Campfire Chronicles Podcast #08 | Learning from Our Experiences

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In this episode, Bryan and Thomas talk about learning from their experiences, and they answer some viewer questions.

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Tags: camping,outdoors,bushcraft,podcast,adventure archives,hiking,wilderness,backpacking,survival,how to

Video Transcription

hello welcome to camp fire chronicles episode 8 I think you are correct today you have the pleasure I guess of not listening to Andrew Robbie but instead to other people myself Brian Lin and and me you're her other co-host Thomason art excellent the first thing we want to do is we want to thank our patron supporters you know every donation that you guys give to us it helps us make adventure archives better and it helps us you know put out more videos so we could not do this without your support anyways the topic of today's podcast is going to be learning from our experiences and what I mean by that is every time we've taken a camping or hiking trip after its concluded I've always felt like there was something that I've learned from that trip whether it be something simple you know if it was a small lesson like what kind of gear to bring or or you know what kind of brand I should buy or something like that or if it was something larger or on a more deeper sense how I relate to people you know or we do a lot of philosophical talk on our camps too but there's just always been something that I've learned and I feel like that I've always grown from every experience that I've taken it's very true I every time you go out into nature and to some degree you end up taking something back most the time is not physical unless you steal like a I don't know a squirrel yeah I think it's the it's the factor that when you go out into nature you are less distracted by so many things you have a lot of time to think about things you know you don't have your phone or a laptop or computer at least for our generation you know those things distract us a lot in real life so I think that's why we tend to learn a lot when we go out hiking camping okay so bright I know you were talking about some some gear now what what type of gear were you talking about like well you know uh my gear has changed and evolved a lot ever since i first started i mean the first backpack I ever had was a piece of garbage from walmart haha wait was it like a real backpacker was it like a school backpack day it was it was technically a real backpack like as real as you can get from walmart like it wasn't just a normal school backpack it had the straps and things but the quality was terrible it was was not big enough it was probably more like a daypack was what it was probably more designed for for like hiking rather than overnighting and back in that back then I was concerned more about price you know mm-hmm just start I had just started hiking and the first trip that I used it on was too it was hocking hills the first trip that we took it to what was that oh I don't know that was that 2008 was that before Yellowstone oh it's definitely before Yellowstone okay um I'm really bad with the Charlie Taylor trip she doesn't 80 doesn't know I don't know yeah regardless I only think of our trips as episode number episode- 65 yeah but I realized that by having just by how uncomfortable I was when I went hiking with those things that it was definitely something I needed to improve and when we took our trip to mohican that was a winter trip and I had this I had actually borrowed Thomas's sleeping bag which was a 0-degree bag and the only other sleeping bags that we had were these 30 degree bags and we brought two of them because we had to and like layered them so that Andrew keys it but it was not sufficient and it was an awful night and immediately after that trip I was like you know what I'm just gonna invest in a warm light weight sleeping bag you know price be damned and basically the bottom line was that I just I found out that if you want to have a pleasurable experience when you're camping you've got to put some money into it because and this is actually true just in life in general and more

so has it been it's that the more money that you put into something you're generally going to have a better quality I I hear you and it's kind of interesting cuz a lot of times in our podcasts or our episodes we'll talk about how you know it's great to go on nature and it's great to you know stop worrying about money and other things well to be fair Andrew talks about that a lot um but you know in the end there's a nice blend between the two on one hand you want to just go out into nature regardless of you know don't worry about money don't worry about anybody anything like that but on the other side I mean if you if you pay for like a ten-dollar backpack ah you're gonna get a ten-dollar backpack compared to a thirty-dollar backpack and what matters is you know how is the distance truth and the wear and tear of it you're going to go through about you're gonna have to buy a backpack basically every hiking trip if you get one for ten bucks vs. if you get a nice one for fifty bucks you know that'll last quite a few quite a few big trips yeah and it's even more important for a camping because when you're camping I mean you're doing rough things you're throwing your backpack on the ground you know you're using it and carrying it over through you through harsh weather and things so the money that you put into it you're going to get something more reliable and I'm not just trying to say only rich people can camp but it's definitely a long-term investment that you're making when you buy this gear mm-hmm and that is something