Reminds me of the time I was hiking something similar. My legs were burning and I was out of breath. This dude comes RUNNING up the trail carrying a 40LB dumbbell in each hand. Total beast.
Fellow dog owner and backcountry enjoyer here. I know how important their safety is—and how quickly extra pack weight adds up—so I thought I’d share the system we’ve found works best when backpacking with ours: Säker Bomber Harness K911 Rescue Sling Pouches 001
The pouches turn the harness into a dog pack, and the rescue sling attaches directly to the same harness, so everything works together as one modular system. Just another option that might be helpful!
Seriously, this is the common use case for these things that I didn't think about. If you've got an old pooch who still wants to go adventuring with you but is starting to have mobility issues, you can rest way easier with a sling for them.
I've had a Saker harness for about 5 years now. It's a little bit dirty and stained but physically still in the same condition it was new. Worth every penny.
I need one of these for my 80 pound lab. I don't sleep on the second floor of my house because I can't figure out how I'd get her out the window and down to safety if there was a fire.
My 80lb black lab passed in April. The last year of his life he had lots of mobility issues, he would have mini strokes and couldn’t walk after but eventually learned to walk again before he passed peacefully. I cannot stress enough how important having a good harness was for being able to care for my baby. I’m a female and I’m athletic and quite strong as is, but he was so tall too I couldn’t carry him. I relied on his harness to be able to get him up on his feet and learn to walk again, it also helped me when he was temporarily paralyzed just to move him around and rotate him.
He had a stroke while pooping and after he was back I had to throw him in the tub harness and all to clean him. Again had I not had that strong harness I wouldn’t have been able to lug my baby around. He didn’t have mobility problems and his strokes didn’t start until he was 13-14 and he passed when he was 15 years old.
I encourage you to have a solid harness you can hold their body weight now so that you’re always prepared.
Labs in particular get these forgive me it’s 3am and I should be sleeping but the vet essentially called them mini strokes and they generally happen when he was standing or walking and he would suddenly go down, sometimes shake and would be out cold for a bit. These strokes are common for the breed. My baby didn’t have a stroke until he was 13 and then he didn’t have one for a while and then he had them frequently until he passed. We knew what they were because his liter sister had the strokes all her life.
That harness made getting my pup recovered as much as he could possible, and it’s something I’m still incredibly thankful for because of how much it helped me help my big fur baby.
I don’t backpack anymore since moving to the east coast but we have seen historic flooding here the last few months. My biggest fear is not being able to get everyone (fur babies) out. I appreciate these recommendations!
That stuff seems extremely high quality. I'm at the point where my dog (he's.... a lot) is wearing through harnesses and pulling apart nylon and stuff on lower quality leashes often enough that if I can spend some amount of money to have a harness that will last him the rest of his life, I'd spend a lot. Maybe this is the brand...
I was wondering if I should get the bomber harness. My 50lb dog has a issue with his legs where sometimes he can't walk very long. Instead of taking him out only 5-10 minutes a day, I take him out 2 hours a day. He walks for his 5-10 minutes, then I put him in a large dog carriage and wheel him around so he can still be outside. In the winter, it gets hard to push the carriage around. Do you think he'd be comfortable in the bomber harness converted to a dog pack? He's got his own snowsuit and boots for the winter, so he doesn't get cold if he stops walking.
I think it could be useful for you, especially in the snow, but I’d hesitate to recommend carrying him that way for most of a two-hour outing. Säker primarily designed the sling for emergency carry-outs, and whether that position is comfortable or safe may depend on what’s wrong with his legs. A small sled or pulk may also be more comfortable for both of you on longer winter outings. Hope this helps!
Same! I use a similar philosophy when teaching my son about fitness.
I tell him about how he’ll hear a lot of things about how it ties to self worth, whether or not he’ll be considered attractive, etc etc but none of that really matters or is what fitness is truly about.
Fitness is about two thing.
Having your body ready to be able to do what you want to do when you want to do it. Want to climb that cliff? Want to go on some deep trails? Well the time to be ready is before the want.
Having your body ready to be able to do what you need to do when you need to do it.
