EP 105 - The Uinta Highline Trail Thru-Hike - Part II

Tayson: Hey everybody welcome back to the Live Ultralight podcast and part two of the uintah highline trail which is actually attempt to at the Uinta highline trail so if you missed the first episode make sure to go back and listen to that that will introduce what we're about to start talking about which will be the second half of this trip again this is the liberal tribe podcast it is powered by outward vitals and if you're not subscribed subscribe but we're going to jump straight back into this story starting with the morning of day three so like we left off in the last episode we just camped at the base of anderson pass we are sitting at 40 41 miles into the trip at this point the trip being somewhere between about 100 510 miles total and.

Tayson: We're about to do the largest pass of the trip well basically the two largest passes of the trip and we're going to attempt to do it all in a single day so we know today is going to be a massive day um and to make matters worse tyler decided to wake up an hour before us at 5 30 a.m and get an early start so that he could go summit the highest peak in utah which uh i think you were the only one that hadn't done it have you done king's peak no so brigham still has yet to do king's peak oh man yeah.

Brigham: Embarrassing to me it was like.

Tyler: It's like most people who come to do highline try to do that summit because it is like um just kind of a big thing to hit the highest peak in utah but also be able to like include that in the trip for the week so i was excited to try and get up there i wasn't excited to be going to bed at like 10 30 at night and waking up at 5 30 and immediately just hitting this wall of anderson pass but i figured it would be worth it and i figured that i had trained enough to be able to add that three miles to the day the day was looking like it was going to be 22 to 23 miles if we were to get up and over anderson all the way down through. Painters basin and then up and over north pole pass at the end of the day and i was a little nervous to be the only one um attempting that and to be adding three more miles to the day when the rest of you guys would have had less miles and be feeling better at the end of the day but i couldn't help myself i just wanted to get up there and see it on paper it.

Tayson: Should have only added about a mile and a half maybe two plus 800 feet of climbing but tyler's watch is really good at tracking extra miles so he probably ended with three or four extra miles on the day somehow but no it was but waking up an extra hour early i mean that's precious precious time on a trip like this where we're where we're really hiking from sun up to sun down but uh so her tyler got up at 5 30 heard you get up and go the rest of us wake up at 6 30. Um i needed to go get some water so the first thing i did was was go find some water but it was it was shaping up to be a really good day um i would say we we kind.

Tayson: Of all got our own clicks we actually all went up anderson pass basically alone uh brigham i guess did did end up meeting up with derrick and kind of finishing it up but i got behind everyone when i went to go filter water and had a really enjoyable trip up we were i was absolutely reminded of why we did not want to come down that path in the snow especially towards the top there's some some areas that man i would not have wanted to be trying to attempt in six to 12 inches of snow and uh never having been on that and you know not having any kind of i don't know anything to just be extra careful but um it's a it's a there's a few parts in it that are tough but i.

Tayson: Would say for me from my perspective all you guys should kind of share this too it was it was a really i would say kind of special pass for me because the first time i had ever gone into the uintas was when we did king's peak in 2018 and in 2018 we went up spent the night um and then we you know summited king's peak came back down the night and left so it was like a 26 mile trip and we took basically uh you know three days or two nights to to do so and as we summoned at king's peak i i felt like trash going up anderson pass i was really struggling i had been dropping weight that year already so i already dropped like 10 pounds i thought i was in really. Good shape we hit the pass and it was just a really humbling pass where i was watching especially derrick and darren just cruising up the pass and then and then cruising up to king's peak as well and me just feeling like man i cannot keep up with these guys my fitness isn't there i don't feel good you know a little bit of elevation sickness and so so that was like.

Tyler: Carrying a frying pan.

Tayson: Yeah i should have left the frying pan down at camp and that was not me carrying a full load either that was me we had left most of our camping essentials down in the bottom so kind of went from that to the next time we came out was you know last year and being able to do some of those passes uh was was pretty fun to just see like where my fitness had got to i guess um just year over year right like year over year fitness and in training and then this year i started up the past and i was just kind of thinking about that and as i started up i'm like i wonder if i could hike this entire past without not without stopping for for water or a break or anything.

Tayson: Like that like if i would be in that good of shape and um so i just kind of made it a little self goal to to try something like that and and i was able to do it and it was it was kind of one of those just really i feel like every once in a while you get an opportunity to like see year over year fitness and um there's a lot to it like i wish actually with joe was still on the podcast joe was in part one he he left uh we voted him off the island on day two and so he's not in this podcast room right now but um i wish that he knew he doesn't get to.

Brigham: Be in this part.

Tayson: Apparently no i he left on his own but but uh i i i hope that he listens to this part and and just kind of sees like he's been training for like eight months but um endurance and some of this type of training can take years right there's a lot of people in our Live Ultralight membership as well that have gone out and trail and you know realized you know just the amount of fitness it can take to do 20 miles a day and some of these things and but they've all been very happy with the experience but they didn't quite meet their goals and i think to all of you guys and joe it's like some of this type of training can just take year over year progress and so it was really cool.

Tayson: For me to get up through anderson and be like holy cow i did that whole pass without stopping feeling way better you know not losing my breath all these things and comparing that to just four years previously where i was dying my head hurt my lungs were on fire my legs were on fire i was not happy you know like just just kind of struggling mentally and and uh that was like a cool opportunity i would say to just be able to look back reflect and and be like man this stuff really can take can be year over year progress not just month over month or week over week um some of this stuff can can be year over year progress but how was your guys anderson pass climb.

Tyler: Well for me i had the pressure of trying to get up to king's peak and then back down to the top of anderson pass by the time that you guys got up there like because i didn't want to slow anyone down too much uh or or make it like a detriment as far as weather goes because we still had kind of bad weather thoughts looming that you know we were worried that we wouldn't be able to get over north pole pass at the end of the day if the bad weather came in so i pushed pretty hard going up anderson pass it was really nice because i was started up it before the sun came up and i got to watch the sunrise from up there which was really cool but i i pushed pretty.

Tyler: Hard and went pretty fast and same for king's peak once i got to anderson pass that's um that's 12 700 feet and then i had to get up to thirteen thousand five hundred feet uh to king's peak and so i was pushing but uh when i made it to the top of king's peak i was the only one there which was awesome because you you're rarely at a summit like that by yourself and i got time to take some really cool panoramic photos like just as the sun is coming into the basin that we had crossed the morning before i could see every pass that we had gone over from the previous two days which was like really gratifying to think holy smokes we went so far in that time and then i had to. I called my wife and girls and got to talk to them for a second and uh it's like one of the only places on.

Tayson: Trail you get services yeah right at.

Tyler: King's peak yeah so i called them and then i like scrambled back down really fast and i just remember coming back down thinking it's a miracle that me or anyone else can make it up to king's peak and back without rolling or breaking their ankle because the entire mountain is just wobbly rocks like like big 150 to 500 pound wobbly rocks and it's like it's kind of sketchy going up and down it um but i got back to you guys and how long have you been there like 10 to 15.

Tayson: Minutes we we could see you like five or ten minutes after we got there and so you weren't that far away it was timing was pretty good yeah so i.

Tyler: Felt pretty good about that i would have enjoyed hanging out there for up on top for another couple of hours but um it was i felt pretty good and i did really enjoy doing that hike just kind of by myself leaving my you know like when we hiked together a lot we talk a lot because we can and we have a lot to talk about but um but i really enjoyed that early morning.

Tayson: Yeah you you just dumped your pack on trail i remember at the scene i mean you like you went ultra minimal he took one one trekking pole and one bottle of water and his whole uh everything else you owned was just sitting there on the trail no i had i.

Tyler: Had toilet paper in my pocket oh and i had the true essentials i had the inreach in my pocket so i had the the.

Brigham: Three four.

Tyler: Four and my phone in my pocket so i could.

Brigham: That was all i needed yeah for that part.

Derek: For me i i thought anderson pass was actually pretty dang easy because like we mentioned before we all kind of went off on our own not this one i'd left camp because i packed everything up and really just had nothing else to do so i'm just going to go and then brigham wasn't too far behind and Tayson went off to get water but i filmed along the way i think i was clicking along at a pretty quick pace but i stopped frequently to like film brigham underneath me i could see him hiking up on some switchbacks below or tasting even further below after you got water and um just doing that and kind of kind of along with what tyler just said i you know enjoyed the early morning hiking up that thing to myself. And whatever pace i wanted and.

Tayson: It makes a world of difference to do a pass like that in the morning yeah i feel like yeah it does because we had to me and as we as the day went on too like the next pass was not as kind but waking up in the morning fresh legs you know your your energy stores are kind of rejuvenated spirits are kind of high like it was for a past that it like has like kicked our butts in the past or had weather in the past it was like i remember getting the top and just thinking like this was suspiciously good and easy like ah you know what i mean like the wind where's the weather where's the fatigue.

