Everything This Ultralight Backpacker Took on a 2,160-Mile Hike

Condé Nast Traveler

Ultralight backpacker Joe McConoughay, known on the trails as ‘Stringbean’, holds the speed record for the Appalachian Trail and is here to share his essentials for the 2,160-mile hike. On the go for 50 miles a day, Joe’s goal was never to remove his pack while moving, allowing him to cover 2,160 miles in only 45 days. From storing the right amount of food to serious chafe prevention, see how Joe packed his ultralight 20lb bag for his record-breaking trek.  Director: Alice Roth Director of Photography: Eric Brouse Editor: Leticia Villarinho Host: Joe McConaughy Producer: Alyssa Marino Line Producer: Joe Buscemi Associate Producer: Josh Crowe Production Manager: Melissa Heber  Production Coordinator: Fernando Davila Camera Operator: Alfonso Sound Mixer: Lily Van Leeuwen Production Assistant: Noah Bierbrier Post Production Supervisor: Andrew Montague Post Production Coordinator: Holly Frew Supervising Editor: Christina Mankellow Assistant Editor: Justin Symonds

Transcript

00:00 I'm gonna get some water.

00:01 This is like the best camera interview of all time.

00:04 I have everything I need.

00:05 You guys don't need to help me at all.

00:08 This is me hiking the Appalachian Trail.

00:10 Here we go.

00:13 Mile zero.

00:15 Oh, this is gonna be such an adventure.

00:17 I'm Joe McConaughey and my trail name is Stringbean.

00:23 I hold the speed record for the Appalachian Trail

00:25 in the self-supported style.

00:26 I ran 2,160 miles in 45 days, 12 hours, and 15 minutes.

00:31 So I was averaging just under 50 miles a day.

00:37 I ran the whole trail with this pack right here.

00:39 This is everything I carried on the Appalachian Trail.

00:44 This is a Palanta Joey pack.

00:52 It's about 24 liters.

00:54 It was a pack prototype.

00:55 Lightweight backpacking was really catapulted

00:58 in the 2000s, where the whole sort of concept

01:01 with ultralight backpacking is to streamline everything,

01:04 to make things as efficient,

01:06 but also usable for what you're doing.

01:08 So something like this is great.

01:10 I'm trying to go three to five days with about 25,

01:14 maybe up to 30 pounds of weight.

01:16 This backpack uses grid stop,

01:18 which is a modern backpacking fabric.

01:22 It's a very thin, lightweight material.

01:24 It's water resistant, very abrasion resistant.

01:27 I wore this for the entire time in the AT.

01:30 You can see a little bit of damage down here.

01:32 So most backpacks have a frame,

01:34 which is either an internal or an external frame.

01:37 This is neither.

01:38 This does not have any kind of internal support.

01:40 So the lack of a frame and these running style vest straps

01:45 make it a great option for a lightweight, fast-packing bag.

01:50 My goal when doing the AT was never have

01:53 to take my pack off ever.

01:54 So I had a great day when this thing was on my back

01:57 the entire time.

01:58 Currently my pack weighs about 17 pounds.

02:06 So this is about two days worth of food,

02:09 maybe a day and a half worth of food.

02:11 These front pockets here,

02:15 these store about 600, 700 milliliter water bottles.

02:19 I have this filter on the water, Sawyer filter,

02:22 so I don't have to actually stop.

02:24 It's honestly, you feel kind of like James Bond.

02:27 Like I literally would go up to a stream,

02:29 I'd be running and be like, that looks good.

02:31 Fill it within a few seconds

02:32 and then be back kind of fully hydrated and ready to roll.

02:35 And I particularly like this Sawyer filter.

02:39 This is basically a microfiber filter

02:43 that filters things to 0.1 micron.

02:46 I like to use a mechanical filter

02:48 as opposed to a chemical filter

02:51 just because of its durability.

02:52 I like Dasani because they are lightweight.

02:55 The plastic is pretty thin.

02:57 Another common water bottle people use

02:59 is a smart water bottle.

03:01 Fresh stream mountain water is a delight,

03:03 particularly on very hot, humid days.

03:07 I also have small pockets up front.

03:14 I would usually put something small, compact,

03:17 easy to snack on.

03:18 These can store about 500 to 800 calories

03:21 is usually how much I'd put in them.

