Episode 137 - Welcome Sherpa Ant, Discussion of hiker fatality on Mount Guyot, Mount Washington name change

[00:00:03] Here is the latest Higher Summits forecast brought to you by our friends at the Mount Washington Observatory. Weather above treeline in the White Mountains is often wildly different than at our trailheads. Before you hike, check the Higher Summits forecast at mountwashington.org.

[00:00:32] Hiker observers working at the non-profit Mount Washington Observatory write this elevation-based forecast every morning and afternoon. Search and Rescue teams, avalanche experts, and backcountry guides all rely on the Higher Summits forecast to anticipate weather conditions above treeline. You should too.

[00:00:54] Go to mountwashington.org or text FORECAST to 603-356-2137. Okay here is your forecast for Friday, January 26th and Saturday, January 27th. Mostly cloudy skies with freezing rain, sleet and snow. Additional snow accumulations of 1 to 3 inches.

[00:01:32] Possible ice accumulations from freezing rain of a trace to a tenth of an inch. High will be around 30 degrees with winds southwest shifting west at 15 to 30 mph increasing to 25 to 40 mph with gusts up to 50 mph. The wind chill will be rising to 10 to 20 above.

[00:01:57] Friday night in the clouds with snow transitioning to snow showers. Additional snow accumulations of a trace to 2 inches. With a low in the lower 20s. Winds will be west at 25 to 40 mph decreasing to 10 to 25 mph. The wind chill falling to 0 to 10 above.

[00:02:25] And Saturday in the clouds with snow likely early tapering to snow showers during the afternoon. Additional snow accumulations of a trace to 2 inches. With a high in the lower 20s. Winds will be southwest at 10 to 25 mph switching to the west at 20 to 35 midday and switching

[00:02:49] to the northwest increasing to 25 to 40 mph late. The wind chill will be 5 below to 5 above. So have a great weekend everybody and crush some peaks! Broadcasting from the Woodpecker Studio in the great state of New Hampshire.

[00:03:46] Welcome to the Sounds Like a Search and Rescue podcast where we discuss all things related to hiking and search and rescue in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Here are your hosts Mike and Stomp. Alright Stomp, episode 137, you ready to go? Let's go! Cranking them out.

[00:04:28] Alright, cranking them out. I was just doing some research on the AMC huts. I'm going to be staying over at a hut. Oh, winter? Yeah, I'm going to do a Zeeland stay if you want to join me.

[00:04:39] I'll send you all the details but yeah, I'm going to like, I changed my mind about doing the Zeevon Traverse. I'm just going to do it overnight. When are you thinking? I don't know.

[00:04:47] I got to figure it out probably like sometime in February, like second half of February although February is a very short month. Now what made you choose Zeeland over say Carter or Lonesome Lake?

[00:05:04] Well because I need to finish my 4,000 footer list for the winter so all I have left is just like I've got a hill and then I've got the Zeelands and the Bonds.

[00:05:12] So originally I was like well I'll just do a super traverse and hit hill and then Zeeland and then do the Bonds in one day. I got a couple of friends that want to do it with me but they're, I was thinking like

[00:05:24] when we went out to Owl's Head I was like well this is a long day. I think my friends were all sort of thinking the same thing and they were like hey you

[00:05:31] know we could stay at the AMC hut and break it up a little bit and I was like that sounds like a good idea. Yeah, yeah. So I'll keep you updated. Okay cool. I'll keep you updated but. Keep me up to date. Yep. Yeah. I'll give a review.

[00:05:46] Sounds good. I've never done the AMC hut so I've done the Randolph Mountain, I've done Greyknob and Crag and those ones but not the AMC so it should be good. Gotcha. Are you planning on doing illicit drugs and getting on top of the roof?

[00:06:01] I'm getting on the roof. Yeah. I'm going to drop acid and get on the roof naked and scream at people. I'm definitely going then, I'll be there. I get to see this. Oh my god. I would have loved to have seen that.

[00:06:14] We always joke whenever we travel we're at the airport we're always on the lookout like my phone is ready to go. I'm like I want one of those viral moments where someone goes crazy and I'm the one that tapes it. But it never happens, everybody's normal.

[00:06:27] But that one was notorious. Oh great. Everybody talks about that one. My favorite story. The naked acid tripping hiker. Are you ready for Slashers Air Review? So Stomp I got a couple of gear updates here. So my daughter's boyfriend, he got me these hand warmers.

[00:07:06] They're electric hand warmers. See these things? They look like little like computer mouses but they're smaller. Oh I see, I gotcha. They've got three levels so I just turned one on. See that little red light right there? It is pretty small.

[00:07:22] And then you can turn it up to like three red lights. So that's directly connected to the... Oh those are hand warmers themselves I see. These are hand warmers themselves so essentially like you can plug it into a USB and then it

[00:07:35] charges and supposedly it does like eight or 12 hours or something like that. Like I got it on the highest level and immediately it's just hot. That would be comparable. Like almost to the point where I can't even hold it. Wow that's great yeah.

[00:07:47] So quick start up as opposed to the typical chemical hand warmers. Exactly so I mean they're not light, you know they're pretty heavy. I don't know like this is probably about a pound or so. I'll have to weigh them with my little scale.

[00:08:02] Maybe a little less than a pound but... That's really interesting. But I'm thinking like you know throw this in with my phone and keep it going or you know have it available in case you need a quick hit with your hands.

[00:08:15] I mean certainly met plenty of times where I've had my hands have gotten super cold and it's taken a while to warm up. Right right yeah that's really interesting and it lasts about the same time as the chemicals.

[00:08:26] Yeah the chemicals so it's you know they're not light for sure but it's... I thought it was interesting and I was like I appreciated the gift so I'm going to use them. Yeah that's clever and what kind of... back to the what kind of port?

[00:08:40] It's only good for what? An apple? Or do they have interchangeable connectors? It's a... No it's not even it's not an apple it's like a standard like yeah it's like a standard USB.

[00:08:52] So it comes with the power cord and you just have to get like the... you do need one of these like bricks to plug it in. You can plug it into a computer too and I don't know how long it takes to charge but

[00:09:03] they came pretty well charged so we're trying. Very cool. And then the other thing I want to give the listeners a heads up on a piece of gear that our friend Jakester sent me over.

[00:09:13] So there's this company that they are called let me just see here we don't have any affiliation with them or anything like that they're not advertisers but it's called Norhex gear and they it looks like they sell it's pretty cool it's like Portland Oregon and they sell gear

[00:09:32] for inhumane terrain so they have like these like canyon rope bags they have otter pocket chest packs they have like a canyon pack that looks like it's made out of the same material was like hyper light mountain and they have this thing called the scooty booty 2.0.

[00:09:52] Scooty booty okay what is this a butt sledding device? It's a butt sledding device so it's like a it's sort of like a climbers harness so it's a pair of shorts that sort of wrap around your your thighs and your waist and you tie

[00:10:09] it around and it's made of this material that oh yeah it's the alpine version of our scooty booty and it clips around the waist and legs and it'll smooth out glissades while protecting

[00:10:21] your climbing pants so it's faster to transition than with rain pants and you don't have to waste garbage bags so they said it's extremely durable vinyl coated PVC construction and it takes you know it takes some serious abuse six ounces yeah and it comes in pink and black

[00:10:44] it looks like. Wow. Oh no it actually comes in all kinds of different colors so it's called scooty booty 2.0. Huh love it. I don't know why whenever I say it I have to say scooty booty. I don't instead of saying scooty booty I say scooty booty.

[00:11:00] Scooty booty so yes all right I gotta look at a little closer at this here for two seconds huh okay it's all good that's that's really clever yeah interesting. All right so that's the gear stuff electro keen warmers and the scooty booty so welcome

[00:11:16] to episode 137 of the sounds like a search and rescue podcast this week we are joined by Kerry Uhlendorf who is the owner of Sherpa Ant an online retailer that offers a variety of creative northeast mountain inspired illustrations cards apparels and gifts so Stomp's got a

[00:11:37] couple of products from Sherpa Ant and loves it so he was he recommended we we talked to her so she's great so Sherpa Ant's mission is to help outdoor enthusiasts pursue and share their passions while giving back to the community so in addition to her work at

[00:11:53] Sherpa Ant she's also a prolific hiker having grown up in or in and around the northeast so we'll talk to her about some of her favorite areas in the White Mountains she's also completed

[00:12:03] the Appalachian Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail so we'll ask her to give a little bit insight about what's going you know a little bit of the inside the mind of a through hiker

[00:12:11] you know we've got the the through hiker classes that are heading out soon enough so we'll talk to her a little bit about that and then on this episode we'll also discuss the recent

[00:12:20] hiker fatality along the Pamilu route there's an attempt to change the name of Mount Washington that's been denied plus we've got search-and-rescue news with a couple of local stories three hikers

[00:12:34] got in trouble in Mount Manadnock and then we had a group of skiers get lost out of bounds in Killington so plenty to cover today so I'm Mike and I'm Stomp let's get started

[00:12:44] let's get started we're gonna get started by going into our friend the hiking buddy spot here this has been peace from hiking buddies we are a 501c3 nonprofit committed to reducing avoidable tragedies through education impactful projects and fostering a community of support

[00:13:22] you can find out more at hikingbuddies.org we wanted to say thank you to those who have supported our mission and most importantly say thanks to those who speak up who ask questions and who are willing to provide guidance and assistance on the trails when needed

[00:13:36] you embody what it means to be a hiking buddy and now for all my newer hikers out there here's this episode's hiking buddies quick tip it's imperative to always check the weather the day before and on the morning of your hike

[00:13:56] to be aware of any changes or storm systems that may have moved in the weather can and will change in an instant always be prepared Slashers hiking topic of the week and we're back Stomp hey another great tip from the HBs

[00:14:43] that's right that's right so all right Stomp you so we're gonna go we're gonna take a somber note on the episode right now you you prepared yeah I know you yeah yeah I know this isn't going to be

[00:14:52] easy so we're going to talk about Christopher Roma was a local hiker he was a guide in the White Mountains and unfortunately he died while hiking on Tuesday into Wednesday last week so it was a pretty extended search and rescue situation so we want to talk through the

[00:15:15] details of the case and then we'll talk a little bit about this you know it's tough to make sense out of these things this is an interesting one from the perspective that like you know it's a very experienced well knowledgeable hiker that that unfortunately succumbed to the

[00:15:32] the hike so just to get into the details here Stomp Christopher Roma is the the gentleman that we're talking about so around at 10 20 p.m on Tuesday January 16th New Hampshire Fishing Game conservation officers were made aware of a hiker in distress near Mount Bond and Lincoln

[00:15:57] yeah concerned acquaintances had contacted New Hampshire 911 after speaking with the hiker by cell phone a solo male hiker was thought to be in the area of Mount Bond and that he might be moving towards Bond Cliff eventually the hiker made contact with New Hampshire 911 and coordinates

[00:16:15] were obtained that placed the hiker between Mount Bond and Mount Giot before the call was lost the hiker stated he was very cold the weather forecast for the area was for heavy winds temperatures in

[00:16:28] the single digits and snow well and I would add to that you know the windchill was unbelievable yeah yeah and it's a tricky area so you've got you know I think about this area and I'm like all

[00:16:44] right well Bond to Bond Cliff yeah there's a little bit of cover as you come down but then you know you're pretty well exposed the section between West Bond up to Bond is pretty well

[00:16:56] covered and then you know as you get that section on the I don't know if that continues to be the twin way or like you go past the spur trail down to um Giot campsite out to Mount Bond out to Mount

[00:17:08] Giot that's about a mile there so then you're talking um really exposed so that's that's the south twin over to Giot is like really the the area that's got a lot of exposure as you head

[00:17:21] over to Bond but um but anyway so a rescue effort commenced and the rescue so we're talking about 10 10 30 at night friends called then Christopher called they were able to mobilize a rescue operation involving fishing game Pemi Valley search and rescue um and mountain rescue

[00:17:43] they all met at Lincoln Woods and by 2 a.m on on January 17th so we're on to the next day we're in a Wednesday early morning the first rescue was started in um and the rescue effort was slowed

