How To: Chop through dense forests with a machete

In this video, Chopping It Up, we see how some men camping and scouting in the remote central Brazilian jungle hack their way through the thick brush with machetes. We watch as they clear a path to the top of a mountain. It's a lot of work! We're told how they identified a route where the need for hacking would be minimized, on an old trail. The problem, however, is the sunlight on an old trail causes it to get choked up with vines and other thick growth. To clear the path with the machetes, they must leave their packs behind, to be retrieved after they've chopped their way up the mountain. They also explain how they deal with the problem of ensuring they have enough water when they don't know if there will be water further along. Chopping through dense brush like this is very dehydrating and exhausting, but this video shows how people with a lot of survival training and experience handle it.