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- My name's Matt, I'm a Brand Manager
at a backpacking company.
In my job I interact with a lot of customers.
And I find out about a lot of interesting
and unique trails all across the world.
The Uinta Highline Trail really stood out
because it seemed to be such a uncommon trail.
- It's really remote, it's really high.
Most of the trail's above 10,000 feet.
I think it's just kind of a hidden gem.
- Just from the little research that I did.
And the pictures that I saw, I knew that this hike
was gonna be something spectacular.
- I didn't know really a whole lot
about Utah to be honest with you.
I wasn't expecting very much.
- I expect to be uncomfortable and in pain.
- Logistically when you try to get a lot of people
in one spot at the same time, usually something goes wrong.
And this time Steve's journey
really became a comedy of errors.
- Matt, Will and myself we flew on one plane and then Benny
had come in a day earlier and Steve was coming from Raleigh,
North Carolina and his flight didn't make it.
He was late, he missed his connection in Denver.
He stuck there, he had to change airlines.
Thank goodness he did arrive there a few hours late,
but we were worried.
We didn't know if he was gonna be able
to even come with us on the hike or not.
So it was great that he he got there.
It wouldn't have been the same without Steve.
- These guys, I don't know why I like them, I really don't.
So I'm gonna be late going into Salt Lake City.
I have no time to go to a store to buy food.
And I'm asking them to buy food for me
and they're like, no, I don't have room.
I don't have time, I can't do it.
You're gonna have to starve to death on the site.
Well, finally, Will Wood
My Savior, went out and bought me a bunch of food
and I had plenty to eat on the trail.
- Fortunately, our shuttle driver was so gracious.
He was able to just wait on Steve
and that made that a less stressful event.
- So basically I'm a Star Wars nerd,
especially with the original trilogy.
So you've got, Boba Fett, Mandalorian,
Imperial Destroyer, Slave I, TIE Fighter.
So I have like, a lot of Star Wars stuff.
And because of those tattoos, we could never get
a ride hitch hiking into town, we had to walk the whole way.
- From Salt Lake City, it was about a four
to five hour drive.
It was so cool because you instantly
just start to ascend into the mountains.
And then you go around the mountain range.
So we went through the desert.
And all we were doing there was climbing,
just to see the way the landscape looked
as we were approaching the trail, it was unexpected.
By the time we arrived at the trailhead,
we were already right around 8000 feet or so in elevation.
We knew at that point just seeing what it looked like,
we were in for an incredible hike.
- The mountains and the forests looked beautiful.
And we all just camped right there.
We're really just amped
to be starting this journey together.
- Well look at that spot right there, nice and flat.
I think I'm gonna put my tent right there.
- Right by the road?
- Right by the road.
- Are crazy?
- That when the car is coming, you can wonder
if it's gonna run you over or not.
It'll add that little bit
of excitement to your night.
- Matt you found something good back there?
- Yeah, but it's, he's gonna say it's good.
He doesn't wanna walk back so...
What he says has no relevance to what's actually up there.
That's what we've learned on past hikes.
- Okay, I'm gonna go see what I can find.
- I feel the elevation.
Just from setting this up, I can feel it a little bit
it's a little harder to breathe.
- Actually I see a trail looks like a wildlife trail that
goes between our sites and some spots where elk have been
doing their business, there's a chance that they'll come up
through our camp tonight and that'd be cool.
- Can't wait to see some moose.
- Lets change that...You hear that?
- What is that?
- Matt said it was an elk.
- What time do you think sun rise is?
- Let's say, somewhere between00am
and30am would be a guess.
But either way, I mean, if thunderstorms are always
gonna be a threat in the afternoon
getting an early start is not a bad idea.
- If we get going at like six in the morning
we're gonna be done at 12 or one o'clock.
- Well if we get started at 10am, and then we hike
through a hailstorm every day at00pm
that would also not be fun.
- Nothing wrong with that.
- I don't think there's gunna be hailstorms
- A $20 bet that we have two or more hailstorms.
- Does it actually have to hail or...
- It actually has to hail, like a substantial amount.
- I will take that bet.
It's gotta be ice falling from the sky.
I mean twice on the same day doesn't count right?
- I'm gunna lose this bet but....
- I wanna just bet you some thing.
- Well, for me my expectations
for this hike was a little bit different.
I started my summer out hiking the long trail
that goes through the Green Mountains of Vermont.
Once I finished that one, I went over to California
through hiked John Muir Trail.
So I thought this wasn't gonna be like anything
magnificent is just 100 miles long.
Don't ever underestimate a trail.
- So today we're gonna hike about 12 miles.
We're gonna be in a forest
most of the time, so that's good.
The thing that's not so good
is there's not really much water.
We may have some water at the end,
so hopefully we don't get dehydrated.
We're gonna start climbing slow
and then in two more days, we should get above treeline
and be above 10,000 feet almost the whole time.
- My name is Tom Flanigan, I'm the Forest Archeologist
and the Heritage Program Manager
for the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest.
The Uinta Highline Trail traversals about 104 miles
along the backbone of the Uinta Mountains.
The eastern terminus is in McKee Draw
which is located on the Ashley National Forest.
The western terminus is over by Hayden peak,
Hayden Pass area near the Mirror Lake highway.
The Uintas were designated as a primitive area
long before the Wilderness Act.
So this was identified early on as a unique place.
We have a unique topography, we have a mountain range
that's unique in its linear structure going east to west,
the geology, the history and its importance
to the expansion of the West.
Even in 1935, it was identified as unique enough
to be set aside as a primitive area.
- The trail itself seems to be built in sections.
We've done our own research here.
And it was kind of interesting, the fact that a lot
of the Forest Service folks don't have a whole lot
of idea when the trail was actually built.
Doing some of the historic research we're able
to put together some of the different aspects of it.
And probably the earliest, identifiable concerted effort
to make a trail was during the Civilian Conservation Corps
era under the new deal and the Roosevelt administration
trying to put everybody back to work.
A lot of our infrastructure on the national parks,
national forests were created by the CCC.
And I did find a newspaper article dating to the 1930s
talking about some of the early sections of the trail
from that Hayden Peak Hayden pass area being constructed
by Boy Scout troops and also members of the CCC.
So then probably what happened is then the trail
was building in sections from that, and then also maybe
existing trails had then got tied into it.
- Hi you guys!
- Moooooooo
- Uh Oh.....
- Not the wildlife I thought I was gunna see out here
- Day one, we were constantly in and out of meadows
and forests and the trail was tough to navigate.
In fact, for a huge portion there was actually
no trail, you were really just following a route.
- So the trail was marked with rock Cairns
and blazes like ax places on the trees
and a lot of it didn't really have foot tread,
or if there was foot tread it was very light.
And I think we got turned around
a couple times that first day.
We had a nice argument over which was the right trail
because there was an old trail
and a new trail that split off.
- This isn't showing any turns.
There's a road that we're supposed to cross
and we haven't crossed it yet.
And there's no junctions on here.
- All I did was get a file,
you guys made me the navigator
I didn't ask to be the navigator.
- Yeah, but you didn't check your file.
- See up here, the blaze is old, but on this same trail
going down before you get to the...it's brand new.
- Yeah, let's stick on the new trail.
- What do you mean a new trail?
- No, I'm saying this trail
has a brand new blaze at the bottom.
- Yeah, because it's going that way.
- I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
- I don't wanna get lost.
- My name is Joe Valesko.
I started a company that makes ultralight
backpacking gear in 2005.
Since then, I've hiked probably
over 10,000 long distance miles.
- Joe's one of the most interesting people I've ever met.
He's one part like robot in a way.
At work, he's just an engineer.
He's kind of emotionless,
he just wants to do things a certain way.
- Problem there is on the other tent on the prototype tent,
this piece shouldn't be this long.
It's supposed to be like this long.
- And then on the other hand, you've got this guy
who in Scotland on top of the second highest mountain
in Scotland, it's like 60 mile per hour sustained winds,
we can barely walk.
And we're like getting blown all over the place.
And I look up and the guy's got
the biggest smile on his face.
So he's like, one part engineer, and then one part living
on the edge, and it's almost like he's two people.
- Woooo!!!
It is straight down.
- Joe has the most minimal needs of anyone I've ever met.
- So I always hike in sandals, they keep my feet cool.
They dry off really quick.
- There's not really any downside to it, really.
I mean, I did the Continental Divide Trail in sandals
in the snow and everything else,
I just had waterproof socks.
- He can get by on very little external material things.
