Episode 233 - Welcome Meghan & Cindy - 48 Peaks Alzheimer's Association, Hiking the Bonds, Mount Paugus

[00:00:08] 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.

[00:00:31] Weather 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.

[00:00:51] You should too. Go to mountwashington.org or text FORECAST to 603-356-2137. What's up listeners? Nick here with your forecast for the weekend of May 16th, 2026. Friday, in the clouds with rain and a wintry mix in the morning and a chance of rain showers in the afternoon.

[00:01:20] Little to no additional snow or ice accumulations. High in the mid-30s. Wind east shifting north at 25-40 mph, decreasing to 10-25 mph. Windchill rising to 20-30 mph above. Friday night, mostly in the clouds under decreasingly cloudy skies. Low in the lower 30s. Wind north shifting west at 10-25 mph, increasing to 30-45 mph. Windchill falling to 10-20 mph above. And Saturday, in and out of the clouds, trending towards clearing under mostly sunny skies.

[00:01:49] High lower 40s. Wind west at 30-45 mph, increasing to 40-55 mph with gusts up to 70 mph. And windchill rising to 25-35 mph above. So, a bit of a wintry start, but looking really nice for Saturday. Have a great weekend, everybody. Be safe, happy hiking, get out, and crush some peaks.

[00:02:07] Casting from the Woodpecker Studio in the great live-free-or-die state of New Hampshire.

[00:02:49] 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 and beyond.

[00:03:03] Alright Nick, episode 233. How's everything going in your world? It's going pretty good. I mowed our lawn for the first time today at lunch.

[00:03:30] It was thick. Got some weed whacking out. Get our garden going. My daughter picked out, apparently, I'm gonna blame her, but we picked out 20 tomato plants over the weekend. So I think it's gonna be the summer of the tomato. Yeah, tomato plants are good. You can grow those. Any idiot can grow those. And the kids, we always enjoy growing those when the kids are little. So they do grow quick. Yeah, we usually do them. We didn't do as well last year.

[00:03:54] So I'm kind of like, come hell or high water, we're gonna have a lot of tomatoes for tomato sauce and caprese salad and all that stuff this year. And then we got some wild cards that I've never gotten. We got broccoli. We got carrots, we got onions, eggplant, summer squash, peppers, a lot of stuff. What do you do to protect them from the critters? So I have like a kind of like a stainless steel. It's probably like four foot by eight foot, three foot by five foot, three foot by six foot, somewhere in that range.

[00:04:23] But it's basically filled. It's like above the ground. And then I have last year, I bought like basically like a steel sort of fence off Amazon that you kind of just hammer in the stakes like they're probably it's like about five feet high. And then you kind of just tie the fence pieces between that's been enough to keep deer out. And actually, my biggest challenge was this chunky little groundhog that's back there. That seems to somehow squeeze his way for how large he is. He's really good at squeezing under fences and things like that, which I think is kind of their deal.

[00:04:50] But it's kind of impressive. I've seen him go before and I'm like, I'm not sure if they have like collapsible like rib cages or something like that, but it's kind of insane how much he can kind of squeak through. I would think he would just get stuck there, but I have to like zip tie the fence shut in spots to make sure he can't get in there. Right. I've told this story on the podcast before, but I've had like endless problems with groundhogs over the years.

[00:05:10] So about 10 years ago, I got a new shed and I was able to put, I guess, chicken. I basically embedded chicken wire into the ground underneath my shed so that it's impossible for anything to get under there. But that was the only thing I could do to block the groundhog. Otherwise, he was living in the hotel under the shed. But that's good. Have you always had a green thumb? Have you ever, have you always been, did you grow up in a family that was growing crops?

[00:05:41] Not growing crops in the sense of like a full farm term, but definitely my dad would always kind of do a garden every year. So I feel like since I've been young, kind of always helped out with that. And then since we've been, I guess, even at our condo, like I had a little backyard area where I would grow tomatoes and do all that stuff. So I definitely like gardening. It's one of my side hobbies. It's a good thing. I wouldn't say I was as extensive as you, but we did do the tomatoes.

