What We Pack - Part 2 - Dani's Pack (Fall 2019)

Hi, we're going through all of our what's in our pack stuff because we've been hiking for a few years and found it really helpful when we started to find out what people were carrying. And now that we have a little bit more down pat as to what we're what we carry, I figured it's about time. So I'll just go over the stuff that's in the pack as an overview. I won't go into too much detail as to what each of the things are and my thoughts. We're probably going to do some review videos on those types of things, so look out for those ones. I don't have my kind of what I would wear hiking clothes set aside, but I do have my shoes. So I switched a couple years ago to trail runners. I've tried a couple different ones. I tend to be pretty hard on shoes, especially on the side, so I tend to switch them out every year. But this year's are the Brooks Cascadia 13. They've worked pretty well. They're not my favorite trail runners that I've used, but they have worked very well and they do have a gator clip. Because I also hike with Dirty Girl Gators, because I'm using trail runners, I find that it's a lot harder or a lot easier, I should say, to get things in between your shoes and your socks. So this just kind of keeps out some of that dust and the dirt and rocks and twigs and stuff. And then my hat. I don't even know what hat this is. Apparently it's a pistol hat. I've been wearing it for years. Nice, lightweight, can go through the wash, which I appreciate because I wear it on every hike. All right, backpack. So for those of you who don't know this backpack, it is a ULA Ohm 2.0. I've tried a few different backpacks. This is definitely by far my favorite. So as far as the things that I keep on the outside, so I do have a shoulder pocket. A shoulder pocket is where I keep my sunglasses, some Kleenex, and then I also keep my phone in there. And my phone is my main piece for taking pictures. I have a Pixel 3, so it does a pretty good job. Eventually I'll upgrade that. And then, I don't know if you can see, but they also have large hip belt pockets. That's one of the things that I love the most about this backpack is the giant hip belt. So in the hip belt, I keep things handy. So one side is snacks. And then the other side, I keep our bug and sun repellent. So I have a small thing of 100% DEET. We try not to use it as much as possible. We do promethrinize. Wow, that's a hard word. All of our clothing at the beginning of the season to keep away ticks and majority of the mosquitoes. But on the days when it is really mosquito swarmy, we do have 100% DEET. I have found small little things of spray sunscreen, which have worked really well. So I carry that. And then the best of all best, the bomb, the Sun and Snow Sport 15. I can't really describe why it's so great, but if you've used it, you'd know. Every time I find it, I just buy a whole bunch of them. I always have my knife with me. It's a Spyderco, just lightweight knife. Either it's in my side pocket in my pants, or it's in my belt. It just really depends on where I want to keep it. I've lost a few of these. I'm going to keep that safe. And then the other thing on the outside. So this backpack also has giant side pockets. It's where I keep my water. I don't have an internal bladder. We did use bladders for a number of years. I like them because it does make water really accessible, but I found that it was really hard to see how much water I was drinking. And if we're on a trail where we're going to have to refill on a regular basis, that's not always the easiest for a bladder. So I carry two one liter smart water bottles with the sport caps. I don't entirely know why we chose a smart water bottles, probably because of YouTube, but I do find that they're really durable. We buy a new one at the beginning of every season and it works out really well. And for a long time, they didn't have the sport caps in Canada. So every time I went to the US, I bought a whole bunch of smart water bottles with the sport caps and then brought them home because they're awesome to have on the trail rather than the twist ones. On the other side, I have my trekking poles. That's Black Diamond, Z-Poles, Distance FLs. They've worked pretty well. One of them is a little bit chewed up because it was hanging in a tree one night and some kind of critter decided that it wanted to have a snack. But so far they've been pretty good. I also have on both sides, on both of them, I've wrapped duct tape. I don't know if you can see that or not. And that's how I carry my duct tape. Good for blisters, good for repairing stuff. You never know when you're going to need duct tape. So I do carry a sit pad. So if the dog isn't with us, I just bring a small little section of one of these Therm-a-Rest pads. That works pretty well. If we have the dog with us, then I will have a larger one. It works really well for, you know, if the seat is a little uneven after a long day of hiking, the last thing you want to do is sit on the log. But I'm also, I also don't want to carry a chair. So this works out well for me. And because we hike in the Rockies, bear spray. We both carry bear spray. On the bear spray, you'll notice that I also have a paracord bracelet. Not for any particular reason. It's just always nice to have a little bit of paracord with you in case you need it. And then attached, you'll also find a few random things. So I carry a hand sanitizer to keep ourselves hand sanitized and an S-beamer because, you know, if something's wet, it's nice to be able to hang it off the back of my backpack while we walk. It's also nice just to have an S-beamer in case you need to hang something from a tree or something like that too. So multipurpose. I keep anything that I want easily accessible. Something that I'm just going to need on the trail, easily accessible on the outside of my backpack. So that includes a towel. We have one for us and one for the dog, you know, in case we have to do a water crossing and we want to dry ourselves