[00:17:55] as the responders had to trudge through way steep snow so if they're coming in from Lincoln Woods I'm assuming they probably got some sort of vehicle uh to assist them to get out to at least

[00:18:05] the wilderness area or maybe a little bit farther and then um they've got to make their way up it's I'm assuming they went up through Bond Cliff and then made their way that way my guess is that

[00:18:15] some people maybe started coming in from Zealand as well doesn't say in the news reports um unfortunately the the waist deep snow and um the rescue is being exposed above treeline with heavy

[00:18:29] winds and blowing snow it was it was quickly realized that the the progress was going to be slow so they made contact with New Hampshire Army National Guard to attempt a helicopter extraction

[00:18:40] of a hiker um the rest of this I'm paraphrasing from the the news reports but essentially throughout the day the rescue teams attempted to locate Christopher efforts by the New Hampshire Army National Guard for helicopter extractions were made difficult because the low level clouds

[00:18:59] ultimately a team of rescuers were able to locate Christopher at 5 p.m on Wednesday but sadly he was deceased so essentially you're talking like from 10 o'clock until five o'clock the next day you're

[00:19:11] talking about 20 hours or so maybe 21 hours and due to the conditions after they did find him in the time of the day in the daunting distance of a carryout a decision was made to wait until

[00:19:25] the following day for a window of weather that would allow for a helicopter extraction early on Thursday morning so from what's reported it looks like the helicopter crew was able to you know they were able to get down there on Thursday land and and and bring Chris

[00:19:41] back to his you know his family but they they did have to deal with high winds before settling down so even Thursday it was difficult weather conditions in the morning so yeah um sad story

[00:19:52] stomp um I figured we could talk about what we know what we don't know here because yeah yeah let's talk about the terrain I think we can go back to that safely uh we want to be really

[00:20:05] respectful here this is the weekend of his um celebration of life as many people know there's a fundraiser that's ongoing and um he leaves behind a young one um so it's it's it's a delicate

[00:20:19] discussion but I think we can do it some justice here but um that that area is really uh pretty incredible in terms of the weather it receives just in general Mike every time I've

[00:20:30] been through the guillot section where it connects from the tent site to the junction to Zealand and off to the twin way it's always getting just blasted by wind it's a large open flat plateau-ish

[00:20:43] area almost so you can imagine what it would have been like uh on this day with the snow and the wind and whatnot so south twin to bond cliff is a four mile section

[00:20:55] I think it's about a mile or so from south twin to get over to guillot and then another mile to get to uh bond cliff and then another mile oh just get to bond and then another mile to get down to bond

[00:21:07] cliff so yeah um it seems like not that much of a distance but it really is a number of areas where you're completely exposed and I would assume that you know when wind's coming in you know I

[00:21:19] was up there last winter and we were on south twin and we talked to a guy that came up from Zealand and he was cutting over to south twin and you could see like he even said he's like you know

[00:21:28] trails just blowing in right behind you and it wasn't that bad of a day but the wind was enough and he was like yeah you can't follow your tracks back because the wind is just covering them up

[00:21:36] immediately so that's essentially what you're dealing with so if he if he made his way to mount bond and he was started to head down to bond cliff and that's where he started not feeling

[00:21:45] great and he's trying to backtrack and he's trying to figure out like do I bail out and go to guillot campsite or am I trying to get back into the twin way and get down to zealand hut we don't know but

[00:21:56] I mean that's assume that's assuming what happened and then once you get past that little area of where guillot campsite and west bond is you're back into that exposed area so if he was trying

[00:22:06] to get back into that area by guillot it's it's just daunting in those those it's uh it's an interesting place I always found it very confusing um even in good weather I've been there several

[00:22:19] times so I know the basic layout now but if you are going to this area you really need to get a firm understanding of how the the junctions work where they are because it is it's a somewhat

[00:22:30] confusing area and it's not evident where you need to go at times especially if you're socked in or in you know low visibility uh in general yeah and I think the um you know the twin way cuts off

[00:22:46] right before you get to guillot shelter but it's like a you're right it's not obvious like there's a weird it's sort of like where the jewel trail and the great gulf trail in that area like it's

[00:22:59] just confusing a little bit like there's well it's a hard right right angle there's rock cairns yeah exactly it's like there's rock cairns and then it's not obvious all the time and I can

[00:23:08] imagine like this it's an exposed area so if the wind's whipping then you know you're not necessarily going to be able to see that well yeah now going back to what you had mentioned about um you know

[00:23:19] being out there exposed for any length of time I think that's a nice area to talk about being prepared for the weight you know and making sure you have everything with you that you need to

[00:23:32] just to manage in those kinds of uh low temperature uh full condition uh circumstances super important yeah and it's tough you know we don't know what he he did or didn't have for gear

[00:23:47] he might very well might have had all the gear he needed and it's just you know there's there's things you can't control for but ultimately like if you look at this situation you've got

[00:23:56] you know a call that comes in at 10 o'clock on Tuesday night you've got the you know rescue team is out there but they were able to locate him at five o'clock so you're talking 20 hours I always

[00:24:05] say like okay well you need enough gear where you can hunker down for 12 hours for a rescue team to come 12 hours may depending on where you're going like if you're going to be out in the Pemme wilderness

[00:24:15] like it may be better to say I need I need enough gear to sort of hunker down for 24 hours and I think what you need to be able to do in that situation is first you have to have the gear

[00:24:26] second of all you know if you've got snowshoes you sort of pat down your area you find a an area that you know is a little bit sheltered from the wind you sort of pat down your area with your

[00:24:37] snowshoes so you've got a nice flat ground make sure you've got some cover and then from there you get your sleeping pad that you lay down then you'll get your bivy you know ideally you could

[00:24:47] even put your sleeping pad inside your bivy and then you've got a sleeping bag as well and then hopefully if you've got hand warmers or you've got hot liquids or you've got anything like that

[00:24:57] it's essentially like those are the things that you need in this situation to hunker down to wait it out for a rescue and again we don't know what he did or didn't have and

[00:25:08] you know we're not judging this is not this is not meant to be speculation I think we've tried to just veer towards education in general over the last few years and regardless of what his situation was I think it's just appropriate to talk about these basic

[00:25:25] safety things again and reinforce them not knowing what happened to him nobody knows certainly not us anyway but it's that's sort of the mantra that you need to look at is you

[00:25:35] have to say like okay if I'm going to be out there I need enough I have to be able to sort of wait it out and survive because it can take a long time to get somebody out there and

[00:25:46] you know a couple of other pieces of information we do have so Chris is an experienced hiker so this is different than you know the situation we had with some previous hikers where it was

[00:25:58] really an issue of they probably didn't know any better than to and they didn't sort of have that voice in their head around like okay this is where things could go difficult Chris had done

[00:26:09] the triple crowns he's done all the long distance through hiking he's done a solo deratissima which is basically hiking all of the 4,000 footers continuously and he did it in 10 days he's completed the northeast eight which is a series of ultra hiking trails which include the muhuzik

[00:26:25] traverse the pemiloop the presidential traverse uh so triple crowner you know he worked as a local guide and then around the white mountain so by any measure his hiking background and experience was significant probably got more miles than both of us combined stop yeah no doubt about

[00:26:41] it so he was experienced he was seasoned absolutely so i mean and it's a good reminder that you know these things can happen things can go sideways even you know even to the strongest

[00:26:53] hikers and you know the other tidbit on this is so the news reports did indicate that he had set out with two other hikers to attempt a winter pemiloop you know i think that that's pretty solid that

[00:27:04] that was the route that he was taking i'm assuming they came in and they were doing it clockwise and he came in from you know osseo and and came over franconia ridge i mean that section from

[00:27:17] north lafayette down into garfield and back up to garfield has to be brutal i'm assuming that you know they worked their their butts off to get through there and then at some point

[00:27:27] they made a decision some of the some of the members of the crew decided they were going to head out and this hiker decided to push on solo um you know no details on the background there but

[00:27:39] yeah you know unfortunately they um you know there are a number of bailout spots but i think it does get tricky once you get up to south twin like yeah you can bail out like essentially like gill river

[00:27:51] is a good bailout section there but once you get up to south twin it gets difficult because you've got a long way out either no matter what you do so if you bail out down into north twin if you

[00:28:01] bail out into um zeeland if you just try to get down into guillote campground like it's a lot of yeah it's a long hike yeah four plus any direction yes you are yeah so i mean so we're here again

[00:28:19] you know we're trying to process a tragedy um we're trying to judge what went wrong without being judgmental um you know i i hear about these things and i think about these things stop and i

[00:28:29] try to assure myself like okay this couldn't happen to us but you never know that it can happen to anybody and you know you try to understand these sort of small decisions that might have been made

[00:28:39] um but it's tough to know no one's gonna know because they weren't with him and you know sometimes you know the mountains just have their way of you know could be that no matter how

[00:28:51] prepared you were those conditions just were so unique to that area that it was it's just not survivable right right just anecdotally um i'm amazed at how many people knew of chris through

[00:29:04] about the community um even co-workers that i guide with on the snowmobiles uh were best buds like literally every aspect of my life locally here i've met somebody that knows him or is like

[00:29:18] very very close to him yeah yeah so our thoughts and prayers are with the family um there is a a gofundme account that has been uh we've shared it across our socials and i think that you know

[00:29:28] he's got a young child that he left behind so if you can find it in your heart to to give a donation i think that that would be cool and you know i'm sure that there's a lot more analysis that that

[00:29:38] people want to get into on this i don't know how um beneficial that is at this point i think ultimately like our our our advice when it comes to safe hiking especially in the winter

[00:29:49] is pretty consistent and you know it's it's keeping the keeping the amount of gear that you possibly can keep to um you know wait out for a rescue safely and and relatively comfortable

[00:30:03] you're never going to be super comfortable but you know just have that gear with you and even then there's no guarantees there's no guarantees in life the mountains don't care about um you know

[00:30:14] how well prepared you are how not prepared you are like they're going to do their thing and unfortunately the these things do happen yeah they do yeah but uh i mean more power to you

[00:30:27] you know he was a goal get goal getter goal crusher fastest known time crusher and that's what it's all about you know yeah yeah and that's the other thing too is people need to understand

[00:30:36] like so you know we talk about safety but also the other the other piece of this is that there's a lot of people that are out there and they're doing amazing things and they're doing these

[00:30:46] ultras and they're you know that that that drive to to go out there is is something that's needed you know there's a balance in things like you know there's a there's a balance in in everything and

[00:30:59] you do need these ultra folks to be out there um achieving new goals to help inspire inspire people so uh and he certainly did that i mean this just reading about like the the northeast eight and the

[00:31:11] and all that he's accomplished like it's yeah he lived a life no doubt about it yeah yeah world-class athlete so i don't know maybe we'll talk about this again stop but i definitely

[00:31:23] got a number of people that reached out and were asking us like are we going to address it and i you know i think it's it's good to talk about it and i think the takeaway again is sort of it's that

[00:31:32] 20-hour period where you know you've got to be you've got to hopefully have everything that you need to have with you to to hunker down yeah agreed yeah i mean we'll come back a lot of time

[00:31:44] but yeah so yeah um rest in peace chris and um i'm planning on going to that event if you're around like if not that's fine i a lot of people are going so i think it'd be nice to support the

[00:31:57] community yeah yeah yeah and that's the other thing too was like it's like you said it's just a small world everybody knows everyone and like since we started doing this podcast like it's

[00:32:05] really hit home like how how small of a network it is yeah for sure absolutely all right stop so moving on um the board of geographic names has denied a request to change mont washington's name

[00:32:19] to agi uh what you have to re-listen to our uh episode on algonquin and whatnot i know i remember talking about it so i g i g could choke i i think it's agio ko choke agio ko choke okay agio

[00:32:41] ko choke okay so i'm gonna do this again board of geographic names has denied a request to change mont washington's name to agi ko choke perfect probably not but whatever uh all right so then

[00:32:55] other people will argue that like um the phrasing of this should be changed the name back to so there's a debate there's a little bit of back and forth online about like okay people were saying

[00:33:05] like look the name was originally agia could choke and um it was then renamed mont washington so history's complicated and um just to start off with so people are aware there is a uh there's