Derek: There wasn't even wind whipping in the morning there was like calm air at the.

Tyler: Top even yeah that was incredible.

Tayson: It was so i don't know if you have any.

Brigham: Thoughts on anderson but we yeah you're good yeah so we took a little.

Tayson: Break there uh had a little bit of service and then we and then we started down uh these guys were talking to some people but this was kind of the next part of it is we did not get another like 20 minutes or 20 steps down the trail before we ran into a group it seemed like and uh they they called us out they're like they knew who we were we just.

Tyler: Watched your highline video you guys are the Outdoor Vitals guys.

Tayson: Yeah and uh that started a whole theme for the entire next day and really the rest of the trip which was which was really cool um so if you're one of the people that call us out talk to us on trail thanks i mean we do we do appreciate that it's always fun to to talk to people in person i mean i wish we could do like more like in-person shows because i really do enjoy interacting with with people um it's it's kind of hard for us to do in-person shows just the toll it takes and stuff but um it's fun it's fun to talk to you guys on trail and in person because a lot of times we're we're either doing our own thing on trail or or uh you know we're working here.

Tayson: In our own offices and so it's a bit of a disconnect than compared to maybe what it was like 50 years ago when you'd come into a shop and only buy gear from a shop or something um but yeah i was it was it was cool because i i don't know which one i mean we passed a group they said hi talked to us we passed another group you know they're like oh yeah we got your gear on our back right now you know lots of guys with top quilts out there um from us but i remember one of the groups that we'd passed um they're like oh you guys got through anderson pass like they knew us like well enough that they were like you guys did it he he came back and got.

Tayson: Through anderson pass but um we talked about this a little bit on trail but we saw a lot of groups like this is like the busiest section of the trail by far because people come up from a trolley called uh henry forks i think henry forks and uh then comes straight at king's peak from that side so it is the busiest section of trail but like 50 uh if not more of every group we passed you know stopped us knew us hey we know your podcast or hey we watched your highline video or hey i've got your top quilt or whatever gear you know got your ventus in the pack and that was that was a very unexpected and cool i think kind of surprise out on trail that was it was cool i think. I think everyone in the group was you know validated and felt felt good about just like the work that that we put in here at the office and sometimes feeling a little bit disconnected from from the rest of people but.

Brigham: It's definitely cool and i i had fun encountering these people and chatting with them yeah but it was a bit of a slowdown it slows down quite a bit i think it's on my mind.

Derek: My estimate would be an hour anywhere between an hour to two and a half hours of what we lost that day just from talking to people if you add it all together it'd be somewhere in that window would be my guess.

Tyler: Yeah i was thinking that we probably talked to around 30 people so so it was there was a lot of people up there i was real happy i got to king's peak when i did because it's going to be real crowded an hour later yeah and like in.

Brigham: That 30 minutes we were up there it's just the groups just kept coming and coming yeah it was cool to see though.

Derek: That you know some of the some of the people that we met and that recognized us like you mentioned Tayson there was sometimes or a lot of times at least a couple people in the group that you could tell didn't maybe know us but they could see how their friends or family or whoever was you know responding or reacting to us and one of them was a teenager i noticed he was kind of standing off there and i noticed him kind of kind of look at their packs and mentioned to the guy standing asking like how bad are their packs they had a few people ask us straight up like how wide are your packs another guy was you know i think i think it was one of the guys that we just went by.

Derek: Just i gave him a fist bump as we were passing or something and and one of them mentioned hey about ready to buy some more of your gear after this trip you know just yes that looks like a better deal that was kind of cool to see as well like people recognizing hey like there is like we're happy like Tayson's mentioned this a lot of times we're super happy to see people outside and we support that but we're also happy to see when people can see that there's a more comfortable way to enjoy the outdoors and so i mean that's part of what we're about is uh living ultralight will make your experience that much better and it was cool to see people recognizing that for themselves just oh you know if i had that. This trip would be xml better or more comfortable or more fun or whatever you know.

Tyler: Yeah it was a visible contrast because we were doing the entire highline trail with 40 liter packs and a lot of the people that were just doing overnighters had much larger packs and so they would see us and they would ask like how far have you come and we would tell them and they'd be like oh wow like you've gone a long ways and so i think that's like when we when we joke around about the frying pans it's just because we've learned from our mistakes to the point now that um we like to pack very light and compact and it enables us to be comfortable in 20 mile days so.

Brigham: Yeah yeah.

Tayson: We definitely got asked that multiple times like how heavy are your packs and just stuff like that because there was just such a stark contrast um between some of them for sure but it was cool it was definitely cool to talk to some of the people that that we had helped lighten their packs and we definitely had some other people that were new us and said hey i'm going to be shopping after this trip because it the uintas is a very unique place uh you know a very unique wilderness area where you will learn pretty quickly the value of lightness uh both because of you know just the the amount of miles the amount of elevation all that kind of stuff but i would also add in one other element that we have not yet.

Tayson: Talked about which is the trails up there are pretty much just rock like they could really use some more dirt on their trails instead of just rocks and so when you're bouncing and rock hopping rock to rock to rock you know all that kind of stuff and you've got a big unstable backpack on you know you just feel you feel it that much more every rock hop you know underneath your foot the the rocks digging up and into your feet you're gonna feel those more and then just the overall stability of maneuvering um it all takes energy it all takes effort and people that are out there on these trails can definitely feel that and see that and it becomes more apparent in a situation like this where um it's just less forgiving out there. Period so i mean.

Derek: Even with our loads i've never had any issues with like my hips or joints really and anything like that but we were coming down anderson pass i looked at my watcher pace sometimes sometimes 16 minute miles in the 17 was very common for the speed we were descending and the trail was not garbage smooth there was a lot of a lot of big step downs a lot of boulders to step over or around and and even with light packs you could feel the impact in your feet i started i think that's the day where i started to experience some issues with my hip my left hip started having some problems i think i had twisted too far or something or in some way just had some issues with.

Tayson: That but i told him because he's finally getting old a couple gray hairs i did find three or.

Derek: Four gray hairs on my head this year so i have uh become an old guy to give you an idea of.

Tyler: The trail though because throughout the entire high line it's it's almost the same the whole way but there's so much rain and precipitation that they get up there that all of the dirt washes away from between this granite rock and so the trail is like a dug out two foot wide stream bed is is really like what it is because when it rains it turns into a stream and so it just imagine walking down a rocky creek or stream for a hundred miles and that's that's the condition of the high line trail.

Brigham: Yeah they're just they're just waterways uh that are dry and full filled with rocks yep that's just that's what the trail is yep yeah it's.

Tayson: It's not very forgiving for sure and um it's it if you cannot come off that trail you cannot complete the highline trail i think without having much stronger ankles and more stable knees and all of that so tenderized feet tenderized feet for sure someone just.

Derek: Cooked those up right after the.

Tayson: Highlands so uh we get through anderson pass we cross painter basin we get stopped a bunch talking to people which was awesome we get to dinner i think we have dinner at sometime between about 5 30. Yep just above fox lake and uh we we potentially have some rain coming in so you know i put on my rain gear to shoot away and that worked pretty good so we really didn't even get rained on um like five drops falls yeah yeah we.

Derek: Pulled wasn't my rain jacket use on this.

Tyler: Entire trip yeah yeah we could hear thunder to the south of us the wind was blowing like from the south east so it looked like the weather would possibly miss north pole pass but we were getting nervous about getting caught in the weather up there again because we were in the storm last year there so we pulled the weather on the garmin inreach and it said there was a 10 chance of rain up there.

Brigham: So we took it well and the the bit there was like there was kind of one big bigger heavy dark cloud that like the 18 raindrops came out of but like it pretty much just broke up and the clouds really started kind of dispersing by the time we started going up the actual pass it was it was pretty nice that it was pretty it was reassuring that it it really didn't like we had.

Tyler: Originally planned to camp like just a little further than where we had dinner but we decided it would be better to get up and over not just with the weather being a wild card and so at that point we were at like 21 or 22 miles on the day for dinner for.

Tayson: Dinner no we had dinner on my watch i think at 18. Uh for you i think you were farther all the way out there because you've done games you were there because you didn't so we did we did dinner around 17 18 miles but i was i was done i was like man if these guys said let's camp here i would be all for it because i was uh this is this was probably the pinnacle of the trip for me where i felt the absolute worst uh that like nausea that i'd kind of described happening at the end of the first or day two had really built for me and uh between lunch and dinner it had gotten pretty bad i was really nervous i wasn't gonna be able to eat dinner um shout out.