off. In case we want to go for a swim. It doesn't happen very often, but it's around us. It's also great for inside the tent in case it's a relatively humid evening and there's condensation that builds up or it's in the middle of winter when condensation builds up. Or if the dog has gotten particularly wet that day and one towel just hasn't done enough. Poopy paper. You know, I don't think I need to explain that. I also carry trail shoes sometimes or trail shoes, pack shoes, camp shoes. Probably the best way to put that. It really depends on the type of trail that we're doing. These are fit kicks. They're really small. They fit on the outside of my backpack really well and they fold in half. These are great. They also have a sole on the bottom. So I mean by no means am I going to hike in these, but they're going to do the job. Pack cover. So this is a ULA pack cover. It's really great. Super lightweight. Has done the job pretty well over the years. The most recent trip that we got down poured on, I did have a little bit of sewage. I don't know if it was just from the water going down my back and in between the pack and my back or if the back cover did wet out. I think it was the first one rather than the latter, but either way I have been super happy with the pack cover. So all right, into the body. So first is a water purifying kit. We have a couple different ones, but this is the Potaplus Gravityworks. Been great. I usually carry the water filter, whereas Evan carries some of the other stuff. We do share it. It's a nice thing about hiking with partners that you can share some of that weight. But yeah, that's on the top for obvious reasons. You never know when you're going to need some extra water. Also on the top is my rain jacket. Again, when you're in the Rockies, things can change on a regular basis. So having my rain jacket easily accessible is really beneficial. I also have it at the top of my pack so that if we've used the water filter, it gives a little bit of a barrier between between the water that might still be on the water filter and the rest of my pack. I don't have an internal stuff sack or waterproof stuff sack that I use. That might change in the future, but so far I found that it's worked pretty well. I do have everything in relatively waterproof places and I haven't had any issues with it. But as you find that having this underneath the water filter, sometimes you just get a little bit of extra protection. And then also speaking of things that might come in handy, I have my emergency kit. So emergency kit, it has a number of different things, but would give me enough stuff that if I was stuck in the wilderness for a night unexpectedly, that I would be able to hopefully survive off of this. It has my Leatherman. Sometimes I don't always bring my Leatherman. It has my headlamp, an emergency blanket, some matches, some water purifying tablets, etc, etc. It's just nice to have and everything's all in one so I don't have to really worry about it. Is it redundant? Probably, but it works. So next, this is where all the things that aren't in a waterproof stuff sack go, that I would want to keep relatively dry. So this bag here is actually the blow-up stuff sack for our Therm-a-Rest. So it can dual purpose. It is weather treated so I can, it is relatively waterproof. I don't know that I would dunk it because it is a blow-up stuff sack so there's a hole at one end, but it does work for keeping any kind of moisture out. So in here I have my pillow. I have a Sea to Summit Arrows pillow premium. It's worked great. I've had it for years. I like my pillow. I don't think I could do it otherwise. I also have my puffy. I won't go too much into detail with this puffy. I am looking at at switching it out, but it's an Eddie Bauer lightweight puffy jacket, down filled. It is, if you look, you can kind of see right through it now. So it is in need of, man if you can hear those geese, they're very noisy, it is in need of some replacements though. But it's nice to have in waterproof so that, you know, I don't have to worry about it getting wet. Speaking of Therm-a-Rest, my Therm-a-Rest pad, we both have one. There are some kind of beginner negative reviews on these Therm-a-Rest pads because of how noisy they sound when you're in the store. But as a side note, they are not noisy when you're sleeping on them. We've never found that anyway. And they're relatively comfortable and pack down really small and are pretty light. Would recommend. Sometimes these pieces just go in my stuff sack with my sleeping bag. Sometimes they don't. But I always have a couple pairs, one if not two pairs of some kind of hand covering. So I am a fan of mitts. So I have a pair of fleece mitts. If it's going to be really wet, I'll bring two sets so that I can have one for camp and one for kind of sleeping in case my hands get really cold. I have a fleece hat that I sleep in or just to wear around the town or around town, wear around camp. And then I always, always, always have a buff. You'll see it in a number of different videos where I am wearing a buff on my head. My ears are super sensitive to the wind. So I do tend to wear a buff if, sorry those geese are really noisy. If it is really windy, it'll help protect me from a wind headache. And if we have been hiking for a number of days, my hair is really disgusting and that will also help shield me from the grossness that is my hair. Last thing in the stuff sack is my electronics kit. I don't bring a whole lot of electronics, mostly because Evan carries a whole bunch for filming, but I do have a battery pack, a small one that I'm able to charge my phone, my Kindle, and my Garmin watch. I have a charger for my watch as well that I carry around with me and my Kindle. So my Kindle is probably my biggest luxury item. I like to be able to read before I go to sleep and then I don't bring an entire book and I can have a number of different things that I can choose to read. So that's it for the stuff sack. Like I mentioned, Evan and I do share