He's truly a minimalist, and he's happy being so.
- Joe's kind of quiet, doesn't say a whole lot.
- He's very opinionated, he's very determined,
and he's mentally strong.
He's got more experience backpacking than any of us.
He's hiked the Appalachian Trail,
the Continental Divide Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail.
Those are just the three long trails
he's done in the United States.
Then the Te Araroa in New Zealand.
His wife did a lot of the hikes with him
but she did the Te Araroa, pregnant.
If that says anything.
- He's always been very confident.
He's very smart, he loves the outdoors.
I think of him, I think of the color green.
- I was outdoors a lot as a kid.
We had a kind of a forest behind my house
and I spent a lot of time back there.
We had a river, I used to go swimming a lot.
My family used to go on camping trips.
Whenever we went on vacation,
we were usually low budget so we would go camping.
When I was in high school, I got the idea
that I wanted to hike the Appalachian Trail.
So I started researching backpacking,
I'd never been backpacking before,
I realized that lightweight gear was important.
So I bought the lightest gear I could find,
did some test hikes, looked at it and realized
a lot of it was just way too heavy and unnecessary.
So I got into making my own gear and ultimately
ended up hiking the Appalachian Trail
in 2004 with mostly homemade gear.
Nobody was ultralight back then, everybody was carrying
like 40, 50 pounds, big heavy backpacks, it was awful.
So I was carrying, you know, an eight pound backpack
and everybody's like, what are you doing,
you're gonna die or they were all impressed
or scared for my life, one of the other.
The people that liked the idea, they're like you should
start making this stuff when you get off
the trail and I had just graduated college
and didn't have a job yet or anything.
So I finished the AT, went back home to my parents house
and of course they were putting
a lot of pressure on me to get a job.
So I ended up getting a job as a software developer
but at the same time I was starting to make
my first products to sell and I put together
a little website and that's how it all got started.
I met my wife in college, I had a studio apartment
so I was working out of my kitchen, I would come home
from work and start working again.
I'd start building a backpack or building stuff sacks
or building little stuff like that.
- In 2010 we grew pretty fast, it was actually stressful.
- I spent the last decade and a half building my business
and that was more than a full time job.
You know we'd get up in the morning and work until we went
to bed at night pretty much, but I've been trying
to tone that back or dial that back lately.
- We are having more family time which is great.
- My family is the most important thing to me.
Every day we try and go and do something.
We'll go canoeing or camping, outdoor stuff.
From what I've seen kids just do the opposite
of what their parents do.
So I don't really have expectations.
I hope they like the outdoors and I hope they like doing
the same sorts of stuff that my wife and I like to do.
But eventually they're gonna be their own people.
I know that.
- I think he's a great husband.
I think he's a great father.
I hope I'm friends with Joe for life.
- I got the sandals, the staff and the hats.
So I picked up the trail name, Samurai Joe
It'd make more sense if I was wearing the hat.
- My tail name is Red Beard and I think you might be able
to figure out why I have that trail name.
I got it on the AT, my first thru hike.
- My trail name is Plug-It-In.
Actually, it's the name of my business.
I was wearing one of my Plug It In t-shirts.
Whenever I was hiking one time and a,
through hiker came through and said
"Hey what's up, Plug It In?"
That's how it happens.
- My trail name is Cannonball.
I got it on my very first night
before I hiked my very first hike.
I fell off the top deck of the Fontana Hilton
Getting up to go to the bathroom, I got a concussion.
And everybody was very concerned.
They said, "Are you okay?"
I said, no, I'm not okay.
But no one seemed to get up to care.
The next day, I had a concussion, I couldn't eat.
I was dizzy, and I almost threw up.
I love it, so I've been hiking ever since,
I fell in love with hiking that day.
- My trail name is Details.
Actually, Steve gave it to me because I was obsessesing
over all the logistics of the trip, and now they like
to make fun of me when I miss a detail, so...
- It's built in name so we can make fun
of him when he gets things wrong.
And we just make up things that he does wrong
just so we could make fun of him.
He's a great planner.
- Dang that's good
- My name's Gordon Hirschi.
I'm president, Uinta Basin Back Country Horsemen.
I've been clearing these trails for about 10 years.
The Highline Trail is special to me because there's very few
people and it has great scenery.
The purpose behind Back Country Horseman
is we make sure that trail stays open.
Basically, we go through with chain saws
and other hand tools, and the trees that are fallen
or getting ready to fall,
that might be a danger to the users,
we remove those trees from the trail.
We also put in water bars, either made out of rocks
or small wooden bars, and they're put in at an angle
to divert the water off the trail.
If you don't, it'll eventually wash the trail out.
In the winter, I'm a couch potato.
When it comes time to working on the trails,
I actually look forward to it, I bug
the forest service I says, get the gates open.
I need to get up there and get to work.
And then in the health aspect, I usually lose 30
to 40 pounds every summer by just getting out
and climbing on and off a horse and the gals
sometimes asked what my secret is, so I says, come on out.
I'll put you on a horse and give you a chainsaw
and I'll show you how to lose pounds.
Something had to be done
or we would lose the trails for posterity.
- Well, we were walking down this meadow here looking
for some water and we came across this beautiful
little stream it kind of looks
like it just comes right out of the ground.
- I don't feel great.
- You don't?
What's the matter?
- I'm just hurty everywhere.
- Hurty
He's in the fetal position.
- Sorry man.
- I just had a great dinner, great hiking day.
Can't wait to get in there and go to sleep, watch some TV.
Read, write some letters.
Wake up in the morning, and do it all over again.
- One of the biggest things we run onto as trail people
is what they call "altitude sickness".
- Will, he wasn't feeling too good,
he was having some issues with the elevation.
- He had a slight headache as did I
and he was feeling a little bit nauseous.
- You figure they're coming from almost zero
all the way up to almost 10,000 feet.
- It's not a fun deal.
The severe cases you feel disoriented.
- Well, today was day one on the Highland,
which trail are we on again?
- By the time we got to camp,
it seemed to be getting a little bit worse.
So after he attempted to eat some food, it really got worse.
- My name is Will Wood and I work for a backpacking company
and I run the backpacking company's social media
and I also backpack for living.
- Will's a fun guy, he's pretty laid back.
He's usually pretty happy go lucky.
- You're almost doing the backpack dance.
- He's a strong hiker.
- The older I get, the less I can keep up with a guy.
- He's got thousands of miles under his belt.
He knows what he's doing when he's on the trail.
- He hiked the Appalachian Trail and then the year
after that he did most of the PCT.
- He has a little camera and he films everything.
He does gear reviews.
- Hey, guys, Red Beard here.
Well, I've been getting a lot of requests on trekking poles.
- He filmed his hikes.
- Wow you can really tell just how much water
got dumped in this area.
- Apparently a bunch of people like to watch him do that.
So he's pretty popular on social media.
- He loves the outdoors, he loves the community.
He really cherishes his relationship with his followers,
and I cherish my relationship with him.
- Will Wood is quite a tender soul much more
than what you would think just meeting him.
He has a lot of depth, a lot of emotion.
He cares deeply about people.
He's very smart, he has a lot of skills.
He is just a close dear friend of mine.
- Growing up as a kid, I was really passionate about sports.
I played tennis, soccer, cross country track.
And I started hiking, when I was young with my dad,
he would take us to the Smoky Mountains and my family
would kind of hang out in town and my dad and I would go
into the forest and just hike all the trails in the Smokies
and ever since then I really started to develop
a passion for being outside and backpacking.
- I hike because I love being in the forest.
And I've also found that when I'm traveling,
I love experiencing different cultures,
whether I'm hiking just in different states
in the United States or in other countries.
- Well, guys, we've made it to Iceland.
- Well, I can't believe I'm here
in southern Chile of Patagonia.
- Well, here we are in Tasmania.
- I really get a grasp for the culture and the people
when I'm walking and exploring on foot.
So it's just a lot different than driving in a car.
You really feel much more connected to the location.
- Before I started long distance hiking in 2014,
I found that I was kind of lost and a lot of times
I settled in life, I got married young, before I really
even kind of knew who I was as a person.
- Before I was kind of just playing everything safe.
So long distance hiking forced me out there on my own.
It really just, it awakened me, it awakened my soul.
Since then, my life has just been one adventure
after the next really and all it took was that first
initial step, once I started chasing after the things
that I was passionate about, that's when I just started
to notice my life beginning to change.
I met Joe and Matt in 2013, as I was preparing
for the Appalachian Trail, a good friend of mine
who was gonna originally hike the trail with me.