that I've learned it's probably something that I've learned with every single trip I've taken like I said if it was something big or something small it's something that I've learned yeah you know it's interesting not to get off topic here but you know sometimes go to the mall and I'll see a bunch of people buying like really nice hiking pants or hiking hiking boots or a hiking shirts like REI oh it's like oh I just get it for the fashion my come on you're you're dishing out that much money to to get something that's really nice and you're not even going to use it for its intended purpose but you know they'll use it for fashion when it's like oh come on you got to use it for what its intended ah but anyway it's just interesting that you know there are two sides for of every story you know one someone can't go out and buy the gear they want for a passion they're interested and on the other side your people buying gear for something they're not passionate about mm-hmm so it's just interesting I don't know yeah and you know it is a big investment to buy the gear we've at least personally me it's been a situation where i bought a couple pieces of gear over time you know like here and there so it wasn't like an initial big investment for people who may be jumping into it seriously like for their first or second time they might be like all this is super expensive but I'm telling you right now you make the investment it'll be worth it absolutely same with cameras too that's a different topic yeah that's a difference that's something that might pertain to us and not many other hydra stammers uh well I did you have a story about Shenandoah and some yeah they're uh so Shenandoah that was also another trip I think where i took i think i had the blue backpack i no no I I don't remember any was back so shenandoah national park in virginia um this was i would say our first real backpacking you know overnight experience we were going in our alone we were gonna be in a place where there's you know very few people and then we'd be hiking out by ourselves and we would bring everything we needed to sustain ourselves and so we got to the ranger station probably like a few minutes before supposed to close and we had not had any registration prepared ahead of time and Andrew had not chosen a trail so we got to the ranger station and the Ranger was fortunately still there we got our registration and then we're like so what kind of trip what trail would you recommend and he like looked at us and they're like yeah could you tell us and he gave us some trail I can't remember the name of it now and we you know drove over to that trailhead and we started hiking down and the trail itself wasn't that bad but it was not amazing it was all forested and you really didn't have any good vistas or views or anything so that was one thing that stood out to me about Shannon Doe was that there was really nothing to behold it was just all trees and that was all you could see that backing up a little bit uh since that experience talking about things that we've learned always make sure when you go to a national park or a national force anywhere you know what trail you want to go on from what I wasn't there for that trip um I oh I remember what I was doing but that park ranger is really nice now Oh every park ranger I've ever encountered has been some of the nicest people I've met but uh you know they can get a little frustrated with if you just get to a place and go I'd show me what to do yeah okay no no you got to tell me a little bit more than that I can't plan you I'm not a vacation agent travel agent type of guy you know they're they're not there for that they're there to help you get to where you want to go they're not there to tell you where to go yeah exactly and that was the lesson that we learned from Shannon go it was it was literally just plan your trips properly take the time to do the work beforehand get the maps get the trail planned out get the registrations and everything will go smoothly for the most part you don't send sorry I guess Andrews I guess Andrews got a little better at that hmm at least with the registration and the trail planning but he still needs to deal with the packing before it's like the last minute another quick thing about Shannon Doe was that when we hiked out so our parents had dropped us off at the trailhead right and when we hiked out we reached the the trailhead and we realized that we had never spoken with our parents about when to pick us up and we had no cell phone reception you know up there oh so we ended up walking on the road for another probably two miles to get close enough to a cell phone tower so that we could call them it was it was undoubtedly the worst planned trip we've ever taken so if you are new to camping or even if you're not new to camping but you know emphasize if you're new to camping because you might not do this plan everything properly look at the websites look at the maps call the place and just make sure you have as many things prepared as possible because if something does go wrong then at least you won't have other things to worry about and have backup plans Plan B Plan C yeah do the research to like I know a lot of people like to ask us questions about oh this is my first time camping you know what should I do with this and we'll give you some tips but we can't give you all the tips you need to you know there's probably better people you could talk to like people who know have more experience or you could go to websites and read about it just just cuz we don't want you to rely specifically on our advice the best advice we can give anybody is how to carry tripods through the woods oh yeah I've couple down hat we've come up with