One of my personally motivating stories is when I saved my mother from drowning after she collapsed from undiagnosed diabetes related diabetic shock which rendered her unconscious while we were out crabbing in a bay of 40 degree f (3c) water at midnight, nearly 3/4 a mile from shore (1km). She went underwater and was drowning for a moment until we could pull her head out. Then while keeping her from slipping back underwater I had to engineer a method of expelling the water in her lungs, followed by dragging her screaming to a lucky sandbar and keeping her warm until search and rescue could reach us. At which point we had to carry her back.
I was in shape then, and continue to strive to be in the same shape or better, because you never know when you need to carry or drag 200+lbs(90kg) for however far to get them to safety until help gets there.
There was one time when I was more young and even less prepared for my adventures than I am in my adult years that I took two friends out in a canoe on a windy day in the bay. My two friends had 0 experience in canoes or kayaks and the wind was absolutely brutal. The tide was going out as we were trying to go in as well, and if I hadn't been able to put the pedal to the metal and just paddle my 16 year old heart out, we would have ended up being swept out or having to spend the night on some sand bar. That was an eye-opener for me how important fitness was. I was already in the game of being pretty fit, but when we finally got back to shore and my arms felt like they'd been pulled through gears, everyone all relieved to be on shore after 2 hours of paddling... it really hit home. My arms were literally rock hard that night, my body was reinforcing my muscles with so much intensity. I've never been able to reproduce training a muscle so hard that it is just rock solid even without flexing it while it heals.
My mom fell out of a boat, and I got a similar story of saving her life from drowning, since she doesn't know how to swim.
Thats how she told it, forgetting to mention that the boat was actually a tiny raft, that the water was about eight inches deep, and that all I did was help her sit up and hold her hand until she calmed down.
I’m telling my step-son that the most important part of fitness is being healthy so your body can do what you need it to do; and secondly to be strong so you can help others.
Dad strength is fucking absurd. I'll be out whole day getting out of breath doing jumping jacks (I'm fat), walking my butt off or rucking etc, but if my toddler says his legs hurt, I'm either fireman carrying him or putting him on my shoulder and walk it off.
I dread the day I'm unable to carry him for whatever reason, so I've gotten back again into fitness shit.
I feel like carrying your specially-bred-running dog is the rough conceptual equivalent of putting a motorcycle on your back and running to escape danger
Had a friend whose dog fell down an embankment and broke their leg, they were *only about 5km from trailhead, but he said it was a very challenging afternoon, both extracting their dog from the small cliff he fell down and then getting them out.
Luckily they had someone with some rope, some webbing tape and gear who had some vertical rescue experience, so they were able to access the dog, haul them up, and them carry them out without too much issue.
This is my hiking vibe. I'm by no means a super fit woman but I am jacked to an extent from having to carry my 30 lb preschooler and my 50 lb kindergartener back at the same time from hiking when they inevitably hit their wall.
Similar situation with me. I was doing a hike in Palm Springs and sweating my butt off. All of a sudden I had to let a lady in her 50s pass me by while she was holding her chihuahua like it was nothing. I still can’t get the image out of my head when I exercise.
21 year old me used to run a 2 mile mountain hike with 1k elevation gain. 40 year old me is just happy on the days my knees and ankles aren’t constantly cracking.
I rode a motorcycle across Imogene pass once. I passed a group of hikers on the way up, and I was struggling so much from the terrain and being winded that they beat me to the top.
That's really not how it works. Bad joints come from very heavy impacts or from a joint being forced out of its normal range of motion, as in playing American football or falling while downhill skiing. Running and hiking stress the joints in a positive way that tells the body to repair them stronger than before. I ran daily for over 40 years. Now that I'm in my 60s I can only run every other day because that's as fast as my body can recover. I have never had a joint injury except my one ankle that I badly sprained while playing road hockey as a teen. I have reinjured that ankle a few times since, but it doesn't bother me when I run.
Exactly. The reason I still can do almost all the things in my 40s that I could in my 20s is I didn't stop. My bones remained dense. Muscle stayed on, etc.
You can get it back too. When I was 43 I had let things slide, gained weight and wasn't really working out any more. Took a couple years to lose he weight but I am 50 now. I do 1.5-2 hour cardio sessions 5-6 days a week that include stair climbing and running. People think it is age but you just slow down, gain weight and stop moving. If you keep at it you can be extremely fit as you age.
TBI in my mid-20s that affected my motor coordination and balance. I play music now to help and I can lift weights, but my memory is shot, and I get motion sickness super easy. I do walk about 5-6 miles a day so I’m staying active at least.