He went to the warehouse of the backpacking company
where Joe and Matt work at and he introduced himself
and they invited us to come on
a hike with them in the Smokys.
It was about a 70 miles section hike.
We started to bond on that hike and form a friendship.
After I finished the Appalachian Trail,
I ended up moving down to Florida to work with them
and we've been close friends ever since.
And we've hiked all over the world together the last four
or five years it's been quite an adventure.
- Will and I met actually on a dating app.
- She was different than any girl
that I had seen since moving to Florida.
Her pictures were of her on a tractor.
She's a farmer and she's very passionate
about what does, I just was really drawn to that.
- When we first met, he popped his head in my window.
And was super smiley and I just saw all this red hair
and he was just super funny, made me laugh a lot,
we got along great, he was also a little nervous.
I could tell, but it was really cute.
- Long distance hiking definitely
can impact your normal home life.
Obviously, if you're gonna be gone for a month
to six months hiking through the forest,
sometimes you don't even have cell phone service.
It can be tough, it can be tough for those you love
and those that you leave behind.
But for us, it's definitely a little bit
more difficult because we are running a small farm.
So it does put more work on Joelle.
But she's a worker, so she's able to hold things down
until I get back and I'm kind of more her helper.
She's the professional farmer, so I'm learning from her.
- Hiking for Will is his passion
and I want him to do what he loves.
He's always excited to come home and share
with me his experiences and I really love that.
- Typically, when I hike at elevation I've walked 1000 miles
before I've gotten there so I've had no issues
but on this trip after the first day of hiking,
we were approaching 10,000 feet in elevation.
So last night I experienced for the first time
having elevation sickness and it was pretty rough.
I attempted to eat dinner and threw it up
so I threw up twice, today's a new day.
I'm feeling great this morning.
So let's keep our fingers crossed.
It's gonna be different today.
- Will seem to be doing fine and all the effects
of the altitude had gone away.
- So Benny and I took a little side trip down
to Mill Park, which had an old sawmill and we found
these old cabins that were like 100 years old or more.
It was really cool to see the history
of the pioneers, to see the relics.
- The remnants maybe just three, four logs high,
but still, that was very cool to see that,
especially to step in those cabin areas.
Knowing that 100 years ago, people lived in those,
and people were walking on the very spots
that we were walking on.
- Near the end of the day, we're gonna pass
Carter Military Trail and there's a stream there
so we can load up, then after that we're gonna
be hitting a bunch of water.
- Day two was very similar to day one
we did pop out of the forest.
- We came next to this one hill and we could see
just this one pile of rocks up there and we thought,
you know, that looks pretty cool, let's go check it out.
It honestly look like a chimney, is was basically a huge
rock cairn that someone had built up that was
probably eight feet tall, if not taller than that.
- We got our first view of the mountains all around.
So that was pretty cool.
We sat up there on top of this little peak
for quite a while and had our lunch and everything.
- So you see this hill behind me it doesn't look
like it's that tall, right?
It's maybe like 40, 50 feet, just climbing up this hill.
I felt like I was about to die, I could not breathe.
We're at about 10,150 feet or so.
There's just not much oxygen up here.
But I can say I'm loving it, it's beautiful out here.
- Throughout day two, Joe seemed to be coughing
and falling behind, which is not typical Joe,
he's usually near or at the lead.
So we were all kind of concerned to see
what was going on there but it didn't seem like too big
of a deal 'cause his spirits were still pretty good.
- We continue to gradually climb all day
as we were approaching the High Uintas.
We had a GPS file that we used, it was on our phone
and it would have been tough to get
through that area without that.
- The trail was still mostly non existent
We were just following cairns and blazes on the trees.
- So it's hailing out a little bit,
hoping it doesn't start raining.
We found this nice little spot to relax
under the pine tree here while we wait, have a little snack.
Hopefully it'll just blow by without raining too hard.
It's dripping on me, but that's about it right now.
- During the first 20 some odd miles as you're approaching
the High Uintas there's really
not many opportunities to get water.
- We stumbled across some water
that may have been questionable.
It seemed like there was a lot of cow activity in the area.
And the water tasted reminiscent of that activity.
- It looked like cows had done nothing
but pee and poop in this thing for like years.
- It was pretty disgusting.
- It was kind of gross and kind of yellowish brown color.
- You know cow poop water is not
your first choice, I don't think.
- There really wasn't any water that day on trail,
other than that, so we just did our best
to filter and scoop from there.
I don't think I filtered it but I did, I did boil it
and cook with that water, it was all right.
It wasn't the worst water I've ever had.
- The Highline Trail does cross
what was the historic Carter Military Road.
The Carter Military Road is named
after this guy named Judge Carter.
He was a veteran of the Seminole Wars down in Florida.
He was out of the Fort Bridger Area, he was a sutler,
which is the guy who supplies
the army with all their equipment.
It was a fairly lucrative business
that he got through a friend of his.
With the advent of the transcontinental railroad
making access to the west a lot easier.
And Fort Bridger being a nexus of things
and you had all the settlement in the Uinta Basin,
encroaching on what was also designated in 1861
as the Uintah Ouray Reservation.
So there was back and forth between a lot
of the Native Americans and the settlers.
So it obviously had a serious impact on the Ute folks,
all three bands that are now on the reservation,
two of them from Colorado that were forcibly removed.
The Battle of Little Bighorn, also known as
Custer's Last Stand
is when basically the Seventh Cavalry was decimated
by a fairly large conflagration of a bunch
of different bands of Native Americans.
And that was the first real defeat that the army
had suffered at the hands of the Native Americans.
So that of course sparked a lot of fear among settlers
that they would be next if the army couldn't protect them.
Of course there was mistrust on both sides.
In the Uinta Basin after the Ute's were forcibly
put on the reservation, the local settlers,
white settlers wanted protection and petitioned
to have a military encampment there.
So military Fort Thornburgh was created.
In order to connect the Uintah Basin with Fort Bridger
and Carter, of course, probably for his own elevation
on the fact that he could supply two military forts.
Had this road made that crossed the Uintas.
- Good day hiking today, stayed hydrated,
and there's the raw water out of this little puddle.
That's not even really a stream.
Probably moving very slowly, you had to dip.
And then this is it, filtered, it's got a little red tint
to it from the Kool Aid.
So here we are set up I'm right in direct line of the sun.
Somehow Joe always gets the best spot, so,
that's why I'm here.
- Well, we did about 10 miles today.
We got hailed on just a little, bit got sprinkled on
just a little bit, nothing to get us wet.
Matt says it's about three miles to the next potential
water source, it should be all right.
- Good morning
- Well we had a little stormed kind of just kind
of glanced us a little bit not too bad.
The lightning was pretty dang bright.
I almost had to crawl way up underneath my sleeping bag
to kind of block a little bit of that out
but besides that I slept great.
Just love being out in the wilderness.
Just something peaceful about it.
You can just sleep forever but time to wake up,
time to get going and we got miles to do.
- I got a nice rolling boil to get all
the crap out of there just in case.
- You gotta do that for about 10 minutes.
- No, you gotta do it for like 60 seconds.
- That's why your kind died off.
- I get blisters because I have a narrow heel
and it slips up and down in a shoe
and I get a blister no matter what I do.
So this is a product made for hiking.
If I don't put enough, I'll still get a blister.
- You should put honey on there.
Put honey all over your feet.
- Have you ever thought about that
You're not the star of this film.
So stop trying to horn in on my time.
- Today's day three, we're gonna be venturing out
of the forest into some of the higher mountains
above treeline, we're gonna start hitting a bunch
of lakes and streams and that water
shouldn't be an issue going forward.
It's only 10.7 miles today.
But we have a 700 more feet of elevation gain
than we did yesterday.
So 2300 feet in total, which still isn't that bad,
but elevation gonna still get you winded.
- So as we were going down the trail, animals ran across it.
- I was in front of everybody and off in the distance
I saw what appeared to be full grown moose.
- I saw it first, Will is gonna probably dispute that,
but I'm like, look, look at the elk, look at the moose.
I called them moose and the big dispute arose
from that because Joe said "Those aren't moose"
He and Will went into a big argument
for about three days on this.
- They had white butts,
I've never seen a moose with a white butt.
- I'm pretty certain they were moose.
I'm gonna go ahead and stick with that.
- We were heading towards a peak called Leidy Peak.
And it was the first time
that we were gonna go above treeline.
- It's just so mind boggling, looking up at a mountain.