multiple techniques we were actually gonna write a book on current tripods I've got my my over the well everybody's got their it'll kind of like over this one shoulder technique and I'm going with like the carrying the two water bucket style you know how you guys you guys have it easy there you guys don't have mountains I I I have mountains I gotta carry my hang up but luckily are you try it is yours the 10-pound tripod no it's not the tempo yeah 10-pound tripod it's the I forget which one Andrew got me but it's a little maybe red three pounds I don't know mean Andrew Lincoln about picking that one up to 44 that's great filming our own things like when we're doing side videos anyways haha segue into um I think Thomas you were on a recent like mountain yes thing something speaking of mountains um so if you about a month ago or so me two of two months ago it's April already I took an rei class AA in the mountains I was called as a mountaineer in 101 or something like that it took place at Mount Baldy if anyone from la's listening you should know where Mount Baldy is if not look it up it's one of the best places you you have in this city I and in February there's still a bit of snow up in the mountains so we drove there and we hiked up to the Baldy bowl and they're going to teach us all about how do you see equipment when ice axes crampon micro spikes helmets and how to hike with an ice axe self belay self arrest all these things that you need someone to teach you not you know you can teach yourself because usually when you use those things you're trying to prevent you from dying so it's not like I'm just gonna teach myself how to stop myself from die on the fly it's it's not that easy so uh that's why I'd sign up for this class so I was taking the class and we were hiking up to the place where we were going to practice which is maybe like a thousand foot elevation gain from where we parked and it was about a three-mile hike or so so it was we were hiking at a pretty fast pace so about an hour a half after we started the hike and we were settling down and I was putting down my backpack you know I'm seeing some people some you know but look like experienced Mountaineer is up in the bowl trying to get to the summit and it's really fascinating because I've never seen anything like this and I'm putting down my pack and I just kind of here like this this likes like snow falling it's no it's not like loud like an avalanche just like you know pitter-patter of snow kind of rolling down the side of the hill and I look up and I see this man he's uh he's tumbling headfirst and I mean tumbling like like like a cartoon character almost it's terrifying I going through just narrowly avoiding some of these trees some of these rocks and lands maybe about 50 yards in front of me up the side of the mountain and I call over to the instructor and I say I don't think that guys okay and they'd start to called out and the guy was not really moving and then eventually kind of just slowly sat up and then just kind of lied back down and the instructors like that guy is not okay so how close was this to you about 50 yards Wow oh so it was like right next no I I could see the face ah so the rei instructor luckily they all have like a lot of great training and an EMT who was part of the learning who was a student there they rushed up to him and you know tried to try to take a look now I couldn't get up there just cuz I didn't want to crowd the guy yeah but from what I heard I think I had like a huge laceration on his face I mean I could see the blood on his face at least two broken bones uh you know some leg damaged just and like I said there's a laceration on his face but he also lost like a lot of skin on his face because he was getting soon I want to say rug burn that's not rug burn snow burn so you're looking up there you can see the streak of red in the white snow and it's just his blood just leading to him and the guy is the guy is not okay so they had to airlift him out of there and we saw the helicopter come in swoop in they dropped a guy the guy examined dim and then they brought him back up a few uh 20 minutes later into the helicopter and AH it was very educational for me because I had never done mountaineering or anything like that before I realized just how serious of a recreation it actually is it's not something that you can just kind of pick up and and you know I'm gonna draw though so it seems like a cool idea but mountaineering is fundamentally different from hiking correct yes and no it's it's hiking in the snow at really steep elevations so it's like you know it's still a lot of legwork uh but it's a lot more balanced and you know but it's basically something that it's not something that somebody could just be like i'm gonna go mountaineering likes like people could probably go hiking and camping regardless of their experience and come out relatively fine but this is definitely something that you need experienced lessons you know learn how to do it right and that's that's the danger of mountaineering is people don't think that and people think you know if they if they have one successful mountaineering trip where they buy an ice axe and they're like oh okay I climbed to the top of this mount with my ice axe the first time it's like great but you could have done that with just a trekking pole the purpose of the ice axe is to stop yourself from falling yeah you know you you dig dig the acts part into the snow so that way you don't go rolling down the mountain you can't do that with a with a trekking pole so people don't people who are inexperienced don't know how to do that and that's why I took the classes so you know I would know what the heck I was doing and actually