[00:33:21] a part of mont washington that is officially named in the bureau of um the geographic names database that is agia chuk crag and this is a it's a lower section matter of fact i hung out here and

[00:33:37] had lunch here one time and it's a pretty cool area it's located between the auto road and nelson crag trail so when you get you know that section stomp where you you take that you basically take a

[00:33:49] a hard like 90 degree turn off of the the road that travels along the great gulf and then you head up to that flat section yes yeah so that the very big at the end of the hill and at the

[00:34:02] very beginning of that flattish section um if you keep going straight there's nelson crag trail which is essentially like a flat trail if you go to the left of that there's like a little um a small crag

[00:34:17] or a summit it's probably like i don't know 30 feet tall and it's a flat area you can just chill out and eat your lunch i've hung out there before it's pretty cool you can see the great gulf and

[00:34:29] then you can see down into like um like huntington ravine and stuff it's a cool area yeah it is so that was named in 2011 so there is a section of mont washington that uses this name gotcha okay

[00:34:44] um so just so that the listeners know so mount washington was named in 1784 originally but just the on the geographic names database there are a lot of past names so there's two they're actually three spellings of a ajia chuck there's a um a name reference there's a couple

[00:35:09] of different spellings of um kodak wazho which is another native name um it was called sugarloaf it was called shooter's hill it was called twinkling mountain of agasisco it was called three or four different versions of wombecket methna and then wombeck not wombeck that we know

[00:35:32] with the b-e-k but wombeck with the b-i-k and then it was also referenced as the white hill so over history it's had a number of different names and um we're going to talk a little bit

[00:35:44] about map making with uh with our guests this week and then you know one of the things about map making is that people just like over time they had different spellings and and features just evolved so that's why you'll have like three different versions of wombeck

[00:35:58] that are spelled three different ways yeah this is a very interesting article it's pretty in-depth yeah yeah so so just a reminder on uh place names particularly when it comes to native americans so

[00:36:15] many of the names used by native americans um may not actually be you know the the names that we use and i'm going to use like amanusik as an example in a minute many of the names used by native or

[00:36:28] labeled as place names that are native american origin may not be the place names in the way that we typically think of place names so in our in our culture we sort of think of like okay we're

[00:36:39] gonna name a specific place with a specific name record that name and then reference that place as that name for all time forever native americans had a little bit of a different approach where many

[00:36:52] of the names um were applied to specific locations by settlers who learned those names from the natives but a lot of times what would happen is that the words were descriptive labels so

[00:37:04] amanusik is an example of a word that is it means fish place and um it could simply just be that at the time when the settlers were talking you know talking to the natives or they learned about

[00:37:17] the natives they would the natives were referencing a particular place that was good for fishing and then the settlers took that word and said like okay we're going to use amanusik to apply it to a

[00:37:28] specific river whereas the native might have just said like there could be 10 amanusiks from in their world where it's just a good fishing place um and koas is another example that's a word that means

[00:37:41] pines so it could mean any any stretch of woods with with pines on it um and then anderskoggen is another one that is is called fish curing place so that's where they would sort of like

[00:37:54] lay their fish out to dry um so you could have many different anderskoggens or in the in the native americans world but essentially like the settlers learned those words and then applied them

[00:38:05] to a one specific place yeah so i i suspect with igeachuk that um they when when darby field first went in 1642 i think it was like he referenced it and said that the mountain was known named as

[00:38:22] a geachuk but it's very likely that what the what what this really meant is that all of those high summits that we now know as the presidential range were very likely referenced as a spiritual place in that it may not necessarily have been like that one specific

[00:38:37] peak because i don't know if they if they didn't go up there they wouldn't know maybe i don't even know if you can differentiate that there's one particular summit depending on where they they looked true true so it's interesting um but i think the the other

[00:38:55] issue with this is that the there's a there's a political aspect to this as well i think that there's probably difficulty in like the amount of money that it would cost to rename and redo all of

[00:39:05] the um the signage and everything like that the decision was made to deny it they did recommend that you could use it in in alongside with mount washington as a um as a way to honor and i feel

[00:39:17] like a ton of hikers i mean it's very common for hikers to reference it as a geachuk not me obviously because i can't even say it but you always do yeah yeah i put some time into that

[00:39:29] that one episode there was very interesting um i want to go back to the back and forth here i mean she cites historical harms done to uh the tribes and whatnot slave owners that type of thing and

[00:39:44] then the rebuttal came back by eight commissioners for the state uh the executive director of fish and game uh drafted letters of opposition for changing the name of mount washington and the baker river uh they included multiple departments in the state including environmental services

[00:40:03] etc etc health and human services but this is interesting some claim the name change would increase danger in search and rescue missions and loss of tourism revenue which the yeah that's sort

[00:40:19] of interesting yeah i mean if they start like so just step back for so just the history on the name first of all so 1784 um there was a uh expedition that so darby field in the 1600s was the first

[00:40:35] one to climb it but in 1784 manessa cutler and jeremy beltnap we've talked about them they basically came in from pinkham notch um cutler climbed it they summited him one day and then um apparently they named it mount washington at that point the early writings of that is 1784

[00:40:54] expedition they just called it like the white hill or sugarloaf but in 1792 they did write um they wrote a i guess a summary of their trip and they named it mount washington at that point so mount washington was named in officially 1792 it started appearing in maps and books

[00:41:12] in 1820 there was another party that was guided by ethan crawford to the range where they they they named the remaining summit so the members of that party um adino bracket john weeks which you know you've got the weeks mountains um up in uh the northern white mountains

[00:41:31] and then you've got um philip kerrigan so he obviously mount kerrigan i think is named after him they named monroe jefferson adams madison and franklin as they went across so they did like a

[00:41:45] sounds like they did a presidential traverse type of deal and they named all the summits so that's how the presidential range came to be now going back to the sort of the points that

[00:41:56] new hampshire had made uh there is currently a the board of geographic names is responsible for fielding requests like you see that we received in new hampshire around like mount washington being changed wait a minute let's stop for a second so this is the federal board that

[00:42:13] the biden administration set up correct this is a separate board called the reconciliation and place names committee which was set up based on like presidential you know he basically said we're going to create this new board right that is going to be an advisory to the geographic um

[00:42:31] the board of geographic names and essentially what this board has done is set up a bunch of different criteria around derogatory place names right and right now what they're doing is they're identifying specific war words that are derogatory so squaw is a good

[00:42:48] example um sure there's like there's other like wild you know anything that says wild in a name like there's a wild chinaman gulch i remember talking about this yeah we talked about it before

[00:43:01] so essentially they have a whole list of words that are offensive and some of them are racist words and things like that and they make sense so they're working on going to the board of geographic

[00:43:14] names and saying like okay we've identified these derogatory words that cannot be associated with place names and then the the board of geographic names is essentially like okay we'll defer to you

[00:43:25] on those you can go ahead and change a bunch of them now what's interesting is that they have a working document which is sort of the principles of derogatory place names and in it they've got

[00:43:34] three criterias one is the the clearly like derogatory place names which are the bad words that are like demeaning but the additional criteria is where it gets into areas where i think the justification around changing mount washington comes into play which is the um the

[00:43:56] idea that place names that are named after historical figures that can be tracked back to historical injustices to um you know sort of underrepresented people though there's a there's a they haven't decided on this but they've essentially said like all right

[00:44:18] we were all settled on derogatory names but we want to leave open the the possibility that there's going to be names that we want to change based on them being named after historical

[00:44:29] figures that did bad things so that's where i think the can of worms gets opened up because yeah it's one of the interest yeah exactly it gets political and it gets difficult and the other

[00:44:39] thing is that if you read the uh public comments that are on this um this committee there's many public comments from organizations where it's very apparent like you know if mount washington got

[00:44:53] changed like that's not the end you know it's it's moving on to jefferson it's moving on to other other historical figures and i don't think that there would be an end to this and i question how

[00:45:05] healthy it would be to sort of go through this process of dialing back names based on you know in some cases factual um historical injustices but in other other cases perceived historical injustices so it just seems like a dicey proposition to to go down that road because

[00:45:24] you could just really you could go on forever with these names that's correct yeah it's a can of worms it's no it's no place for government not federal government anyway well i mean they oversee i mean

[00:45:35] that's their they oversee the um the place names so it's it's it's 100 their responsibility to to change and approve name changes and labels and things like that so ultimately it will come onto the federal government yeah so it's interesting but i'll link in the show notes

[00:45:54] like the all the documents for the reconciliation and place names you can take a look at like what words they're they're using as derogatory you can take a look at like the public comments

[00:46:02] um some of the public comments are pretty funny they're like uh you know we'll be happy to identify all the bad places that need to be changed and it's sort of ominous because you're like oh wow

[00:46:13] i wonder what they what they have in mind yeah it's it's crazy i mean the biggest problem is the whole political aspect of it you know you get some other administration with a different

[00:46:22] ideology it'll be a whole different thing that's what i mean it's like when you when you're talking about the federal government it's a political beast and uh it can't make rational judgments on this stuff stop we're too old to start learning new new names and stuff like that

[00:46:37] it's gonna be hard yes especially uh native tongues yes exactly um all right so next uh article we have here chinese marathon runner 52 is disqualified for chain smoking throughout an entire race which he finished in three hours and 33 minutes that's a that's a pretty badass time

[00:46:54] for a 52 year old chain smoking runner yeah he smoked him this is funny though right yeah he was just chain smoking the whole race yeah his name's uncle chen unbelievable why did they disqualify him though because he was pissing off everybody oh my if i was running a

[00:47:15] marathon and some dude smoking cigarettes near me i would like want to punch him in the throat but see some of the video yeah it's ridiculous it's honestly they should have they just didn't even

[00:47:26] let him run they should have tossed him out what a funny story his name's uncle chen he's nicknamed the smoking brother but he looks like he's in damn good shape that's what's funny about it

[00:47:37] is in good shape yeah wow interesting story he's got like bad he's got really good calves there yeah he's got he's got the vmos and his quads going yeah wow funny story yeah i wouldn't want

[00:47:52] to be stuck behind him though yeah we all know that hiking a mountain can be hard at times so here's a corny dad joke to help you get over it but i'm bummed well i just dropped a dad joke

[00:48:10] so do you have any this week yeah stop bob why did the fart miss graduation why because it got expelled oh my goodness that's and thanks again to lance and camilla for giving

[00:48:30] my 365 days of dad jokes that's excellent stuff yeah so i think we've got like another we've got 360 episodes left where i can do dad jokes okay so uh hey if anybody wants stickers you can grab

[00:48:46] slash your stickers either from us you just drop us a line on social media and we'll send them out to you or you can find them at ski fanatics off exit 28 in campton new hampshire or in massachusetts

[00:48:59] off at 93 dascom road in andover at spinner's pizza parlor pizza pala pala pizza pala what about this what about the five star reviews how many do we have now mike

[00:49:12] we got a little like so i i just put a reminder on here to like beg beg for more reviews so we had like we had a bunch of good reviews in august and then it got quiet and then we had a big spike

[00:49:23] around christmas because i think i begged for some good reviews around christmas time but if you could find it in your heart to give us more five star reviews and um give us a good shout out on

[00:49:32] apple podcast that would be great yeah i don't know what it does but it feeds my ego so i think that that works out if you don't want to give a five star review then don't give a review at all

[00:49:43] doesn't it make us show up in the search results higher or something like that i don't know i don't know i always i always check the search results and i type in white mountains and we we don't

[00:49:54] show up then i type in new hampshire and we do show up and then mount washington 4 020s we show up so that's funny oh boy hey a quick little shout out to our supporters ems

[00:50:06] we haven't mentioned it in a bit your northeast go-to for outdoor gear guidance education and more since 1967 check them out at ems.com and of course reckless a special thanks to at reckless brewing

[00:50:20] where you'll enjoy the best food craft beer and fun just 15 minutes from franconia notch many 4 000 footers and less than 10 minutes from the five corners i was hoping to get over there this

[00:50:30] weekend after some sled guiding but uh things just got a little behind shall we say yeah yeah you were angling um when we were on owls head and you were you were doing your stuff you were thinking