It looks like it's just right there.
When you get up on top of it, it's extremely high.
It's just so hard to get the scale.
But we climb up Leidy Peak, we get some cell phone service.
Everybody's on their phones.
- And I don't think anybody was really
paying much attention to the sky.
- We're all standing around taking pictures and I'm looking
around thinking, I don't wanna be up here.
This isn't looking good.
That was a moment that I thought, sure enough...
Okay this is where I die
- A lightning strike got really close.
Everybody freaked out.
Right as we were at the high point,
this thunderstorm just opened up and started hailing on us
and lightning started striking all over the place.
- There's a lightning storm right there,
but there's not really anywhere to go.
Except right down here.
- And it was like a mad rush to get
back down to the tree line.
So we don't get burned into a crispy critter
from a lightning bolt.
- I owe Matt $20 bucks because it said
it was gonna hail every day, I thought he was lying.
- He was not lying.
- Some hail hit me in a sensitive part.
You can say, that wasn't so much fun.
- Once we made it down into the forest, it was pelting us.
And the lightning was crashing right above us.
I look over at Steve and he's got his cell phone up.
And he was looking at a picture.
And he turned his phone towards me
and was like, look at my girlfriend.
Isn't she beautiful?
And I was like, damn.
It was definitely a Steve moment.
That's what I love about Steve.
He wasn't even thinking about the lightning
or the danger that he was in, he didn't care.
He was just thinking about his girlfriend.
- Everyone scattered and we all got into cover
and back into the tree line.
So that cell exhausted itself and went away
and we gathered up and got a game plan together.
We pulled up the weather radar,
and it showed another big cell just coming our way.
So we got back down into the tree line
just to be protected from any lightning strikes.
So we're waiting it out, better be safe than sorry.
- We wrote out like two waves
of storms until the weather clear.
- That was the end of our first real hail lightning storm.
But then we didn't have cell phone service after that.
- I didn't die there, so that's good, I'm still here.
To hike another day.
- That was probably the most fun part of the trip, for me.
It was the only part when I forgot that everything hurt
and that I couldn't breathe.
- We reached the top of the plateau there,
close to 11,000 feet, and it was like walking in a field.
But on top of a mountain, I would say kind of like
The Highlands or something maybe
that you would imagine in Scotland.
- One of the really cool aspects of the Uintas is really
they're a monument to 19th century science.
The Uintas kind of formed a sort of a crossroads
of what they used to call the great surveys of the West.
You had the Hayden survey, the Clarence King survey
that came out of California, John Wesley Powell,
and they all kind of converged on the Uintas
at about the same time at about 1870.
They mapped the geology and they had paleontologists in toe.
So if you look at a lot of the peaks,
they're named after naturalist, geologists,
explorers, surveyors, and paleontologists.
- So you have Untermann Peak.
Untermann was well known for doing some
of the early renditions of both dinosaurs
and some of the early mammals and trying to make them
lifelike and sort of bring them to life for the public,
translating that from the bone to the actual animal itself.
Leidy was sort of a gentleman scholar,
also the father of Vertebrate Paleontology.
So there's a peak named after him.
He was one of the foremost
paleontologists in the 19th century.
Marsh Peak is named after Othniel Marsh,
A fairly famous sort of paleontological war took place
between Othniel Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope.
Marsh was associated with Yale, Cope was attached
to the Hayden Survey for a while, and they were battling
over the fossil fields of the West
It was sensational enough
that they basically warred with each other in the papers.
When it started off Cope was in New Jersey and was actually
getting some fossils from a rock quarry.
Paleontologists would team up with rock quarriers
and people that were miners and things like that
and as they would come across things,
they would then relate them to the paleontologists
and that's how they would get a lot of their specimens.
So Cope was down there and he was using this one quarry
and he invited Marsh down to check it out.
And then by the time he left, he didn't realize Marsh
made deal with these guys and they started
sending all the fossils to him.
So basically these guys were constantly
scooping each other's finds.
So that of course put them at odds very early on.
With the transcontinental railroad,
access and logistics are a lot easier.
So once that sort of opened up, and everybody knew
about the fossil fields of the West,
it was almost like a gold rush but for paleontology.
So these guys were always kind of trying to stake
out claims, and then claim jumping each other's claims
and then every time they would find something,
they would rush into print
so that they would be the ones to name it.
And then trying to one up the other guy.
That's why you would have maybe say something like,
the Uintatherium it might have five different names,
by the time it gets published, 'cause everybody's
finding them and then naming them themselves.
Marsh kind of had more the financial backing that he kind
of pushed Cope out in a lot of ways while Cope
was still able to find hundreds
of different fossils and fossil fields.
Another big bash against Cope was,
Cope had sort of a Plesiosaur,
and he had mounted the head on the wrong end.
So Marsh got a lot of traction out of basically trying
to make fun of him and saying didn't know what he was doing.
But then of course, Marsh is also famous for creating
a Brontosaurus by putting
the wrong skull on the wrong skeleton.
Leidy was so disgusted with the whole Marsh and Cope war,
going back and forth that he actually kind of bagged
out of it and stopped investigating in the West.
But overall, this went on and on they both died
about the same time.
There really wasn't a winner in the end,
but volumes have been written about these guys.
Cope is still the most highly published
scientists in American history.
In fact, actually what we've been talking about recently
is even trying to nominate one of the peaks
to be named after Edward Drinker Cope.
- Our first pass on this great hike was Gabbro Pass.
And once again, you just can't get the scale you're looking
at it going, how am I gonna hike over that?
- Like most of the passes on this trail,
it was a pretty vertical climb, it was Rocky.
But for me the passes are my favorite part.
So maybe some people dread them because it's a hard climb.
But with each step that you take, every time you turn
around and look back, the view just gets more spectacular.
- It was just gorgeous, just beautiful.
- Gabbro Pass was really our first experience of what
the next few days were gonna be like for us on this trail.
- We ended up down at Deadman's Lake, not really a name
of a lake you wanna be hanging out at,
especially after nearly getting struck
by lightning like multiple times.
- Deadman Lake is named after the unfortunate body
of a prospector that was found there
by a couple of individuals later.
The north slope is known to have fairly harsh winters.
Even today, we lose people in the Uintas.
So the idea that this prospector could be up there and run
afoul especially, you know, back in the early days,
when you don't have all the fancy
equipment that we have now.
It's pretty status quo back then you're really taking
your life in your hands,
especially as an individual going in there.
It's an undertaking now, but to do it,
say in the 1870s, or 80s, or 90s.
It's a whole different ball of wax.
- Today was probably one of the most eventful days
of hiking I've had, it started off pretty normal
and pretty awesome and then some crazy storms rolled in.
I almost got hit by lightning, then it started to hail,
which was kind of good because I won my bet with Joe
that it would hail at least three times.
So I won 20 bucks and then promptly a piece of hail
struck me in my genitalia, which was pretty not awesome.
But, it's funny now but wasn't really funny at the time.
I haven't even looked, it could be bruised, who knows.
- I feel like today was the first
real day of hiking. After the storms past.
It was beautiful and it felt like a ton of climbing.
It was only supposed to be 2300 feet, but it felt like more.
So it's a beautiful day.
We're here at this beautiful pond tonight
and we're gonna get some good rest 'cause tomorrow
we've got it again, we got 12 miles
and we're gonna probably be going over a couple passes.
- My name is Matt, I work for a backpacking company.
I love to travel.
I love my family and I love backpacking,
and I love it when I can incorporate all three together.
- The best way I can describe Matt,
he lives his life with integrity.
He makes it a point.
He is really dedicated to his family.
And that speaks to me, those two things speak volumes to me.
I would say when it comes down to it,
me and Matt are probably the two most alike people,
even though we come from totally different backgrounds.
- Growing up, I was a little explorer.
I was always spending time in the woods.
I was always building forts, going farther than my mom
would like on my bike or my skateboard.
I grew up with a single mother,
so I never really got the chance to travel or go anywhere.
As I grew up, like after high school, I was in a band
and I used that as an opportunity to explore the country,
go on tour, see places I'd never been before.
And I learned through those experiences
how valuable travel really was to me.
- He was a singer in a heavy metal band.
He's tattooed from head to toe.
He's never been high, he's never been drunk,
and his memory is like a steel trap.
He will pull names and dates out of his memory.
And you wonder, where does this come from?
- Matt was the person that I instantly
connected with when I met him.
He's a fun guy to be around.
On the trail, he's all for hiking 30 miles without breaking
and it's hard sometimes to keep up with him.