03:23 I'm gonna whip out a salami stick right now.

03:25 I would eat a salami stick while running.

03:28 Let's dive into my bag here.

03:30 I have a variety of snacks

03:33 that sort of comprise my holistic diet that I have on trail.

03:37 Protein is probably the hardest thing to get on trail.

03:39 Bars, I found, is kind of the best way to do that.

03:42 I also have Pop-Tarts.

03:43 That was one of the snacks

03:44 that I would like save for special moments.

03:47 I am fine eating a lot of nuts.

03:49 I averaged about a pound of trail mix a day,

03:52 which is about 3,000 calories on the ATs.

03:56 I had 13 resupply boxes

03:59 where we had each box for each location.

04:01 We had a certain number of calories.

04:03 The most important thing for me on this in terms of diet

04:06 is making sure I got enough calories.

04:08 I lost about 15 pounds on the AT.

04:11 So I packed generally 7,000 to 7,500 calories per day,

04:15 when in reality I was eating closer to 9,000

04:18 or maybe 10,000 calories per day.

04:20 Every day when I came into camp, I'd take my bag

04:26 and I wanted to see everything that I had.

04:28 So I'd give it a good old shake.

04:30 Sometimes things fall out.

04:33 There's my GoPro.

04:34 So my goal each day was to go as far as possible.

04:39 Usually sunset was a pretty good time

04:41 to start wrapping things up.

04:42 I would try to find a spot

04:43 that was just convenient enough to sleep in,

04:45 where I could basically throw out all my stuff,

04:48 have a flat spot of ground to sleep on.

04:50 Ideally, I was close to water,

04:51 so I could give myself a hiker shower,

04:53 which was basically splashing my crevices

04:56 with a little bit of water from a stream or something.

04:58 This is a Therm-a-Rest Z-Pad.

05:04 It's a closed cell foam pad,

05:06 which means the foam itself

05:08 is providing the protection underneath you.

05:10 This is what I would sleep on every night.

05:12 I actually have, if you can see here,

05:14 I cut it and sort of modified it

05:16 so that it will fit to the contours of my backpack.

05:20 Most people don't know what a bivvy is.

05:22 Bivvies originally come, short for bivouac sack,

05:25 which is something that mountaineers would use.

05:27 So a bivvy sack is just a lightweight tent

05:30 that's really a minimalist style,

05:33 wherein you're looking to spend

05:34 the majority of your time in camp sleeping

05:37 or in your sleeping bag.

05:39 This bivvy sack goes about the length of my body.

05:42 It's almost just like a mummy bag.

05:44 A lot of people will ask you if it is claustrophobic,

05:47 and in fact, yes, it is claustrophobic.

05:49 This is an Enlightened Equipment Quilt.

05:52 You can see it's very compressible.

05:54 Inside of this sleeping bag, essentially,

05:59 it's filled with down, which is what keeps you warm.

06:02 It is a quilt simply because it lacks a zipper.

06:08 It helps save weight.

06:09 When you're actually sleeping

06:10 and you put a down fabric on the ground,

06:13 you're removing a lot of the warmth properties

06:16 of that piece of equipment.

06:17 So it makes sense to have a quilt

06:19 that just simply drapes over your body

06:22 rather than is zipped and tied entirely to your body.

06:26 Down functions through its fluff.

06:30 So that's what a quilt is great for.

06:31 It just removes some of the excess materials

06:35 that don't actually really do much for you

06:37 at the end of the day to keep you warm.

06:39 I was extra cozy in my sleeping bag.

06:41 No, it's honestly a very comfortable system.

06:44 I got the poncho right here.

06:53 I would rarely set this up.

06:54 It's a poncho tarp,

06:55 a multi-functioning piece of equipment.

06:58 I would use this whenever the rain

07:01 was substantial enough to bother me,

07:03 and that would be enough to sort of cover me.

07:06 So this is what a Southern thunderstorm looks like.

07:09 This is a DCF or Dyneema composite fiber,

07:16 decently abrasion resistant,

07:18 but very tear resistant fabric

07:20 that is a very common ultralight fabric

07:23 specifically for shelters.

07:25 This is my spot tracker.

07:29 A spot tracker is a GPS device.

07:31 In order to validate your record, you need proof.

07:35 So every 30 minutes or so or hour, this would ping.

