The way I see it, the core of backpacking is comprised of two basic components: hiking and surviving. Hiking is fairly self explanatory, just get out and walk for the most part. Surviving is completely different, but can be broken down into two basic components: food and shelter.

When Ryan and I decide what to film we look at those three components: hiking/walking, food, and shelter. If you look back at every episode you can see this correlation in every episode. We try to give each of these equal airplay and over the years to come we would like to cover everything imaginable.

Another thing you may not have noticed is that we release a re-occurring topic (cooking or gear review) episode then do an episode about a specific technique or topic. There are several reasons why we do this…

• Typically the one off episodes take us several weeks to orchestrate, film, and produce. The gear reviews and food episodes — while they still take planning, time, and a 100% effort — are not as difficult to pull together. This allows us to give our viewers a steady stream of content and provides us with the time we need to create meaningful content for each and every episode.
• I love food and I love to cook, that all carries over to when I am in the backcountry. I got tired of eating dehydrated meals — and ramen — so I branched out and started developing better things to eat while in the woods. That is one of the main reasons why I like to do food based episodes.
• The biggest reason why we do this is because our viewers have requested more of this type of content. Plain and simple, we film what you guys want to see.

With that said, we have some exciting new content coming over the next few months. We are doing a few new gear reviews, going to show you how to tie knots, take care of your down filled gear, hike with kids, and much more. Stay tuned, and as always let us know what you think.

Do not fret though, the trip is in a few weeks and we will be back on schedule soon. We have been releasing a new video at least every three weeks since we started. I am surprised that we made it 12 episodes before missing one. We have every reason to believe that the next episode will be on time (June 13th).

Thank you for understanding and as always thing for watching.

I have tried to put the videos in a format that would play on an iPod but apparently that is not working. When we do get the issue sorted out we do not plan to update the old videos, sorry. This would reek havoc on every subscriber of the show and cause everyone to download the episodes all over again. When we get it sorted out we will make sure all new videos work with the iPod and post a separate link on the old episodes for an iPod ready version.

We are truly sorry for the issues. It is my fault and I am doing what I can to get it sorted out. Please let us know if you have experienced any issues with the videos or the site. You telling us is the only way that we can get them fixed.

So if your curious, bounce on over to Linux.com and read up on how we do it.

I also got to use my new shotgun microphone for this shoot. I think the quality was way better than the wireless mic I have been using. It is by no means a high-end piece of equipment but it gets the job done. On the outdoor shots with me in-front of the camera it did a really good job of removing the background noise. The very flooded Arkansas River was rolling on right behind the camera.

This was a fun one to shoot, to spite the weather; next time we get to talk about food!

This was my first episode to go it alone and I have to say that it was an interesting experience. The episode that you see is actually the second complete one that I filmed. I had originally filmed episode 10 a full week beforehand, but it turned into one long lecture. The more I watched and edited it, the more I disliked it. So, at the last minute (literally) I was blessed with some great weather and I headed out to the beach and recorded the version that you see here. I did an experiment in the other version, but it was much more boring. Filming at the beach allowed me to do it more ad-hoc and in a style more true to life (i.e. trudging around in water, therefore saturating the material as best I could).

We continued to use Amazon’s S3 service for transferring the files between each other and it has made working with them much easier.

As always, head on over to the wiki to see what we are currently working on and to get involved. We always interested in seeing what others think of our show topics and their contents. Please don’t hesitate to let us know what you would like to see in future shows.

We hope you enjoyed the show!

If you wonder why my camera work was so shaky it was because I had to hand cam most of my footage. I got out on location and realized that I left the tripod’s camera attachment at home. All of the straight away shots were easy enough, I just propped the camera on the tripod. The rest of it I had to do by hand.

For the third episode in a row we had serious issues with blip.tv, our video host. The upload of the high-res version failed three times before it finally posted. The flash encoding also failed for the third straight time. All of these issues have us contemplating a move to a new video platform.

We solved one of our “distance apart” issue making this episode. I signed up for Amazon’s S3, a storage solution built around web services. We were easily able to transfer the large DV files from Seattle to Arkansas without too much issue. This is where we are looking to move the video hosting. It does cost money though, so we are just thinking about right now.

As always, it was fun putting the episode together. We hope you enjoyed it.

If you would like us to mention and/or cover The One in our upcoming episode about Tarp Tents, please give us your thoughts in the Wiki page.

There are four options for donating: reoccurring (monthly) donation in the amounts of $10, $5, and $2 and a one time flat amount. The entire donation process is being handled through PayPal.

In all sincerity, we would love it if you feel compelled to donate but please do not feel obligated. If the donations cover the costs of operations we plan on dropping the few small ads that we have running.

As I decreed before, we will also provide full disclosure of all donations that we receive. Please let us know what you think.

For the review we (me mostly ) chose the Jetboil PCS. One of the big reasons I wanted to do the Jetboil was because I have already used it in three of the previous episodes. That and I absolutely love the thing.

This episode was also the first one that Ryan and I did where we were not in the same location; thankfully it was not too big of a deal. We had a little fuss getting the video files passed back and forth, but not too much. Everything should be a little easier next time.

The only real technical issue we had was with my microphone. If you noticed, and I am sure most people did, the audio gets a little choppy half way through the video (around the coffee bit). It was because the batteries in my mic were going out. I salvaged what I could, then went back out to the location and re-filmed everything else.

This episode also marks the first time that we had some involvement from the community, thanks you guys. We are glad that you like the show enough to make suggestions…keep them coming!

Oh and Ryan has a brand new camera to film with now, woo-hoo!

From Ryan: Wow, what a rush. I literally got my camera in two days before the episode was supposed to go live. As you can tell, I have a lot to learn when filming, but that will come with time I hope. I had a blast making this episode, for my part — I only wish I would have had a little more time so that I could have shot outside. I think for you, the viewer, it would have made for a better video…if for nothing else, then to have the scene(s) a little better lit.

Now that the equipment is in order, we’ll be able to start work on each each video earlier. This will allow us to more fine tune the episodes to what we want and hopefully make it so Chad isn’t waiting around for me to get my part(s) done to finish things up.