talking about learning from experiences I kind of swore it off I was never gonna do mountaineering ah having said that I'm doing about Whitney in early June and there's a ton of snow up there and I'm going to have to do some mountaineering there so it's not going to be nearly as intense as what I saw up in Mount Baldy but I am so glad I took those classes because otherwise Mount Whitney would be completely off-limits to me so anyway you know I've recently okay so this is kind of like a side note but the gym that I go to they have a theater room and the last few times I've been going they've had that uh Everest movie playing oh yeah so when you're talking about this all I'm picturing is like you and some people like on the middle of Everest like I the only thing I could think of is the shots that I saw an Everest which is kind of funny because I'm like it's probably not that extreme but but they like airship the guy out and ever so I'm like oh man that sounds really scary so would you say that thing you learned from it was basically don't go do something that you're not prepared for basically learn that's it you know and that's actually interesting I got a message from somebody who is say he was asking if a hike that I recently posted online was I good for bringing for beginners and I never want to say no don't do this if you're only a beginner ah I what I told him was just do it until you feel like you're your health is at risk your safety risk and then don't do it anymore the problem is you have to be really smart about when your health is at risk so when it comes a mountaineering you know if you can do on a little hill fine that's great teach yourself there but don't go up to like Mount Baldy at 9,000 feet elevation where there's 100 foot dry be smart yeah I awesome well you know that's like the first time I've heard you tell that story cuz i know you like right after it happened like oh my god guys this thing happened but you've never liked told me the full story so that's pretty intense yeah um but speaking of mountains um how about those Smokies haha you guys have probably seen our Smoky Mountain video but Rob ablaze might not have known was that was not our first experience in the Smokies our first experience in the Smokies was quite different this was still I think this was the this was after Shannon door correct and before Yellowstone i first god i know this is this was after yellowstone this was my friend yeah this is my freshman year of college how are we still so dumb after Yellowstone I guess Yellowstone week maclee wasn't all backpacking no we only did like two nights of backpacking in Yellowstone so that doesn't count but although easy to be share um one of the problems we had and this one was not knowing our limits and in the Smokies when we were when we went to Yellowstone at Tetons the route Andrew had originally planned way out of our limits do you remember that I think I was only part of that plan yeah oh my god well that was learned right yeah some never let someone who's lived lived in the plains of the Midwest playing a hike in the mountains if they've never seen mountains before yeah um so Bates Mokey's the story that I want to tell you guys is about our first Smokies experience and basically how it went down and this is kind of it's kind of good that Thomas is the one talking with me today because he was involved in my half of the story but basically we had arrived at the smokies with the plan to do this

this loop that we had planned we got there and the weather was great and we headed that we head out onto the trail and we come across this river that were supposed to afford and apparently had been raining a lot of days previous so this river was very high and very fast and I don't remember who it was i'm almost certain it was you thomas that actually said we should truck go for it it was mad out of all the people Thomas was the one who who's generally play it safe kind of guy was like go for it more like Thomas come on even Andrew knows that we shouldn't do this so we got stuck at that part and we ended up so basically we at that River we've decided to change the direction that we were going on the trail and we hiked out to a different camp site and it was at that campsite that we decided that we wouldn't be able to do this loop and we would have to hike back to our car and figure something else out so the next day we hiked back to our car and Thomas and I we didn't feel so hot yeah we didn't feel good we wasn't that we were like you know sick or anything like that we were just like so tired and we we basically decided that whatever loop they wanted to do we probably wouldn't be able to handle it mmm it wasn't the Thomas that you know today who's hiking up mountains and everything so or the bride yeah well I'm still I'm still not you you you I complain less yes no I like rested every point I can get but anyways so basically what ended up happening was that Andrew and Robbie decided they would go do this smaller loop by themselves and the Thomas and I we would just do our own thing right so what happened was Andrew and Robbie who were sick of having so much weight in their backpack eliminated as many things as they could from their their backpack too many things i would say they would argue that they were fine but they were starving by the end of it is that's the thing even they knew they weren't fine so bad they were yeah they won't admit it they would be like I wasn't too bad hungry I was like yeah but you were hungry like literally if we hadn't if that was you know had been longer than you probably would then beam in trouble and if you hadn't run into those people who gave you food but anyways their stores I'll leave that for