Tayson: To harvest right i had brought a freeze-dried meal that i had made myself in our harvest drive freeze dryer and that was really the only thing in my pack that looked like i could eat it or wanted to eat it so i had that i was still able to eat but i just didn't feel like eating and i think i had started to get a little behind on hydration as well but it was hard because i was trying i was really like focusing on drinking focusing on hydrating but um i was feeling low energy and and pretty nauseous and knew that we had to get up and over this other you know massive pass and uh so yeah had our dinner and you know couldn't didn't want to drag it out too far and we. Basically went to do north pole pass and we had a we had a polar opposite experience from the year before the year before when we did north pole pass it was raining uh you know a little bit of lightning on the outskirts and and uh was a pretty miserable pass for the most part it got.

Tyler: Dark on us when we were at the top of the pass so we had to descend it in the dark in the sleet and mud.

Tayson: Yeah.

Derek: This year it was uh like amazing it was clear it was like a really comfortable temperature at the end of the day and uh great views and it wasn't like at this point day three we'd seen enough sun that we were getting sunburned especially the backs of our calves our necks etc it didn't.

Tyler: Matter how much sunscreen i put on yeah.

Derek: Tyler layered it up like four times a day and still got super roasted on his calves but like the it was a little it was overcast just enough to where the sun wasn't a problem as we were up on top of this pass and it was just so nice hayson was really having a hard time i think he he had tried to go up leading all of us on the trail the first little while and uh at one point we paused for a little breather and tyler passed him and then Tayson basically the rest of the way up had to lock into tyler's feet and just follow his feet because he was feeling so crappy this all he thought about i think was just dancing on those feet yeah.

Tayson: I basically had to like mentally lock in so i i basically got behind tyler and i just thought don't let him gap me just stay on him get up and over this path now that tyler was like racing up the path tyler's just doing a very i think solid pace good pace what we've been doing on most the passes but to me man that was like really tough i was i was really not in a great place and so i kind of mentally had to think like think about i actually started thinking about ultra runners and how freaking like hard of people they are and just like the crap that they do like talking like uh thinking of of some of these guys that run some of these hundred milers through this type of terrain.

Tayson: And i was just thinking man the amount of pain those guys are feeling got to be way worse than what i'm feeling so kind of just let that like ruminate in my mind and just like lock on to tyler i'm like i'm either gonna make it to the top behind tyler or i'm going to throw up but i'll do one of the two so um it worked out it was it actually made it to the top of the pass and literally as soon as we crested the pass and it got flat um you know i felt better and so that that was a good sign to me good sign i guess but it was it was a signal to me of like what i was feeling had to be pretty related to just exertion um. I actually am unsure how you know.

Derek: When you crest the pass north pole pass is like when you're going up the steep side of north pole pass there's this big huge cam like some of the cairns to mark the trail up there were enormous they're like the size of.

Tyler: Polar bears which is why we think Tayson calls it polar bear they're like bigger.

Derek: Than a man just stacks of rocks and you could see the one at what looks like the top when you're going up the really steep section which is most of the pass zigzagging up the switchbacks on the steep view you're like i just got to make it to that really tall pile of rocks up there and when you get to that cairn well north pole pass kind of just curves and it it becomes more gradual but it's.

Tyler: Still up just a big round it's like a.

Tayson: Half mile top and so when you get to that first.

Derek: Big pile of rocks you could look and you could see three more you're like oh okay well that must be the top that third one over there down it's like a never-ending.

Brigham: False summon yeah and then then you hike.

Tyler: To that third one away and it's like.

Derek: Still going up gradually there's just enough curve kind of like the curvature of the earth you can't see then all of a.

Brigham: Sudden you're walking downhill somehow yeah it's like i had no idea when we.

Derek: Were when we switched from going up to all of a sudden now we're going gradually down and uh that was like the longest pass ever um you're just like up above 12 000 feet walking from pile of rock to pile of rock for a long time trying to figure out when you're gonna start going down again and.

Tayson: So when we got there i started feeling better whatever that was.

Derek: Wherever the top was doing good well to paint the image for.

Tyler: You like most of these passes that we've gone over so far in the trip are like like the pass is a low spot in a knife edge ridge that connects multiple peaks and so you climb up the pass and then you climb straight back down the other side of the pass but this one is like just this huge long gradual like a saddle between yeah some.

Derek: Peaks still but.

Tyler: Yeah and so like also to paint that picture a lot of these other passes are less than a mile like from the bottom of the one side to the bottom of the other this one from dinner to where we camped was four and a half miles so so to get over the pass was two to three times like the distance of what the other.

Tayson: Passes are yeah so we get up and over the pass and on the other side there's this really cool little bowl that like looks really nice it's pretty lush and green but it's still really high up and we weren't really planning to stay there we knew another like mile and a half to two miles to get to like a camping site in the trees and so as we got down to there we're like man it's almost dark we're at over 22 miles for the day which is kind of that marker we're looking for the garmin weather reports that there's only a 10 chance of rain let's just camp in this bowl tonight like let's just let's just push our tents right here in this bowl and uh we'll call it good and so after some.

Tayson: Prancing around the bowl we've picked a spot and set up our tents and things are going well um pretty much got some really good photos and i think i had climbed into my tent tyler was brushing his teeth and i remember him making a noise and i so i look over at him and he spits out his toothpaste and says i just saw some draw dry lightning over there and i was like oh cool that'll go past us like clear over there you know what i mean and and that was it we all go to bed but maybe an hour later two hours later i hear derek and tyler you know talking tent to tent in the dark now talking about some kind of lightning off in the distance and i'm thinking oh yeah it's. Probably the same crap it's just going the other direction i i'd uh.

Derek: Gotten up actually i woke up to to like go pee and so i'd gone out of my tent and it was pitch black by that time and and tyler had already been up i guess watching this lighting so when he saw me get up we started chatting he's like see that lighting over there so i'm just standing there and staring at these clouds that are just bright flashes all throughout these clouds they're still kind of the distance so like way in the.

Tyler: Distance they look like they were 30 miles south of us some big flashes of.

Derek: Lightning in them but they were they were a ways away so i'm like well that's really cool can i go i got to have a view with my knife p that was pretty then i go back into my uh go back into my 10 fall asleep.

Tyler: I had i had i pulled the weather again right then i think and uh or did we pull it before we set up our tents i can't remember you pulled it.

Tayson: Like then you pull it afterwards and.

Tyler: Because i was seeing these clouds and they were like huge tall clouds um and they were just lighting up with lightning like every 10 seconds or or less and so i pulled the weather again and it said um that there was like a 10 or 15 percent chance of rain at 3 a.m and i was like okay i won't make a like i won't make a big deal out of this um we'll just sleep and if it comes at 3am it looks like it would only be a 10 chance for an hour so it's like it looked like it was not going to be too bad but that was at 10 o'clock when derek and i had that little conversation and i pulled that and then by 11 o'clock we were getting no i woke. Up at midnight i.

Tayson: Woke up at midnight to my tent like to just a torrent of wind hitting my tent just like and it was so it was so stark it went from like dead silent to just like like the wind just came swirling in and i woke up and i was like whoa that was that was really surprising and then i could kind of hear off in the distance something and then all of a sudden the tent just flashed bright and it was just like thunder and lightning were raining down upon us and uh i'll be honest i uh i had a lot of thoughts first thing i started to do is just count you know every time a lightning would strike my tent would light up i'd just start counting you know one two three to just. See how close that that lightning actually was to us and uh you know i think it initially i was counting closer to like eight seconds and and you know maybe up to 10 seconds but man like being up that high it was it was booming you know it was so loud.

Brigham: Yeah and we were like in a echo it's like an echo like an amphitheater type really really good acoustics up there i would say.

Tayson: You could have an amazing rock concert up there for sure and that's that's essentially what we were sitting in and uh i remember me personally sitting there just thinking like oh my gosh like this is coming in it's coming in hot it's so loud we're so high we're pretty exposed yeah we might be in the bottom of this bowl but we're we're still like there's nothing up here there's no trees there's no above the.

Brigham: Tree line we were something like that of.

Tyler: Timberline and yeah and my mind started.

Tayson: To go everywhere so like so my first thoughts were like holy crap like this is super sketchy what have i brought these guys to do you're right like these guys are up here on a basically a company trip and and like now we're in the middle of this and i'm i remember laying as flat as flat as i could on my pad just thinking like i don't even want to raise my arm and then i look up and i see my garmin inreach and i'm thinking i'm seeing my trekking poles and i'm thinking trekking poles they're carbon fiber right those guys have aluminum poles right i think they got aluminum pulls so maybe uh maybe it's less likely to strike carbon fiber over aluminum like i'm thinking of everything and then i see my garment.