- My name's Kim Favero, I'm married to Matt.
I'm a cardiovascular specialist.
I met Matt on MySpace.
He tells me he was impressed with my picture
'cause I was pretending to lick Borat on like a bus stop
promotion for the movie.
So that was enough to reel him in I guess.
- And 11 months later, we were married.
On my honeymoon, we stumbled across
this trail in Canada and we just decided
to walk down it and about 15 minutes in, I was in heaven.
It was the first time I'd been in the woods in so long,
ever since that day man, it led me to my job.
It led me to so many adventures.
Every time I go into the woods, I just wanna go back.
- When I married Matt,
I knew that it wasn't gonna be boring.
I knew it was gonna be an adventure.
I knew that for sure.
Matt's crazy passionate
about everything he does, just unconventional.
I can just list off so many weird things he does.
He was in a band.
- Matt's a good organizer of everything really.
- He did A.M radio show.
- He plans most of our hikes.
- He was running all night scavenger hunt game.
- He also for a while was running a soccer club.
- He made t-shirts.
He did screen printing till like four in the morning once.
- That's what Matt does.
He finds people and gets them together to do things.
- People tolerate him pretty well.
- My family came to be,
again in true Favero fashion very unconventionally.
And I think at the time, we were talking about having kids,
and then we stopped talking about it
because he had gotten laid off.
We moved in with my mom,
we just weren't really in the position at that time.
And then I got pregnant.
- So in 2010, my wife and I were working out of our garage,
we were still building everything ourselves.
It was getting to the point
where we couldn't keep up with demand.
As I got into backpacking, I stumbled across Joe's website,
and I noticed that Joe had moved
to the next city south of me Palm Bay.
- Matt emailed and asked if he could come over
and check out some gear.
So he came to our house to our garage, checked out some gear
and we talked, we ended up going out to lunch.
And basically we ended up extending him
an offer to be a seamster for us.
So he was our first first outside employee.
- We kind of just went with it and slowly got
our lives back together structurally.
And then Lu was born in 2010.
But then, a few weeks later,
we found out she had a serious heart defect.
- She had a couple holes in her heart and some other things.
- It was a really trying time for my wife and I
because we were broke at the time,
our living situation wasn't the best.
And then we had this huge, horrible situation
with our daughter and through it, I was still able
to go on hikes, and it really helped me decompress.
For me hiking lets me get into a place in my mind
where I'm at peace with how I feel about things
that have happened and how I would feel
about things if they happened.
And going through a difficult situation
like that hiking really helped me stay strong.
- From then on, she's just been everything.
She's guided us through everything
and everything has been for her.
- My trail name is Champion.
I like to hike with my family.
The longest hike I've been on is Italy, France
and Switzerland. 100 miles.
I was the youngest kid that hiked it. In the world.
- The older I get, the more I realize life
isn't about obtaining possessions.
It's about obtaining experiences. What that translates
to with my family is traveling together and hiking together.
So the outdoors and hiking in general has become
an experience that we share to build
and foster our relationships with each other.
- Well, now today is day four, just got off,
just got packed up, spent the whole night coughing
so that wasn't great.
We're meeting somebody and we're picking up
our food drop today, and we're gonna go from hardly
any food to a six days of food
and so that's gonna be fun too.
Oh, and then I guess we have like a bunch of passes
to go over with all our heavy food.
And we've got 13 miles today,
so it's gonna be a big day for us, so there's that.
- So we've been smelling smoke all morning.
And you can see in the distance
here that the sky is all hazy.
You can smell it pretty good here.
So we're wondering if there's fires nearby
or how far away it is.
Hopefully it's not gonna impact our route,
but you never know.
- One of the great things about this hike was the community
in the area, we actually had someone that was willing
to drive out there and bring us our resupply.
So this allowed us not have to carry
10 days worth of food from day one.
- And we appreciate the kindness.
Of the gentleman who did our resupply, a phenomenal guy.
- Cameramen down.
- There was a little unexpected event, we lost Gordy,
our cameraman, he jumped off the trail
'cause he had extreme foot pain and blisters.
- It's been a crazy four days
seen stuff I'd never seen before.
Vistas I never imagined I would see.
Too bad my feet aren't hold up but..
It was cool, while it lasted, super cool.
- Cool, we're gonna miss you Gordy.
- See you in Salt Lake.
- I'll try to meet you at the end of the trail.
- All right man
- Best of luck out there.
- Stay safe
- Take care
- You too, it was awesome hiking with you.
- We hated to see Gordy go 'cause we got attached to him,
he was like became one of our own.
But we definitely understand we've all been there.
- So he was able to get a ride with Aaron off the trail.
So he was out.
- It left us with our producer
and other cameraman and Matt and Benny.
They picked up some cameras
and they were taking shots as well.
So we managed to get through it
but Gordy did miss a great hike.
- Chipeta Lake is named after the wife of Chief Ouray.
And he was one of the most well known Ute Chiefs
that the government actually sort of identified to speak
for all the Ute during the negotiations
over the Uinta Ouray, named after him of course,
Reservation in the Uinta Basin,
where now the three bands of Ute's reside.
- The Native American story in the Uintas
goes back to the late Ice Age.
We're talking about 15,000 years plus
of human habitation in North America, it's not new.
There's an archaeological culture called Clovis Culture.
And we know that we have artifacts from very close
to the forest, a famous Clovis cache of weapons was found.
And those date back to say 14,000 years ago.
- These are the folks that are still
in the last waning stages of the Ice Age.
These are the people that are still hunting mammoth,
and hunting extinct forms of animals
that we don't have any more.
We've got some more severe weather patterns.
We've obviously got lower sea levels,
that's affording people to actually come across Beringia,
which is the Bering Strait,
coming down into the continental United States.
- Time marches on, things change, the environment changes,
people adapt to their sort of home range ecological zones,
you see a little bit of diversity in that.
We don't necessarily know how they were organized, socially.
What they call themselves up until about the historic period
when we do have all these other sort of Western Shoshone
Piute and Ute bands that we see in more recent history
that we can identify with the names that they still
identify themselves with today.
- Obviously, native people have a very different
relationship and a very close relationship
with the archaeology and history of their own people.
As archaeologists, our job is to make that Native American
history relevant to people that aren't necessarily
of Native American ancestry, because I think a lot
of our problem comes from people see things
as the other, or they're not concerned about it
'cause they don't feel some sort of link to it
with that sense of stewardship and that sense of time depth
that we seem to always be yearning for.
But we have. If it can just be recognized
by more people as an American archaeology.
This is an American history and we're Americans.
- It really stunk to have to go on without one of the guys
in our group, but you just got to keep moving.
And that's what we did.
We threw all that weight into our packs.
And we took off again.
We still kept an eye on Joe.
I was kind of wondering if he was gonna bail
at that point because he was in bad shape.
In fact, I think, in my opinion,
he seemed to almost be doing worse than Gordy.
So I was nervous, and at that point, you know, I didn't know
if we were gonna have other opportunities
to get out of the mountains if it was necessary.
- I'm feeling all right, right now.
I've just been having a hard time breathing
on all the up hills, and I feel like my lungs
aren't working right.
I can only breathe in like halfway
and then it kind of like hurts.
So I don't know exactly what's wrong with them,
but I just have to go real slow going uphill.
I was like, can't breathe, so I'm dealing
with that but whatever, maybe it'll go away.
That's what I'm hoping for.
- Of course, as luck would have it, we got our resupply,
and then immediately had to go up what is routinely
considered the toughest pass
on the Highline Trail, North Pole pass.
- Every pass seem to be a little tougher than the one
before 'cause we were going west going
into more aggressive terrain.
- I'm not sure exactly what happened, but I think I had some
kind of like, chest cold or chest infection
at the same time as being at altitude.
So when we got to North Pole past, what I was doing
is putting one foot in front of the other like this,
little bitty stops 'cause that's all I could do.
- It seemed like it took forever to get
to the top of that pass.
I remember seeing this sign, thinking Ashley
my wifes name is Ashley.
So I thought about her a lot
when I was sitting there at that pass.
I love the outdoors, I love going backpacking.
I love being out for days and weeks and months on the end.
But I still miss my wife.
- Well, today was day four.
I will say it started off today
and I was a little nervous because the smoke blew in.
We could smell it when we woke up and I was thinking
that we might be walking into a fire, but it sounds
like that smoke is just blowing to us here
from California and Oregon and maybe for some other
smaller fires around Utah.