them to tell their side of the story someday what happened with me and Thomas is we ended up staying at a few campgrounds and doing some day hikes but uh we actually went to a burger joint and we got ever so much get out at a burger joint galbard and then we at than some other time we went to KFC and I feel really guilty when I say it out loud on the podcast but you know that's just something that we had to learn from like when we were at the experience you know we realized we didn't know our limits we first of all we didn't know how far we could hike in a day with what we were carrying and another thing we learned was that we need to pack a lot smarter YUM Thomas I think you were packaged how much clothes we oh god I was it was so many so many unnecessary I i brought like a pair of underwear and a spare pair for basically every day that i was planning on being an amount of this is having clean underwear is super important you know equity mountain Bay and I I I should have gone online but I listened to my mom and my mom I love her but she's never gone backpacking in her life so I don't I don't know why she I think she told me and I I'm probably putting plain board doesn't need to be but mom if mom if you're listening I think you told me to bring like underwear for every day I was coming if not i I'll call you and I'll apologize but I should not have brought under what I should brought maybe two pairs of underwear and that was it yeah closer yet none this kind of goes back to the thing about equipment that you buy two because it's worth it to spend at least okay so when you're more experienced it's worth it to spend the money not for the derb not only for the durability but also for saving some weight like investing in a good gas or wood burning stove will save you a lot of weight when you want to cook a meal buying like dehydrated foods efficient ways of carrying water it's it's a lot of things that you'll eventually own when you camp it adds up to saving a lot of weight and then that in turn lets you you know hike further basically enjoy the trip more because you're not as tired mm-hmm and that's something that when we first started filming adventure archives I found that you know by the end of it I'd be so extremely tired that I just couldn't really enjoy it I just wanted it to be done of course I always look back on it with fond memories but the endurance is something that you have to work up to and since we don't get out as often as we usually do it's been tough to you know build up the endurance yeah that's that's something I'm actually working on now for Mount Whitney is getting that endurance so it's a tough enough day hike already but let alone making it a day I and a filming hike filming just adds so much extra yeah why don't you tell us about your first experience filming with us and OH was I think I talked about it earlier podcast but you guys you guys are just the worst people to go on a hike with for anyone who wants to hike with us reconsider because we wouldn't love to have you we would love to have you but if you want to go anywhere uh just don't expect to go anywhere fast yet it is it's something that I've mentioned to you know our little group here and there but a lot of people sometimes reach out to us they're like hey you know if you guys are hiking in the area but I love to come with you and like Thomas said we'd love to do that but there's just something we need to warned you about don't go in with the expectation of hiking you know eight nine ten miles a day and everything's going smoothly because to get the shots that we do well why don't you tell them Thomas was what we do well I you guys just take your take your merry little time to make sure every shot is perfect and that's great because it looks really not to toot our own horns but it looks really good on camera well yeah but you know I went on a hike two weekends ago it was a 14 mile hike on paper my pedometer to 18 miles um and I filmed much of the first part and I filmed none of the second part just cuz I was yeah it was like wow it took us six hours to hike six miles now we have another eight miles to hike and I have to get back to the car in four hours so I it's not gonna work so anyway it's you just come up with our own thing ah and you probably will talk about it another time it's something that we have to factor in when we do our packing is but you know we've got a 10-pound tripod to carry we've got two cameras we've got batteries and memory cards and the the Steadicam also so you know when we pack like we say pack smart so you always have to factor in everything that you plan on bringing mm-hmm and all of this comes back to what have we learned you know going back to what we did whether it be from cameras to gear to training to knowing your limitations all this stuff kind of you know every time you go into nature you take something back like I said it's not usually something physical unless you have a squirrel on your pack that's it a few of squirrels I don't know I'm new vision that way squirrely mood today so anyway um Brian anything else you want to talk about learning experiences I know we have some questions to answer yeah well I just wanted to add on to what you just said basically don't worry about your experience everybody regardless of how much

