why I go out and hike I go out to be in nature to experience nature and to kind of get out of that society where I'm not constantly being paraded with with loud people and the rush of traffic and stuff so whenever I'm out in the woods I don't want to listen to that crap it's one of the big problems that I had in 2015 on the trail they were just way too many young people that were out partying on the trail and it just kind of rude you know it spoils the experience for other people they're getting out there have a different type of experience I think if you want to party that's fine but you know ghost stealth camp somewhere maybe stay away from the shelters

stay away from big groups of people and go do your own thing if that's what you want to do hike your own hike that's fine it's not my thing as far as advantages and disadvantages of doing a thru-hike with a partner I'm not really going to answer that one right now actually snuggles and I are working on a video on how to through hike with a partner or hiking with a significant other and we'll be doing that video here within the next coming month so keep an eye out for that there's a lot of advantages to hiking with a partner and there's also a handful of disadvantages again if I start getting into that it'll be like an entire video of me just answering your question so keep an eye out for that video should be looking about a month within the month it should be coming out hello Darwin Tom from El Paso Texas when is the best time to start the PCT southbound so from what I understand the best time to start a southbound through hike of the PCT is about mid-june that's usually when people start from Canada but that all depends on the snow rate in the Cascades now this year it was a pretty high snow year pretty much for the entire west coast so the Sierras got really bad snow the Cascades got really bad snow so it all depends on that snow melt so if you start too early going southbound the trail tends to be covered in snow and it's really hard to navigate that

so most people try to start about mid-june to late June again it really all depends on the snow in the Cascades it's the same as a northbound hike as well a lot of that depends on the snow in the Sierras so if you get to the Sierras too early you're kind of stuck in one spot waiting for some of that snow to melt I'm 15 now and I'm hoping to do it through hike in 2019 2020 but don't particularly like the company of drunk people at the time how intrusive is the whole party scene on the 80 is it easy to avoid so it seems like there's a lot of talk and answering questions about people drinking on the trail in this Q&A on the 80 it can be a bit much it's mainly only bad from the getting to about mmm Pennsylvania and then all those partiers kind of start dropping off the main place that a lot of them drop off is in Damascus so they hike in to trail days which is this huge party in Damascus Virginia every year for do hikers and then after that they start to dwindle off and then that's when the real serious hikers kind of start hitting the trail more and continue all the way to Catan as far as avoiding that yeah I think you can avoid that the main thing you might have to do is do a lot of stuff camping so a lot of the partiers or people that drank and smoked and all of that tend to want to hang out at the shelters fit shelters and be shelter s you can just plan to camp a little down from the shelter and kind of make your own stealth camps that's probably your best bet to stay away from people aside from that you're not really going to run into that while you're hiking during the day it's really only a camp at night where that can affect you so yeah I think it's pretty easy to avoid good luck on planning your hike for 2019 2020 we might see out in 2019 snuggles and I have been talking about maybe heading that way towards Virginia in 2019 when I get done with my hike of the PCT so maybe we'll see you out there man hello Darwin I was just curious what was the longest amount of time that you can recall without hearing the voice of another person as much as I loved to meet interesting people there's something about the solitude of being alone um there's been a handful of times where I've been on a trail and haven't heard the voice of another person I think that the longest time was probably last month whenever I was doing my section height of the CDT there was about 48 hours where I didn't hear another human being didn't even see another human being which was kind of two different ways it was kind of lonely for a little bit and then it was kind of really nice not being able to talk to anybody didn't even have cell service so I couldn't call snuggles so it's pretty much 48 hours without having any other human interaction and then I didn't actually hear the sound of another person's voice until I was trying to get into Silver City I was hitchhiking a guy stopped over and picked me up he was kind of the first voice that I heard so I really loved the community of a trail

hanging out with other hikers and hiking with people talking about stuff talking about trail life sharing gear stores and all of that but yeah there is something to be said for that solitude one of the things I really like about out here in New Mexico is there's a lot of trails that you can just go out kind of get lost and never see or hear another person all day long there's something to be said about that it's pretty magical kind of hard to find on the East Coast from what I found there's just so many people out there and it's so densely populated if you really want to get alone and have some solitude in nature head out west come down to the southwest here in New Mexico tons of places where you can just go out and get that solitude that you're looking for on the trail how did snuggles get her name so I got my trail name the first week that I was on trail on the 80s and I stayed in the shelter with Darwin of course the first night and it was very nervous about being on the top bunk and having to get down in the middle of the night to go pee that was my main concern so I decided to sleep next to the ladder Darwin decided not to sleep next to the ladder so I snuggled up to a random person that I had not met before while we were out there who happened to turn out to be hot sauce so I snuggled next to hot sauce for the first night the second night we are on the 80 similar situation very nervous about having to get up and pee during the mill the night except for our second night I snuggled on one side next to Darwin the other side was next to hot sauce so after a couple of nights of snuggling next to random men while I was on the trail including my husband I got nicknamed snuggles alright guys so last question of the week is another video question hey Darwin and Troy here I'm currently hiking the North Country Scenic Trail near Petoskey Michigan I'm just doing a section hike but today it's pretty damp and kind of find a place to set down and cook some breakfast everything's damp and I've heard you talk about an ass pad didn't know if you had any recommendations on that and maybe you've reviewed it before and I missed it but looking for some recommendations on that if you get time and you can answer this I would greatly appreciate it and as always thanks for your great videos I really enjoy it have a great day so yeah man the ass pad is a phenomenal tool to have so the one that I use is the therm-a-rest z seat I use the one that is yellow and has the silver on the bottom snuggles has the one that's brown so it's not as insulated not as thermal but I absolutely love that thing tons of different uses not only do I use it whenever I'm stopping for lunch throwing it under my ass to get myself off the wet ground but also using it as a windshield screen for my stove sometimes other times because I am a side sleeper I don't like my knees knocking together when I'm sleeping at night and then other times my legs are kind of sticky so I hope my legs sticking together so I actually take my ass pad at night fold it up and put it between my knees I get such better sleep on the trail so absolutely the ass pad is an amazing thing to have I highly highly suggest finding one so if you don't want to buy a new one and you have an old closed-cell foam pad you can always cut a big square out of it and use that as an ass pad as well snuggles actually did that for the first like 300 miles of the 80 we had found an old pad it was in a hiker box that people have been cutting up for the same thing she cut a big square out of it and she used that for about the first three hundred miles and then we were actually out on the trail at a shelter somebody had left behind one of those thermo as these seats so she ended up taking that up and then got her new ass pad that way but yes out of all of the items that I carry that our luxury items the ass pad is my favorite alright guys so 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 over to Darwin on the trail at yahoo.com and then next week I'll answer as many as I possibly can so right now my hiker track buddy knot is out on the Appalachian Trail

shooting for the fastest known time record for self supported hike so go over and check out his Facebook page his Instagram he's been posting tons of little Facebook live videos some awesome photos from the trail but he is setting out to smash that record so if you want to go over and check him out and show him some support I'll leave a link in the description box below for his Facebook page I almost forgot which is why I am now in a different spot but we have a water filter to give away so I recently did a review on the hydro blue versus low water filter I had you guys send me an email with your entry I have everyone's name that entered here in my hat so I'm going to do this old-school and just kind of draw a name out of here [Music]

and the winner of the Versa flo water filter by hydro blue is Chandler Dickinson so Chandler Dickinson I will send you an email asking for your address and I'll get this guy in the mail and get it out to you if you haven't got a chance yet go over and check me out on Instagram and posting a lot of new photos lately of some of the things that snuggles and I have going on throughout the week plus some photos of some past hikes on the 80 so go check those out 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

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