Ask Darwin Q&A #36 (Answers)

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Tags: Appalachian Trail,AT,AT Thru Hike,Thru Hike,PCT,Pacific Crest Trail,PCT Thru Hike,Backapcking,UL Hiking,UL Backpacking,UL Gear,Hiking,Hiker Trash,Camping,Adventure,Arizona Trail,AZT,Long Distance Hike,Florida Trail

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 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 happy Halloween I hope you guys are having a great and spooky time let's go ahead and get into this week's first question what long trails are good to hike during winter in the US so I think that pretty much any of the desert trails would be great to hike during the winter so the southern sections of the Arizona Trail the Pacific Crest Trail the Continental Divide Trail now obviously once you started getting up north after the first seven hundred or a thousand miles you're probably gonna run into some snow and some hardcore winter conditions but if you're just going out for a really big section maybe a big section hike those would be great now if you're thinking about doing a full on through hike I think the Florida Trail would be perfect for that there are a lot of hikers that go out and hike that trail in the winter because well you can do it there's no snow you don't have to worry about super high elevation no ice storms so the Florida Trail would be perfect if you're planning on doing a full on through hike but it's not like I said I would check out the desert sections of the Arizona Trail the Continental Divide and the Pacific Crest because those would be really great to do in the winter

why isn't snuggles doing the PCT through hike with you like she did on the 80 so I've actually been getting that question a lot lately um and it's not for really any reason she just doesn't want to hike the PCT now whenever both of us went out to hike the 80 we both had a one-and-done mentality we thought we were just gonna hike that trail and never do another one I have a super addicted personality so I'm gonna hike the PCT and continue to do through hikes snuggles really doesn't have any interest in doing a full on through hike again however she will be coming out and meeting up with me in certain sections to hike certain sections she's more of a weekend backpacker and a section hiker she still likes doing long hikes just not going out for four to six months is not really her bag anymore the 80 is something that she wanted to do wanted to accomplish and doesn't really have a desire to do another one so I'll be hiking it solo hey Darwin it's Christine I had a question about water filtration can you taste a difference in water that's filtered from a source that looks seemingly clean versus one that's not looking that great just wanted to know how good is the filtration and if you can taste it and have you ever gotten sick from filtered or not filtered water and what do you do for that yeah I definitely think that you can taste a difference in good water or bad water not necessarily a disease or like a virus or something but you can definitely taste fresh flowing water from stagnant water so if I was out on the 80 getting water out of like a spring or a stream it definitely had a nice fresh taste to it we're out on the Arizona Trail the Continental Divide Trail where I was having to get water from cattle tanks and little ponds it definitely has a nastier dirtier stagnant taste to it so for those water sources I'm usually a little bit more on the fence and make sure that I really hardcore filter were out on the 80 or places on the Pacific Crest Trail you know you have this nice beautiful flowing rushing water you don't have to worry about it as much now there are a lot of hikers that don't filter their water and just drink straight out of those sources but me personally I always take the time to filter my water because you never know even the nicest flowing beautiful stream could have a dead animal like a mile up the stream and you're drinking it's viruses and all that stuff so I always make sure that I filter my water now as far as getting sick no I've never been sick from a water source

knock on wood wherever it's at I'm in the desert but I do know a lot of hikers that have had Giardia and other water borne illnesses so definitely filter your water what are some hiking channels that you subscribe to and what do you like about their channel Tom I have subscribed to a ton of hiking channels and it's other people's hiking channels that actually inspired me to start this one two years ago so some of the people that inspired me and people that I still watch all

