PCT 2018 Thru-Hike: Episode 3 - Trail Injuries

Description

PCT Gear List Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaQqPbu1Fa0

PCT Gear List - https://darwinonthetrail.com/2018/04/19/darwins-2018-pct-thru-hike/

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Tags: UL Hiking Gear,PCT,Pacific Crest Trail,PCT Thru-Hike,Thru-Hike Gear List,UL Backpacking,Zpacks,Enlightened Equipment,CNOC Outdoors,UL Backpacking Gear,Vargo Bot 700,Hiker Trash,Hiking,Backpacking,Pinhoti Trail,Adventure,Long Distance Hiking,Zpacks Duplex,Zpacks Arc Blast

Video Transcription

I decided to hit the trail a little bit early this morning I got up at about 5:30 a.m. and started hiking by 6 10 so why the earliest day I've had out here so far 19.8 20 miles in the Big Bear but because I'm just going to be going into town and spending the night I didn't find get it light or try to push out his rabies mouth as I can this morning and just kind of cruise into town get something to eat and relax so wish me luck [Music]

now 250 it's crazy that I'm already at Mile 250 haven't even been out here to eat yet

tomorrow makes two weeks so I feel pretty good about that the PCT has been going down this dirt road for a while which is always nice to have a little break from kind of the steep ups and downs it's still amazingly beautiful out here so it's not like it's a boring road walk or anything so apparently there's like a zoo up here in this section there like a bunch of animals that they use for movies and stuff and I'm walking through I just heard some crazy noise I would assume is a bear or something kind of sad though [Music]

animals we're moving to a new location new huge enclosures I hope so [Music]

kind of sad it's always like really disappointing whenever you're out on a hike you'd come upon something like that and used to being surrounded by nature natural habitat

and see something like boy in a cage it's pretty depressing so ones you guys to see this it's literally what I've been staring at all day long there's this I'm you don't see every day on the trail oh man and it's absolutely gorgeous in this pine forest I think I'm about eight miles from Big Bear or at least the road to get into Big Bear

[Music]

so I made it in to Big Bear Lake I actually got to the trailhead at 12:30 so I got 20 miles before 1 p.m. that's a new record for me I got into town got some food with a fat pack another guy that I'm hiking with did some resupplying and I'm here at the Robin Hood in right here like next to the strip in Big Bear Lake a really cool little town so I have had three pieces of gear fail on me most of them have been my fault number one is my set of headphones my Skullcandy headphones I was actually right before Idlewild I had them dangling off of my pack and a branch caught the end of one of them and I severed the right headphone off of it so these are essentially a one headphone pair of headphones now so I just picked up a new pair so that is a gear failure again that's my fault that's not squall Kandi's fault I'm just a moron and I left him hanging off my pack the second gear failure that I've had is my umbrella as you can see it snapped on me see if I can open this up a little bit here here we go so yeah it snapped right there you guys can see that I was about to come in to scissors crossing and it was super windy and I had the umbrella out and the wind took it turned it inside out and it snapped it so I need to repair that with duct tape I probably shouldn't have got that out whenever it was so windy however I feel like maybe it could be a little bit stronger it wasn't that bad and I've seen a lot of other people's umbrellas kind of flip inside out so yeah that kind of sucks and then the last thing is I think my thermal rest NeoAir x-lite is finally bit the dust so the last couple nights on the trail I've woke up in the middle of the night and my pad has been pretty much completely deflated I have a leak right here so I have pretty much gummed it up with superglue all the way around the edge here but I think that the air is leaking out of kind of under the valve here I put it in a little bit of water and got a couple bubbles I knew that that was a problem before I came out here I just thought that I could put another bandaid on it and make it last you know 2,600 miles again but that thing has about 3,000 miles on it it is wore out so I'm gonna be buying a new exact same pad and I'm just gonna have it shipped ahead and then pick it up I think in Wrightwood so yeah those are three pieces of gear that have failed on me whether it is my fault or bad manufacturing or a band-aid that I keep putting on or just being a moron and you know letting my headphones dangle off my back

[Music]

so I didn't film a lot today because it was super windy and super cold but I left Big Bear this morning at about 11 a.m. so got a pretty light start on the trail but got about 20 miles up and now I'm camped at a very small little spot and some some bushes trying to get out of the wind winds got pretty crazy today and tonight supposed to get down to like 18 degrees so pretty cool today marks two weeks on the trail so my two-week trailer bursary with PCT yeah hopefully tomorrow will be a little bit warmer it won't be as windy and you can find a decent camp spot that is not stuck in between a bunch of bushes so hopefully my pad doesn't give out because it's still waking even though I put some superglue on there it still has a bit of a week so we'll see what happens [Music]

you can hear the the ice swishing around in my bottle all my bottles froze last night did sleep with my filter just to make sure that it it didn't crack and my phone to make sure it didn't get too cold and freeze and lose all its battery very desert II out here reminds me a lot of New Mexico the desert is not always super hot folks sometimes it gets really cold

