First Aid & Toiletries on an AT Thru Hike

Description

In this video I talk about the First-aid & Toiletries that worked for me on my Hike of the Appalachian Trail.

Music By: Thunder/Dreamer

facebook.com/thunderdreamerband

Tags: Appalachian National Scenic Trail (Protected Site),Thru-Hike,Thru-hiking,Hiking (Sport),backpacking,thru hike

Video Transcription

so over the last couple weeks I've had a few comments and requests from the fine folks over on the white blaze forum about doing a video on the toiletries and the first aid that I carried on my 80 thru-hike this year so I figured I'd make a video and kind of show you the things that were in my pack and it worked for me so uh first off let's talk about toiletries

one of the main toiletries that most people carry and that I use my entire time on the trail and I still use now in my bathroom as a this great stuff it's dr. Bronner's um 18 in one biodegradable soap they call it magic soap so this stuff you can whenever I was on the trail I washed my clothes in it I washed my hands with it I washed my dishes with it I washed my hair with it my body with it um some people say that you can brush your teeth with it as well I'm not a big fan of that I like a traditional toothpaste but I guess you could do that too

so yeah the main toiletry in my kit was dr. Bronner's don't leave home without it it works for everything and like this little itty-bitty bottle it doesn't really weigh anything and one of these bottles will last you like a few hundred miles until you have to either get a new one or refill it so I just usually usually refilled it if I came to a hostel and they had some dr. Bronner's widget quite a handful of the hostels that we stayed at did have dr. Bronner's already in the bathroom for hikers to use so I would just squirt some more in there or if I couldn't find that I just picked another one up headed Outfitters so yeah dr. Bronner's um the next thing that I carried was a Burt's Bees lip balm I had to have it especially whenever it got chilly up in the Smokies he got cold my lips got dry good to have so he looks don't crack carried Burt's Bees on me the next thing was obviously got to keep your teeth clean I found this little bitty toothbrush here at a grocery store and it actually came with the little travel-size Crest toothpaste but yeah it's little plastic toothbrush it packs down inside its own little tube and it turns into a full-sized toothbrush some way tweeze I guess could say you could ditch this and just carry this little guy but for what this weighed it didn't really bother me so yeah toothbrush was a great little combo and it looks like a dollar so had those in like it I guess we could call it a toiletry I wasn't a real piece of gear but bins bins bug spray 100% DEET pretty much a must have especially whenever you get farther up north in New York New Jersey Connecticut Massachusetts mosquitoes are really bad this stuff is great to kind of spray on your legs spray on your arms to try to kill down the mosquitoes and the ticks dens next was an obvious teepee good old toilet paper good thing you can do with it is you can actually take out the tube and then squish it flat put it in a ziploc bag make sure it doesn't get wet or any moisture and it works great I usually would grab some more TP anytime I stopped in for a resupply pretty much anytime there was anywhere where I could get toilet paper like a bathroom in a park or something always needed a toilet paper as some friends on the trail caught on shit tickets that's what they came known as go shit tickets so yeah a bag with some shit tickets in there got to have it so that was pretty much my main toiletries that I had didn't really carry anything else didn't need anything else

some people had Gold Bond stuff like body Glide

I ended up not needing it I didn't chase that much so it didn't really work for me because I didn't really need it some people need

some people chase easy the next thing that I wanted to touch on was my first aid kit this is it this is all of it I carried for my first aid had this picked up this little bitty pouch I think at an REI and just kind of filled it with the things that I needed so if we break it down and open her up I'll show you what's in here first off a moleskin moleskin is phenomenal stuff it is a nice soft fabric that is adhesive on one side of it and you trim it to the size of the blister or cut that you have on your feet or hands stick it right to the cut after you clean it of course and I usually just took some duct tape that was wrapped around my trekking poles and wrapped it right around and it acts like a band-aid you don't have all the extra packaging a band-aid it stays in place it goes nowhere this stuff is phenomenal it's like putting a second layer of skin on your skin which is why it's called mole skin so mole skin was in my first-aid kit next up to clean the wound alcohol pads got to have alcohol pads I used them for a lot of stuff not just cleaning blisters and cuts and scrapes I used them to clean all kinds of stuff alcohol swipes gotta have them have a nice big handful of them in here picked him up in a write hood you can usually find a lot of this kind of stuff in hiker boxes in stores hostels hotels a lot of places along the trail have hiker boxes and you'll find a lot of this stuff so I'll follow slopes next up in my first aid bag I had some three-in-one antibiotic ointment I had a handful of packets of this so if I did have a pretty deep scrape or a cut could definitely use this stuff and definitely help heal the wound a little bit faster then I put some old skin on wrap with some duct tape it'd be good to go so had that in the first-aid kit I also on the other side of it in my first-aid kit kept a kept some thread thread for sewing on patches more importantly repairing stuff stuff gets ripped stuff gets damaged you spend a lot of time out on the trail you're in rough terrain stuff can get ruined so it's nice to have some thread on you and some some needles I had a few needles that I would use and the other good thing is if you have a blister you can thread take a piece of thread through a blister so it drains all the liquid out of it patch it up with your moleskin so what the thread does is it doesn't allow the fluid to gather back up in it it helps heal it faster so that's a good little tip and trick for for all you newbies to backpacking keep keep some thread and keep a needle and just thread it right through there and it keeps all that fluid drained out of there and doesn't allow it to blister back up so really good to have and then last but not least I had my vitamin I for you non backpackers that don't know what that is it's ibuprofen we take a lot of these on the trail a lot of aches a lot of pains pretty much for everything so I've got to have your daily dosage of vitamin I every morning and I had that inside my first aid kit and kept it up pretty regularly so anytime we came to a town or found a hiker box usually a previous hiker would leave a bottle that they only took about half of it I filled my bag up to make sure that I had some so that's pretty much it that's all I carried for my first day that's all I carried for my toiletries I didn't really feel the need to have anything else so uh to the folks on white boys hopefully that helped with getting ready for your 2016 hike and for everyone else out there in YouTube land hopefully that helped for just uh putting together a nice kit about toiletries and first-aid for your pack whether you're doing a weekend trip or a thru-hike so leave some comments below like or dislike my video subscribe to my channel if you really like what I'm doing here and as always thank you so much for watching