time would be syntax 77 he's been making videos for years and way before I ever even thought about hiking the 80 I was watching that dudes videos I like how he edits his videos he puts him together really good and he's a music producer which I also used to be so he does all of his music in his videos he just has really cool editing I highly suggest checking his videos out and then another one that really influenced me and one that I followed on the 80 was red beard red beard hikes puts out some great videos and he was one of the guys who really inspired me to start a channel and do kind of a similar thing where I did gear reviews I did trip reports and just overall gave general hiking advice so definitely check those two dudes out some other channels that I've really gotten into over the past year would be homemade wonder loss Dixie that just got done hiking the PCT did amazing videos out there I was really really impressed with that she has some really solid advice on hiking too you have johnsy which does some of the best work on youtube as far as I'm concerned plus he has a really cool podcast you have nemours world which he actually hiked the same year out on the 80 that I did and then hiked the PCT last year he is super entertaining definitely worth checking out and then actually a new channel that I've really gotten into and it's a new channel in general which is lint if any you guys know who lint is he is a triple triple crown er he's like a superstar of the hiking world he recently started a YouTube channel and he's been trying to put out as many videos as he possibly can and I've really been enjoying him cuz I love that dudes sense of humor so if you want to check out any of those channels I'll put a link in the description box below to all the channels so you can go give them some love from Darwin hey Darwin I wanna start out saying thank you very much for your awesome Channel I've watched I think every video put out so every week I'm just waiting for the next one so I had one general question which was that I'm working on my own YouTube channel as well and I've been using the YouTube editor to do basic stitching and cutting off sections and just put it together but now YouTube has gotten rid of that worth I know they have a little bit of basic functionality but I can't stitch and do some other stuff so I was wondering what program do you use to stitch your videos and if you could just describe your just processing process what do you do to go from your video content uploading it so thank you very much yeah so I answered this question in last week's Q&A but I guess I'll touch on it one more time um hi believe it or not I I have final cut I have had Premiere Pro from Adobe but 90 to 95 percent of the time I do all of my video editing in iMovie and pretty much how I do it as I shoot my video I take my card

I load it onto my computer I take all my footage and dump it onto my hard drive so it's good and backed up and then when I'm ready I just drag and drop it into iMovie I edit all my stuff up dump it back on the hard drive and then upload it to YouTube pretty simple process and I think that's how most people do it and there's a ton of great software out there that you can use to edit your videos I just really find iMovie super convenient super easy to use and at the last minute when I got to edit a video really quick it's a great one to go to biggest advice on starting a YouTube channel is put out everything that you can there's a ton of times that I shoot videos and I can't stand them I can't stand how the audio was I don't like the lighting I just overall don't like the concept of the video but I put it out anyways because making videos is a complete process it's all about making something putting it out to the world getting your positive feedback getting your negative feedback and learning and improving as you go so my biggest advice is put out as much media as you possibly can