[Music]

the trail is a so beautiful today it's funny like yesterday was kind of a crappy day today is just amazing the trail always finds a way to reward you always

[Music]

whoo it is about one o'clock I think that I've hiked about 17 miles already so I'm gonna take a little break a little bit of lunch yesterday I was coming down a pretty steep hill and I tripped over a rock instead of falling on my face I decided to run you know how you run forward to kind of keep your balance and I did something to my ankle or my shin in my right leg I've never had shin splints before but uh it's kind of what it feels like snuggles told me a long time ago she's have shin splints best way to deal with it is to every time you take a rest take your foot and write the ABCs like to take your big toe and write the ABCs apparently that helps stretch it out so it's bothered me a little bit it's not too bad

obviously I've been able to put in 17 miles on it so but uh yeah I definitely something to watch so it ended up being a accidental 32-mile day-to-day um was supposed to stop at 30 miles super awesome terrain today super cruzi but whenever we got to the 30 mile mark there was no camping it was water but no camping so I had to hike a couple more miles and found a pretty good camp spot there's a bunch of other hikers here again tonight and this guy here caught up with me I think tomorrow thinking about pushing another 30 and we should be getting to that uh the infamous McDonald's on the PCD but we're gonna skip that and go across the street and get some tacos and some subway yeah both and yeah today was awesome

absolutely awesome about seven miles ago I came to a really awesome hot springs big swimming hole and hot springs there was a lot of naked people there so I didn't film anything awesome day on the trail amazing 32 miles very smooth terrain very beautiful very very rewarding for you know how crappy yesterday was with all the wind so gonna eat something gonna lay down and go to bed and get up and do it all again tomorrow

[Music]

good morning it is another beautiful day here on the Pacific Crest Trail in sunny Southern California

[Music]

so a little update from yesterday on the shin splint thing woke up this morning and it's gone I have no shin pain at all so either it was a fluke and just a day thing or the ABCs was talking about really really works because I did that last night a couple times then yeah this morning really good hooray for no shin splints I've never had those and I don't want them it is one o'clock and I am at 19 miles for the day already so I'm here on a hillside and taking a little siesta think I'm only like four point seven miles from the famed McDonald's on the trail everybody is always kind of excited about McDonald's I'm not a McDonald's fan so I'm actually going to be walking across the street and apparently there's a subway in a Del Taco

[Music]

that is the famed PCT McDonald's behind me we are we skip past it and went to subway and del Taco it's like right off the trail next to what is that like interstate 10

and now we're gonna hit the trail again so we just got done at the McDonald's and now we have to go into this creepy tunnel

[Music]

so it ended up being another 30-mile day-to-day we went about five more miles past the McDonald's and Del Taco and subway and I'm about to feast on my reward for the day not only did I eat a burrito

from Del Taco but I packed out this guy Subway sandwich baby here in a canyon watching a beautiful sunset next to an amazing mountain and about to feast on a Subway sandwich it doesn't get much better than that [Music]

working on this big old climb out of where we camped last night beautiful camp spot but this morning woke up with a ton of condensation on the inside of 10

[Music]

[Music]

at about another mile and a half until the side trail to get down into right would where I have a new mattress waiting on me this guy's got a new phone waiting on him and we both have pizza waiting on us so you know that's something to be happy about

[Music]

right would California quaint little town we had a sandwich here this morning whenever we got in the evergreen cafe it's pretty a pretty killer now one search for some some pizza so I am sitting here inside of a room at the Canyon Creek Inn in Wrightwood California and today is April the 20th I am going to be taking an unexpected zero today so fat pack left out this morning we had a really good time yesterday we got into town we got some pizza we had a couple beers got some good rest found a place where I could soak my legs in some epson salt a nice trail angel came and picked me up and took me back to their place and let me soak in their tub because this place doesn't have a tub for some reason and getting into town yesterday the the shin splint then was kind of coming back I thought it was gone but it started coming back and I woke up this morning and it's it's hurtin quite a bit so I can probably push it and I could keep hiking but I think I want to play it smart I think I'm gonna take an unexpected zero to rest my shin rest my leg so that way I'm not putting too much stress on it I did go and get my new pad my name therm-a-rest pad so that is swapped out sadly I'm throwing away my old one it was a trooper it held in there for close to 3,000 miles so I think I got my money's worth out of it but got a new pad got some food in me gonna rust a little bit more take it easy and then hopefully tomorrow I'll be hitting the trail again so I have been off trail for I guess technically three days I got into Wrightwood on Thursday and then I've taken three zeros and today is Monday because of a shin problem it's been hurting me pretty bad today I decided to get back on trail and give it a try cuz it hasn't really been bothering me my plan is to hike a five mile section so my thought was to get out today and test it and see how it feels and if I need to get back off and get into town I can if it really gives me problems by the end of a five-mile stretch today I'm probably gonna go see a doctor about it I think that it's a tendon problem the tendon that's next to my shin I don't actually think that it is shin splints because it's not really in my shin it's more in the tendon or the muscle next to my shin but I mean it feels good to be back out here after being off the trail for three days so [Music]

[Music]

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