If you search for a West Coast Trail video, you will find an endless supply of breathtaking, color-graded masterpieces. You will see extremely fit people standing on pristine beaches, looking thoughtfully at the horizon while gentle acoustic guitar music plays.
I am not one of those people.
I am a fifty-one-year-old dad who strapped fifty-five pounds of gear to his back, dragged his sons to the Gordon River trailhead, and spent seven days absolutely fighting for my life in the mud.
When I got home, I wanted to put together a nice, family-friendly West Coast Trail video highlight reel of our adventure. But because I possess absolutely zero video editing skills, I let an automated AI program do the heavy lifting. I also tried to use editing software to censor the staggering amount of exhaustion-fueled profanity that apparently made up 100% of my communication with my sons on the trail.
I failed miserably at both.
Instead of a cinematic journey, the timeline is mangled, the audio is a mess, and the censor bleeps don’t actually cover up the swearing. I got so frustrated fighting with the software that I finally threw my hands up in defeat.
My Real West Coast Trail Video
I am posting the completely botched, heavily-profane, director’s cut anyway.
Because this is the actual reality of a family trying to survive this trail. When you are waist-deep in a root-choked mud bog near Thrasher Cove, you aren’t meditating on the beauty of nature. You are arguing, you are questioning your packing strategy, and you are definitely swearing.
Watch the full breakdown of my editing disaster below, and stick around to the end where I read a short, painfully accurate excerpt from my upcoming book, 55 Pounds of Regret.
If you want to know what it actually looks like when a middle-aged guy realizes he packed enough gear to launch an e-commerce storefront on the beach, join the waitlist for 55 Pounds of Regret here.