[00:50:41] about reckless too yeah and we ended up hitting a black mountain burger yeah yeah we went there after our hike too yeah that place is killer oh my goodness those burgers are amazing oh burgers

[00:50:55] are good the mac and the buffalo mac and cheese balls yeah yeah those are good yeah mrs stomp and i went there for a little dinner date while you guys were out on owls head and i think that was

[00:51:08] the day those crazy squalls were coming in and i was getting nervous for you guys like damn it's coming in around like two or three hope they get out yeah that's funny we got hit with um a good

[00:51:18] amount of snow coming out and then but like but then we went to black mountain burger and then you know i probably got on the road at like 6 6 30 and then driving home on 93 was like a death ride yeah oh yeah absolutely frozen you're very dangerous

[00:51:33] hold my beer it's time to find out what mike and stomp are drinking on this week's beer talk all right stop so this is the part of the show where we talk about what beer we're drinking

[00:51:57] i'm enjoying a tilted barn brewery it's called raise the barn winter soul can you see that winter soul which is winter sun i believe um and this is just a little something different away

[00:52:13] from the ipas it's a seasonal potter beer porter beer that they brew sparingly generally only in the colder winter months a little vanilla bean and cocoa in there so it's really tasty it's closer

[00:52:27] to a stout it's yeah yeah it's really good though pretty tasty yeah it's a little bit of a stout yeah it's really good though pretty tasty what you got happening i am finishing up my last uh zero gravity provisions so it's got a nice outdoorsy theme it's got

[00:52:48] trees and checkerboards and hiking boots and watermelons and paddling paddling and jeeps so sweet it's nice i knew we should have gone left back there stop don't worry i know it's this way i've got a feeling

[00:53:07] in my gut uh are you sure you're not about to have a bowel emergency uh totally we got this but i just blew out my hip fell down that gully with my 40 year old micro spikes suck it up stop

[00:53:20] it's 4 p.m we're at 3,500 feet we got nine miles back to the parking lot your leg may be broken we got no cell connection and we can't feel our fingers but we're finishing all of my list

[00:53:31] tonight by the way i need some water i'm empty i would if i could see what i'm doing but my headlamp batteries are dead you gotta be kidding me what a chump this is the last time i hike with

[00:53:42] you whatever mister do you know me i have a podcast whatever let's find out what mike and stomp have been hiking all right so this is the part of the show where we talk about recent hikes

[00:53:59] you should probably put the shame drop on here because neither one of us have anything to share yeah that's true i think i'm i'm tapped out for the winter 48 i'm just guiding on the weekends

[00:54:11] so i've got no time maybe next friday i can do something yeah oh i'm off next friday yeah if you don't mind the late do whatever you want okay if you don't mind a late start like a noonish for

[00:54:24] something quick yeah i'm off okay let's let's plan on something then oh my god it's a slash a date stomp yeah that sounds good um yeah because i'm just like tapped out i'm doing seven days a

[00:54:37] week for different things and where do you where do you need to go where do you want to go um i have the smaller ones that i need to do like uh wombeck i mean okay how about jackson one row

[00:54:52] i mean it would push us into the into the afternoon hours but i'm fine with that jackson you need jackson i don't need any of them i'll just go with you immediately know for wombeck

[00:55:04] all right oh to be honest with you yeah that's actually that's actually probably not a bad idea maybe crank out jackson okay all right man do that all right let's pencil it i've done the great

[00:55:16] north with you up in cabot once and that's enough for me yeah yeah three times is enough for me it's just a long ride so yeah it's true it's very true all right and then i got nothing i may be

[00:55:29] going up to i was talking i'm scheming i'm scheming for the weekend i gotta wait i gotta go upstairs and make sure that mrs mike is in a good mood and then i'm gonna hit her with the old

[00:55:39] i might go out on saturday but maybe i should and i feel like i should stick around and then she'll say like no you can go and i go okay okay gotta go back okay immediately i'm going

[00:55:52] and sometimes she'll be like yeah you need to paint and i'll be like oh damn it i can't go hiking yeah it's time for slasher's notable hike of the week if you want to be considered for the hike

[00:56:12] of the week simply tag slasher on your social media post all right stomp so this is the part of the show where we do the notable listener hike of the week otherwise known as dave shits in the woods is not winning this

[00:56:31] i have a funny story about this coming up so dave is actually the first one that tagged us and remember if you want to tag slasher on your adventure you can be considered for slasher's

[00:56:41] hike of the week uh no guarantees you'll be plugged on the show and uh the first one that was tagged was dave dave shits and he also by the way like let's just talk about this like how many people

[00:56:53] reached out to us and were completely shook when they realized that dave's hits in the woods is actually his his name and we got it wrong the whole time that was hilarious oh i was like i was

[00:57:06] like i can't believe this yeah our minds are in the gutter mike our minds are in the gutter yeah that was funny so uh yeah dave tagged us for north kinsman notch peak which i'm not familiar

[00:57:18] with but i can imagine where it is and um blue ridge mountain north peak marley sue too and what donna hamilton photographs hiked up cannon via kinsman ridge trail which i'm telling you i did

[00:57:32] that about two weeks ago it was so mint and uh from their report i think they experienced the same type of uh magic shall we say yeah so this is my emily's hike crew so um hello to don and

[00:57:46] marley but um they had they had sent some video over we have a little group text going on and um they got like the narnia experience you know like that area kinsman's and cannon is so like that it's

[00:57:57] like the puffy snow like they didn't get like a lot of views but like the the trail going up was just amazing yeah the trees are so heavy with snow and uh it's a beautiful trail when it's it's carved

[00:58:09] out by snowshoes it really is yeah so nice job um new hampshire wild official tagged us and they hiked uh mount shelburne to mariah on dr mlk day well i think you i think they did shelburne mariah

[00:58:25] and then to mariah uh mount shelburne to mariah correct no no no no no what show would that be uh trail um well the you take the shelburne mariah trail to so you take rattle river to

[00:58:42] shelburne mariah and then i think they went over to mariah so there's two one peak is called shelburne dash mariah yeah and then the other is called mariah i'm pretty certain that's what

[00:58:53] it said on their post though so i'm just going verbatim what they said i'm 90 positive that's what they wrote what you're reading right there so i don't know whatever i'm not a hiker anymore

[00:59:04] i just snowmobile figure out the place names correctly stop or okay keep moving on we can we can pull it up and confirm it's on i mean i'm gonna give her like the the hiker of the week

[00:59:18] anyway because they like did some awesome pictures so and plus not to mention they do always do good stuff so we need to give them some love anyway okay uh pretty girl one did willie via field

[00:59:31] uh gingerbeard keen did the wildcats and the carters another epic hike i miss that area and then we're back to our recent guest liz faye did a blue job little blue job and hussy mountain

[00:59:45] and then like several days later this guy named dave posted the same thing so i don't know what this is all about so they were a little late a little late to the party for that guy dave but

[00:59:54] uh just kidding good all right so we're giving it to new hampshire wild official um i was going to give it to marley and donna but i i forgot about how cool those photos were on shelby mariah stomp okay i'm gonna you're gonna make me look this up

[01:00:29] it's time for slashers guest of the week very cool very cool we're gonna go into our segment here so um kerry was nice enough to join us so she is the founder and owner of sherpa ant which is a cool retail uh

[01:00:55] um online store and they also have retail locations or they they sell in various locations at retail stores so we were excited to talk to her learn all about like her background she's going to talk about through hiking and some others you know some other stuff around her

[01:01:08] hiking background and then talk about the cool stuff you can buy at her store yeah and the sponsor for this segment our favorite valkluz gear so does your backpack not provide enough ventilation does your back sweat too much when backpacking as you know sweat can be extremely uncomfortable

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[01:02:16] game changer regarding airflow and ventilation visit valkluzgear.com to order an ultralight ventilation frame today use promo code slasher to enjoy a five dollar discount and plus let them know that mike and stomp sent you all right let's check out this segment

[01:02:41] all right we are live here so kerry this is your moment do you do you prefer to go by kerry or sherpa aunt either one is fine we'll talk we'll say kerry for yeah no but i do a lot of people

[01:02:54] call me the aunt the aunt is that you're like did you get that like we might as well just get this out of the way like does that like the trail name no no my trail name is a little more embarrassing

[01:03:03] than that um i came up with sherpa aunt on the at though so i love it okay yeah i read that story on your website yeah yeah my trail name is actually shrocket shrocket yes what is the meaning behind

[01:03:20] that snot rocket but i would i refuse to go by snot rocket so we shortened it to shrocket so i would how long into your through hike like you know you make a connection with your trail

[01:03:34] family and all that stuff at what point and i i liken this to we're gonna get a little crude here kerry so i apologize ahead of time just tell me if i'm stepping in line but like there's a certain

[01:03:42] point in the relationship when you start dating someone where like it becomes like you can pass gas in front of people i but like at what point did you um were you able to do the snot rockets

[01:03:53] in front of like all the trail family and all that stuff day two day two all right you guys bonded very quickly then it all goes out the window it was cold in march georgia is surprisingly cold in march

[01:04:09] yeah yeah it is you do what you gotta do yeah all right well we're gonna talk about um georgia and what's going on um down there coming up but why don't we start off so we didn't do a proper

[01:04:20] introduction kerry but we'll let you introduce yourself in a minute but stop why don't you kick this off because once again you're you're doing all the heavy lifting on landing our great guest

[01:04:28] so can you just kick this off and give some background sure sure i kerry i think i uh started realizing uh that your work existed out there maybe several years ago and i want to say

[01:04:40] it was probably in an actual retail location versus uh internet i could be wrong about that but i think the first time i saw your work was at mountain wanderer and lincoln uh by the great

[01:04:53] steve smith and it was probably a few of your uh etched uh not etched but drawn maps and then also the trail sign cards that you make and um i fell in love with your work immediately and it was very

[01:05:06] unique and then at some point i i started following you online and um i've i've been following straight along as a matter of fact when my my wife mrs stomp and i finished our 48 um i purchased one

[01:05:21] of the carrigan trail sign cards and uh gave it to her because that's where we finish so that's that's framed in our framed in our bedroom and um and then the second piece which was really nice

[01:05:33] my oldest daughter evelyn um gave us as a gift following our wedding was the a framed version of the your presidential traverse which is again black and white and uh just more uh fine lines

[01:05:50] and whatnot so your work has always been sort of part of my family which is really neat and um i've always been a fan of um like the eastern art or like traditional chinese gray scale

[01:06:01] and uh like jr tolkien's maps and his books and your your work sort of falls in those two categories for me and i've always been a big fan so we're really glad that you uh

[01:06:12] agreed to come on and chat with us we're happy to be here yeah it's super cool awesome well kerry why don't you um just start off can you just introduce yourself and give a little bit of

[01:06:24] background about um you know your your hiking background then we're going to talk about um sherpa ant and the retail opportunities or the retail products that you offer and all that fun

[01:06:36] stuff but let's let's talk about the hiking piece first okay yeah so well first off thanks for having me on the show this is great um i'm a new hampshire native i've lived in new hampshire almost

[01:06:47] all my life i did leave for school i went to university of rhode island and then when i met my husband i moved to massachusetts for a few short years um but i have a background in art

[01:07:00] i have an art degree with a concentration in graphic design so i've always been passionate about art and i've been a graphic designer now for about 15 years so about eight years ago i left

[01:07:16] or 10 years ago 11 years ago i left my corporate job to hike the at and then when i came back from that i decided to start my own business and that's when sherpa ant evolved and then i'm also a mom

[01:07:34] a wife i have two two young daughters who love the outdoors and uh love climbing and hiking and all things outdoors wow and with the with the work that you did in course so i'm assuming i'm

[01:07:48] gonna guess you went to rizdi then if you were in rhode island right graphic designer no no i went to the university of rhode island oh wow all right well yeah i didn't know that i was going to do

[01:07:57] graphic design until senior year of high school and in order to get into rizdi you needed to have a strong portfolio by senior year of high school so huh interesting well that's uh that's great and

[01:08:11] then so you worked in the corporate world what would what happened i'm always curious about this like because i feel like in the at i just make this assumption that it's either like right out