07:39 And if it could catch a satellite,

07:40 then it would ping information to that satellite

07:42 and it would be recorded.

07:44 Here we are, halfway.

07:46 Let's go, string bean.

07:49 I use a Black Diamond Storm headlamp.

07:53 I would definitely run at night,

07:55 even through the Appalachian Trail.

07:56 Like I was kind of scared of running at night,

07:58 to be honest, it was intimidating.

08:01 I had a smartphone.

08:02 My phone was really useful

08:05 because I wanted to confirm with every resupply location

08:09 that they actually got the package

08:11 they were supposed to have.

08:12 I also needed to charge my GoPro

08:14 and I also needed to charge my spot tracker.

08:17 I was constantly juggling getting into town

08:20 and thinking about how much do I charge my charger,

08:23 other electronic devices,

08:25 and what is the right amount of charge

08:28 to be able to get from point A to point B.

08:31 [upbeat music]

08:34 I had floss, duct tape, toothbrush,

08:38 toothpaste, Vaseline, lip therapy, needle and thread.

08:43 I had a backup safety pin and Neosporin.

08:49 Also I had my ID and a credit card.

08:53 I literally got like a normal toothbrush

08:56 and then I took a hatchet

08:57 and just hatched it off the end of it to shorten it

09:00 and to save a little extra weight.

09:01 That's what some people call gram counting

09:04 in ultralight backpacking

09:05 where you take all the little things you can do

09:09 to minimize weight and remove them.

09:12 Another thing I used was some needle and thread.

09:14 I resitched my pack.

09:16 It took me maybe five or six days

09:18 of slowly seeing this tear and break apart

09:20 before I finally decided it was worth taking 10 minutes,

09:23 15 minutes, and I stitched this shoulder strap

09:27 back into place.

09:28 And lastly, with a needle,

09:30 it is used for me to pop blisters.

09:32 So that's also why I have this safety pin here.

09:35 Pocket knife's great

09:36 and it's nice to have a multi-tool on it.

09:38 I mostly just use the knife feature and the scissor feature.

09:42 This helped me cut guy line

09:44 or cut other twine that I needed.

09:46 It also helped me cut my thread.

09:48 I also use toilet paper, the fun stuff,

09:50 which is pooping in the woods

09:51 is always like a hilarious topic no matter who you are.

09:55 I use toilet paper on the AT.

09:57 Your goal is to leave no trace.

09:59 That's a basic backpacking principle.

10:01 And I certainly followed that while I was out there.

10:03 Well, I have gone to like a TP-less system

10:06 of using something called the Backcountry Bidet.

10:08 It's basically like washing yourself,

10:10 like washing your butt,

10:11 but just with the water that you have on hand.

10:13 This is the AT Guide.

10:18 This is something that is sort of a staple

10:20 and standard for any thru-hiker.

10:22 This is really nice because it provides a few select maps

10:25 for critical areas, what they offer,

10:27 how much they might cost,

10:29 and what other amenities are in a certain area.

10:32 So before actually going on the trail,

10:34 I ripped up all the important papers out of this

10:37 that I might need from section to section.

10:39 I packaged them up

10:40 and put them into different resupply boxes.

10:42 So then when I got into town,

10:44 I'd have these immediately on hand

10:46 to be able to look at and reference if needed.

10:49 Thru-hiking has changed a lot since I did it in 2017.

10:52 There are apps.

10:53 So there's something called Far Out,

10:55 is a popular thru-hiking app.

10:56 And they have all of this data, essentially,

10:59 in a similar organized fashion, all into your phone.

11:02 Let me show you some of my worn gear.

11:13 I wanted to have different shoes

11:17 throughout the entire trail that I could swap between

11:20 based on the different challenges that I would experience.

11:24 So I brought a few shoes to compare,

11:25 since I don't have those original shoes from years ago,

11:29 that are pretty similar models.

11:31 So the first shoe we have is the Brooks Divide.

11:34 This was closer to the Mazama.

11:37 I wore the Mazamas on areas like Pennsylvania,

11:41 which is also known lovingly as Rocksylvania.

11:44 Trail shoes are designed

11:46 to have a little bit more protection.

11:47 You're going over roots and rocks and technical terrain.

11:50 You need your foot to be able to adjust

11:52 'cause you're gonna land on things unexpectedly.

