Out of the Wild: The Alaska Experiment

[NiteRaven]

If you're like me, about to start a long hike on the A.T. and don't have a lot of long distance hiking experience, I found the Discovery series "Out of the Wild: The Alaska Experiment" not only very educational but also pretty darn entertaining. At least educational from an amateur's perspective on what mistakes not to make. You can find it on Netflix if you have it. Here is a description of the show I that copied:

"Deserted in the harsh Alaskan interior, nine outdoor enthusiasts must rely on their resourcefulness to make it back to civilization alive, foraging for food, building makeshift shelters and battling plummeting temperatures along the way. Over the course of one grueling month, several team members give up completely while the others valiantly struggle to overcome their crippling hunger and exhaustion."

After reading a lot of treads in this forum, I found watching the series answers a lot of them. For example, those asking about what kind of pace you should start out with? It becomes very clear in the few couple of episodes that the trek they are going on is not a race. There is a guy who wants to keep pushing the group but in turn realizes he's forcing people to push themselves beyond their bounds and he ends up giving up. A slow pace is key. It also is presented in a pretty honest way that exposes the emotions of what you might go through. I don't expect hiking the A.T. will be nearly this difficult, since we don't have to hunt our own food, but the physical and emotional challenges will be similar. Also, you have to see the black guy who bear maces himself in the first episode. I laughed for days after that because I could see that happening to myself.

Just throwing it out there if you haven't seen it. I watched all 8 episodes in two days. I felt like this was the closest thing I've watched to what we will be doing. More so than Survivorman or Man vs. Wild. Good luck all.