[01:08:20] of college you go or you retire or you're close to retirement you go but so you did a little bit of a corporate gig and then decided to just step away from that and and hike the appalachian trail

[01:08:31] were you were you always planning to do that or did it happen sort of on short notice a little bit of both i had always wanted to hike the at and uh after college i had my life kind of set up

[01:08:48] already i kind of fell into a job that i loved and everything was working until it wasn't and so i worked for a company for about six years after college and then i decided you know if i'm ever

[01:09:07] going to do this it's going to be now so i was kind of feeling like i needed a change at the job as well so i was getting into more of a management role so i wasn't doing as much design and just

[01:09:20] wasn't quite happy where i was so decided to make a huge life change and just leave that job and finally go take my hike yeah do you ever think like because i mean i i sort of i never really

[01:09:35] i mean i've been in sort of the corporate world for the last like 25 years and i never really had the luxury of saying like you know what i've got a little window here but do you

[01:09:43] ever think back and say like wow if i had stayed in sort of the corporate world how different my life might be yeah yeah very different yeah it's um it's interesting like so many people

[01:09:56] don't take that chance or they don't they don't take the moment and i'm assuming like you know six years you get a little bit of a nest egg built up so you're like okay financially i can

[01:10:04] do this but uh it still had to be nerve-wracking did you get any pressure from like family or friends or anybody that's like you know hey you're gonna step away for like six months or a year like

[01:10:13] the job market may be tough like this is a huge risk or were you just pretty sure the whole time um i was pretty sure the whole time i think most people were pretty excited they kind of understood

[01:10:25] what i was doing and why i was doing it um obviously my mom and my grandparents and family were a little nervous but um i think i think i was living with my mom at the time i

[01:10:39] don't even remember anymore but i'm pretty sure i had moved back home and it was just kind of time to do something new awesome and then um did you can you think back like was there

[01:10:51] a lot of online resource resources for you to plan with or did you have to do more of just buying books and uh more reading about the trail a little bit of both i do have some

[01:11:02] how to hike the at guidebooks um that are all way outdated now um there was was it whiteblaze.net yep yeah is that still around yeah that's still around yeah that was a huge resource um

[01:11:20] and yeah just kind of figured out what kind of gear to take where to do mail drops not that i did many but just to have ideas of where i might stop i did have a small group of friends that we

[01:11:34] did the hundred mile wilderness uh the fall before the hike so kind of tested out some gear learned what not to do that was actually my first backpacking experience so i knew i was doing the

[01:11:48] at and the hundred mile wilderness in i think july before the trail was my first backpacking and did you um were you pretty dialed in with your gear or did you have to switch it up quite a bit

[01:12:00] by after you got on trail i was pretty good um i remember my shoes i started with a pair of trail runners that did not work and i switched out at the first i think it was called mountain crossing

[01:12:19] yep yeah at that first gear shop i switched them out and those shoes lasted me to main wow so they would they were just um like regular hiking shoes yes i can't believe i forget the

[01:12:33] name now because i love them i still so then on the pct i bought the same pair because i was like those work and i had two pairs on the pct but i still have my second pair that i'm wearing now and

[01:12:47] that was six years ago did you uh how so for the we get some listeners that you know are doing the appalachian trail and i think most of them are starting to get on trail between march and april

[01:12:58] so it's coming up what are your what's your thoughts or like what is your your view on like that initial period when you get to georgia and you start hiking north is that were you able to

[01:13:10] find your friends pretty quickly and settle in or um was it was it more of a process to get into a routine day after day for the through hike yeah i actually i guess i started on a great day because

[01:13:24] day one we had a great crowd around us obviously a lot of them dropped out but i stayed i met four three people that first day and the four of us stayed with each other till the halfway point

[01:13:40] and we just we had great hiking pace we had lots of things to talk about and we kind of had the same hiking style and the only reason i separated from them at the halfway point was they were going

[01:13:57] a little faster than i wanted to go yep and i had allotted six months and i wanted to make sure i took that time okay and we would have finished in four months oh wow so they were going really so

[01:14:09] you were going really fast the first half then yeah yeah and then i really slowed down because i knew if i got back i would probably go right back to that job and i just would fall back into

[01:14:21] everything and i that's not the experience i wanted on the trail so it was really hard to leave them because we were a great group and uh the funny part about it is we all ended at katahdin

[01:14:35] on the same day just randomly well so they did they have to like step off trail and then come back or something yeah a couple of them stepped off to visit family or um had injuries and for whatever reason we all ended up on the same day together

[01:14:55] and how those are any periods where you had doubts or you thought like oh this isn't uh i'm gonna step off or this isn't really what i had hoped it would be or were you pretty sure

[01:15:05] the whole time that you're gonna just keep keep going i was sure i was gonna keep going there were days when it wasn't fun um the year i hiked was one of the wettest years i'm sure there's been

[01:15:18] wet years since but i think it was 80 of the days were rainy so you know almost all of us had trench foot and we just woke up were wet walked in the rain went to bed wet it just gets old after a

[01:15:33] while but it was still a great experience i guess and when you uh the other thing i'm curious about is so when you're down in georgia and like in the southern part and you start meeting people

[01:15:46] do you immediately like start flexing that you're from new hampshire and that the whites are going to be like nothing and that you you try to sort of assert your dominance over them but by your

[01:15:55] new hampshire credibility no no i didn't have i didn't have enough backpacking experience to assert any dominance i figured you know you gotta you gotta you gotta throw your resume out there

[01:16:09] people were asking they they were a little worried um you know everybody looks ahead in the guidebook and you see the elevation profile and they'll look and they'll be like oh this doesn't look so bad

[01:16:21] and then all of a sudden they jump ahead and they're like what is new hampshire about wow and so clearly the through hiking like stuck with you because you ended up doing the pacific

[01:16:30] crest trail as well yes and i had not really planned on doing that um after the at or a little while after the at i met my husband at the climbing gym and he had just kind of said oh yeah the at

[01:16:48] i'm planning on doing that one day too then we started dating and he was like well you've already done the at and so he casually said oh why don't we do the pct together and i wasn't really thinking

[01:17:02] about that but like six months later we were starting out on the pct wow so you guys so you're dating him for like what does it six months 12 months whatever so had you done any like trips

[01:17:15] with him before or was this the first big trip that you guys had done together it was the first big trip i think we were together maybe a year a year or so yeah um yeah we were together about a

[01:17:26] year year and a half and but you know a year of that is the planning and figuring out how we're going to leave our now jobs that we have and um he owned a house and what would that look like

[01:17:43] um but yeah we planned it and he proposed on the trail which he proposed 700 miles in which i thought was very bold no kidding anniversaries gonna be tricky and he proposed in an area where

[01:18:01] we didn't get to a road crossing for four days yeah that's what i mean yeah i was like well that would have been i'm curious from your perspective like so when you go on trail

[01:18:14] you go on trail solo in the at and you like you meet your friends and your crew or whatever and then you're going as a couple on the pct is it completely different does everybody just stay

[01:18:23] away because they're like well you know i don't want to encroach on the couple or did you were you able to sort of find friends or do you find other couples that are in the same situation

[01:18:31] it it was harder to find a group to get in with um not that people wanted to stay away but it's a totally different crowd on the pct and um we did find we found our group and

[01:18:51] we're still great friends with them they came and visited us over the winter and um yeah it's just different but once you find them they stick with you yeah do you find like it's

[01:19:02] more spread out with the pct like it's not as crowded at the shelters as is it on the at um yes uh there are there were 10 spots that were very crowded uh especially in the beginning

[01:19:19] very crowded uh especially in the beginning but yeah it's definitely spread out we didn't we didn't stay in many shelters or like common tent spots but um yeah the at is a lot more crowded and the at is a lot of younger and older generations so like

[01:19:42] under 30 and over 60 and the pct tended to be like 30 and 40 year olds okay yeah because that sort of goes back to my assumption with the at is it's like a lot of college kids and a lot of retirees

[01:19:57] wow i don't know what all the 30 year olds were doing on the pct but yeah i don't know well they're all the tech they all cashed out on their tech jobs and they've got money um so just after

[01:20:07] you did after you did these through the first through hike like did the bug bit you or the ant bit you and did you go you did a lot of hiking around new hampshire the white mountains 4 000

[01:20:17] footers any other list that you did um i don't think any other lists now i wasn't a big list person okay i'm still not a big list person i i didn't even complete my 4 000 footers until

[01:20:34] many years after the at yeah so you took your time do you do you like to do day hiking or do you prefer the backpacking trips oh i love day hiking yeah um i love backpacking now and but

[01:20:50] you know with especially with two kids day hikes are a lot easier yeah exactly the kids getting into the hiking how old are the kids yeah three and five um so they like to ride in the pack

[01:21:02] um and i go on a lot of trail walks during the week but that means i'm usually carrying both of them and they're getting kind of heavy yeah that's at that tough age the fight you gotta

[01:21:13] you gotta negotiate with the five-year-olds yeah look kid you gotta walk now yeah so luckily they're both pretty small so when i'm carrying both of them it's about 75 pounds but i don't prefer to

[01:21:26] i don't prefer to do that huh sound like a candidate for search and rescue carry she could help come on we'll take you all the way down it's nothing there she's i'm exhausted just

[01:21:40] thinking about her life i don't think she can add search and rescue team member to her resume but and then you've been outside the u.s you've been to patagonia the azores and some other areas can

[01:21:51] you talk a little bit about your international trips yeah so patagonia was a trip that i did while i was still in the corporate world and it was my first solo trip ever and um again just

[01:22:08] kind of had a life change and needed to do something and said you know i'm gonna take a take a vacation and found a tour group that was going to patagonia and they were going to do

[01:22:22] a lot of hiking so decided i was just going to jump on board and try it out and it was one of the greatest trips i've ever been on um i had no idea what i was doing and i didn't know anyone

[01:22:35] and it was scary but it was amazing well it's definitely on my bucket list but i'd say um it's it's difficult to break away with with my family situation but in the future i would love

[01:22:47] to go so you you recommend like so this tour group situation like there was no no creepy people or difficult people it was you got along with everybody and yeah yeah it was it was a small

[01:22:59] group i think there was only like six or eight of us and a mix of ages and it was yeah it was and nobody everybody got along and it was just really nice we spent a couple days in the cities and then

[01:23:15] did uh the the circuits down in patagonia and it was great going with a tour group because they were able to do all the visas and kind of get us on all the buses and other smaller flights

[01:23:29] that you need to do to get to those areas did you as you were doing these trips like i'd imagine you came back from patagonia with like a million photos and things like did you start just pulling

[01:23:41] together the um the photos and any drawings and things like that did you start getting creative around some of these early trips were those anything like any prototypes to what you eventually

[01:23:52] ended up doing with with sherpa aunt um not so much with the patagonia trip um i did patagonia got me sketching again and realizing that i wanted to do something more with my career than

[01:24:09] work for a corporate job that i was just grinding at um but i still had no idea what that meant and then when i was on the at i kind of thought more about it still you know everybody says

[01:24:26] you'll figure out life while you're on the at but i finished the at more confused and um but then in the months after the at when you're kind of going through that

[01:24:37] weird period where you don't know what to do with yourself that's when i started coming up with new ideas and uh that's when i created my first product which was the color your hike

[01:24:51] trail map that of the white mountains that most people know about right and did that so that first project the color um project that just did you think that this was a business to

[01:25:08] start off with or would you just doing this sort of on the side and seeing um what the interest was how did it i guess how did it develop from sort of a small interest to a real business

[01:25:21] so i remember and it started kind of at mountain wanderer that's why it was kind of funny when you said you first saw it there i remember walking into steve's shop many many years ago and i asked

[01:25:36] him if he had any large-scale posters of all of the hiking trails in the way it's not just the maps um that you know you'd have to open all of them up and then it's you still don't have a

[01:25:51] complete picture and he said he didn't have anything like that so i said well if i create one will you sell it and he said no yeah yeah show me what you got and so pretty much that day

[01:26:04] i went home and started sketching and um after lots and lots of sketches and rounds i came out with the first version of that map and showed it to steve and he was like oh yeah this is pretty cool