Tayson: Intereach and i'm like well maybe i should grab that so i like cautiously reach up grab my garment and reach like put it on the ground i'm thinking of everything my mind was just going everywhere just thinking you feel so exposed i think in that scenario because again now the lightning's like five seconds away right like you're counting and and and it was just like that for a solid 50 minutes to an hour where for 50 straight minutes i'm awake and i'm just counting lightning strikes i'm just counting after every single lightning strike and what was crazy was nothing.

Tyler: Actually struck our bowl no but it was so dang loud and bright without it being right honest yeah i think that's what i.

Brigham: Was thinking about the most is like i um i i feel like the rain and the wind was definitely the most intense part of the storm not the lightning and the thunder just because i was kind of doing the same thing of counting it and like it was never like three seconds or less like i never counted anything and so you know realistically i was thinking okay well you know half a mile it's still still a ways away but i you know i was also you know reminding myself like well we are above treeline and this it could be honest at any time like really that could that storm could intensify and like isolate itself like at any given time like that's totally possible um but uh yeah it was it was very intense just. Like 50 minutes to an hour of like the wind and the rain and it would have been kind of cool to be like removed a little bit and watch it and just like see if you can climb out of your tent bouncing off the mountain like i was thinking of that i was like this this could be really cool to watch but you should have taken the.

Tayson: Gopro and just shoved it out there you know i wasn't moving very much i don't think anyone i don't want to move i had a fleece beanie on.

Brigham: And the wind was like blowing so hard it was like rubbing the fleece and i was like that's a bit of static electricity i don't part of the tent and just kind of laid like with my head off the pillow so i was just a little bit lower i mean silly i don't know if that made a difference or not but i was like well if i can reduce any stability well it describes how we're all feeling.

Tayson: Though we're all feeling how can we lay flatter on the pad right now you know.

Tyler: When it first came in i tried to lower my trekking poles like i reached up and i tried to lower my trekking poles and then the tent was just like going crazy and i was like this tent is gonna be shredded if i don't put the poles back up so then i put the poles back up and it like it did great in the wind you know like in that crazy wind but i was really wishing my pulse could be shorter.

Tayson: Yeah um yeah i might i had a really great pitch i had no sag or no anything but but i would say i would second what brigham was saying if with the intensity of the rain like the intensity was coming down it almost sounded like hail on my tent like it was so loud and then the echo chamber of the thunder and then the wind was crazy because it would gust at like i don't know 40 miles an hour it felt like and then it could literally stop to zero miles an hour and then just smash back into the tent at 40 miles an hour and so it just like kept you on your toes never knowing what was actually happening i was like oh it's gone and then just bam and pile back into.

Tayson: The tent and then it'd stop and then it would lessen and then it would intensify it yeah i it i mean i remember you know we geek out about this all the time and brigham is he's always joking about how much we talk about oh what what's your watch mileage at or this or what's your heart rate at but i did like check my heart rate and my heart rate jumped from like a resting in like the 70s to like 100 beats per minute of just like and that's just pure like anxiety just it it definitely was just an intense uh hour of time for sure uh that night was.

Brigham: Uh it's really weird because there's that intense storm but that was actually probably my second best night of sleep was in that like there's something was my best night of sleep was the the last night when it just kind of like just rained very lightly there's.

Tayson: Something about i think.

Brigham: Subconsciously like i sleep really well feeling sheltered and like i consciously feel more sheltered when there's something in the environment that i'm being sheltered from so like when it's raining i sleep really really well and so like having had that like that wind lightning and rain it just like knocked me out i was just like i slept so well that night and that was yeah.

Tyler: I don't think i slept at all until after the storm ended and it was probably like a half an hour after the storm ended but then by then it was only like five hours left of the night and then i was like stressed i was like oh i did extra miles compared to everyone before then i was up worried about the lightning now i have to sleep why can't i sleep you know and so then it was like that was my worst night of sleep on trail did you after my biggest day because i ended up doing over 25 miles that day and so i was like feeling like i really needed to sleep.

Tayson: Yeah did you wake up derek i don't know.

Derek: Yeah i did i.

Tayson: The guy who could sleep through everything couldn't even sleep through.

Derek: That one yeah no that definitely woke me up and i was pretty nervous but i was like looking around in my tent i'm like nothing i can do about it.

Tayson: They're really i mean there isn't derek you're getting peace with god he's he knows he's in a safe spot or really what i ended up doing because like the.

Derek: Lightning and the rain it did give me anxiety like definitely i was anxious i was like well i better not be a stripper i'm better but my main thoughts for self-preservation were like well i guess i'll just try to stay away from my trekking poles on either side of me like in the tent and that's the best i can do now so um did you lay on your side no i i just made i mean i was i was already pretty centered my pitch was pretty good on my tent um i just kept laying there what i ended up doing if i wasn't gonna sleep i'm like well i'm gonna flip over my stomach i had my phone there and just played like those silly little offlane games like solitaire or something so i just. Sat there playing solitaire for like an hour gosh and then uh when it stopped and all right and then fell asleep again but.

Tyler: And Tayson's the only one who got any footage of it the rest of us for whatever i just turned on my camera.

Tayson: And got flashes of light and big booms you know uh and then just you could you could probably get some some you could hear the rain just like you know hammering down and then letting up and hammering down but um yeah it was it was nuts but we made it through that we all survived no one was struck by lightning we did oh i did fail to mention this but when we were right after we climbed into our shelters we had some elk come right into camp and skirt around the edge and they like basically were just feeding up like they normally would and probably about stepped on little derrick's tent over there and they're like what they like kind of chirped like they were just like astonished that there was also in this tent. In their basin and uh and then they kind of went up and around our tents and then passed mine and it was it was an eventful night i guess you could say between wildlife and and storms but.

Derek: Yeah when the lightning flashes kept happening i eventually ended up just kind of like i could see like the lightning flash start to happen so i just closed my eyes and just pretend it wasn't flashing for a little while and you could see it through your eyelid.

Tayson: Yeah i don't know what you're i could close my eyes and just be like yeah still blast no i just i would just blink.

Derek: When i could see a lightning flash coming on and pretend it wasn't there and then i didn't really feel as anxious because i wasn't really focused on lining and thunder it's just.

Tayson: Yeah well we get up the next morning and we had another big day and this was our last day like in the high high country so got a lot of miles to cover more big passes and uh yeah so we we got started um and i don't know i mean basically beautiful morning like.

Tyler: It was so calm and nice after that storm it was really really pretty.

Tayson: Yeah um we so basically we were descending for a good chunk of that morning dropping down to had some moments where we passed like where we had to say goodbye to brennan last year um past the lake that he got picked up at um brigham made friends with a deer.

Tyler: Named wanda.

Brigham: Yep yeah brigham's pet wanda came to visit town.

Tyler: He tried to steal his breakfast.

Tayson: Um really pretty uneventful i think i was still feeling a little sick and just trying to just manage that and click off miles and um get food in me and and i think everyone was kind of feeling that same way we were we were talking a little bit about like how far we should push that day and um other than that it was it was kind of uh i think we talked a little less that day and we to me like day four was probably one of my like hardest days.

Derek: Not physically per se but i did get probably the worst sleep um that night before and so i feel like i was feeling pretty dang like sleepy once the.

Tayson: Lightning left you like you're like i can't stop playing solitary.

Derek: No just in general like my quality of sleep wasn't like amazing and i was feeling it that day on day four but i think for me mentally it was like well last year the build-up was all towards anderson pass and everything beyond right and then this year we got all that done and out of the way and back over north pole pass which the year before had been like the start of the most crazy stuff and so the way i was remembering it in my head north pole pass and what we've done everything like before that that was the bulk of the trip and so basically the trip was over and so to me at that point i'm like well day four feels like it's just endless miles as we're trying to like be done. And get off the mountain at that point and we're.

Tyler: Gonna stop talking about pizza yeah so to me i was probably mentally more.

Derek: Checked out after day three i was mentally okay we did all the passes time to go home but then like we saw another night of camping and another day of hiking after that so mentally i was kind of ready to be done on day four after not sleeping well and so in that sense i think i was having like probably the hardest day of the whole trip was day four.

Tayson: I think i think it was kind of going i'm like man i'm ready to go you know i feel like we started to like feel like hey we've walked this section before yeah but then i remember like after i got our north pole pass went through some that i'm like but the section uh between chipeda lake and lighty peak though i was like that's a really cool section like i am excited for that and so that was definitely the highlight of the day is around right after lunch essentially we got back above treeline and you cover these two i don't call them two big basins two passes um and they're they're really awesome as well um it's funny ever all the hikers kept saying oh you're like there's like two hikers that are actually doing.