[00:06:06] And then I think we grew some other things. I can't remember what we grew, like maybe some peppers or something like that. So, but good, good for you, Nick. If you have any extra tomatoes, I'll take them. Thank you. I'm sure. Hopefully we will. I used to have a neighbor. The neighbor that lives next door to me now is an asshole and I don't like her. But the guy that used to live there, Bob and his wife were super nice. And just in case my neighbor listens, I like to throw that in there.

[00:06:33] But they used to grow all kinds of tomatoes and grapes and all that stuff. And he used to smoke a little pot in the backyard. And one time I was out there and he was smoking and I was like, oh, and he was an older guy. I don't care. I was like, I'm not a drug guy myself. I'm a beer guy, but I didn't really care. But I think that he like was afraid I was going to call the police or something because after that he used to give me all his crops. He would like come over. He would give me eggs because he had chickens.

[00:07:00] He would give me tomatoes, grapes, all that stuff. And I was like, oh, I love this guy. That's a good, that's a good deal. He's like paying, he's like buying you out or something. I guess. Like you won't rat or at least feel bad if you rat on him. I was like, look, if you want to smoke pot outside, I have no problem with that. We have a lot of people with chickens, like not direct neighbors, but it's like, I think it's just common. I think a lot of areas in Massachusetts, but we can go get eggs for like four or $5 from people. Right. I get them from the supermarket a lot of times now, but when we first moved here, I'd be like, oh, I got to go get eggs from this.

[00:07:30] Like guy that has a cooler in front of his driveway and leave him five bucks, but that's fun. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. I eat a lot of hard boiled eggs, but, but anyway, Nick, welcome to episode 233 of the sounds like a search and rescue podcast. So this week we're going to be joined by Megan and Cindy. They're going to be here for a segment to highlight the annual 48 peaks Alzheimer's event. So Cindy and Megan will update us on the plans this year. The hike, the big event is on June 13th, but you can hike anytime this summer that you want.

[00:07:59] So you don't have to limit it to that day. So we'll catch up with them on even some of their own hiking adventure. I think you're probably going to talk about Owl's Head with Megan, I would think too. So she was out there. All right. Plus an update on roadside camping in the whites. We've got a Dave Schitts in the Woods on the Appalachian Trail update. We've got hikers getting killed by volcanoes. We've got hikers needing rescues on Franconia Ridge. Mount Washington is still getting snow.

[00:08:26] The feds have announced that the Hubbard Experimental Forest and Research Facility will remain open. So we'll do a follow-up on the discussion we had about the Forest Service headquarters moving and about the impact that that has locally here. Plus we've got a bear attack in Glacier National Park. And then recent hikes, Nick has been everywhere. So Nick has been on Bond Cliff. Mike has been on Mount Pogus.

[00:08:52] And then Nick is back to the Bonds via Zeeland, Guillot, and West Bond and Bonds. So we've got a lot of hiking stuff to talk about. So I'm Mike. And I'm Nick. Let's get started. Let's get started! I was going to say, this isn't the Sounds Like a Gardening podcast. I know. Exactly.

[00:09:21] Sounds like a Green Thumb podcast. Yeah. There we go. But why don't we kick it off with talking again about our friends, the Alzheimer's Association, 48 Peaks. Sure. So use your passion for hiking to end Alzheimer's. Join 400 plus hikers as they climb New Hampshire's 4,000 footers or create their own challenge to support the mission of the Alzheimer's Association. The annual hiker celebration will be Saturday, June 13th at Ledge Brewing with Raffles Food and an amazing community. Hike that weekend or any day you want this summer.

[00:09:51] No fundraising minimums. But those who raise $125 will receive the annual performance grade t-shirt and a ticket for the hiker celebration. Let's turn the White Mountains purple to end alls. Visit alls.org slash 48 Peaks to learn more. And as we're getting down there, I'm sure eventually communication will be sent. But you can join the Slasher 48 Peaks team on June 13th. We're hiking Mount Adams. Should be a great time. All the friendly faces will be there. And it should be good. Excellent. Excellent.

[00:10:20] And then obviously after you go hiking, you need to eat somewhere and you need to drink. So why don't we give a shout out to our friends, Reckless Brewing. Yes. So for those who spend their days navigating the granite peaks and unpredictable weather of the White Mountains, the trail doesn't truly end at the parking lot. It ends at Reckless Brewing Company. Located in the heart of Bethlehem, Reckless serves as the unofficial headquarters for the tired, the muddy, and the bold. It's where trail stories are swapped over a massive menu of mountain-sized meals and pints of craft beer brewed for the North Country soul.