[01:26:18] so he said yeah let's stock a few of them and see what happens and that's when i kind of started thinking this could be a thing i have a lot of other ideas let's kind of just put them all together

[01:26:32] except for right when i finished the map that's when we decided to go on our pct hike so it kind of put the hold on it right as it was ramping up but but it probably also gave you a

[01:26:43] little bit more time to sort of think through and say like all right maybe i have something here and um sometimes that's a good thing let it percolate a little bit and when you came back

[01:26:53] from the pct what happened was it like was everyone like where were you we want more maps no my mom was mailing them out yeah and you know it was like one or two every other week it because i wasn't promoting it

[01:27:10] i mean i wasn't on instagram i'm not on facebook that much um but the people who did hear about it and wanted to order one she would mail them out for me um but no people people didn't really

[01:27:23] know yet but when i got back that's when i really started promoting it and showing people what i had and coming out with other designs got it so for the listeners um i guess the way i would

[01:27:35] describe this and to yell at me if i'm doing this wrong so these are sort of gray scale maps that have you know the trails on them and they'll have a particular region the white mountains manad knock

[01:27:44] bell naps whatever and then you can color in your your progress in whatever creative way you want can you talk a little bit of like what have you seen some some people do with with these

[01:27:57] yeah so you can use any any marker crayon colored pencil to color the the trails in and basically what i wanted it for was there were a lot of times when we would go to say north conway

[01:28:13] and we knew what we had hiked but we didn't know what else was around and we would look at maps but between me and my husband i have a terrible memory um we would just kind of hike the same

[01:28:26] thing every time and so i wanted a map or you know kind of like red lining but i wanted to be able to see it on the wall and just be like well we're going to this area what can we hike that we

[01:28:37] haven't done yet and so that was my original idea for the map but since then i've seen people use it to track they do different colors for different years that they've hiked they do different colors for different people in the family or different seasons some people put

[01:28:58] glass like keep the glass on their frame and use like a erase whiteboard marker so that they can erase it every year and do it again so there's a lot of different ways to use it yeah it's really

[01:29:13] cool and then um you've obviously like this isn't the only products that you sell like you have a bunch of different prints and you have apparel and ingredient cards but like the the maps

[01:29:25] themselves that you've drawn stomp touched on this a little bit before like i was a big like sci-fi fantasy kid reader when i was a kid and like all those books you know like george rr martin

[01:29:36] and tolkien and even like terry brooks and all these other they always had maps of the worlds that they they wrote about and i was always fascinated with those maps were you were you at

[01:29:49] all into that or how did you get to sort of learn to draw about draw maps as surprisingly i was not but i have a lot of map books that have vintage maps in them so anything from vintage to you know

[01:30:08] more modern map styles and i am constantly going through those and just looking at how people have made maps through time um i still have not looked too much at the fantasy maps um but the vintage maps are really what what captivates me yeah it's and it's interesting

[01:30:32] like those maps where we have a segment where we talked about early on the show where we talk about like the not only but not only the the early map makers and their sort of their their art and design

[01:30:44] skills but they also were responsible for like basically naming all of the features that we uh we all travel on now the trails and all the all the rivers and mountains and summits like

[01:30:55] they basically just you know it was up to them to make those decisions to um to do all those naming so it's just fascinating how you're drawing from them as well because it's just really they've it's

[01:31:08] the biggest piece of history that i think that is left behind is watching those how those people made those maps and how you can sort of see the story on how things evolved in the white mountains

[01:31:19] over time yeah we have a couple hanging on our wall that are very old our um my husband's dad is a collector so he finds us some really cool ones oh so you can go over there and then get

[01:31:35] new inspiration yeah awesome so um a couple of others so the product line so if anybody wants to check out all the products they can go to sherpaant.com and then you've got you know

[01:31:48] probably like five or six different sections here so you've got greeting cards that you sell uh do you make those all yourself i know that i know you're not a one person show so you have

[01:31:56] another person i think and i'm sure you probably have family and friends that also help out but do you do you design most of the greeting cards i design everything design layout create everything

[01:32:08] i have someone who helps me with shipping and she also helps a lot with you know any other random she does all my uh you know billing and stuff like that that i don't like to do all the fun

[01:32:24] business stuff yeah but yeah i all the greeting cards i've designed they're all meant for people who love the outdoors which it's kind of hard to find greeting cards like that and um they're not

[01:32:39] sappy but they're not they're also not like over the top shouting at you yeah i love your vibe do you do you you know there's a there's themes across your greeting cards that give sort of

[01:32:51] similar um i guess feel across all the different cards um do you are you pretty much set like you've got all your themes are you always thinking about like okay i've got to i've got to create a

[01:33:04] new theme of greeting cards um like sentiment or new like sport uh like a new like so you've got them broken down by you know like outdoor adventure and birthday and love and friendship

[01:33:17] etc like do you ever say i'm gonna make a new sort of segment of cards or are you pretty set in these these themes yeah i'm actually i'm thinking of a new segment right now um it's but it would kind

[01:33:30] of fall into a category already it's more of a congrats but a targeted congrats um but i'm also always looking for suggestions so if anybody needs a theme let me know all right stop i may

[01:33:46] i may have to hit you up for a special stomp birthday card that's great so carrie i'm looking through the um i mentioned it earlier but i'm looking through the uh trail sign uh poster

[01:33:58] that you had made and uh i gotta hand it to you you've captured the character of of each of these peaks in each of these pictures it's really impressive thank you it's so cool how did

[01:34:11] you do your research for the actual uh font or style of each of the signs was there a resource for that a lot of it was from my own photos that i took when i was hiking that's great um and then

[01:34:26] you know like a lot of people like to point out a lot of the mountains don't have signs um so those i just kind of took the took you know a major feature from the summit and

[01:34:40] just kind of created my own sign uh using it's all hand drawn so the font is all just my handwriting yeah it's beautiful like for instance for the listeners i'm looking at the mount liberty and um it's that classic photo as you're about 100 yards from the summit and

[01:34:58] the rocks are angling up and to the west towards the sunset you know that classic image and then the sign is right on top of that so classic very nice thank you do i see

[01:35:10] you even have a great jay is that on uh yeah mount willie yeah that's a good call can't hike that without seeing one exactly yeah that's great wow yeah this is cool

[01:35:24] and then you the question is do i update it with the lidar oh no oh no you're gonna get this i've had many debates with this why don't you make a separate uh variation on it i know that's

[01:35:41] all right it's it's a possibility yeah and then you also sell clothing right i do yes yeah and then you can get so you it's not just mountain wanderer you have a bunch of different retail

[01:35:52] locations where you can where you sell um is it apparel and then your prints as well yeah apparel prints gifts i have mugs and tote bags and i'm now in about 50 stores uh throughout

[01:36:06] the u.s okay yeah you're in a bunch in new hampshire so you're in you're in a couple of spots in north conway so international mountain equipment store you're in mountain wanderer you're

[01:36:16] in the amc lodges yeah um as well and then is there any whereabouts in massachusetts is it the three places in massachusetts you got to get some presence in the north shore here yeah i have to

[01:36:29] update that list as well okay um so um yeah yeah i'll update that list within the next day awesome um but as of this is an exciting announcement but as of last week i am now

[01:36:45] in rei bedford oh oh that's great yeah huge yep they bought pretty much everything really yep so if you're looking for something and you're in that area step on in well i need to get over

[01:36:58] there because i haven't been to that store so that might give me the motivation to just get up there there you go um and so all of the apparel is printed in new hampshire okay and i print the

[01:37:15] i print the onesies myself so those are all right in right right here but um yep printed in new hampshire and i try to keep everything as local as possible my large-scale prints are right in

[01:37:30] massachusetts and um yeah the thing i love is so you have the you get the 4 000 footer hoodie sweatshirt which is huge yeah that one's really comfortable yep and then you've got a bunch of different themes so you've got adirondack high peaks you've got the presidential traverse

[01:37:46] um and you've got so t-shirts long sleeve t-shirts hoodies so you've got all the big three that we need for all your apparel here and then and a mix between cotton and wicking

[01:37:57] so that you can bring some hiking and then wear some in town yeah no that's good that's good stop so you should buy me the 4 000 footer white mountains in blue okay i'll do that i need

[01:38:10] some stickers for my uh my dj rig i'm gonna give you guys a coupon code too all right excellent yes for all your listeners okay what is that um do you want to wait or do you want to do it no let's

[01:38:26] just do slasr 24 yeah slasher 24 for a discount code super cool we appreciate that and i'm sure you'll get some hits we have no doubt um and then what's so you're in rei so that's pretty much like

[01:38:44] now you get you're in the the big leagues here and then it's only a matter of time before you get into redding and some other locations um what's next do you have any other big plans

[01:38:54] or you just like you're you sort of like it feels like you're at the point where like you're you're going from like the one one or two person operation where you might need to expand are you

[01:39:03] have you thought about that are you scared about that like scaling up is like it can be difficult because you got to deal with other people yeah um i'm excited about it um our my goal was always to

[01:39:15] stay home with my kids while they were not in school so i've been trying to keep it kind of smaller for the last few years and they're getting you know my oldest is going to kindergarten next

[01:39:31] year so it's kind of time to start ramping it up and so it's kind of all just working perfectly perfect timing um but i'm excited about you know growing it but also not growing it giant i'd like

[01:39:48] to keep it you know small business because then i can still make things in the u.s and keep it as local as possible yeah it's admirable yeah and part of your mission too it's not you

[01:40:04] have a a pledge to sort of give back and you've been involved in supporting a number of different organizations so can you talk a little bit about sort of the mission and values of sherpa ant

[01:40:17] yeah so you know our mission is to you know share the outdoor outdoor it okay so the mission is to help outdoor enthusiasts pursue and share their passions and also give back to the people in places we love and so i give back by

[01:40:43] giving five percent of profits to an environmental cause um the past few years that has been helping with um providing more access to um to the outdoors more equitable access to the outdoors

[01:41:06] got it excellent and do you uh do you ever do a lot of you recruiting new hikers i'm assuming you get hit up like occasionally like hey i want to get into hiking and like you're the

[01:41:15] let's talk to sherpa aunt she must know what to tell me to do like do you have do you ever help out or do you just have any just general advice for new hikers or people that want to get

[01:41:24] in the outdoors i get a lot of questions about through hiking a lot of people um ask about resupply and mail drops and specific gear for through hiking i think most people know that i'm

[01:41:41] not hiking the big mountains right now and i'm mostly on trail hauling two kids so i don't i don't get many of those questions anymore yeah yeah are you nervous like i know with me i made

[01:41:54] the huge mistake i made with my kids is like i just did too much too fast and i burnt like two of them out i still got one that like hikes but the other two were like no i'm not going hiking

[01:42:04] with your dad because you're a maniac do you do you think about that at all i mean it sounds like you've got it you've got it down pretty well if you're not pushing them too hard but that's that's

[01:42:13] a tricky thing with the kids is like how do you keep it fun yeah but you also you know you want to get out there and hike yeah so most of our hikes are about a half a mile and they consist

[01:42:26] of a lot of fairy houses yep so that's how we're doing it right now um they are getting more interested in doing longer hikes and you know they can they can walk a little further now too

[01:42:42] so i'm excited about this summer i'm hoping we can get up and do a couple a couple bigger hikes you know maybe a mile or two that's that's smart yeah and it's good for you because like you gotta

[01:42:57] tire these kids out like if you don't if you don't tire the i tell people this all the time i'm like don't don't put them in front of the tv don't don't give them like the ipad like you gotta get

[01:43:05] these kids out walking get them to bed they're gonna drive you crazy otherwise and then if you are up north and you need to get them tired out and you don't you can't go on a hike stop at the

[01:43:17] amc lodge because that playscape that'll get them every time all right that's a good call that's a good call yeah there's just get them moving that's that's such an important thing for

[01:43:27] the kids um and then do you have any plans to do adult size onesies because i'd like to buy one for i'll see what i can do you definitely need a bib so that would be great

[01:43:43] you can also mail me something and i'll just slap slap an image on it yes that's great all right so essentially then if from what i've learned here then like you're the go-to place like so if you're a hiker and you're listening to the show