So that's really good news.
We'll see if it clears up because it still is a little hazy.
- Today was a tough day, man.
Got up, walked a little bit, got our food drop,
and climbed the biggest pass ever.
North Pole pass with six days of food on our backs,
seemed like it went on and on and on forever.
Finally made it to the top came down the other side
and ended up here in this grassy meadow,
which is really nice, so I'm glad to be here.
- So Joe's been having some trouble with the altitude
and climbing at higher altitudes, he's having a real
hard time breathing and getting a full, full breath inside.
So he's been struggling, he's been coughing a lot.
If you know Joe, he's a tough dude.
So he's gonna make it to the end for sure.
But he's just dealing with some stuff right now.
And we're concerned for him, but I think he's gonna make it.
- During the night, I woke up some where around
two o'clock and I could hear Joe coughing.
And I was a little bit concerned.
- I listened to him for, you know, probably 15 to 20 minutes
just struggling to breathe in the middle of the night.
And then I dozed off, but the next day,
I just knew that Joe's trip might be coming to an end.
- It was like the worst night's sleep for me ever.
I got this cough that keeps getting worse and worse.
So I don't know what to do right now.
We're a long way from anywhere.
So there's not really any great escape plan.
I couldn't breathe so like I didn't blow
my sleeping pad up last night.
I was like I'm so short of breath.
So in the middle of the night like I wanted to blow
this thing up because I kept tossing and turning,
but I just couldn't do it.
So if it's worse tonight, I'm more screwed
'cause we're gonna be farther away
from any escape plan.
- Unfortunately, Joe was not getting any better.
He seemed to be going slower.
He seemed to be coughing more, and we were considering
that a helicopter ride might be on the horizon
for Joe to get him out of there.
- When I got up, I knew that I wasn't feeling well.
So I'd already started looking at my maps
and trying to formulate an escape plan.
And there was one trail where I could hike
out to a trailhead near Fox Lake.
And I was thinking well if I keep going and if it got worse,
I don't know what I would have done because we would have
been too deep into the mountains and it would have been like
a multi day hike to get to a trailhead to get out of there.
- We got to the end of Fox Lake and there was an old cabin
and we sat down for a break.
- We were all in good spirits except for Joe.
He was real quiet and just kind of keeping to himself.
- I remember I was sitting on a rock just exhausted,
couldn't even move and everybody else is like dancing
around and having a great time.
Like they hadn't been hiking or anything.
So we got to the end of the lake and there was a dam
and that's where the trail splits off, where I knew
I could hike eight miles and get out of there,
if I wanted, I was like, well,
I'm not dying, I'm gonna be okay.
- Joe's got the beginning stages of pulmonary edema.
So basically Joe's gotta bail.
- So we hiked about another mile or so and
Joe had had enough.
He was coughing, he couldn't catch his breath.
So he finally made the decision
that he was gonna get out of there.
- Somethings wrong with my lungs right now, so...
- He said, "Look, you guys, I am not enjoying it.
"I didn't sleep, I'm in pain, I'm coughing.
"And on top of that, my hands are turning cold."
And I noticed when he was holding his trekking staff
that his knuckles were white
that he knew at that point
that there's just really nothing he could do.
He needed to get out of there.
And it just wasn't worth it.
It wasn't worth risking his life.
- And I think he made the right choice.
Anytime you're dealing with that kind of issue,
it can be life threatening.
We had a brief discussion about a helicopter,
a brief discussion about a horse.
If you know Joe, he turned those down pretty quickly.
- Hey, Gordy. - So we found
an alternate route.
We made a satellite call at Gordy who now was free.
- I'm gonna hike like an eight mile side trail down
to a trailhead and Gordy who got off yesterday.
He's gonna come pick me up in the rental car.
So I'm out of here, but I bet you guys will have fun.
Five more days to go after today.
And I'll see you guys at the end.
- So we all said our goodbyes,
and Joe headed down the trail away from us.
And we were all pretty sad because we really wanted
to complete the journey together
but it just wasn't in the cards this time.
- It took me the whole day to do that eight miles.
So it was probably 5.30 by the time I got down there.
- How are you doing?
- All right, how are you doing right?
- All right.
- Gordy had a pickup truck and he had a half
of a turkey sub in the car
and it was the most amazing sound I've ever had.
All of a sudden I went from I don't feel like eating to,
oh, I do feel like eating.
It's amazing what getting in a air conditioned vehicle
and knowing you don't have to walk anymore
will do for your morale.
I was a little disappointed that I wasn't able to finish
the trail but at the same time, I just wasn't able to enjoy
it at all with how I felt so it wasn't worth it.
I was able to catch a flight out of Vernal,
Utah, the next day. It was really good
getting back home especially on this trip.
It took me a couple nights of sleeping sitting up
until whatever was wrong my lungs cleared out of there.
So everything kind of worked out really well.
- So we were down to five people. Four hikers
and our producer cameraman.
- Well today, really the one thing that stands out to me
is we kind of lost our captain, Joe,
the most experienced hiker of the bunch.
He had to check out early and I've hiked with Joe quite
a bit, and I've never seen him like I saw him on this hike.
So we're definitely gonna miss having him here with us.
- We're kind of beding down for the night
getting ready for another epic day tomorrow.
We go to the highest point on this whole trip
We'll be climbing Kings Peak.
That's the highest point in Utah so that'll be cool.
That'd be another high point state for me.
I think we got a pretty tough time in the morning
but I think a lot of us are ready for it.
We're kind of used to it at this point.
Should just be like another day on the job.
- Today, we are climbing up to Anderson Pass,
the highest point on the Highline Trail
and then we are gonna take an off-shoot up to King's peak,
the highest point in Utah.
So we'll see we're gonna be about, man,
I think 3000 feet higher than we are right now.
So it's gonna be pretty crazy up there, I'm excited.
- I really am not crazy about climbing 700 feet
straight up, but peer pressure got the best of me
and I will be making that climb.
- Today is gonna be awesome.
We're gonna go really high and pass out
because we're gonna not have a lot of oxygen.
And then we're gonna hold up a sign that says, Kings Peak,
and then we're gonna like do crazy faces like.
UINTA!!!
Now my throat hurts.
UINTA!!
- This was our big day.
This was a day that we were looking forward to.
But we were also a little nervous and apprehensive about
because we knew we were gonna be doing a lot of climbing.
- We weren't doing huge miles on the hike,
we were only really doing anywhere from eight to 12.
So that wasn't a big deal but being above 10,000 feet
in elevation, a 3000 foot climb just feels so much harder.
- We started making our way to Anderson Pass.
It took a while. It meandered and switchbacked and we
finally got there
and it was the first pass that when you got
to the top it was like dropping off a cliff
on the other side and just a big expansive valley.
- So we could already feel it, we could feel the elevation,
but the views were just unbelievable.
- We put our packs off to the side on some rocks
and just start going up this peak,
all of a sudden the trail disappears.
The side trail to the King's Peak should not be called
the side trail to anywhere because it is not a trail.
It is simply giant rocks for 700 vertical feet,
all the way to the top.
- I've never seen a mountain like this before,
it was just a pile of rocks, rocks that are about anywhere
from the size of a coffee table to the size of a car.
And you have to just kind of hop from rock to rock
and just hope that you don't fall.
- I don't think anybody really expected it
to be as difficult as it actually was.
Some parts of it, we were actually going hand over hand
and it just kept going up and up and up
and I complained, I bitched the entire way.
I yelled at everybody, I was mad.
I was like, why are you making me do this?
You said I was gonna have cell phone
service halfway up this mountain.
That's the only reason I'm coming up this mountain
so I can call my girlfriend, was their cell phone service?
No, there was no cell phone service.
- It is completely rewarding being up here
and doing it with these guys.
Makes it all that much better.
These guys let me tag along.
I feel pretty grateful and lucky for that.
- It was a good time, and here we are.
- The Highest point in Utah. Here's to Utah.
- It's one of the reasons why I hike is for those moments
and it was a moment that I'm not gonna forget.
- We made our way back down Anderson Pass
which took almost as long as it took to get back up
because you couldn't move fast 'cause there's no trail.
- We're all sitting there at Anderson Pass
and we're just kind of relaxing
and Will says, is that a patch of snow on the side of
that mountain, I look at it and I seen the head move,
I was like, no, that's a mountain goat.
That's first time I ever seen a mountain goat.
- So we're coming down from King's Peak, none of us
were smart enough to bring enough water with us.
So we're all out of water, we're in this valley.
