My friends, welcome to this episode of the outdoor gear review. I hope you all are doing well. For this adventure, we are on a closed road and we are doing some hiking. It is raining heavily. It is cold. In other words, the conditions are perfect. The temperature is 39° with a cold rain coming down. Over the last couple of weeks, we've had numerous snowstorms, ice storms, and whatnot. And the entire area basically is still on lockdown. All of the national forests are closed. That's right. They shut down all of the forest

roads and mountain passes like this are also closed. They are closed, but they're about to open up. And I figured before they do, we should get out and explore. One of my favorite things to do as we go from winter into spring is to hike the closed mountain passes. We did one a few weeks ago that was covered in a ton of snow and ice. We did not make it very far. Something tells me today we are not going to have any issues. Up here a ways everyone is a really cool bridge. We will walk across it and also go underneath.

Something tells me they're not going to hop without their shoes. The stuff you will find on the side of the road is always interesting. A few weeks back, we had an ice storm that dropped roughly 3 in of sleet. That afternoon, it rained and then it flash froze. That means that we've had this layer of ice on the ground 3 to 4 in deep. And thank goodness it is beginning to melt because it has caused a lot of problems. The national forests have been shut down and closed. Lone Wolf Mountain is still inaccessible.

I've been able to hike up about halfway, but once you get about halfway, it's a solid sheet of ice. This has made doing some adventures very difficult. But luckily, things are changing. It's beginning to warm up with the rain here. You can see the ground is frozen. It can't soak into the soil. Very cool. Beautiful, too. Even though you really can't see much, you can see enough. This is a bridge. It is not the bridge that I'm talking about. The bridge that we are going to is very impressive. I don't know if I've ever told you all this, but I do not like heights. Even looking down off of this makes me feel ill.

It has been a few years since I've been out this way to do some hiking and whatnot. How cool is this everyone? out here all by myself. I love it. At the same time, this is some easy hiking. Nice paved road. Luckily, there's no ice. I did bring my micro spikes just in case, but I don't believe I'm going to need them. talking about my micro spikes. In one of the previous adventures, I mentioned a misadventure. Basically, if you don't know the story, I'll just tell it again real quick. So, we had the winter storm that dropped 3 in of sleet and then it rained and then it froze. So, we had the ice on the ground. Then, it snowed just a little

bit and I decided to go out for a winter storm trip. There was a storm coming in and the forecast was for it to drop a foot of snow. Well, I went out for a trip. I went to a trail head. I parked, put on my micro spikes, got my gear on, shut the door, locked it up, and I begun to hike. That's when I slipped on the ice and I busted my elbow. I can use it. I don't think it's broken or anything like that, but like I can't lift anything with it. Like even holding this GoPro, it hurts. I did that smooth move right on the side of the road at a trail head. That was my smooth move of 2026 so far. I'm sure there will be others. With the ice on the ground, it was just too slick to go out on a trip,

even with micro spikes. To everybody who was asking about my arm, h it is getting better, but I can hardly straighten it out. Can't lift anything with it. Really hurts. I got to ask, what is your smoothest move of 2026 so far? Anybody crash and burn at a trail head right next to a road with a bunch of vehicles driving by like I did? Hopefully I look like Tom Cruz hitting the ground instead of like Napoleon Dynamite or something. All right, folks. Up here is the bridge. This bridge is so cool. In the wintertime when the road is closed, that is the only time that you can walk on this or that you're supposed to. When I was a teenager, I may have

brought my girlfriends out here late at night and we would have walked this maybe. I'm not saying that happened. It's a possibility, though. This is seriously cool. All of this is one continuous bridge. It wraps around this mountain side high above the trees and the view from up here is incredible. on a sunny day. Not right now. What makes this such a marvel of engineering is the fact they were not able to disturb anything. No blasting, nothing like that. So, they came up with a plan. A plan to glue this bridge in place. And that's what they did. The fog

is beginning to break. You might actually get to see this bridge a little bit. It starts way over there, comes around, wraps around, and keeps on going. And again, we are high above the trees. Woo! Everybody, the winds are picking up. It's a little chilly at this elevation. We are getting closer and closer to freezing, which means once we get to the end of this bridge, I'm not going to go any further. There is a reason why this road is closed. Luckily, we are permitted to play on it, which is cool. Unfortunately, there's no shelters up this way. There is one further back. And also, we can go underneath this bridge, which might be an interesting idea.