Tayson: The full high line a lot of them um don't go all the way to the highway they start a little bit short and they're like the two hikers like oh my gosh there's so many cows and they're like so obsessed with telling us there's cows down the trail but we got up there there was some cows like in this past but like overall it was just a really nice pass and uh yeah it was a good good chunk of the day i think me and me and tyler kind of hiking together through that big basin and it was a pretty enjoyable nice pass really started to gap us it was the first time brigham finally decided to not follow he takes the lead and it's just like nascar he's just out of there man he's.

Tayson: I don't know what happened i want to know i actually want to hear from you brigham like so brigham basically had this long drawn out past that we it was just very like it wasn't a steep pass was just this super long rolling hill long pass and uh brigham and derek were kind of hiking together and then the next thing we know like brigham is just like gone like i don't know what what was with that bring him i felt like it was a big flex like he was just like hey look at me i've still got all this energy what's wrong with you guys you know whatever.

Brigham: But what actually was that's my style i don't know i was just feeling uh i was just having a good day i i was i think i was just uh i felt like why i progressively just enjoyed my time more and more i was just happy and i felt like i still enjoyed that that part of the that part of the trail and i don't know i think it was just i felt great i felt like i had tons of energy and and i i kind of just wanted to like check my check out and just just go like in my natural just just go kind of like as if i was hiking by myself and like just let myself let my mind kind of like i don't know drive it away and just go. It was really enjoyable i really enjoyed that that whole day it was yeah.

Derek: Yeah i i actually was trying as hard as i could to keep up with brigham too and i could not but i mentioned on day three starting to have some problems with my hip that long drawn out pass that we were going up at that time no trail there's.

Tayson: No trail there's another one of those.

Derek: Without a trail so there's like lumpy ground where the grass grows but it grows enough that a trail really can't be there because this grows rocks just.

Tayson: Throws a lot of rocks a lot of rocks and.

Derek: Lumpy ground and it was also sloped we were we were traversing across this sloped like a huge a huge bowl and at the top.

Tyler: Of a basin yeah.

Derek: And so.

Tyler: I was trying to keep up with brigham.

Derek: Once he started pulling away i was like i should be able to i should be able to go that fast but i just could not my hip was like hurting so bad after this you know a few miles of walking on this really off camera off camber sloped basin with lumpy ground and rocks everywhere my hip was like not allowing me to move any faster i was.

Tyler: Guessing brigham just needed to poop really bad and just wanted to get all the way over and have some privacy before we caught up.

Tayson: It's been a good guess yeah no problem it actually i think i think one lesson here or thing to note is before i actually went and ran that ultra um a friend of mine had said you know in an ultra you're going to have lows you're going to have highs they're going to come at different times you'll be maybe even surprised you may have a low early on you know it doesn't necessarily mean that the low is going to be at the very end type of thing and i think that happens to everyone on trips at times um where you have like a high moment or hi you know like last year for me going over north pole pass i just happened to be in a really good spot mentally physically felt good or uh.

Tayson: You know or for me this time like i felt really good going over red knob everyone was talking about how steep it was and i just i felt really good going over red knob so i think there's going to be lows and highs and i think if you read into them too much it can be a detriment uh you know brigham he's always holding back he could probably go way faster than we ever know because he never will like walk in front but i think it is just something to note that you can have lows and highs they can be any time any day and to just don't read too much into them people can definitely get in a negative spiral and you know just check out of a trip per se with with something.

Tayson: Like that but you can always bounce back so but yeah bring him bring him tore off up the up field got up there did his private poop that he's not telling us about and then took a little break and then we got to do kind of the last section of above tree line uh it's this really beautiful section goes above this really beautiful lake and basin and you know this area where we took we took breakfast there last time coming the other direction looking at this cabin down in there just a a really really pretty section and um went down around lady peak and then it was um you know we were gonna go down to basically where we started the dry section and uh for those of you that don't know they went to.

Tayson: High line there is a dry section where there is 25 miles of no water uh so it's a very significant dry section and uh our plan was to either get right to the edge of the water or to eat dinner at the edge of the water and go another you know four miles in and so we were able to get to the edge of the water for dinner so that pretty much meant that we were gonna start into the dry section spend the night in the dry section and then um finish the trail the next day so um we uh i mean that's that's essentially what we did and it was interesting for us you know we had our dinner we all you know cameled up we drank you know what we could there i.

Tayson: Was trying to hydrate as much as i could before we got there like i wanted to get there hydrated so that i i wasn't already behind going into the dry section and even with me trying my hardest to hydrate man i i just never felt like i was really fully caught up but did a little bit better um and we basically left i think all of us had about three and a half liters of water to go into the 25 mile dry section and we had to camp in.

Tyler: That section where a lot of times we'll drink a little extra and we'll use a little of extra water for meals when we camp and so going into that with only three and a half liters was like a little tight yeah.

Tayson: It was it was like a little concerning i think because at this point there's so much water in the entities that we've only been filtering two liters at a time maximum we've only ever been carrying two liters of water and so um yeah a little bit of concern there but we we cruised down um crossed the big the big cow field essentially where i'm sure most of these people have been talking about all the cows uh there's we i me and me and brigham try to do a little cattle drive uh to push the cows over at tyler and derrick but.

Tyler: We just walked straight through the field yeah they just walked through the.

Tayson: Cow pies and me and brigham went around but um it was nice we we took a little bit of time finding a campsite but we ended up sleeping finding a spot just in kind of a forested area that they'd done gone in and harvested wood out of it before so we're out of the wilderness essentially at this point and uh i quite liked our camp spot it was it was dark it was quiet um and it was it was nice i don't know like it was very nice camp spot was good the end of the day was very pleasant because it was almost all downhill so it's low exertion uh spirits were pretty high and set up camp it started to rain during the night and you know no lightning or thunder but just this. Light trickle of rain and that was my best night of sleep on the trail by far me too had a really enjoyable night but i had my hardest point in the.

Tyler: Trail like in those last three or four miles before dinner my feet were hurting really bad and i was feeling really depleted we had dinner and then did three more miles three and a half yeah and i felt okay then but i was like feeling really beat that night and me and derek set up our tents in pretty crappy spots so i was very surprised that i slept as well as i did in my in such a ski wampus tent site i just shoved a bunch of clothes under the one side of my sleeping pad and i level it out i.

Derek: Actually had a very poor night of sleep again for the two nights in a row and i i think i attribute most of it on this night four to uh i think at dinner time i had like a horchata and as soon as i like after dinner to finish that up it did not sit well with me i had to go rush off to visit trees fairly often after that throughout the entire night and during that's where the rain comes.

Tayson: Into into play because this nice background i thought it was just like.

Tyler: Cows walking around no i got up like so.

Derek: Many times and and yeah it was just after dinner during day five i was fine you know but pretty much throughout the entire night i'm like well this is ridiculous.

Tayson: That's crazy because i had horchatas before almost every night that i had like water and this is my like hitting the spot this is my second time really.

Derek: Trying with the horchata the first time was when we did the grand canyon room to rim and that also didn't sit well with me it didn't it didn't do the same thing to me but it felt like i didn't like i felt not very well i wonder if you just don't like if you.

Tayson: Don't agree with like the powdered milk or something that they kind of put in it well i don't know i have pot powdered.

Derek: Milk all the time not on trail but like huh um.

Tayson: Yeah.

Derek: I think after two tries i'm like well i love horchata i love how it tastes you can give the rest of me but this mixed stuff i don't think it's a good trail i think it's gonna have to be if i want horchata in my house it's like a hot chocolate mix now well that one's made.

Tyler: By scratch labs and it's made for ultra runners to recover their stomachs after the gi distress that they put themselves through.

Derek: Did the opposite stomach i would say.

Tayson: It distressed your gi distress well it's a little different thing you.

Tyler: Know it's designed for ultra runners who have been living off of sugar for 45 to 100 miles yeah and you probably weren't quite in.

Derek: That situation i had plenty of carbs and other things that were not straight sugars they were i mean roundabout i guess i don't love them on trail either.

Tyler: I like them after a really strenuous one-day effort but so we we uh finished up that night got a.

Tayson: Good night's sleep started the next day and again we're in the dry section so we have um about 20 miles left on the entire Uinta high line to finish and we are trying to get that done as early as possible so that brennan our shuttle driver could pick us up with a nice hot car full of domino's pizza that we'd all been dreaming about for a few days now um.

Tyler: Like on day three asking.

Tayson: Pizza it's like day yeah it's like day three we're like wait we're not gonna be able to go get food it'll be too late so we gotta have brendan pick us up food and meet us at the trailhead with it so we're like let's do pizza and so we sent them we sent them our uh our our list our order essentially on like day day two and a half of the journey and uh then after that we just couldn't stop talking about how good pizza sounded for for the next two and a half days um but yeah we're trying to get there but before six which is when we 5 30 to 6 is when we thought he could be there so we're trying to get 20 miles in basically by five o'clock and uh.

