CDT: movie Embrace the Brutality

Watched this again. It brought back memories and also made me reflect on some things.

Table of Contents

Gear changes over the years

The backpacks were mostly Osprey with a Golite. Osprey is no longer the sole “real” pack for thru-hikers and Golite is long gone.

A lot of MSR tents and no Dyneema in sight. 3 to 5 pound tents. With a four pound pack and you are already at around eight pounds of gear.

Pump filters. No Sawyer or Katadyn. No Smartwater bottles.

No sun hoodies and ball caps. Instead they have bandanas and broad brim hats.

Closed cell foam pads seemed universal.

Aluminum hiking poles seemed pretty standard.

Changes on trail

They all carried umbrellas at the start. I didn’t see any at the end.

Many hikers had foot trouble early on, but eventually they all seem to have adjusted.

The movie didn’t tell us what adjustments they made to their food other than eating lots of pizza. Jester lost a lot of weight and too much early on, but seems to have solved the problem.

Missing

Toaster House did not make a showing.

But the movie catches everything else well.

Bottom line/Caveats

The movie is still worth watching. Very much worth watching.

Note: as a caveat I’ve bought this three times. Twice on DVD and once digitally. I lost one DVD and after watching the digital managed to lose that too. So I bought it again to watch it again.