[01:43:58] and you want to get like some cool stuff to hang on your wall or you want a unique sweatshirt or you want to flex that you just did a presidential trip matter of fact i did a presidential verse

[01:44:07] traverse this i'm i can buy that shirt now you can buy a lot of things you can buy a shirt you can buy a short sleeve shirt a long sleeve shirt a hoodie a mug print i could be mr traverse

[01:44:20] a sticker a magnet yeah that's pretty good um and then oh you the other thing too is you have like you have a logo so is the the sherpa ant is it's a cool logo so you designed that i think

[01:44:32] early on but does the ant actually have a name or is it just as sherpa the name of the ant i think it's just the ant it's just the ant no name um and so that ant i drew on the at

[01:44:46] we were at it's like you know the story everyone knows is it we were at a you know all you can eat breakfast or something and i just drew an ant and i said if i ever own a business this is going to

[01:44:59] be my logo and the first few years it was that photocopy of that one napkin and then i actually went in and rendered it and uh that's that's the logo were you always recruited to like tag all the

[01:45:17] shelters because you had the best drawing skills no i would i only drew mountains okay that's good that's good uh wow so this is great so we'll link all of you so we'll link your um

[01:45:31] you know the website and then um we'll put up the retail locations as well and you know i think also like people should definitely if you haven't gone to the rei in bedford check it out

[01:45:41] but i'm gonna go up there i think maybe pretty soon and see if i can get some stuff as well but um anything else as far as you want to plug carrie um i've got lots of exciting plans for this year

[01:45:55] i have two new collections that i'm sketching out now that i'm really excited about they're on the lines of the prezzy traverse but uh two you know different areas and i'm really excited

[01:46:10] about them and i'm gonna have new cards soon and i'm working on a couple collaborations so lots lots in the works right now awesome yeah i feel like there's um there's like this crossover

[01:46:27] between the hiking community and the creative community that i more and more the the more i'm around the more i see it so it's just great to uh this was such a great idea stomp i don't often

[01:46:39] give you credit but like you there's a great idea to reach out to carry i but it's this has been great thank you yeah yeah absolutely this has been wonderful thank you carrie yeah thank you

[01:46:50] that's what's right and if yeah if you have any news or any updates let us know and uh we'll certainly be willing to plug and uh share the news to the listeners yeah i'll let you know when those

[01:47:03] new designs are out awesome and i'll make sure to get you a coupon code and you can give your listeners 20 off yeah yeah slasher 24 we'll uh we'll put that in the show notes as well

[01:47:17] and then uh i'm gonna carry you're gonna get rich soon because i'm gonna have my wife just pick out a couple of things here she's a shopper she likes to love it love it sure um this is great

[01:47:29] so then now so carrie we'll let you go we're gonna get into like all the calamities and um search and rescue disasters that have gone on nationwide over the last like um week or two so um you will spare

[01:47:41] you the pain of listening to this stuff okay well thank you for having me you're welcome thank you very much bye and we're backstopped so that was pretty cool yes it's super cool i love her art

[01:48:02] it's just so unique it's very cool that's awesome i'm telling you take a take a look when you have a chance at your lord of the rings jrr tolkien maps that yeah it's a scene vibe absolutely it's

[01:48:14] so neat it's very cool it's just i just want to look at just put um i put together like a bunch of photos from my um yosemite trip and uh i got some spaces on my wall though down here that i

[01:48:29] need to add to so i'm definitely gonna go shopping yeah that sounds great i think i might too i mean we have a couple nice prints i would love to get the pemi loop print that she has it would be

[01:48:39] similar it would match the presidential traverse print that my daughter gave mrs stump and i and are you brave enough to do the color i would i would buy one of the coloring things but i wouldn't

[01:48:50] be brave enough to actually color it in i'd have to do like the the whiteboard thing i'm a purist i don't touch art i just leave it you don't touch it all right so even even though it's designed for

[01:49:00] color you you would just leave it be i leave it be as a collector's item a memento yeah for sure i've been like that forever yeah i i would just ruin it if i tried to like do any level of art

[01:49:18] and you any level any level i can i have a one guy i have like one guy that i can draw it's just like the oh it's the same character i learned in like second grade but that's the

[01:49:29] only thing i can draw it's got like big cheeks i have to see this maybe it can be our uh new logo yes i'll draw him i'll draw him and post on the show notes slasher rant yep slasher stomp

[01:49:48] all right so this is the part of the show where we're gonna do search and rescue news but you need to jump into a sponsor here yeah so i hope some people have tried this i've been enjoying

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[01:51:17] great and so when you go to mad river coffee um is it just like a i've never been there so is it a sit-down place where you could is they have retail where you can buy like a four pack or a

[01:51:26] six pack of kombucha no no you can buy them individually individually okay it's it's like a coffee shop with uh you know bakery goods uh egg sandwiches heavy duty coffees several flavors

[01:51:40] of coffee and you can sit down and eat or just take it to go they do music it's a great spot it's really nice it's starbucks style coffee too it's very very strong okay all right nice

[01:51:54] well i gotta check it out and i'm gonna get myself a kombucha when i get in there yeah good absolutely um all right stomp um what is your what is your biggest fear in life hmm my biggest fear probably the most the scariest way for you to die

[01:52:42] probably drowning i would say drowning drowning i i would say like getting eaten by an animal like a alligator or hippopotamus or like a lion or something like that and then right behind that

[01:52:54] is like getting stuck and or in like a small confined like area or something like that so this first story is a emergency responders work to rescue a hiker stuck between rocks on bishop

[01:53:06] peak so this is in california other yeah i don't think i would want to ever be stuck that would freak me out so emergency responders were attempting to rescue a hiker who became trapped

[01:53:17] between two rocks on bishop peak in san luis obispo on saturday evening how can i say san luis obispo but i can't say og a chuck i get the joke yes i don't know a call for aid was made to

[01:53:31] bishop peak uh around 4 15 that afternoon fire department chief said a 40 year old woman was hiking along with her dog when she slipped and fell at the top of the mountain and became wedged

[01:53:44] between two rocks and was unable to get out oh my god that would freak me out um she's a 40 year old woman she only spoke spanish so initially it was a little bit difficult but there was a

[01:53:56] helicopter that was able to airlift a member of the county's urban search and rescue team to the top of the mountain where they were able to translate and help coordinate resources so um they were able

[01:54:08] to get to her by 5 30 so that's pretty good within an hour they got a helicopter out there once she was removed from the rocks he said the crew would probably walk her back down the

[01:54:17] mountain since the helicopter would no longer be operational after dark they said that the woman was not hurt they said four crews were on scene from the fire department uh to help out there

[01:54:27] so it's pretty good they got an urban search and rescue team so i bet you they do a lot of like um dementia walk-offs and stuff like that yeah i suppose i'm just really curious how how she was

[01:54:39] lodged in there and how they got her out and how she couldn't have gotten herself out i mean did they have to use tools nomadic tools or i don't know it's very strange i always have those details

[01:54:50] yeah i mean i imagine they maybe put a rope under her armpits and pulled her up or something but who knows yeah who knows wow my biggest fear is like getting lodged like that but like upside down

[01:55:01] head first between the rods oh my god oh i didn't even think about it i can't even i'm moving on okay biggest nightmare biggest nightmare all right so this is a uh this is a story out of

[01:55:13] italy a 45 year old italian hiker was swept away by an avalanche on mount serenti in abruzzo around 4 p.m i tell you by the way speaking of italy my daughter was supposed to go to italy

[01:55:26] to do studies overseas and i was all excited that i was going to go climb the mountains and uh yeah uh the dolomites and she got rejected from the program oh so your dreams are dashed crushed

[01:55:41] crushed now she's like i'm gonna go to london i'm like when i am in london i don't go to city so um not her fault it's just a lottery like it's a popular place and like they

[01:55:51] picked from the lottery and she she didn't get in so she didn't do anything so she doesn't listen to the show but don't don't say i said she got rejected

[01:55:59] um we should delete that it's a hop skip and a jump over to uh scotland the highlands oh yeah that's true that's true so that could be worth it could be could be she'll wait in here she gets to

[01:56:13] london so she may not get anything i don't want to deal with that drama but anyway so back to italy avalanche 45 year old italian hiker was swept away by an avalanche unfortunately

[01:56:25] he did not survive this so a rescue call in came in from fellow hikers they immediately sent a helicopter to the scene there was a doctor on board and they were able to locate the victim

[01:56:42] but unfortunately his condition immediately appeared critical and the doctor on board who had landed on the spot could do no more than confirm his death so there's operations as a follow-up underway to recover the body and his fellow mountaineers by ground rescue teams at this

[01:57:00] point so the helicopter just sort of did what it could do but they just said like he's dead and we're moving on gotcha well that's a shame yeah it can happen anywhere dude really can

[01:57:10] well i mean avalanche avalanche territory only yep so um this next one's in colorado spring so a hiker suffered frostbite and other injuries after becoming stranded in the backcountry on a dangerous cold morning there's a photo here of them getting lifted out there on a pretty steep

[01:57:28] cliff here let me check this out cheyenne cannon right yeah north cheyenne cannon just before seven saturday morning so they must have been out it's around two degrees the person was stuck on steep

[01:57:40] terrain and unable to move after hiking in the cold so they used drones there you go to locate the hiker and they found him on a rocky ledge in the canyon and immediately got to work setting up a

[01:57:52] rope system yeah so um took about two and a half hours to get him out and there was some some firefighters involved that was suffering cold exposure symptoms so they were able to be treated

[01:58:04] on the scene you know what they needed stop what's that was my daughter's boyfriend's christmas gift of electric hand warmers yeah um that would have been awesome so the hiker was rescued

[01:58:20] transported to the hospital and i guess there's an arctic front you know how we get those polar vortexes in colorado they get arctic fronts yeah what i find interesting about this is that they

[01:58:34] used um fire department versus a volunteer team i'm not familiar with this area but i'm assuming there are teams throughout the region but uh yeah i mean colorado spring so it's like a um

[01:58:46] city area i guess so i mean it's right near the mountains but maybe maybe they just it was accessible enough so they could get the firefighters more front country than back country

[01:58:57] yeah yeah stepping on the back country territory there wait um this is another one i feel like did we do this maybe we didn't um so hikers run out of food and water as iphones die 11 000 feet up

[01:59:12] this volcano so this was a mess this was um i apologize i feel like we did this story but maybe we didn't um this is the 17th okay maybe it's different yeah um two hikers got lost 11 000 feet

[01:59:26] up a freezing volcano in hawaii without food or water sounds maybe maybe i'm thinking we've heard this story before because this happens all the time in hawaii but they were trapped overnight in severe winter storm that closed the peak of monoloa wow 11 000 yeah so the basically they

[01:59:43] said above 10 anything above 10 000 feet you can't go they were at 11 000 feet so they called 911 on sunday saying they were freezing you know what they were doing they were pulling a pierce brosnan they were pulling a pierce brosnan that's right mr entitled so they did a search and rescue

[02:00:03] operation via helicopter and they flew to around 11 000 feet on the road they found them they landed so a ranger could check on the hikers but the high elevation and dangerous gusting winds made

[02:00:14] it too risky for them to fly off the volcano so the ranger gave the hikers food water and a satellite phone and told them to hike on to the nearest shelter and get out on their own so that's

[02:00:25] that's tough so they land the helicopter the guy gets out he's like here's some stuff and then i'm going back on the helicopter and see you later wow i love it so i love it that's that's that's a good

[02:00:39] incentive to not do that type of thing right but wait there's more so they they got food they got water they got a satellite phone and they're moving on their way so just after sunset the hikers texted the ranger that they had lost the trail there

[02:00:55] 10 300 feet in the foul weather so they made it down 700 feet and they got lost again they were like we need another rescue so the pilot wasn't able to fly the helicopter safely in the

[02:01:04] dark so the rescue has had to wait until monday to fly up there again and eventually they just took them off the mountain this time so huh two helicopter rescues and once one one event incredible incredible yeah search and rescue can be fun yeah extremely grueling 10.2 mile