eventually somebody will grab on and you'll learn to perfect it how do you properly fit / tighten / adjust to your pack for example do you tighten certain areas first to properly disperse the weight yeah so I have a method that I've been using for years every time I put on a pack no matter what packet is first I put on my hip belt I tighten it down and a spot that I like I kind of bend over I put my sternum strap on then I'll pull down on my shoulder straps and once I get all that nice and adjusted I'll grab my load lifters and bring the pack up onto my back and I do it every single time no matter what pack it is and no matter what weight it is because your weight in your pack is constantly changing and shifting so you need to be readjusting it every time you put it on your back now there's tons of different ways to put a pack on that's just the way that I've used for years and it seemed to work pretty good so far maybe I ought to do a video on that the future I have five days to do a section of the Arizona Trail can you recommend a starting point for me yeah um I would actually suggest the section that I just got off the last month which would be from Flagstaff Arizona to Pine Arizona you're looking at about 120 to 130 miles between those two towns and that terrain is phenomenal you get a taste of all that the Arizona Trail has to offer so you get some pine tree forest you get some higher elevation you get a little bit of desert hiking and both hiking towns Flagstaff and Pine are great to start and to stop it especially in Pine there's a really good brewery there that has amazing food and killer beer starting out on that section it's pretty nice smooth terrain that you can just kind of cruise through to get your hiking legs and then as you get about halfway through it you start getting some higher elevations and a little bit of up-and-down roller coaster type trail so you get kind of the best of all worlds when it comes to hiking do you ever wash your clothes out on the trail if you wash them how do you do it um no no I never washed my clothes like I've never used soap and really washed them now there are some times if I'm hiking a trail and it's super muggy or I'm super sweaty and I'm kind of collecting those sweat crystals that you kind of get on your clothes during the day I will take my shirt off when I get to camp and I'll put it in a stream obviously away from where people are filtering water and I'll wring it out so that way I can get kind of all those nasty Krusty's off and the next day I'm not worrying about it and it's not chasing me but as far as washing clothes no I've never done that I've seen some people do that on the trail I just know that the next day I'm gonna be just as stinky and just as nasty so I don't worry about it and I just do it in town what is the one thing in your previous life you missed the most that is a good question there's not a whole lot of things that I miss in my previous life aside from you know your general comforts that you don't get whenever you live in a 5x8 car go try but I think that the the one thing that I actually do miss is having an instrument having a bunch of instruments a bunch of guitars at my disposal so I've been a musician my entire life and I owned a recording studio back in Indiana so I definitely miss getting up in the morning being able to walk down into my studio grab my guitar turn on my amp and just create music now the funny thing is whenever snuggles and I left I actually bought a small travel guitar because I'm like oh well I'll just keep playing while we're on the road I never played the damn thing because I was too busy hiking and thinking about testing gear and stuff like that so I think that one passion definitely replaces another passion and there's nothing wrong with that but I do miss having that convenience of just being able to go down into my studio grabbing an instrument and just creating music all right guys last question of the week hey Darwyn kind of a newbie question here but you talked a lot about going into town and coming out of town on the 80 does the trail go through the towns do you have to get rides do you hitchhike I mean everyone kind of looks over that detail and I was just curious like how that worked so yeah the trail does go through certain towns I would say there's about five total on the entire Appalachian Trail where the trail goes right down the sidewalk Hot Springs North Carolina Damascus Virginia there's a handful of them but even if the trail doesn't go through the town it comes pretty close to a town usually between two and like five miles so most times if you're wanting to get into a town to resupply stay at a hostel wash your clothes you'll just hitch now know there's a lot of people right now that are like Oh hitching that's bad well out on the 80 because the trail community so used to it and those towns have been used to hikers coming through coming in and out for so many years doing something like hitching is not rolling McCobb it's not weird it's just kind of part of the trail and if you're not down with hitching there's also shuttle services so a lot of times you'll come out of a trail you'll come to a trailhead there'll be like a little I don't know like a marquee or something and there'll be business cards on there where you can call them and you can get a shuttle maybe pay five to ten bucks to take you down into town Drive you around to resupply and then come drop you back off the trail but me personally I would come out to a robe throw my thumb out dance around a little bit and I would always get a ride people are super great out there and the community is awesome all right guys so if you want to leave 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 I hope you guys are having a super awesome spooky Halloween snuggles and I have definitely been enjoying it where big Halloween geeks we actually went to a Halloween party this past weekend and had a killer time tonight we'll probably binge on pizza and watching stranger things to get in the Halloween mood so I wanted to let you guys know that I recently partnered with a company called bonfire and what bonfire does is they make limited edition t-shirts and different apparel so I partnered with them in making a limited edition Darwin on the trail t-shirt so how it works is the design will only be available for 15 days so it is limited edition after the end of the 15 days you won't be able to get it anymore and will probably design a new limited edition shirt so if that's something you guys are interested in I'll put a link in the description box below you can go check those out grab one for yourself they're super cool and proceeds from the shirt go to help me grow this channel help me make these videos and do things like hike the PCT next year Darren had a chance to go over and check me out on Instagram I'm posting a lot of new photos lately of some of the things that snow goes and I have going on throughout the week plus some pictures from some past hikes if you found any value in this video go ahead and hit that like button subscribe to my channel if you haven't already and as always guys thanks for watching [Music]

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