Tayson: So yeah we started off started going when we were cruising um i remember passing a guy 16 miles to water yeah we had to do it we had about 15 to 16 miles to water and then another five i remember passing a guy maybe four miles in and uh he was all loaded up you know with stuff and i mean he was carrying in his hands like a i don't know three liters of water and then his pack had water carrying a.

Brigham: Bladder it looked like a three liter platter yeah it was he was he was loaded.

Tayson: Up um with water he'd spent the night in the drive section as well oh i forgot about the cute guy remember yeah no right yeah so early in.

Derek: The morning on day five we were cargo killed.

Brigham: We were hiking out of there and Tayson.

Derek: Was in front i was kind of hiking with them behind him a little bit and we we passed this guy going the opposite direction and he recognized you right yes he called out to me oh i recognized.

Tayson: You and but derek didn't hear him i was still like far enough away i didn't hear.

Derek: What he said so when i walk up there and there's stops on the trail chatting he turns to me and he's like oh i recognize you too i know you from somewhere and and i just look at him and just sit there staring at him well i.

Tyler: Don't know derek's thinking he knows him personally.

Tayson: Like a friend right yeah he doesn't think that it's from work or from YouTube or anything and so derek is puzzled as all can be and uh so we talked with the guy for a while we started walking up the trail and finally i'm like derek you know he knows you from our YouTube channel right he's like what i'm like yeah he knew who i was and he's like oh yeah he said there's like this because i think you said to me i just can't figure out how that guy knows me maybe i know him from here and i was like no no no don't overthink this yeah no cause like.

Tyler: I i thought he would mostly by the time.

Derek: I walked up to where they were chatting like at that point he basically turned to me and talked about hey i know you from somewhere and i was just just could not figure it out i don't know if i've ever seen you in my life had some steam coming off of derek's.

Tayson: Head he was thinking so hard but anyways we passed the guy with a bunch of water you know he i mean these guys are really cameling up for this section um but we were i mean one thing to note here i think that's interesting is water consumption people sometimes look at water consumption on like how many how much water they need for the miles but i think the smarter way to look at water is how much water consumption do you need for the amount of hours between the water um i think it's a it's a good fairly smart way to look at it sometimes because us with three and a half liters getting through this section we kind of knew how long it would take us and we knew so we kind of could gauge.

Tayson: It that way versus some of these people i think some of them had no idea how much water they really needed so they were packing a ton of extra water because they had no idea some people were probably underestimating it significantly the opposite direction but being able to judge your water and know your body and being aware of that can be really helpful for a system like this because you could way over carry water which is probably what this guy was doing he was he was well past halfway and probably was still carrying like five liters of water and he was probably just way overweighting himself versus um we met some people a little bit later on that you know i might be concerned that they weren't going to carry enough water or so on. So forth so judge that if you kind of can get an idea of like i need to drink you know roughly this much water and those types of things it can be it can be quite helpful one of the things about doing viewing to highline the way we did it is if you're going to get dehydrated get dehydrated on the last day not the first day and.

Brigham: Yeah the last day that's downhill yeah.

Tayson: It's all downhill it's the last day so if you come off trail a little dehydrated that's way better than starting because when you're starting the other direction you know you don't want to be heading into the high country and getting dehydrated it's going to set you up for altitude sickness for sure and and just a tougher trip in general so yeah we have that going for us um but overall that i honestly that like next 15 miles from the time we woke up to water that felt like a pretty long section everyone's just thinking about pizza everyone's just head down and essentially we just got in this really good mode of just asking brigham military questions and learning all sorts of things about the military and that probably saved my life on that trail from. Just kind of i don't know getting too bored and having a draw way too long um yeah i.

Brigham: Mean just for the the listener that isn't too familiar i mean so it's a dry section and and this last this whole day these 20 miles we had to to crank off it's it's very uh it's very much all the same like there's not a lot of variety you're walking through pine woods like pretty much the whole time some of them are more open because they've been logged some of them have been logged so they're not open but really you're just walking through like woods and you you don't really get many views or vantage points and so it does get like mundane like kind of boring i mean you've been through like this incredible country and then it's just this kind of like average walk in the woods for 20 miles and it's surprising how.

Brigham: Hot it gets at still like 9 500 feet to 10 000 feet in the woods but it's just it was just really hot but i think the other like knowing that it was all downhill knowing like our own abilities and our own experience like yeah i think on the water side we all kind of had an idea of like what we needed to carry and what we could put up with in terms of you know rationing it out to last as long as we needed it to and so overall i felt pretty good like i.

Derek: Personally had plenty of water for that carry um.

Tyler: Yeah.

Tayson: I would i would call out between brigham stories and tyler making me a tortilla with summer sausage cheese and mayonnaise i was on cloud nine man that was the best meal i had the entire time i was i was you know really still feeling quite nauseous nothing in my pack was looking good at all and i was just craving like fatty foods like the mayo and then um like the summer sausage is like this real fatty meat the salt and man i was craving that so that and then derek also gave me a tortilla with a tuna jalapeno tuna and uh man both of those like saved that saved my life but man they were so welcome i i had gotten in a rush packing for the trip and just time wise and i hadn't.

Tayson: You know stuck to my staples you know i know from last year that i my body really craved those things packing the mayonnaise packets out there and some of that was was like a lifesaver on high line the year before and i'd i drifted from my guns so i mean once you figure out what you want on trail stick with it but i would say i've been so much also in the mind of like this ultra running thing where it's just all sugars and carbs and man by day by day three like i didn't want to look at sugars and carbs anymore at all i wanted like proteins and tortillas and cheeses and you know all that kind of stuff and so um just be aware of that like what you want on day one.

Tayson: Day two often changes by the time you're out there for more more like four to five days um anyways we got through the dry section i think all of us had enough water we did fine and it was it was very relieving that we could get through that much of a section with the amount of water that we did carry you know still able to stay pretty light pretty fast and uh got to where we were um you know got to our first water we stopped to get water uh brigham got stung by a wasp which was nice and exciting we uh we shifted to the other side of the river and filtered our water and then we had a really cool encounter with uh with three altitude hoodies walking up on trail so here. Comes isaac one of our live.

Derek: Ultralight members charging up the trail he was leading a group of friends and people he knew that they were all out about to the parts of the high line as like sections of it except for him he was actually going to continue on and do the whole whole high line trail but yeah there was three or four people wearing altitude hoodies multiple shadowlight backpacks and that was kind of cool to see like how much that that he being a Live Ultralight member had been out of the benefit uh by getting access to the gear then he kind of shared the love with people he knew and made sure they had some good gear for the trip as well they looked a lot of them like they were much better off than a lot of other. Backpackers that we've passed on the trail with the the gear setups that they had um the ones that were using some of our stuff it was cool i mean he'd been trying to.

Tayson: Set him up for success it sounded like they weren't it was kind of like some of their first backpacking trips and so he was kind of acting as their guide and so he he'd helped him you know i think probably with some of the gear choices and different things but it was cool it was kind of like we thought like oh that might be kind of the last group that we meet on trail and it was cool that it was him he you know he was from utah he'd actually lived in malaysia so we kind of bonded over that and um yeah just seeing the gear it was it was fun to chat with him he was very aware of us you know he was one of those guys i think that also was like.

Tayson: Oh you made it through anderson pass you know and um you know it's very aware so it's really cool to meet you isaac i appreciate you being a little ultra member and and also just getting people outside um you know it's a that's a mission of ours a passion of ours is to help people get outside and and experience that so um you're a great ambassador of what we try to do here as well so that was a lot of fun um got our water filtered up and uh started heading off again for our last five miles i think everyone was feeling like oh yeah this will be this will be great had an enjoyable one two miles ran into another guy and he was like hey i just watched your highline video like a.

Tayson: Day ago and so then we we talked to those guys for a while really cool actually because he was a he had hiked like the e.t the arizona trail the colorado trail so he was he had a lot of big trails on his belt and he was bringing his his uh grandson out for for their first trip together to do the in a high line and uh brigham made the comment of you know like i hope this is what i'm doing you know at your age and you know and it's true i think we all hope that we're just out there getting after it um you know throughout our entire lives no matter what walk of life we're in and it was it was definitely really cool to just see them being able to bond. In a situation like that i mean they were they weren't too far into the trip yet but uh it was it was still cool to meet with them and talk with them and then after that and we didn't have.

Tyler: Too many too many uh more miles to go.

Derek: After that it was like two or three miles easy miles we assumed.

Tayson: We assumed it felt like the longest.

Tyler: Three miles down just.

Tayson: Downhill through massive massive boulders like walking on point.

Brigham: Basketball-sized moving boulders for three miles and it was.