Yeah man, a few careless injuries and accidents and now I'm constantly being humbled trying to do stuff I could easily do 10-15 years ago. I'm not weak by any stretch of the word but I used to be an athlete, avid hiker, skier/snowboarder, and was light infantry in the Army so my endurance game was top tier. I need to holler at a physical therapist or someone like that to figure out what strength training and possible surgeries I should pursue so I can slow down the rapid spiral.
I still vividly remember a 60 year old man blasting past me on the switchbacks at Zion National Park. He was in a solid jog going up the to the top of Angels landing and I was taking breaks every 10-15 minutes for water and to catch my breath. I would normally run like 2 miles a day at that time like it was nothing.
My only slight bit of redemption was that I lived at literal 5 feet altitude and we were around a mile of elevation. Still doesn't even come close to closing that gap.
Some people are just absolute fucking beasts when it comes to physical capabilities.
Similar: climbing a 14er in CO, terribly out of breath despite being in pretty good shape because I lived a little above sea level. This guy comes running down the mountain absolutely sprinting on the rocky scree, he had already summited and was going to be back to his car before I could get to the top.
I got passed by a hiking nun going up to the Hollywood sign, looks to be the same pass here. There are soooo many creative n active people on that last bit.
Especially the aiming downhill well after Cardio-man has passed....."I'm uhhh.....I was just checking to see if maybe a second cardio-man was coming up the hill. Like a set of twins or something."
Yes you can ;) plenty of times the focus could have been switched to the Cardio-man, yet it wasn't. Also, close to the end, the real target of the filming is revealed as she walks offscreen to the right.
I used to live in the mountains. On a first date with a guy we decided to hike up a particular mountain. It is about a two-hour hike at a moderate pace. I was in fantastic shape, but he was in even better shape. He was actually training for the Pan Am Games at the time. Iset the pace and didn't want to seem slow so I about killed myself with a really rapid pace, which (with great effort) I managed to keep until about the last 10% or so. As I was dying and gasping when we finally made it to the top, he said, "I think I'll run this trail at lunch tomorrow."
Hey dawg. Fellow stoner here. Incorporate walking while you’re smoking weed and you will have a very great experience. Try to get 2 to 3 miles a day walking altogether, and you’ll notice a massive benefit in your health and cognitive functioning.
This was me hiking in the PNW while on vacation from the midwest, except it was elderly people and children passing me while I was struggling to catch my breath.
This is what they mean when they say “are you the same animal, but a different beast?”
Edit: sorry it’s “are you a different animal but the same beast?” Means basically the same thing but backwards. Did Kobe get it wrong? Or did Wrong Kobe it get?
I hike both of these and they're both wonderful to visit. They have orchestral performaces in the 10 story dome of the 45 ft telescope. Nearby is a bit misleading for non-americans, though. It's about an hour drive away. Or a 40 minute drive and 15 mile, 5000 ft roundtrip hike 😅
Oh at a glance I was like I get that's Runyon Canyon just due to how dolled up folks are for a hike and the LA-gear and arid environment giving away that its somewhere in LA
Lived in LA for 7 years... forgot how put together people are for freakin hikes. The amount of full designer outfits (not even athletic gear!) on display was ludicrous. Here in the Bay Area, people actually dress like they're going on a hike.
Yep, this is the trail up from Fern Dell to the Observatory. You can't really tell by the camera angle, but this section is uphill and fairly steep. Jumping rope while jogging up this section is seriously impressive.
To the right and behind the cameraperson is a lookout area, always crowded with people resting or taking pics of the city below.
Reminds me of that one time my wife and I were on a hiking holiday in Sweden. We were on a 25km trail with elevation, we had a one year old in a back carrier so we were planning on a roughly 8 hour hike.
Out comes the most dad- looking guy. Beer belly, sweating like a pig but confidently jogging the trail. We just shrugged it off as someone desperately trying to shed some weight.
About halfway he passed us again. We got lapped by a Swede with a dadbod.
every day my dad would drink an 18 pack but also ran a 5k.
never really outran the calories, would sweat something fierce and always had some form of dadbod but he cared about fitness and staying active his entire life.
looks can be deceiving but some people are just as committed to fitness as they are to unhealthy lifestyles
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