[02:01:26] hike is not for everybody and by everybody they definitely mean these two hikers um hikers are urged to be prepared and know their limits so i guess they were with two other companions that

[02:01:37] they separated and those people got in trouble too so all four hikers were cited for hiking the volcano without a permit hmm yeah the old pierce brosnan effect it's spreading it's a syndrome

[02:01:50] i gotta imagine like the search and rescue i mean actually most search and rescue people i you know like they they don't think this way but i feel like the the locals in hawaii must just roll their

[02:02:00] eyes when when the tourists get in trouble like this exactly did you hear about the rescue oh boy climbing above 10 000 feet all right so this next one kentucky college students are rescued after a winter storm leaves them stranded on a mountain peak there's a good video with this

[02:02:20] one i'll include in the uh show notes so this was a group of college kids from asbury college and they they hiked up they were gonna do an adventure and then they got up on the summit and

[02:02:31] they were like nah this isn't good and they decided to call for a rescue helicopter was able to land on the summit and then they were able to i think it was like four of them but it's a pretty cool

[02:02:41] video of the helicopter landing and then all the students are like for some reason they're hiding in like these bushes i don't know why but um you don't see them initially and then all of a sudden

[02:02:52] you're like oh look at all these humans that are in the bushes and they they come out unbelievable so what's dangerous about this place do we have good pictures in there or no uh video right camping

[02:03:07] and they underestimated the weather and they were stuck on this dangerous snow-covered mountain wow um gorge rock it sounds pretty gnarly yeah they just i guess they just felt like um because

[02:03:21] it was like an icy rocky face and wind and snow that they just felt like um it would be safer to um to just take them off the mountain via the helicopter hmm all right yeah so there you go

[02:03:41] uh this is next one here this takes us back to honolulu uh this was rescuers repelled down a mountain slope about 200 feet um after a barking dog had caught the attention of bystanders and

[02:03:58] they eventually found the owner trapped a couple hundred feet down a trail so there was a hiker on lenipo trail in kamuki honolulu saying that there was a random dog running around barking at the

[02:04:12] edge of a steep slope so rescue crews were dispatched they went to go save the dog uh and then once they were able to spot the dog they got a they got a rescue to repel down about 20 feet

[02:04:26] to retrieve it and then from there uh one of the pilots that was overseeing it noticed that there was another object about 50 feet down so after they got the dog to safety they decided like to

[02:04:38] start looking around to do a safety check for the dog's owner because they were able to track the owner based on the dog's collar and when the owner yeah the owner didn't answer so then they checked

[02:04:48] the parking lot they found the owner's vehicle and then they went back to that spot and found a 35 year old woman underneath thick foliage about 100 feet below where the bag was found

[02:04:58] so um i guess she was injured they provided basic life support before taking her into a rescue stretcher and airlifting her to safety so that's that's pretty fortunate yeah so let's let's this

[02:05:12] this is an interesting one to cover um yeah it's like there's a detective work going on at the same time yeah it's wild because you it's it's the dog that triggers the call and a whole troop of rescuers

[02:05:28] go out because of a dog so i'm assuming it means that they they're familiar with this this scenario that if there's a dog barking on a trail then it probably means there's somebody else nearby

[02:05:38] no i think they just care about dogs in hawaii more than they do in new hampshire and they like just will rescue a dog well i didn't want to say that but that's the other option for sure

[02:05:47] like sending out a gigantic crew to get a dog is unusual at best i would say you send a crew out to get a dog over a human a lot of times and i think a lot of my listeners would agree

[02:06:03] um yeah but yeah i don't know i don't know what the policy is if they if if they were like you know hey maybe there's a hiker attached to the dog yeah look at that they found her 100 feet below

[02:06:16] underneath thick foliage interesting yeah she must have been like injured or something because if like i heard all that commotion with a helicopter and my dog bar i'd be like hey what

[02:06:25] about me yeah yeah yeah wow that's a nice story yeah so here's a not nice story that comes local here in mount manadnock three hikers rescued from frigid conditions so this happened um on friday

[02:06:39] night so three lost hikers were rescued friday night from frigid conditions on mount manadnock i love mom and adnock on a friday night hike not in the winter okay so um the hikers were described by fishing game as unprepared for the impending darkness and cold weather

[02:06:58] windshield dropped on the mountain friday evening to minus 10 degrees wow manadnock park staff had to call fishing game and the rescuers called the help the hikers to help find the trail and get below tree line i guess they had no lights with them so they couldn't

[02:07:14] really go anywhere so eventually they were able to make contact and give them gear to help with the ascent um it was a 50 year old person from quincy a 37 year old person from thailand and a

[02:07:27] 63 year old woman from quincy mass the woman was in poor condition had to be carried about a mile and a half to the trailhead and um taken via ambulance to the hospital so okay i don't know

[02:07:42] what they were thinking but they weren't um weren't prepared to be out there at night on mont manadnock yeah the picture here looks like they're they set up a uh a bivy one of those um

[02:07:53] expandable shelters to keep them warm while they um were getting ready to carry them that's pretty cool yeah one of those like bothy bags or whatever yeah it looks like yeah that's right bothy looks

[02:08:05] like a bothy yeah awesome yeah i mean that's like you have to make the decision like if you what you want to carry you carry one of those bothy bags you can carry like a field bivy or

[02:08:16] you can carry like one of those cheap solo bivys that you can get at rei yeah like when i was in when i did owls head i had my 20 degree bag i had uh my sleeping pad and then i had that like cheap

[02:08:28] bivy which you know if i had to lay down i wouldn't be super comfortable but i i'd be okay yeah um all right and then last but not least our friend ginger ginger beard keen had sent

[02:08:43] this over to us so there's a group of skiers and snowboarders 21 skiers and snowboarders rescued from killington's back country saturday so um six of the missing kids were juveniles so those juveniles up to no good but two dozen people rescued this weekend after they got lost

[02:08:59] while navigating the back country at killington um you know are you really a a skier or snowboarder if you don't go out of bounds every once in a while stop true right i mean 21 yeah give them

[02:09:12] a break 21 so i read somewhere else they said that like there was some ski instructors that were actually involved in this and essentially like i think somebody was going out of bounds

[02:09:21] somebody said oh let's look i'll follow them and then a whole group of um a whole group of them ended up finding each other so they all stuck together which was the right thing to do

[02:09:32] and um eventually they were notified of like seven to nine lost skier snowboarders in the back country this is saturday afternoon so killington officers spoke with vermont state police search and rescue and they discovered there was actually 21 lost individuals at the time so 12 members from

[02:09:51] killington search and rescue team went into the woods where they spent the next several hours hiking snowshoeing and skiing over five miles in frigid temperatures so once the rescued individuals were found and brought out of the woods they warmed up in killington's fire

[02:10:04] department's heavy rescue truck along with team members personal cars were waiting for their rides home so a call came in from two more lost skiers just as the team was ready to clear the scene so

[02:10:16] kudos to them because um i guess they cleared everyone up by 7 30 at night but yeah everyone took a wrong turn at killington i don't go out of bounds anymore stop i don't i

[02:10:27] used to do that i don't do that anymore i don't i don't ski anymore i miss it i gotta get out there again but it's supposed to be a good season so far jimmy chaga has been getting out of waterville

[02:10:39] right down the street yeah yeah he sure has been him in little chaga but little chaga hey listen i know there's four snowmobile things here but you have to read the one about the cable you have to

[02:10:52] read this one oh this is so interesting i think i might change my way to go like drowning i'm going to change it to this this is this is pretty wild yeah yeah so saturday january 20th um

[02:11:08] at 8 40 pm the k is it canaan how do you how do you pronounce canaan canaan c a n a a c a n a a n canaan police department uh fishing game bunch of people uh operator identified uh it's a 22 year

[02:11:26] old from canada new hampshire been riding a snowmobile with a friend they had ridden to clark pond where we're trying to access core road via private property unfortunately the rider was

[02:11:36] unaware that there was a cable across the road he was riding on he ran into the cable at speed which caused him to be thrown from the snowmobile um unbelievable yeah his friend was able to access

[02:11:49] like the road and make a 911 call but serious injuries and chargers are pending for the rider so not only did he get absolutely wrecked by a cable but um he also was going to get charged

[02:12:02] for illegally riding off trail without written consent of the landowner wow so riders got to stay on trail so this is brutal the landowner puts a cable on the over this kid runs into it

[02:12:14] now the kid's gonna get charged so the landowner has no um liability no liability here true yeah it's not like a uh like a a trap or something like an explosive to go off to

[02:12:29] kill you if you go into the property it's just a common gate yeah very interesting well we when we were kids we used to ride dirt bikes a lot so i grew up in north reading mass but

[02:12:39] back then it was much more rural and you had like these woods and you could ride dirt bikes and there was always like these urban legends about like oh so and so found like a cable struck across because

[02:12:49] people get mad because they make a lot of noise and it was always like we'd always talk about like oh you know you always got to look out for you know residents that put cables across the trails

[02:12:59] because they're gonna they're gonna injure you and it will always be like somebody knew somebody who knew somebody that got like their head chopped off by a cable right so those are the basic rules

[02:13:09] that's why they stress always stay on trail yeah he doesn't never know yeah and speed is um always you got to pay attention to your speed although i don't think you have to be going that fast to get

[02:13:20] really injured by a cable if you don't see it true yep absolutely unforgiving a couple of other ones snowmobile one needs a rescue injured snowmobiler it is the season yeah yeah there was a fatality

[02:13:36] unfortunately not a lot of details um but there was a massachusetts um renter um that was killed in a crash in berlin yeah and this happened on tuesday so this week the the driver was on

[02:13:50] corridor 12 and basically was going straight they had a passenger behind or on the back of the snowmobile and she failed to make a right hand turn and it appeared that she didn't even attempt

[02:14:01] to make the turn so she may not have seen it um you know apparently she was um you know she rented from goreham and uh it's believed that the victim had limited or no previous snowmobiling experience

[02:14:17] so yeah i don't know um tough one i think they dangerous atv rental snowmobiles if you don't have experience like go with a guide i guess i don't know stop you know better than i do

[02:14:28] oh yeah absolutely i mean power power vehicles like this it's always inherently dangerous getting on these things if you don't have any experience it's probably best to get a guide for something like that yeah um it's you know i'm pretty fortunate these guys that i work with they

[02:14:44] really never rent to newbies you have to have some experience for sure before you do that so that's that's a shame yeah no i would i would i don't think i mean i've ridden snowmobiles i've

[02:14:56] ridden dirt bikes i've ridden quads for a long time i don't think i would even go out i i would wouldn't want to go out in a snowmobile without a guide or at least somebody that knows what they're

[02:15:05] doing yep tis the season tis the season stop it's always sad to hear about fatalities but uh you know it's it's a risk everything about life is a risk at this point but um yeah you know we learned a lot

[02:15:20] this show we got we had some high moments some fun moments some sad moments but um we'll close it out with uh with a goodbye and then we'll see everybody next week all righty see you then

[02:15:36] thank you for listening if you enjoyed the show you can subscribe on apple podcasts spotify podbean youtube or wherever you listen to podcasts if you want to learn more about the topics covered in today's show please check out the show notes and safety information at slasherpodcast.com

[02:15:57] that's s-l-a-s-r podcast.com you can also follow the show on facebook and instagram we hope you'll join us next week for another great show until then on behalf of mike and stomp get out there and crush some mega peaks now covered in scratches blisters and bug bites

[02:16:21] chris staff wanted to complete his most challenging day hike ever fishing game officers say the hiker from florida activated an emergency beacon yesterday morning he was hiking along the appalachian trail when the weather started to get worse officials say the snow was piled up

[02:16:37] to three feet in some spots and there was a wind chill of minus one degree and there's three words to describe this race do we all know what they are lieutenant james neeland new hampshire fishing game presented thanks for being with us today

[02:16:54] thanks for having me what are some of the most common mistakes you see people make when they're heading out on the trails to hike here in new hampshire it seems to me the most common is being

[02:17:01] unprepared and i think if they just simply visited uh hikesafe.com and got a list of the 10 essential items and had those in their packs they probably would have no need to ever call us at all