which experience they have hiking though they will almost always come back from a trip with something that they've learned something too rather whether it's just to improve their next trip or something to improve themselves mm-hmm that's just how I feel about each trip we take yeah we we we didn't grow up as Boy Scouts we didn't grow up as people who like lived in the woods who's you know we're not those people we've this is something we really just kind of grown into over the past five six years and so by no means are we with professional hikers or professional climbers definitely not professional climbers but yeah this is just a hobby of ours that has grown into something that we take a little bit more seriously correct um so anyway uh if you want real professional advice we'd recommend going to like a camping store and talking to people there or team like a class like Thomas did without mountaineering yeah yeah yeah if you want to see a bunch of idiots do some funny things sometimes and we're we're your group of people yeah all right so looks like we got some questions that we're gonna answer here um okay this is off the record Thomas but let's just start from the top okay okay I'll go with the first one okay so the first question from Gerald witty he says how much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood and what Andrew use the woodchuck shavings for tinder to start a fire and the answer is a woodchuck would chuck as much wood as it could chuck I'll just throw that right back and what is I'm for the ambiguity right back okay what does Chuck what does Chuck actually mean um doesn't mean like Chuck like I'm gonna throw like Chuck Chuck a baseball or something or just Chuck mean like non up with your their teeth I I've never understood that I think Chuck could mean like you know like if you're swinging an axe at something you're chucking the accent it i guess i don't know i don't know but i can tell you that definitely would use the wood well first he would look at the shavings and he'd be like oh wow woodchuck was here and then he pocket the shavings and uses it to the desert and then he would identify the tree that the shavings came from yes yes so next question Thomas next question all right from Peter Psalm how is hiking and camping oh sorry how hit how has hiking and start up and change started with me all right we got another question from Peter Psalm a question is how has hiking and camping changed your perspective on life if it changed it at all would you say the outdoors is a central or peripheral part of your life at this point would you consider taking on a role of conference conservationists in the future your time is valuable and I thank you for well thank you Peter that's a wow that's a very deep question um you know hold on Tom's yeah okay start sorry go ahead okay um just for the record you can always coffin-like on you can give yourself yeah I just didn't know how much copy ahead okay all right um let me hang on a second come in oh thank you thanks um sorry about that okay so uh just gonna start your own business Tartans no I got this okay uh your time is valuable I thank you for it Wow well thank you peer that's a wow that's a really good question thanks for asking it uh who has is the outdoors a central peripheral part of your life at this point now that's it to me that's a tough question because like the center of my life I guess technically is my work like my real job just because that's where I am most of my hours of the week apart from my bed and yeah I'm sitting there so I guess that's like technically the central the center of my life but don't believe that I'm not sitting there for every hour i'm sitting there don't believe that at least five of those minutes probably you know if we're going to be 30 or so I'm thinking about what can I do like how can I you know what's outside that I can be doing right now or something like that and I love my job don't get me wrong but it's it's always on the back of your mind and it's hot for me I don't think it's ever going to go away it's like it's it's for me it's not the center but it's literally everything else around it in some way that it all comes back to just like getting outside and taking a role as conservationists I mean I would love to be a con I you know I consider myself somewhat of a conservationist I mean it I probably could go out and pick up the trail with the sierra club every weekend but i'm not quite there yet maybe someday definitely if I'm older and I have like and I don't feel like doing the miles that I do now definitely I would love to become a conservationist what are you Brian um well for that first part of the question I would say that it has changed my perspective on life maybe not as profoundly as some people might think but basically what it has made me think is that for life life is what you make of it basically don't expect things to happen and like momentous things happen to you you need to go out and you need to make the most of life mm-hmm basically you know every time we go out and we do a trip it's because we want to go out there and we want to do this trip or we want to film this episode and we never regret it so that's just how like I see things now it's like you gotta go and you gotta do the thing that you want to do because otherwise it's not going to happen um and that kind of pertains back to us and how we started venture our guys we've always talked about it but until we actually started went out there and started filming you know we never realize we've come this far when I say that outdoors is a central or peripheral part of my life I would say it's probably peripheral right now that's more due to just you know life and my schedule right now I I think if I had more time it would definitely take a larger chunk of it because there's been many times where you know the weekend is coming I'm just singing myself man i really want to just go somewhere and camp out for the night because it just feels like it'd be really good right now and also I think maybe once the weather starts improving I'll be more inclined to get out a little bit more often you guys