We can't find any, we're thirsty, and that sucks.
- So we saw some herds of sheep, two or three times,
and you would hear 'em ahead of time.
And I said, why are those sheep making so much noise?
And Benny just makes this up.
He says, "Oh, they're just trying
"to tell each other that we're coming."
And he was totally serious
It was the biggest crock of crap.
- I've never heard so much bahing in my life, like .
It was kind of crazy.
- There are sheep drive lines that do cross the trail
at times, we've had almost 150 years
of grazing history in the Uintas.
Sheep grazing mainly in the high elevations.
And the Uintas are a primitive area,
now they're a wilderness area, but it's still part
of our public land system.
So grazing is still an acceptable use.
- Well, today was definitely one of the hardest days
of hiking that I've ever had.
And that's saying a lot 'cause I've hiked a lot of miles,
a lot of places, a lot of countries,
but the climbing was pretty insane.
And the sun was just beating on us all day long.
The water was plentiful on the way up,
but on the way down, we kind of ran out.
So we were hiking without water for a while.
So we were a little parched.
Pretty much ran down the mountain
so that I could get to water source.
So as you can see, I'm in a reclined position right now
that's because I'm literally about to fall asleep.
I just ate my food.
And I'm gonna go climb into my tent,
and we're gonna do it all over again tomorrow.
- Usually I wake up a little chipper, didn't happen today.
- My name is Steve Kaiser, and I'm 60.
And I feel like my life has been a life
of adventure and enjoyment, for the most part.
- Steve is like a mix of a big brother and another father.
He's just this big, jovial personality.
He's always optimistic.
He's a person who's not afraid to give a compliment.
He will always find something positive to say
about you to build you up and to make you feel good.
- When you're down or you're feeling it.
Your legs are feeling it.
Steve will come up and he'll just make you laugh,
and make you smile.
- There's only so much oxygen here
and I need it to breathe, not laugh.
- And don't tell him that he's 60 years old
because he's hiking with all us young guys.
Sometimes he's moving faster than us.
He pretty much started hiking with Joe
and Matt right from the beginning.
So all he's ever known is moving fast.
So Steve is just crazy.
Honestly, I really aspire to be like Steve,
when I'm his age, you know, in that good of shape.
- Steve is a crazy character, I absolutely love Steve.
If you're not laughing when you're around Steve,
then you're deaf.
- I love hiking.
Well, I love everything except the walking.
- Can be moody at times so we tease him about that.
He gets Hangry.
- Look a bone!
- But just a great guy who would do anything for you.
- He's had a crazy life, you know,
he's lived in a bunch of different places.
He just has a lot of stories.
He's a real interesting guy to hang around with.
- I have some core passions that really
have been with me all my life.
I have to work with my hands.
I do a lot of original designs, you know,
nothing really too complex, more artistic.
I make a lot of gifts for people.
So woodworking and metalworking those are two very important
core passions of mine and also fitness,
I try to be as fit as possible.
As a person, just my overall path in life,
I just feel solid and I'm happy, I'm content
and my life is perfect.
- Life before hiking,
was, well, a lot transpired around the same time
I started hiking, so my life is very different now.
My life of addiction actually began when I was
about three or four years old, being the youngest of five,
I guess I was a surprise for parents that were over age 40.
My two older sisters were 15 and 17 when I was born,
and by time I was three, they were gone.
So, back in the 60s they didn't know about abandonment
issues and all of that, you know, it just wasn't a thing.
But it's real, so my life changed at that time
and I kind of went dark for 52 years.
My parents back then they smoked about eight
or 10 packs a day between them, just lighting one cigarette
off the other, and so I would get cigarettes just take them,
just steal them and they would never miss them.
But I was addicted where I needed a cigarette.
I was addicted by time I was four or five years old.
From age 27, I had been involved with AA or NA,
and most of my adult life from age 20 to age 55,
I only had six years cumulative
of active alcoholism or addiction.
All those other years were just dry years
trying to be sober, but miserable.
And throughout my adult life, I had probably six bad spikes
of depression where I really needed to go get help.
I would go to AA, I would go to NA, I'd work the steps,
I would get sponsors, and the story was always the same.
When I was three years old.
My two older sisters had left me
so it just stopped right there.
There was no more, there were no more questions
about any other trauma.
And so I had had other abuses
that I didn't realize were a factor.
And I struggled with that until I was about 55 years old.
I discovered hiking as a series of random events
that began with reading a novel entitled, "Lone wolf."
And in that novel, there were things mentioned
about hiking and things like that or wilderness.
And I got this idea of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail.
My motivation was pretty dark.
Actually, I'd been to therapists
and psychiatrists and nothing worked.
Nothing could help, and suicidal thoughts were escalating.
And my plan was to go out to California in 2014,
and hike the Pacific Crest Trail
and just die and just not come back.
I was not coming back.
I knew I just did not wanna live anymore.
I researched probably 200 websites,
looking at gear of just reading about it.
I had not done any hikes at that time.
That's how I met Joe Valesko.
- Steve Kaiser is a good friend of ours.
He started off as a customer, he had bought something
or other and he came to the shop to pick it up.
And we were going on a like a short section hike
of the AT in a couple of weeks.
And we just happen to ask him if he wanted
to come on the hike with us.
- And I thought, "what?" Do you see what you're looking at?
I'm an old fat man, I can't even walk barely, you know,
and here's Joe like not even 30 years old inviting me
on this hike and I was a little uncomfortable
with it wondering, what the correct answer was,
of course, I wanted to go but I felt like,
oh my God, I'm gonna be imposing on these people.
Well, I went with him, his wife Sheryl and Matt Favero.
That's when I first met Matt.
He was a little scary at first,
but really hit it off with them.
I went to treatment, and the therapist said,
"I'm gonna put you in the trauma group."
So I go the trauma group, and there's about three people
in there plus the therapist.
And she said, "Well, you know, Steve, why are you here?"
And it just came out with this sexual abuse I had as a kid,
10, 11, 12, 13 years old, a couple of different incidences.
And I remember saying it
and then feeling this feeling inside.
And I just said, "I guess it was important".
And I just started sobbing.
I had no idea I was carrying this around.
I was free at that moment, because I'd worked
on so many other things in my life.
There really wasn't anything left, except that.
Since then, I haven't had any more depression.
No more thoughts of suicide at any level whatsoever.
It was a very fortunate event, because I think a lot
of people are walking around with those things
that they don't know how to get rid of.
And I was one of the lucky ones.
- That was probably five, six years ago.
And ever since then, he's been coming on
almost all the hikes that we do.
He does great, he keeps up with us, no problem.
We have to keep up with him, half the time.
- All right, so today is day seven.
It's gonna be one of our easier days.
We've got about just a little over 10 miles
and we 1700 feet in elevation gain,
which is about half of what we did yesterday.
We're gonna go over Tungsten Pass immediately.
Then we've got Porcupine Pass, and then we're looking
forward to that Red Beard dance party.
When we get to camp early today.
- Growing up my dad always had nice minerals and rocks,
you know around the house from places that he went.
And so doing this hike, you just see all kinds.
This just gives you a little sampling of these red,
there's purple, there's green, there's yellow.
Just beautiful.
- My name is Ryan Buerkle,
I'm the Recreation Program Manager
for the Ashley National Forest.
Once you're on the Highline Trail,
especially in those high basins, you're gonna come
along these big rock cairns,
Six to eight foot high pile of rocks.
And what those are for is for way finding.
So you can see from one cairn to the next,
and see where you're supposed to head towards.
Because in that alpine tundra,
there's not a specific worn in trail tread.
It's just walking across a natural landscape.
- Stone cairns are a difficulty for archaeologists,
because you can't just date stones.
So basically, unless someone's already identified
them historically, and you can go back to a historic record
and know that one was there.
There's really no way to know necessarily
when they were built.
Sheep herders are a kind of well known for making some
of the more complicated cairns that you might see,
like some of the nice sort of cylindrical ones.
The hard aspect of that too, is the fact that what you see
in a lot of wilderness areas and public lands,
especially in the West,
is a lot of the hikers creating cairns themselves.
Existing human infrastructure that's already there.
That's historic, we like it and it's good stuff.
But as far as creating new infrastructure or new structures,
whether out of trees or rock or anything else,
that's something that's kind of a big
no, no in the wilderness, we wanna try to leave
that as untrammeled as possible.
- I was walking along the rock path yesterday,
one of the rocks turned over and the sharp edge of the rock
went "pow" right into the side of my shoe.