11:55 It also has lugs that provide extra traction

11:57 and extra grip.

11:58 I'm wearing Njingi toe socks.

12:00 So they have little finger puppets for my toes.

12:03 These are compression socks or calf panties,

12:06 as one of my good friends refers to them as.

12:09 And what this does is help promote blood flow

12:11 and also protects your skin.

12:13 So this hat is just a lightweight running cap.

12:15 Protects you from the sun.

12:16 So this was something I wore every day.

12:19 This is a Smartwool shirt.

12:21 Wool is one of the best fabrics you can use

12:24 as a backpacker.

12:25 Comfortable, lightweight.

12:27 I also have a Smartwool long sleeve,

12:30 which I would use to supplement

12:32 in slightly colder temperatures.

12:34 To be fair, I use polyester most of the time I go running,

12:37 but wool does a better job at keeping the smell off.

12:40 The shorts I wore, which these are also Smartwool shorts,

12:43 they have a Merino wool underwear liner.

12:46 So that was one of the things on the AT

12:47 that I had to deal with too, was some extreme chafing.

12:50 Shorts almost always had sort of an underwear liner

12:53 to them.

12:54 And more recently, you've seen a lot of shorts

12:56 that have more of a tights liner to them.

12:59 To me, like having a liner is kind of non-negotiable.

13:03 I had gloves, which these are just nice fingerless gloves.

13:06 The one I used on the AT,

13:07 I actually just bought garden gloves from a dollar store

13:11 down in Georgia.

13:12 I cut off the fingertips, but they did a pretty good job.

13:16 So these are Black Diamond Carbon Z trekking poles.

13:19 They're called Z-Poles because they fold up,

13:21 they're compact.

13:22 They're very lightweight.

13:23 I was using them pretty much the entire time.

13:25 I would either have them out in front of me

13:28 and just use them sort of as standard hiking poles,

13:31 or whenever I was running, I'd kind of throw them up,

13:33 grasp them by the middle and just run with them by my side.

13:37 They're also great when you come across wildlife.

13:39 So I'd tack on them and it makes a good kind of jarring noise

13:43 So this is pretty similar to the watch that I had on the AT,

13:49 which was a Timex Ironman.

13:51 A very simple start-go type watch.

13:54 Money matter, but also the charging factor

13:57 of a smartwatch is really tough.

13:58 So I've since upgraded to a smartwatch.

14:00 This is a KOROS Vertex 2,

14:02 and this is the watch that I use

14:04 on all of my long expedition-y type trips.

14:06 It is pretty primo with battery life,

14:09 and to me, that's the big sell.

14:10 So this will get you a hundred plus hours.

14:14 It can tell you the elevation gain and loss.

14:16 It can tell you the grade of the trail that you're going on.

14:19 So technology is crazy compared to when I did the AT,

14:23 and that was in 2017.

14:24 When I was in the Whites,

14:26 this was one of the lowest points on my trip.

14:28 Looks skinny.

14:30 I dropped about 3000 feet of vertical gain

14:35 and about three miles off in the wrong direction.

14:38 I'm almost too big.

14:42 A watch like this would tell you

14:47 that you've just dropped a crap ton of elevation,

14:51 when in reality, the trail was supposed

14:53 to follow a ridge line,

14:54 and I maybe was supposed to lose 300 or 400 feet.

14:57 I realized that if I really wanted to get the record,

15:00 I was basically going to have to go through the night

15:04 on the very last day and put over a hundred miles

15:07 in one consecutive push without sleeping.

15:10 About a hundred miles out,

15:17 and I'm going to pump myself up.

15:21 I feel very fortunate to have done the Appalachian Trail

15:34 when I was 26,

15:35 and I sort of carried that ideology on as an athlete.

15:40 So things that I really love

15:41 are long multi-day races and efforts.

15:44 I've done the Long Trail, the Arizona Trail,

15:47 and the John Muir Trail.

15:49 On top of that, I also still love pushing the envelope

15:51 with backpacking and fast packing.

15:53 So I work as a backpacking guide.

15:55 Twice a year, I'll go out

15:56 and basically connect high mountain traverses

15:59 and routes with clients.

16:03 So this is everything I carried in the Appalachian Trail.

16:06 (upbeat music)

16:09 (upbeat music)

16:12 (upbeat music)

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