freaking have snow going yeah and it's late snow today it's almost the middle of April yeah that's that's crazy dude yeah okay next question do you want to how about you read this one Brad sure the next question we got is from James multis he says what items are okay to buy knockoffs and what items would you spend some money on also pros and cons of camping alone Brian you got this one yeah we've mentioned this earlier in the podcast and I will say this now do the research and then bye don't buy knock-offs if you're worried about spending too much money you can go for maybe a slightly cheaper version of a good brand but like Thomas and I said you the money that you put into your gear is going to pay off generally because you're taking this stuff out you're being rough with it and your one's going to want something that's not going to fail on you when you're out there and about the only thing I could say goodbye knockoffs of is maybe food because you don't have to necessarily go out there and buy out those camping brand freeze-dried foods or whatever you know I just buy like a dollar packet of add hot water rice and it's like perfectly fine

pros and cons of camping alone those that that's kind of opinionated basically because some people prefer camping alone Andrew Robbie and I and Thomas have always for the most part camped as a group together and we much prefer that way but just because of the camaraderie you have you know you get to talk you get the support of each other if you know you're tired or something and it's just a view it as a group activity if I wanted to be alone I could be alone in my room on a weekend not to state anything about my personal life next question mark mark school eddie i think that's how i pronounce it if I'm not I'm sorry mark any advice you can give a beginner backpacker about not over or under packing before first weekend trip now other Norfolk we discussed yeah mark I got to be honest with you I've only gone technically backpacking twice so I don't again this goes back to me not being a professional voice here but having severely overpacked once and then packed just the right amount the second time I can tell you don't bring more clothes than you need no matter no matter what what you think no matter how many pairs of underwear you think you need socks you need uh basically any girl that you meet out there mark if you're looking to meet a girl out in the wilderness you know just that there's a common understanding that personal hygiene is important to some degree but when it comes to smelling bad you're gonna smell bad and just just embrace it so you know no need no need to bring deodorant no need to bring four pairs of underwear you can leave you no deodorant maybe if you're going with other people and it's like you're gonna be sleeping in the same tent with someone yeah well you know I personally would not want to sleep in a tent with someone who has some bad bo and I would appreciate if they brought deodorant yeah well if you're bringing a bag of beans you got some worse things to worry about ok gotcha Thomas Luther here it may sound silly about the clothes thing but it's very true a lot of people probably do over pack clothes and certain things on their first trip basically what you want to make sure is to not under pack on important things like water and food big bagel water what are you gonna say something I was gonna say bag all your food don't bring any cans yeah yeah with the food you know if you're gonna bring things that are non perishable I would recommend if they've got if they come in like heavy packages you know maybe you could like take them out of the package and put them in a ziplock bag or something like that but um water I mean you can always overpack water if you have too much you can always drink it or you can just dump some out somewhere and food you know food will only get less and less as you go through and like Thomas said clothes is really a minor necessity because you're going to be out there you're gonna get dirty anyways your if you clean change into clean clothes you'll feel good for like the first two hours of a hike and then you're just going to be dirty again so if you're a first time and you're not sure I would say the safe thing to do is to over pack but be smart about it because yeah if you under pack and something goes wrong then you're gonna be in trouble uh yes Tina Marie next question Brian do want to read that yeah um she asks have any of you ever attended any wilderness survival classes um no and I'm I have attended a class about navigation with like a compass but i don't think that Foley counts as a wilderness survival class and i know andrew has done a I don't know if it was survival over it was just fire starting but he did do something with Dave Canterbury yum so maybe we'll have imposed this question in the next podcast where he can talk about his experience hmm Frank dally or Dolly I'm sorry Frank I would say show us honey Frank daily I do any of you guys keep mementos from your trips or collect anything

