TV Question - Thru Hiking

Hello!

Random email here! I am a development TV producer at Crybaby Media in NYC always on the hunt for new shows and larger than life characters!

Currently I am developing a show on thru hiking! We want to hear your story. Looking for the most intense thru hikers who wouldn't mind breaking records or some sort of milestone this up coming season. However you are hiking.... you are doing it in a very unique way. The hikers we are looking for - hike alone, know how to survive in the woods, travel light, and are determined to finish in a certain amount of time and in a certain fashion! So wether it's the Appalachian Trail your hiking, the Great Divide or the 100 other long distance hikes in the U.S. - we want to hear your story and approach! 

If this is you OR you know would would be perfect - please call or email anytime! Look forward to telling your more about the project! 

bryan@crybaby-media.com
732.673.2456

Thru-hikers make up a very tiny fraction of backpackers. You will have much more luck locating them at a site that is designed to meet their very specific needs, such as whiteblaze.com or through the mailing list run by pcta.org.

If you really would like to persuade some thru-hikers to assist you, I would also suggest offering them some sort of monetary support or direct physical assistance, such as helping them to resupply more easily on the trail. Personally, if I were thru-hiking this year and all you had to offer me were further complications for what is already a very demanding activity, I think I'd go out of my way to avoid you as a waste of valuable time and energy.

There are two members here that you should contact. Click their screen names below and send them a Private Message. I'm sure they'll talk to you.

For larger than life adventures you should contact wondering_daisy

For thru hiking I'll recommend BrianLe

Neither of these two would risk their lives for a TV show, but both would probably be pretty tough for a camera crew to follow and your viewers would certainly think they were risking their lives when you're done editing your footage

Otherwise, you can follow me down into the Leatherwood Wilderness and we'll look for Bigfoots. That's a very Squatchy area!!!

Backpacking is something that is fun to do, but in terms of intense tv? All you have to do is go over to amazon and check out all the books on thru hiking. Three or four books later, you figure out that the majority of thrus start to focus on the wonders of calorie dense food, and much less on survival skills - most backpackers have none - or on intense adventures.

A show about real backpackers will be about as fascinating as drying paint. A hyped and fake version would be ridiculous. Bear Grylls would be dead of his own stupidity by now if there was anything real going on there.....

If you would like real intel - go backpacking. Multiply by 100 days. Cougars, bears or elk Don't chase you nearly as often as most non hikers are afraid they do....

It would be much more interesting getting a total newbie and follow their learning curve. I think you could find it easier to produce a film in short multi day hikes. The logistics of a cameraman with all of his camera gear and top that off by the fact he too has to "backpack" with whom ever they/you follow would be nearly impossible. Batteries alone would be a major hurdle, unless of course you have a mule team following the crew around. Sounds like a disaster if you ask me.

Real wives of the Sierra? Survivor : Katahdin? I hope someone scores their 15 seconds of fame (Warhol's 15 minutes is now really, really diluted ) with this idea. Basically i think this idea smells like one of the big shelters on the Long Trail on a night of downpours when its SRO with 2 dozen people in bad need of showers and laundry.

This post has hit several other forums I follow, and on at least one has been deleted as spam. I'm not quite that strict, nor, evidently, are the other mods who have replied, but it appears that most of us have given the OP the consideration it deserves.

The original poster posted the same text four times to four different forums on this site. I deleted the extraneous three. I left this one thinking it would stimulate some fun discussion, if it accomplished nothing else.

Or multiple newbies. Collectively, the newbies I've hiked with have made for some interesting, sometimes hair-raising, episodes... that last one where the dude managed to have flames shooting out in all directions from the stove? Yeah, several lives flashed before my eyes....

I would have liked to have seen that....



From a good safe distance!

Not interested. Been there, done that, never again.

In 1969, the NOLS course I was on was filmed for the ALCOA Hour. It is called "30 Days to Survival". I had a small part because the film crew were following the wilderness course and I was on the mountaineering course. But we somewhat traveled together and met at times. One climb I did was filmed. I have a 30 second claim to fame.

Must say, that most of us, absolutely HATED the film crew by the end of 30 days. It was a very difficult course - the weather was some of the continuous worst weather I have ever backpacked in. We honestly ran out of food. We were down to eating soggy oatmeal with Crisco for a week. The same time a helicopter brought in food for the film crew. They were wining and dining in luxury. So much of the filming was so phony. And guess who was the "star" of the show? The kid of the producer.

The fun part - we were sitting on a ledge overlooking the Pacific Ocean. If he hadn't been able to shut it down, my next move would have involved kicking it out of his hands into the water.

The easiest backpacks draw the crazy, I tellya. Point Reyes isn't even wilderness camping - assigned sites and restrooms, and water faucets.

I should start issuing a disclaimer based on every Dumb Newbie Trick I've seen.

On this trip, you will kindly refrain from the following: lighting the stove before you finish screwing it on the canister. Pitching your tent on the edge of anything. Not staking out your tent so no one has to chase it half a mile across the open alpine. Peeing under my hammock!!! Seriously!!! And, thou shalt not leave bear canisters unlatched! Also - please tell someone you are leaving the trail to pee, so we will wait for you instead of waiting at a trailhead for two hours while you unknowingly hike miles in the wrong direction because when you returned to the trail you went the WRONG WAY. Thanks, have a nice trip!

I too have seen this on a couple of other forums.

Folks that are out to break records are generally 'findable' --- most who set out to do so announce same ahead of time. Records broken on both the PCT and AT last year are good examples.

"... or some sort of milestone" is more vague and leaves lots of options. There certainly are interesting folks out there, like the guy who wore a wedding dress all along the PCT (a different one for each section).

Probably best place to post this in the "some sort of milestone" context these days would be on the per-year-class-of pages for each major trail on Facebook.

I will say that when you say first that you're developing a show about thru-hiking but then say that you want folks out to break records and you're looking for "the most intense thru hikers" --- that suggests to me that you're not at all looking to capture what thru-hiking is about in the more general sense, but rather looking for those on the extreme edges. Like the guys that took the CDT route last year that hit some improbable number of 14'ers along the way.

Nothing wrong with that, certainly, but I would say that rather than "a show on thru hiking", you're looking for a "a show on extreme thru hiking". Best to talk then with the handful of folks that have done anything like that.

The legends shouldn't be hard to find --- 2013 record breakers for a start, then others like Tatu Joe, Eric D, Scott Williamson, Flyin' Brian, Justin Lichter, Andrew Skurka ... it's a small community and I would guess they mostly know each other somewhat and are aware of who is up and coming to challenge the records in future.

I nearly spitted out my coffee all over my MacBook. Oh, man, that was funny.

spirit visits in camp from Racoons perhaps? How about planting bears at strategic points so you can film wrestling matches with hikers? Maybe an attack or two from woodpeckers with mad-pecker disease. Just a few things that may spice it up. Of course, there's always the scenario of combining a through hike with a bigfoot hunt.

My hope is someday I and my wife will realize our vision of moving to an area where everything is real - humans, wildlife, trees, water ... and boring enough that no media is interested.

How bout just doing a show on all the Volunteer Trail Angels out there, and since the TV industry has such deep pockets, provide a little trail magic of your own. I personally don't have a TV anymore, best to get out there and see whats going on for yourself then to see it through some bias viewpoint.

+1 for no TV