hey this is a halfway update of my trip across the pyrenees if you aren't familiar with the channel
i'm on the hot route pyrenees and i'm about 400 kilometers in so in this video i want to give you
a bit of an update of really the three things that this channel is about and it's really the
three things that we have control over when we go into the natural environment and that's our mind
our body and the gear that we take with us so i'm going to be going through a little bit of
a review of the trip so far and touching on some of those points i'm going to try and do
this in one take because i'm on trial and i can't be editing much so i've got some notes
and uh the first thing i want to just divulge is that the weather has been pretty brutal in the
last couple of days we've had some pretty serious thunderstorms in the afternoon it usually clears
up afterwards but uh it's meant that i've just been really soaking wet the last couple of days
so right now i'm in valderran in s a zero day and drying out all my stuff staying in a hotel room
so it looks like the weather's gonna stay like that for the next probably a week or so so my plan
is to get up early get as many miles down as i can find a refuge or a cabana or some kind of
shelter by the time the typical afternoon storm comes in and then either call it a day or i'll do
an afternoon session hopefully yeah another stage or so done in the evening after the storms passed
and that way hopefully i can avoid getting soaking wet every day and still get uh the miles done so
i've done most of the trial alone but the last week i've been with my buddy karim we actually
met on the gr11 last year uh so karim has just left he jumped on a bus this afternoon he's got
to go back to work so i'll be alone for the rest of the trip most likely i've met a few
people on trial but it seems to be reasonably quiet most of the people i've met have been on
the gr11 and i did actually meet one guy who's attempting an fkt uh on the gr11 his name is
mario uh his details are north of society if you want to check him out and follow his trip
he's trying to go as fast as possible and he's doing pretty well but he did have a little bit
of a knee issue same story as always iliotibial band syndrome so we took him through the exercises
and by all accounts he's doing really well uh i think it's been quite effective for him so
hopefully he gets the fkt we'll see how he goes uh my speed and how fast i've been going has varied
i've slowed down a lot with the thunderstorms of late i've been doing kind of 20-ish kilometer days
in the last couple of days but uh leading up into this i was averaging between sort of 28 to
35 kilometers a day just depending on uh where we're talking about at the beginning
coming from the basque country it's relatively flat so i was doing bigger days 33 35 kilometers
but as the mountains really start to kick in and the central pyrenees after government then it's
a little more difficult to do 30 something case uh you know right now having a rest day
i have this kind of progress anxiety where i don't feel comfortable just sitting down and resting and
not doing anything especially when the weather's so beautiful it hasn't rained today at all
ironically you know so i kind of wasted a day here but i did want to have a day to really take
stock of what i have in terms of my food and my equipment because a couple of things have changed
uh gear wise which i'm going to get into pretty shortly uh in terms of how long it will take me
i think probably another 10 days or so and i'll be done i'm not necessarily aiming for a for a time
frame last year i did the gr11 in 30 days i think i'll be able to do this in about 25 but i'm really
trying to focus on not rushing trying to calm that progress anxiety and just really
slow down and enjoy the trip without uh company on the trail now that i'm alone i'm going to be
probably focusing more on the filming aspect and i'll definitely be making like a cinematic style
uh film again or at least one or two parts we'll see how how much footage i've got at the end
of the trip but i'm really trying to keep like a dialogue in mind and trying to create like a story
that's interesting along the way so hopefully that comes out we'll we'll see how it goes
uh so in terms of the in terms of my body let's talk about body stuff
last year on the gr11 i had a little bit of plantar fasciitis so far nothing i'm totally
fine you know over the last year i've really learned a lot more about the feet and learning
how important they are so i've learned how to manage the restrictions that i have in my feet
i've learned how to free my feet up a lot more so you know plantar fasciitis can be it can be
caused by a whole number of different things not just in the foot it has a lot to do with
the hip as well so i'll be probably releasing a video soon about what i've learned about plantar
fasciitis and how that i have overcome that but so far has not been a problem could have something to
do with my shoes as well i'm wearing the ultra olympus 4 and they are very flat very wide very
you know relatively thin they're especially thin now because i was in attempt to dry the shoes
out i took the inner soles out and i left them in the class refugee i was in so they're even
even more minimal now but i've negated that by just taping up the uh the seam around the shoe
and that's made a lot easier are they all um vlogging in public it's always a little bit weird
uh in terms of my tightness calves hamstrings all that kind of thing it's fine
i tested myself on the my pigeons stretch standard the other day and i was able to go flat
down straight into a pigeon stretch which means my glutes and my hips are nice and loose and i
haven't been tightened tightening up my cars feel great no real body issues so everything's going
well i'm super stoked about that a few scrapes and bruises uh because i had a couple of little
rock falls slides which you'll probably see in the video trying to film something and just lost
my footing and scrape myself up a little bit but apart from that nothing nothing really serious
the one thing that's kind of bothering me is that i feel really flat i think it's probably because
of the type of food that i'm eating throughout the research of the uh the video that i did about food
which i'll link up uh this led me to really focus on getting as many calories as possible
so i've been eating kind of like more junk food than i usually would and it's kind of resulted in
me i think and feeling a little bit flat and not so energetic on trail so for the last half of the
trip i'm really going to focus on eating a little bit more naturally i've just reassessed all my