Derek: Steep there was a steep downhill through all these big rocks and it wouldn't have been so bad like say this was like our second day on the trail but after at this point over 100 miles because again we said this is between 105 110 miles uh well over 100 miles on the trail and in the last you know five days leading to this point our feet were thrashed and so every step on these boulders we could feel that through our shoes my triceps were.

Tyler: Getting pretty sore from taking a lot of weight on the trekking poles my muscles were also getting tired to.

Derek: The point where like it was in a smooth motion stepping down it was kind of like a jerky you stepped forward and almost kind of not fall but it just wasn't a smooth brace yourself as well yeah and so like your legs just going down didn't work as smoothly and nicely and everything was more jarring and and for two miles straight we would just go down these rocky steep bouldery trails it was also.

Tyler: Very hot and it got quite humid because we had storm clouds coming in but they wouldn't just rain on us so it was just very humid and hot and rocky wind wasn't.

Derek: Moving nope no airflow those were hard.

Tyler: Miles.

Tayson: They really were um yeah my knees started hurting and you're in the trees and i was trying not to look at my phone to see how far we had to go like i thought that would be a better option it probably wasn't because i kept thinking that the end was around the corner for like a mile and a half yeah after like 30 minutes i'm like we're at the end nope we're at the end now and so yeah it really drug on but uh finally made it to the bottom everyone was very happy to hit the bottom we get to walk across kind of this this meadow well that meadow was a tease too because.

Derek: They're like oh we thought it was yes it's the meadow and then you walk across the meadow and you go back into trees for a second and then there's another meadow yeah and that's the last that's nasty and so we had a couple false endings there for sure but yeah we.

Tayson: Got there we're all like oh yes we we sit down we know we've got you know probably at least 30 minutes before brennan's there we're super excited to just sprawl out tyler just lays down spread eagle on the ground to fall asleep or stretch out and then two minutes yeah literally two minutes go by and rain starts falling so then we all hunker up under the trees and finally i'm like i turn to brigham i'm like and he says that the the bathroom has enough cover for us and so me and him head over there and hang out basically in the little covering of the outhouse and pretty soon the other two come by and now we're all just four crammed in the little cubby of the outside cozy little.

Brigham: Shelter there just the the covered section of the entrance to the outhouse and there was room for us all we just pulled out our pads and yeah wiped off our dirty legs and cleaned our feet i was a little bit late over there because i.

Derek: Didn't mind the rain i pulled off my socks and shoes and i knew those things because every night i smelled them you know going to my tent i knew they smelled real bad and were really dirty so i actually just sat leaned up against the tree really comfortable as far as like the position i was sitting in and leaning back against it and let my feet and legs get all soaked and i watched the dirt just run off of them and uh that smell aired out a little while and then after that i kind of hobbled over to the outhouse and sat down so the rest of me didn't get too soaked but.

Tayson: Yeah so we uh we're sitting there and we had a a random visitor i think i think we must have known that we needed a good laugh right then or something i mean we were happy but uh we needed another laugh so we're sitting there under huddle under the outhouse and the lane the rain had let up a little bit but it was still drizzling and this this guy just comes pulling up on this big fat tire e-bike and he and he says hey i'm from the from the forest service at i'm forest service i'm forest service uh you know how are you guys doing we're like good and he's like you guys you guys got a ride you know we're like yeah we got a driver abandoned.

Derek: Yeah we're like no we got a shell driver.

Tyler: Coming he's like oh good i wanted to.

Tayson: Make sure you guys weren't abandoned out here like no no they'll be here in another you know 15 minutes or so and he's like okay good and then he's kind of sits there in silence for a second and he goes i bought an e-bike wow that's right.

Brigham: Since this is the endless we should try to be a little more accurate about how.

Tayson: Tayson is giving this guy way too much.

Brigham: Credit with his illiteracy and pronunciation and ability to speak clearly okay this guy he looked real dirty looked real dirty and talked really slow and slurred if you know what i mean so when he said i bought an e-bike it was like took about 10 seconds to say i bought and then he swallowed and then he said an e-bike and then he slowly started to pedal away we started to try to back it up and then he's like.

Tayson: It's real big.

Tyler: It was about five sizes too big for him.

Brigham: So he's pedaling off he turns around to.

Tayson: Pedal off and tyler's like there's no way he bought that e-bike he just left a dollar at someone's camp but took it it was just laughing but anyways he turns to go and he's not talking to anyone in particular now he's like 20 yards away from us and he's just like this is real fun or something he's like great this is great that's what he says he starts pedaling away oh man we got i i literally laughed until i was i was shedding a few tears i thought it was so dang funny but uh no that guy was on cloud nine literally just uh hanging out in his own world having fun and next thing we know our shuttle driver with uh pizza was showing up and uh that was a a very welcome sight.

Tayson: We were all very happy to see brennan and uh i think most of us put down about five slices of pizza before we even knew what happened and uh man that was that was good had to pick up some coke that was very satisfying but uh yeah it was good and then we just did a whole lot of driving to get home and we had finally completed our uwenta highline trail uh two years essentially in the making in some ways uh some of us have been aware of the trail and thinking about it for a whole lot more than that um but it was it was a it was really an amazing experience um you know a lot of lessons were learned over multiple years but uh really just incredible incredible country that wilderness style. Country you know is is just rugged it's unforgiving but it's some of the most pristine beautiful country that you can you can ever experience and um yeah it was just just really really remarkable it's one of those things that.

Derek: You definitely you definitely at least for me you look back on and say i'm glad i did it thanks and asked i mean we were doing some interview questions and trying to film some things maybe put a video together i'm at the end of the trail and one of them was would you do it again my immediate answer was no but not that i didn't enjoy the trail i uh i did and and i would go back to do parts of it but if i were to spend a week and do a hundred plus miles somewhere i would not do the same trail again having seen it once i would go explore somewhere new but definitely was worth doing the once and definitely would be worth going back to explore some of those parts you. Know here and there bits and pieces again uh it was pretty amazing what we were able to experience.

Tayson: I think a lot of us were kind of on the same page like some of us would would do the whole thing again but really most of us would want to go do like the 60 to 70 mile section kind of starting at like lighty peak and just going through like the more high country section and kind of cutting off essentially the last day the last day of like the last 25-ish miles is you know it's not that it's like not worth doing but it's not worth doing twice type of thing um well the logistics is hard to do a point-to-point.

Tyler: Shuttle and everything so for me i would probably rather do some big loops that went through some of the other basins that we didn't see yet.

Derek: And then hopped on the high line for a.

Tyler: While and then hopped off you know yeah that's more of just personality wise.

Derek: Where i'm at like i don't need to go do and see the same thing again probably ever unless it's like bits of it but i also got to see something new i i'm big on seeing new things and doing new big things so especially if i've taken a week to go do something it's probably going to be something new so okay oh i was just.

Brigham: Going to say i i'd definitely do it again i just i i would totally agree with the the starting from the east to the west that first 25 mile day i would absolutely eliminate that there's like there's no in my mind like the other the 80 mile high line trail you know from lady peak to the to the west that would be i'd do that many many times throughout the rest of my life in fact that's i've already talked to my kids about kind of making that a family trip when they turn a certain age and just kind of having to be a family uh right of passage and then honestly i could probably i could spend like years of compiled time in the winters like aside from the highline trail with my kids but. Just like some loops and some some routes so much fishing you know three to four day trips up there that put together like a 50 mile trip i think like there's like a lifetime of of their country to explore so much up there.

Derek: That's just amazing stuff that you could easily spend a lifetime exploring it um so i mean yeah there's still i think if you do i think if there's one con of.

Tayson: Our trip it's that we went through the country so fast uh at times it can fill fast um you're kind of zoned into clicking off some miles and stuff but okay i think that's worth talking about.

Tyler: Though because i think when people are listening they're like oh joe couldn't do the pace you guys wanted to do why not just slow down or why did we go so fast through such pretty country so i think we ought to kind of explain what our our purposes were for doing the under high line in four and a half days where most people do it in eight or ten i mean we kind of talked.

Brigham: About like last year but there's gonna be new listeners i mean there's it's multifaceted there's like practical reasons logistical reasons there's kind of like company operations reasons um you know like one of the things we talked about last year is um this is basically like the company leadership team minus one um and it's it's very hard to just basically have 80 of your company out of the office for i mean it's hard for five days like we're all playing catch up with our workload now but like that that's a big deal so like stretching that out for like three or four more days is just it's not very practical or prudent um yeah that's just one aspect yeah i mean there's there's also family time.