We need to find a place to hunker down so we can make some coffee, have lunch, and all that stuff. A few years ago, I came out here in the spring. This road was closed and I hiked I want to say it was about 15 miles of this closed road. It was awesome. I remember very specifically it was cold but yet sunny. I was walking this section of road here and there were fighter jets off in the distance cruising by. This area here is part of the US Air Force training path. So fighter jets, cargo planes, and all sorts of stuff come by all the time. We've gone over the bridge and I want to take a quick second here to detour to see what exactly is underneath the bridge.

We are now underneath the bridge everyone and we are protected. What we could do is go underneath here and have lunch. It's not a bad idea. There is something spray painted on this concrete over here that I do not want to have in my video the entire time. You can likely guess what it is. Teenagers all around the world are spray painting pictures of this all over everything all the time. They're not a very good artist, but I can tell what that is. So, that's a no-go. Even out here in the middle of nowhere, nothing is safe.

Let's go see if we can find our way underneath this bridge so that we can have lunch, have coffee. I am going to hike back on this bridge and see if I can't make my way underneath it. If memory serves me correct, there's a trail down here a ways that I can take. As you can see here, we still have some snow, some ice. It has been unbelievably slick here for weeks. Luckily, by next week, all of this should be gone. It's supposed to be in the 60s next week. Woo! By the way, everyone, when I say that this bridge was glued into place, what I mean specifically is epoxied. I know someone in the comments was going to

correct me, so Unfortunately, everyone, my plan of hanging out underneath this bridge is not going to work. This is the one level spots and yet water's coming off of the bridge hitting this rock and is splattering all over the place over here. There's a big slope to it. So that's not going to work. We will have to come up with another plan. And that plan might be as simple as going back to the vehicle. This bridge was made on the face of a cliff. So, there really isn't anything flat here outside of this one section of trail and that one little spot back there. But unfortunately, it was like being out in the rain. Because of that, we're heading back to

the vehicle. Let's go. I will go ahead and I will tell you all this, but going back to the vehicle now is not a bad idea because when I stepped over that guard rail to go under the bridge at the top, my waterproof pants split down the middle. So, right now, as I'm hiking, my crotch is getting wet. The last time I was out for a rain hike, I noticed that the glue was beginning to dry out, but I forgot about ordering a new pair of pants. Now I have to because these are compromised It might not be a bad idea to go back to the vehicle anyways. The temp, it feels like it's dropping and it's definitely beginning to get breezy with these cooler temperatures, a breeze and rain gear that's failed. That could be the recipe for a problem.

So, let's make our way back to the vehicle. Pouring the rain. The forecast was for half an inch of rain last night, which we got. 1 in of rain today, 1 in tonight. I wish I could be doing some waterproof testing with some tents, but unfortunately I can't make it up to Lone Wolf Mountain. I can make it up almost halfway. As I mentioned, luckily next week that will change Take a look at that hole, everyone. That is where the pants ripped. I've had these for a very long time, and they are excellent. But it's time, obviously, for a new pair. That's cool. There's a bard owl in the forest here, not far. As you all could tell, I moved locations, and that's because where I was parked at, it was not level. The vehicle was slanted like that. So, I

went down the road and found this spot here. No one's out today. Heat This is a new stove that I'm testing out. This is from Primus, and I have to say, I'm really impressed with its performance. It's cold today. Again, 37 36° and it's getting this water to a boil in no time at all. Oh yeah. As it stands right now, it's still raining, but it's relatively light. The wind is beginning to pick up just a bit though, so it's feeling quite a bit colder than it really is. For lunch, I am having a real Turat MR. This is from a legit military MRE. And this is some sort of pasta with like a tomato sauce. Actually, it says here pasta and tomato sauce.