a lot of the weight, so he takes the body of the tent and I take the extras for the tent. So for the Sierra Designs tent that we have, their three season, it does have a removable vestibule. You don't have to take this, but we do on most trips, just because it is nice to have an extra little space, especially if it's going to be raining, that we can store our crap and then dry off the dog before we get them into the tent. So we do bring that and I carry that. It does have another pole with it, just tied together with a little bit of paracord. And then I also carry the poles. This tent is pretty robust, so it has lots of poles. And then on the tent side as well, I also carry the pegs. We usually have enough pegs for the tent for all of the guy outs. And then if we have the tarp, we always have a couple extra tent stakes just in case we want to set up a tent or a tarp and need to stake it down. I also carry a bag of bags. So the bag bag has a number of different types of things. It has a couple grocery bags. It has a large garbage bag. It has a couple Ziplocs. It has a couple produce bags. The produce bags we use for putting on our feet when our feet are wet. And then when we're at camp, so that we have something that's a little bit more dry and we're not getting our camp socks or our next day hiking socks wet. I find it very useful to have a bag of and usually go through most of them throughout the trip in some way, shape or form. So kind of handy. This is usually in my food bag, but I figured I would take it out. This is my toiletry bag. So pretty, pretty minimal. I do wear contacts. So I have some night and some extra night and day contacts. I do wear contacts that I can sleep in so that I'm not sticking my dirty fingers in my eyes at the end of the day. But I have a couple extra of those just in case, because I am quite blind. I have some eye drops and then just your toothpaste, toothbrush and an extra hair elastic, because being in the backcountry without a hair elastic when you have long hair, it sucks. Food bag. So we just have a couple of these 10 liter Outdoor Research dry bags. So I just stuffed a bunch of food in this. This is not actual what our food would look like in a trip, but this is probably enough food for one day for the two of us. If we are going to go somewhere where we can't hang, we do have an earth sack that we use. But for the most part, if we're able to hang our food, we just bring a couple of those, one each, and then that gives us enough for a couple of days and be able to split up our food. And then my sleeping system. So I'm not going to take out everything in here because knowing me, the wind would pick up and then my nice quilt would go into the gross pond behind me. Anyway, in here I have my sleeping clothes. So I have a pair of sleeping socks, my long johns. So I have a 200 weight icebreaker long johns, full length, and then a 200 base layer icebreaker Merino wool shirt. That's typically what I sleep in as well as my hat, depending on the conditions. In here as well, I also have my extra clothes for the trip. I don't bring a whole lot of extra clothes, some extra underwear, some extra socks. And sometimes depending on the trip, I'll bring an extra long sleeve shirt or an extra tank top just so that I have a little bit of versatility for when we're on the trail. It just kind of depends on the trip as to what extra clothes I bring. If we're away for a long time, like on our GDT videos, if you check those out, I do have an extra pair of clothes so that we're able to wash the stuff that we're wearing. But other than that, not a whole lot. Other thing that's in here obviously is my quilt. I have a Hammock Gear Burrow zero degree quilt with snaps on the bottom. Again, I'll do a video as far as a review of that quilt. It's one of my favorite pieces of gear. I can't recommend having a quilt high enough, but it does take some getting used to. Anyway, that's in here as well. So all of my sleeping system is in a dry bag. Again, 10 liter outdoor research dry bag. I've had this quite wet on the outside and had everything inside still be completely dry. So I have been, unfortunately, have been able to test out the waterproofness of this. So it does work quite well. Last but not least, rain pants. I do carry rain pants on almost every trip. Almost every trip when I'm packing the rain pants, I think it's very stupid. I shouldn't bring them. I will never wear them. And almost on every trip I do, especially this last summer. So this is, we're right at the end of the summer of 2019 and the summer has been really, really wet. Lots of rain, lots of cold. The rain pants are great because not only does it protect you from the rain, but it also gives you a layer of warmth. For instance, our last backcountry trip, which we don't have a whole lot of footage for, but it poured, it poured and poured and poured all the way to camp. And I got there and I was soaking wet and being able to then get to camp, take off the wet pants and put on dry rain pants gave me a lot of warmth. I don't hike in these. I only wear them for camp, which is why they're at the very bottom of my backpack. It also gives me another layer between the bottom of the pack and the rest of the stuff in the pack so that if I do set it down in a puddle by accident, it does give me a little bit of protection that are great to have. And gives me an extra layer of warmth for somebody who doesn't bring any extra clothing. Anyway, I think that's everything. If you have any questions, concerns, thoughts, things that you think I should do differently, please comment below. And it is ever changing. So my clothing system, my way that I pack things, all of those pieces change on a regular basis. But this is, this is the core stuff. And this would be typical for a three season camp in the Canadian Rockies, because whether it's April or whether it's middle of August, it's pretty much the same temperature. So anyway, thanks so much for watching. And stay tuned for for more stuff to come. Thanks guys.