I don't know I tried I generally try not to just because of Leave No Trace yeah the rule of thumb actually is too if you bring it in you bring it out if you find it there you leave it there mm-hmm that being said yeah I have when we went to mammoth the island that we stayed on for the night had really cool like very smooth rocks and I did take one home as a souvenir because I just thought was really cool but for the most part I wouldn't take anything physical you know take a picture take a video write in your diary but don't bring like plants or sticks or things like that you know there's an exception oh not an exception but I forgot about this one is we didn't give on camera but when we went to Yosemite I actually wrestled a bear and I punched the bear and it died and i have the Bears head mounted above my my my my bed so I guess that's a little memento yes thomasson rd bear hunter next question Ryan looks like Levi hemet asks will you come back to Morgan Monroe force I can show you some other cool things you missed Morgan Monroe that was an Indian Indiana yeah I mean will definitely head back there I'm not certain if will actually film because we've already been there but it's a close enough place that you know it's convenient for us to go and maybe we can just go just to hang out with you Levi and you know just go out for a night I would totally be down for that Morgan Monroe was beautiful the first time we went and I'd love to go there like in the spring or summer I think it'll be fun I'd love to I'd love to see another video so I hope you guys film there sometime mixing weeks I think that's a brown said make see how are you a question is what is my true long so shout out to him and his mic stuff yeah Oh awesome uh when is the next when is the next adventure West Yosemite tahoe Zion Rockies Big Sur and or Catalina can't come along answer is yes hopefully all of them at some point I keep looking at Catalina asking myself what am I going to go there and can you come along we would love for you to come along the only

question is can you bear to hike with us and then stop every 10 minutes to film it's not even 10 minutes oh it's come on it's that lead every three minutes oh my god so the question is can you bear to come along yeah uh Russ Cosby yeah Russ Cosby asks uh well I don't think this is an actual question yeah yeah okay oh my god next next question okay another question from praying daily he says if there's something you could change about the National Park System or add to it what would it be I would add to it a bigger budget yes yes I would I would I would second that and on top of that I don't know I have mixed feelings because on one hand I want everyone to go to the national parks but on the other hand if too many people go to national parks it kind of defeats the point of national parks you know and the wilderness and the the pristine of it all so I don't have a solution to that maybe they should let some filmers with some filmers that's not a word is it some mother fers cinematographers some people with the cameras go and film it and just cut this whole part out hey again again mixi meeks a last question Brian I'm gonna let you answer this but the question is desert island alone what is the one food what is the one album and what is the one person dead or alive and what is the one luxury item you would have all right Brom what is the one food start with that the one food would be okay disregarding any sort of health or anything like that the one he has is e pizza what is the one album uh the one album would be orchestral symphony of Zelda I don't know if that's the official name of it yeah they're great yeah

I like them for some reason I just like it what is the one person get one person and I think we should make this the point here saying that it can't be okay no no one person if I had to choose from anyone it would be les stroud okay because he would help me survive but if I didn't couldn't choose like a survivalist then it would be Adam Savage of the Mythbusters because I think he'd be extremely entertaining to hang out another one finally what is the one luxury item you would have a speed boat is that count uh yeah I guess all right and how about you Thomas what is my one food I would go with a Kiwi just one Kiwi one single key we know but literally QE like if you had choice of one food you did go ye Kiwi okay sure we'll go in that how about the one album Nickelback okay now you're just messing with me um yeah not Nickelback I don't know uh I will you know actually there's this really good album um its nature sounds and there's actually one really good one about uh hold on you're saying you want an album of nature sounds yeah yeahs island I would want one of just waves crashing what is the one person dead or alive um i would i would want Axl Rose from Guns and Roses I don't know if that's an actual I want Axl from Guns and Roses uh singing because I I would want him to sing that I'm a cowboy and I wanted dead or alive and what's here one luxury hi Doug a bigger speed both in yours okay that's fair enough I also kind of want to change my one person all right is it I'll go with Scarlett Johansson okay all right that looks like that's all the questions that we had adventure archives after dark oh my gosh anyway we'll have to start but that's about all we've had to discuss for today um we want to thank all of you guys listening to our podcast and supporting our channel and thank you so much so much to all our patrons you guys you know it's it's really mo it's it's motivating for us and it's really moving for us to that you know you guys have supported us this much you know the more we continue to grow the better our content will be and the more we can give to you guys thank you so so much especially to those who donated recently donated a hundred dollars that means it we were floored when we saw that uh so thank you so much for this in the podcast next week I'll finally get a hold of andrew and I can you can hear me yell at Andrew for not prepping this mount whitney hike uh so anyway Brad finishes off yeah so you can check this you can like us on Facebook I'll just look up adventure archives if you want to support us on patreon you patreon.com / adventure and we also have an Instagram it is Adva rch you can see pictures of me anyway thank you so much guys and we will see you next Monday alright see you guys bye