It does look like there's some beef or at least some meat inside of this. Here in a minute, it'll be ready to eat. This is certainly not where I expected to end up on this trip. My plan was to have lunch underneath that bridge, but because of the phallic symbol that was spray painted on there, well, that did not work out. Trust me, you would have been distracted if there was that spray painted on the wall behind me the entire time that I was talking. So, that did not work out. Today has been a ton of fun getting out to walk out to that bridge. So cool. I'm really glad that the fog departed so we had a good view and that you all could see at least somewhat what that bridge is. as far as a pasta meal goes. This is

okay. Real Terat has some excellent meals, but this one I would say on a scale from like 0 to 10, 10 being the best, this is a five. I'm not sure how well the camera is showing what this actually looks like. Cameras have a tendency to lighten things up, but in truth, it is very, very dark, even though we're not close to sundown yet. Sometime back, I was talking about 2026 and my plans for the channel. I mentioned that I wasn't going to change anything or do anything differently because everything was going so well.

Well, I was wrong about that. I am going to do something different in regards to this channel, a new type of adventure. Within the next couple of months, we are going to begin doing some moto camping. That's right, everybody. I have a dirt bike on the way right now. This is going to be interesting. I am really, really excited about this and I cannot wait to begin filming these adventures. I'm still getting some gear together and there's a few things that I need to figure out, but I'm close to having everything ready to go. To be able to do this, I had a bunch of stipulations that I had to meet and also work around. I've been able to do all of that, and soon enough, we'll be hitting the trails

together. We will be cruising the hundreds of miles of gravel roads, taking trails, going off in the middle of nowhere to do some moto camping. That everyone is going to be a ton of fun. That is certainly something new for this channel that's going to be going on in 2026. dirt bikes and stuff like that, that is certainly not my expertise, but I'm sure together we will figure it all out. Bike packing I've done before. Dirt bike moto camping I have not done. But like I said, we'll figure it out and I'm sure you all will help along the way. I am incredibly lucky to have a ton of national forest to explore. Every which direction there's a national forest which is really cool.

Unfortunately, right now just about everything is closed because of the snow and ice. The road that we've been hiking on closed. The road behind us closed. The national forest over at this direction, it's closed. The last thing that I read stated that they plan to keep everything closed until spring, if not late spring. Before I forget, I need to do some shoutouts. Keith, thank you so much for the delicious beef jerky. That stuff is amazing. Theo, thank you so much for the official Mr. Heater Buddy fan. I cannot wait to try that out. In the past, I've tried different fans with, you know, using heaters and whatnot inside of

tents. They didn't work so well. So, maybe this will be different. Theo also sent in some coffee in a tube, which I cannot wait to try out. That stuff looks interesting. Thank you so much, my friend. I do appreciate it. Christopher, my friend, thank you so much for the MountainHouse meals, the colored flames, and the coffee. You are the man, and I appreciate you big time. Lastly, there's Jeffrey. Thank you so much for the MountainHouse meals, the MREs, and the One Tigris tent. I really appreciate everything that you've done that you've sent in, and also your friendship. I hope you're doing well, buddy. Those are the shoutouts for this week. Thank you everybody so much again for everything.

I tell you everyone, the temp is dropping and that tells me it is time for us to go. I want to get out of here just in case it does go below freezing because if it does, this entire place is going to be a skating rink. The ground is already frozen, so it's not going to take much of a fluctuation as far as the temps go for this to become a real problem. I want to thank you all so much for joining me for this adventure. The plan was to do one thing. We ended up doing something else because of that terrible drawing. Unfortunately, I can't show it to you all, but in your mind, draw what you know is there and do it really, really poorly. Just imagine the worst graffiti that you can and that's what you get. I can't say that I understand

why so many people spray paint picks all over the place. If anything, you would think it'd be like the other thing, you know, but I don't know, maybe that's just me, right? If I was going to be doing genitalia graffiti, I wouldn't be spray painting those. I'd be spray painting. Folks, don't listen to me. Anyways, thank you all so much for joining me on this trip. I do appreciate it. If everything goes according to plan, next week we will be out on a backpacking adventure, and I cannot wait to go. After a handful of other adventures that I've already filmed, we will be doing some moto camping after that. If you had a good time on this adventure, please hit the thumbs up. I do appreciate it. Until next time, take care. Be well.

Strengthen honor. Bye for now.