Tayson: Like we did this basically during one work week without needing to go onto weekends so we didn't have to cut a whole lot into like weekend family time personal time things like that so that's another facet that if we can do that we will you know and um but yeah i mean i think i think to the listener like if they're doing this for personal like making that a six or seven day trip slowing down even one to two days would would uh have probably been preferable and i would think you'd be able to fish some of the nights and and spend time maybe in some of the spots and you know just things like that but yeah we're we definitely condensed it primarily for the purpose of you know work week and leadership being.

Tayson: Out of office and um you know just just some of those type of facets it also is a really good opportunity for us to push the limits of gear and gear testing and and push the thesis of living ultralight you know joe coming on this trip it was awesome because he got to really experience like the pure necessity of having less weight on you and how much that matters when you're when you're like pushing the limits of gear and pushing some boundaries some days and and stuff like that so there's there's a lot of reasons for us but yeah i would say like just because we did it that way does not mean that anyone else should or should plan on that it's just we had some limitations that we worked around so yeah that. I think that.

Tyler: When we're pushing ourselves that hard and and we're doing that many miles it really pushes the gear beyond like the normal usage of it which is awesome r d.

Derek: For us too so.

Tyler: We had a lot of r d going on and uh you'll see in our videos there's a lot of unfamiliar products and that's all we're going to say about them yeah right that's all we can already.

Tayson: Um but let's do really quick we're pretty far into this let's kind of do a rapid fire round really quick so two questions um well i'll make it three biggest takeaway from highline number one number two favorite piece of gear number three what you would have left behind so uh we'll start with you derek with biggest takeaway from highline biggest takeaway from highline i need way more.

Derek: Crunchy snacks.

Tayson: Makes perfect sense all right one bag of.

Derek: Corn nuts was not enough.

Tayson: Okay uh favorite piece of gear favorite piece of gear um.

Derek: I would say probably my tent the 40th tent and these guys comment about me setting it up real quick every night it's really not hard to set up especially when you don't care what the ground looks like underneath.

Tyler: I had great ground.

Tayson: And.

Derek: You have so much space in there even more than a lot of the freestanding style tents i've used before so that was really nice okay what would you.

Tayson: Left behind i brought too much insulation because of.

Derek: Last year where we were so cold and in the snow um i had both the ventus and we've started teasing out the vario which is a warmer synthetic jacket and it basically it basically replaces a three season puffy and i had that and my mid layer and rain gear and i just didn't need it i just did not need that much insulation i also had dragon will zip offs which i never used so.

Tayson: Probably less insulation less insulation uh tyler your first question is biggest takeaway.

Tyler: Um dang.

Tayson: This is rapid fire tyler so all right should we go to the next one his biggest takeaway was he likes to do 20 mile days not 22 mile days all right uh next one that probably was it.

Tyler: Like being in such amazing country and doing 23 to 25 mile days like just doesn't quite give me enough time to soak it in the way that i would like but 20 miles is like totally doable so favorite piece of gear favorite piece of gear um i really liked the vario jacket for this application it was like perfect insulation so again the vario jacket is basically kind of.

Tayson: Like a sister jacket to the ventus but you'll hear more about it in a couple of months and then the what would you leave behind um.

Tyler: Like derek i was packed for cold snowy weather and i don't really re i don't really like if you left the the.

Tayson: Muck luck boots behind and no i mean i wasn't that bad but like i did.

Tyler: Have the wool zip off bottoms i would have still brought those knowing how unforgiving those mountains are and how back country you are but um i did pack like a big heavy pair of wool socks that i only planned on sleeping in but i also had packed our loftic booties.

Tayson: So like i didn't need both of those.

Tyler: Stuff yeah so i would have left i would have left the socks.

Derek: Just too much insulation all right well there were some nights where all i slept.

Tyler: With was the booties of the ball of club that i was wearing because i was too hot no one peeks in tyler's tent at night.

Tayson: Yeah we ask him to pitch it low he always pitches it high i don't know what the deal is.

Tayson: Says he wants maximum airflow you know um all right i could see the light yeah for some reason he could see the lightning when all of us couldn't see it out of our tents but uh all right brigham biggest takeaway.

Brigham: Oh crap man my my legs got fried like i think i've got permanently burned tissue in my even your legs have been flaking off of the knee my my my lips like i can deal with that they're tiny but my from the knee down my legs got i put i had blisters on my legs and so i mean i'm stupid i didn't take any sunscreen i've never taken sunscreen backpacking in my life but and you know part of that's you know the high line trail last year.

Tyler: There's just that.

Brigham: Snow and clouds and rain seared into my brain that like i just thought man if anything i'm just going to be cold and wanting to put on pants and rain pants and but man my legs were fried so biggest takeaway is like i can't do that i've gotta take sunscreen um.

Tayson: Big or a favorite piece of gear.

Brigham: Um i'm gonna go the previous choices were very good i sustained those um but my favorite piece gear was a backpack that i was testing okay and what would you left behind i'd leave behind the 15 degree top quilt that was definitely overkill i would the 30 would have been perfect 30 degree topical would have been perfect and i was just over over insulated every single night and so that was definitely like some unnecessary weight so yeah yeah i think those are all really good.

Tayson: So let's close it there uh my biggest takeaway from the trip um man i don't even i don't know i i should have been thinking or.

Brigham: I'm the last one to go so i should have a takeaway but.

Tayson: I think it's just like.

Brigham: Kind of related to just overall.

Tayson: Experience i mean and like remembering your experiences and so for me what i would have left behind is some of the crappy food i didn't want to eat what i wish i would have brought like the takeaway was just like i should have stuck to my food plan that i have vetted out before you know i stuck to like my packing gear list but for some reason i just didn't follow through with my food side of what i've proven on trail so that was just a big takeaway as i you know i had to basically deal with kind of nausea and not wanting to eat and stuff like that that may have been somewhat preventable had i packed off of what i you know my experience so big takeaways just stick to what you know.

Tayson: Experience wise and and um and that pays dividends i think on on a trip like this like you should never go to a trip like this with this level of intensity mileage without doing a lot more vetting a lot more time on trail and that will pay big dividends for you so and then i would say my favorite piece of gear um man that one's that one's tough like derek i love my 40s i feel super at home in there i enjoyed a backpack that i was testing um but i would say probably for newer like a newer thing that i was taking is i did take a newer garmin mini inreach mini 2 and i was very impressed with just the improvements of the two over the one i did feel like it it.

Tayson: Sent messages faster it got messages in easier and the battery life was like stupid good like i would turn it on and leave it on all day long i'd turn it off when i slept and turn it back on the next morning and i had like 80 battery by the end of the trip five days of that it was it was ridiculous it was like suspiciously good so um that was that was kind of a new piece of gear that that i enjoyed seeing and using on trails so i don't know also though just garmin watch too i'll just call that out like like brigham hates to hates for us to talk about we're just constantly watching the miles looking at pace looking at heart rates but i love to watch my heart rate at. Elevation and try to help myself you know hydrate and eat and do different things to to help you know see if i try to help myself get good rest get my heart rate low at night monitor it things like that so that's that's another one but all right we've we've been going a while i want to put out one one last thing.

Tyler: Okay so um for those of you who didn't see it or didn't participate we treated this trip as part of our Live Ultralight member 100 mile challenge for this summer and what that entailed was us doing a training program through the summer with the participants who signed up for that and then we had a trip window where everyone got to go out and do a hundred mile trip at the same time so in a way it was an opportunity for people to do a hundred mile trip with us because of permitting stuff we can't have hundreds of people on trail together at the same time so we this is the best way we've found to do that and this was our first uh year of trying this and it was a great success it was.

Tyler: A good success for us we've had participants who joined who had awesome stories and trips and it proved the concept for us so we're going to be doing this again next year it may not be 100 miles it may not be on in august but if you're interested in learning how we train for this and learning how to do bigger days or if you're just interested in in taking part in something where we do live streams every week and we talk about the craft of backpacking then keep an eye out for the 100 mile challenge we'll announce it way earlier the next time around and it'll be even bigger and better but for this year it was a great success as a test and we want to thank everyone who did it with us yeah. I would definitely second that it's.

Tayson: Been awesome to see the feedback it's been super positive and if you listening to this you know have interest in trying something out like this for yourself watch that for next year it would really be a fun thing to participate with we get you more than your money's worth of of swag and tons of you know live streams and experiences and frameworks and and it's just fun to do it as a group so definitely pay attention for that it's it it was a it was a really fun thing this year that we did so okay we have uh gone on for a while it was obviously a big trip lots to go through we really appreciate you guys hanging on for it um if you have comments on the podcast or any thoughts make sure.

Tayson: To leave us a review we will read that on the show and really appreciate all the reviews that we have they do help the podcast grow they help us get in front of more people and help more people get outside and Live Ultralight so again really appreciate it make sure you're subscribed and we will uh we'll listen to you guys or you'll listen to us i guess on the next episode of the little trip all right we'll see you.