food today and went did a shop at the supermarket and i've changed that a little bit so that's a lot
less junk a lot less like lollies but still a lot of calories so there's a little mini test for me
to see if clean eating improves my performance and how i'm feeling on trail but apart from
that with the body there's not really much else to report in terms of my gear um i have learnt
so much from kareem just in this last week i mean he's an amazing guy he's gone from literally not
being a hiker at all um you know he's egyptian they don't have a real strong hiking community
there but he's learned a great deal he's really dived in and done the research he uh went from you
know not hiking at all to doing the jr11 and now doing a section of the hrp so he's had a really
steep learning curve and he knows a lot more about ultralight gear in some respects than i do so it's
been really interesting to see what he had uh he had the lightweight elements in same pack as mine
except in x-pac which it looks to be a little bit heavier it looks way more durable though
and it's basically waterproof i mean he's actually gone as far as sealing the seams within that and
it's super super durable and it looks really bomb proof and it's still really really light
so i might try and get my hands on an x-pack version of the elementum or even ask
evien from lightweight if you can make me something custom we'll see so my http grid
stop elementum that's going really well but you know it's a year or so now it's nearly got
probably got a thousand miles on it and it's not waterproof so what i have grabbed from kareem
he's got off trial and he's given me this hdpe plastic bag now he's bought that for three euros
from trekking light store in germany so if you're in europe and you're after something like that
then go and check out their website i'll try and link it below if i can find it
because the dcf liner the prototype that i got from lightweight equipment it uh has got some
abrasions on it from me just stuffing gear in uh it's got a couple little holes and it's just not
entirely waterproof so i have been lucky enough to get that from kareem i also got from kareem this
uh cedar summer eros ultralight regular pillow i had a couple of rough
nights sleep because the pillow that i bought the decathlon one that i used last year
it has like 30 holes in it i tried to repair it but there was just too many holes to count so uh
korean's been nice enough to give me this and i'm very much looking forward to having a full night's
sleep without having to wake up five times in the middle of the night to inflate my pillow uh you
know there's ways around that i've used you know extra clothes in my backpack and whatever just to
sleep on it but it's just really nice to have a pillow and this thing is like 60 grams apparently
very very light so after i send that back to cream i'm gonna get my own version of that probably uh
in terms of the ultras they're really good apart from the the problem that i mentioned
earlier you know they're they're wearing out obviously but the trade's still really good
especially the mega grip like the orange stuff on the bottom of the the tread is really good
i really have no complaints i'm super stoked on that on that choice i think they are uh a very
capable shoe in the mountains given that they are essentially like a trail runner but they're like a
tractor this thing's so wide when you compare it to other shoes it is incredibly wide very
stable and i'm super happy with this uh none of this ski is sponsored by the way i should say
the sunglasses that i brought had a little bit of a drama there i was using the glacier optics
sunglasses they were actually a gift to me the company asked me to give them some feedback
uh the feedback is that they broke on like the second day so i really need something that's
absolutely bomb proof uh you know i'm pretty rough on my gear i just stuff everything into my pack
and i think probably yeah on day one or two it was broken so luckily kareem had the weilongs
the valon classics almost the exact same pair of sunglasses that i wore last year he bought a pair
they were run over by a tram in fryburg in germany and they're still going so he's he's lent me his
pair i'm gonna go back to wearing the vellums for the rest of the trip which i'm really happy about
just because i want it to be super easy i don't want to have to worry about things breaking
i mean the glacier optics they are a really nice lens beautiful uh sunglasses but i think they're
probably meant for more like hanging out in switzerland and you know pounding the slopes
not necessarily pounding the trail so i'm going to go back to using the whalens
i'm so lucky that i get to do that i'm super stoked
um one thing with my with my gear my phone so i've got an iphone 11 i'm using the outdoor
active app for navigation and so far that's been really great it does use a lot of battery though
so what kareem was using he had outdoor active but he also had a coros smart watch
and that was tracking absolutely everything that he did i'm not a smartwatch guy i'm not
really beginning to tech and i've never i had a suntoe like five years ago but i've never really
had like a smartwatch that tracks you know everything i do and kareem was able to tell
me at any time how many kilometers we've done you know our pace how many calories we've burnt
um ascent and descent our current elevation all this kind of stuff and so that really got me
into it so i'm really excited about uh getting a hold of one of those i think it's like 350
uh 350 euros something like that i'm realizing that the camera is quite dark now so i'm just
going to dial that up a little bit so you can see my face uh that is probably about it yeah i
want to get a hold of that watch everything else has been really fine uh like i said i probably
got about 10 more days on trail i do really want to slow down and enjoy the rest of the trip it's
around 8 30 at night on my rest day so i think i'm gonna end this video here but thanks for watching
so much uh i will have a bunch of videos out soon that will go further into the gear especially and
a couple of other little video treats along the way if you haven't already joined my discord
it is a little forum uh for everyone that watches this channel who's interested in
backpacking hiking mountaineering like good stuff the link is in the description
thanks so much for watching the video thanks to my patreons who support
the hiking and the work that i do and also thank you to everyone who's bought a program this year
it's really been a life-changing year for me and it enables me to stay out here and keep hiking and
producing content so thanks very much to you guys that's all for this one i'll see you on the summit
bye