I screamed a few choice words at the rock and kept going
and I just realized that hey, look at this.
I got a nice bruise from it.
- What are you gonna do?
- Towards the end of our day, we got to a location
and we stopped there initially just to take a break.
But it was so incredible that we all just kind of came
to the conclusion rather quickly that this was a great
place to spend the night.
- Around 10.30 I climbed out of my tent.
The stars were just incredible.
They were unlike anything I'd ever seen before.
And I just remember standing there and taking it all
in for a few minutes before climbing back in my tent
and going to sleep that night.
- Steve here, he had to go to the bathroom.
We just started hiking so he went off
into the woods to do number two.
- No way.
- He just got an Elk to freken call back at him.
The Elk's like, "I wanna hang out with you".
- It was amazing.
- As we climbed up Red Knob Pass, the beauty around us
was just spectacular again
like it had been on this entire hike.
But once we reach the top of the pass, I'll never forget it.
It was by far the best pass that we had been up so far.
It was almost 360 degrees of mountains
with a deep valley, almost a canyon.
- We did this right going from east to west on this trail.
Every day was great.
And the next day was even better and today was the best.
The whole mountain range was just so much
more defined and jagged and pretty.
Everything was just better today.
- My name is Benny Braden, I'm Electrician by trade,
but I also have a great passion for backpacking.
First of all, I'm follower of Christ,
and I absolutely love my family.
- Benny is Mr. Loyalty, if you need him, he'll be there.
He'll drive hours to help you, he really values friendship,
and he values a quality relationship,
whether that be with his family,
his friends or the hiking community.
- Benny is one of the most passionate guys
when it comes to hiking that I've ever met.
He is pretty much always on a trail.
He holds some records, he's the fastest person to ever hike.
All the trails in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park
is about 900 miles of trail.
- I think Benny is the most physically fit
45 year old I have ever met in my life.
- He's a man of few words.
He's an electrician by trade, and I guess he's able
to just stop his business and then his clients wait
for him and when he gets back to town, he picks up
where he left off and he's able to make enough money
to basically support himself and support his hiking.
- When I was growing up, I was, I like to say,
I was a good son, I was a pretty quiet kid,
and I really enjoyed just being outside.
In the early 2000s, I used to be an EMT.
I did it because I would hope that someone would do
something for my family member if they were in need.
It is a great opportunity, I enjoyed it at the time.
It's tough to do that job and have a normal life.
We did all kinds of calls, mostly medical,
that they could range from anything
from a vehicle accident, to drownings.
To spare everybody the graphic nature of that job,
I just simply tell folks,
I've seen people die every way they can possibly die.
Those kind of events can really impact you mentally.
Whenever I would leave a scene, I would just block it
out in my mind as if it didn't happen, and I would go on
with my normal daily routine.
And when I was on call, if I was let's say extricating
a person from a vehicle, I wouldn't make patient eye contact
because it wasn't human at that point.
I'd focus mostly on moving the metal of the vehicle
to get that person out, and that allowed me
to just kind of "out of sight out of mind".
And that worked for years,
until after I was completely out of the field.
I first noticed the effects of it,
shortly after we got married.
I had a son from a previous marriage,
and Ashley had her two daughters from a previous marriage.
In addition to that, my brother passed away
in that same time period, and he had two girls.
Most people call it PTSD, post traumatic stress disorder.
Nobody wants to be labeled with a disorder.
So that's why choose simply to call it PTS.
You try to block out some stuff but at some point in time,
you can't block out anymore.
It sent me into a very deep depression.
- To see Benny go through PTS was really heartbreaking.
It was kind of like walking on eggshells all the time.
- I would just become a monster I would yell
and scream. Not just at Ashley, but at the kids.
- Then he would leave and he'd say gone through the night
he would go park in a parking lot and sleep.
- And before I knew it, there was an attempt at suicide.
I woke up a day or two later,
being evaluated in a mental hospital.
- That was definitely a hard thing to go through.
And I did a lot of praying.
But I knew that there would come
a time where it would be over.
So you just have to like, work through it.
And I wasn't gonna stop loving him no matter what.
- Whenever I'm on a long hike, I pray a lot.
Talk to God a lot, just try to clear out my mind.
And I started seeing some answers.
It's like I have a huge desk in my brain
and is just piled up with images of different events.
It's like I can take one of those images
and look at it and pray about it, meditate about it,
and try to make some sense of it.
Now some things I don't ever make sense of,
like why did this one child have die?
Or why did this family have to suffer this loss?
Some things I simply cannot answer,
but I'm able to make sense of it.
So that allows me to move on.
Then I can pull another image.
Now it might take me a day to deal with that.
It might take me the whole hike to deal with it,
but at least that's one situation that I've dealt with.
And I can move on.
My whole demeanor was different, it was changing me.
Every day I would be out in the woods, it was changing me.
I was less aggressive with my discipline, with my words.
It softened me up
- We're closer as a couple and closer with kids.
He's a better husband, and a way better dad.
- Well, my life now is a lot different
than what it used to be for sure.
And I'm so thankful, I couldn't have scripted
my life any better than what it is.
And it's all thanks to long distance backpack.
And of course to God. A lot of answered prayers.
Our time together is very well spent and is cherished
'cause we know how life used to be.
- The finish!! - Congratulations!
- Good job Benny!
- You beast!
- Good job Benny!
- Careful.
- Best pass so far.
No doubt definitely the sketchiest pass, my gosh.
- Amazing, geeze.
- You can definitely knit a hat out of that.
Yeah, I love wool hats.
- I was just in the worst hailstorm in my life basically
it started off pretty tame and then it just got crazier
and crazier and heavier and heavier.
- It only lasted for maybe three or four minutes.
And then we were able to really just jump out of our tents
and hang out together and just enjoy each other's company.
As we experienced our last night
on the magical Uinta Highline Trail.
- The final day.
Me and Will are some of the first to wake up.
We're sitting there taking pictures of the sunrise
reflecting off of the lake, and all of a sudden,
I thought Will was gunna choke on his coffee
because he's like, "moose! there's two moose!"
- We're seeing two moose right now, right in front of us.
It looks like a male and female.
It was really a special moment for me on this trip.
And I'm like pumping my arms and I was like yeah.
- What a great ending.
Really, I don't think we could have scripted it any better.
To have these incredible majestic animals just walk out.
And it was a great experience really,
and something I'll never forget.
- The thing I missed the most every time I'm on the trail
is my wife and my daughter, I know that sounds cliche,
but it's totally the truth.
- What I miss on this hike is just communicating
with people that I talk to every day.
We've gone so many days without any phone service.
You know how it is it's traumatic.
- The thing I miss the most is my girlfriend,
Joelle and just my life in Gainesville and the farm.
- I miss my wife, my beautiful bride, miss my kids,
the last couple days just before you start going back home,
you start anticipating what that moment
is gonna be like whenever you reunite.
- The thing that really means the most to me in life
are my relationships, because you can't buy them.
You can't fake them.
You have to earn them through shared experiences.
- I can be in the country, I can be in the woods,
I can be in the city, and enjoy myself no matter where I am.
I guess what's most important is who I'm with.
- Yey!
- Yeah! yeah!
- Another one done baby!
- 104 miles.
- It was incredible.
I couldn't imagine finishing up my summer hike,
any other way at any other place,
than on the Uinta Highline.
- And it's just one of those things you kind of have
to just chase after your passions and you don't know
what tomorrow is gonna hold and that's the whole
excitement about long distance hiking, you don't know
who you'll meet the next day, you don't know
where you'll sleep the next day.
- Everybody spends their time indoors.
You know, you go from in your house, to in a car,
to in an office, back to in your car, back in your house.
So I think you know, getting outside
is important for everybody.
- My children are watching.
We don't only teach our children right from wrong,
but we also teach them how to live.
Do we want them to be ordinary?
Or do we want our children to be extraordinary?
We lead by example?
- I'm so grateful for my life and I love the experiences
and the adventures that I've been on in the last few years.
I look forward to what's to come.
- It's our path, and this is where I'm supposed to be,
right now, at this very moment.
And what we do next, matters.
- All right, day night, oops, day night.
Okay, it's day nine.
- Take 12 Matt.
Day nine.
- He's really struggling with it
- My favorite animal.
I don't know if I have a favorite animal,
maybe the honey badger, 'cause they're pretty badass
- Hi! Make a happy face.
- Make a silly face Lu
- That's awesome.
- That was wonderful.
- Please don't put that in the video.