[00:10:49] When the hike is over and the gear is stowed, Reckless is where the adventure truly settles in. Reckless Brewing Company, the finish line for every White Mountain trek. And it looks like you've got a link in here for Wreckfest coming up, right, Mike? Right, right. So Wreckfest is an outdoor festival that is being run by Reckless Brewing Company. So it's Friday, July 31st through Saturday, August 1st, 2 p.m. to 9 p.m. So Friday night.

[00:11:14] So you can buy a ticket for the whole weekend and it's going to involve, looks like here. So Friday night, you're going to check in. You're going to meet at the Pine House to get your welcome package. You're going to meet, you're going to get assigned a guide and anybody else that's in your group will get assigned a guide. And there's going to be live music, beer, food trucks, and there's going to be a film screening of Best Day Ever. You can check that out.

[00:11:42] I'll put the link in the show notes here. And then Friday will be loaded with guided excursions through the White Mountains and then an evening musical festivals, music festivals. So good times. Good. I think this is a good thing to sign up for with a little crew. So I might get a little crew together myself and do this. I'm looking forward to it. But I'll put a link in the show notes and you can check this out. Yeah, it looks like a lot of fun. It said you can kind of choose from different adventures, including trail running, hiking, biking, gravel riding.

[00:12:12] So it's playing in the White Mountains. Who doesn't want to do that? Maybe Nick, maybe you can choose the cycling part and learn how to ride a bike. God, I set myself up for that one. Oh my God. You could imagine. I walked into that. Imagine part of Wreckfest is us teaching Nick how to ride a bike. Well, it'll be after we go to Baxter, right? Yeah, that's true. That's true.

[00:12:42] I love riding bikes. I guess we should just jump to this one here and then we'll go back to the Sawyer Road opening that I was going to do. But Massachusetts has enacted a new proposed bill that would regulate e-bikes. So e-bikes could be under regulation in Massachusetts. First of its kind. One thing Massachusetts likes is the big brother people, Nick. Yes, and taxes. And taxes and registration fees and everything else.

[00:13:11] So they're going to treat these things like mopeds or minibikes or whatever, which, I mean, honestly, like I see some of these things going past me so fast that I think that it's, maybe it's reasonable to treat them that way. Because they, I mean, people are cruising on these now and it's dangerous for the pedestrians that are stepping out in front of these bikes. Does this, would this include like e-dirt bikes and things like that? Because I see those people, kids have those like everywhere around here. Like they're super popular. I would assume so. I think it's anything. Electronic bike. Okay. Yeah, yeah.

[00:13:41] I guess they have the, they're broken into three categories. Class one can reach 20 miles per hour using pedal assist. Class two can use a throttle to reach that speed. And then class three can reach up to 28 miles an hour with pedal assist or sometimes a throttle. So even, I don't know, maybe the, uh, those electric dirt bikes you're talking about may even be a different category. I don't know. Yeah, they definitely go faster than 20 miles per hour from what I've seen. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:14:08] So, but yeah, they're going to regulate this and it's, it's the typical bill stuff. Like, um, they're going to like put together a commission to, um, study the impact that these bikes will have on, uh, on safety and whatnot. And then they're going to come up with some plans for registration and I'm sure there'll be fees and I'm sure that they'll open up, they'll create a commission that will oversee e-bikes.

[00:14:34] And some connected insiders will get jobs on the commission for the rest of their lives on their next pension. And then we'll have to pay 50 bucks to register our e-bikes, Nick. Yeah. I mean, the good news is it'll probably take like two to three years before anything actually happens because there's so much bureaucracy. Right. Right. They got to pay the lawyers to write the bills, to do everything. Have to have a commission to review the commission because the first commission will have issues. Right. Right. Right. So, um, anyway, so yeah, new rules to regulate e-bikes.

[00:15:04] Um, so I guess the new legislation builds on recommendations from a statewide commission that already happened, uh, prohibiting higher speed devices from zipping down sidewalks, bike lanes, and other high risk areas while increasing enforcement. So, and then moped use would be restricted to riders 16 and under. I used to have a moped when I was a kid that was like the in-between before you were old enough to drive a car.

[00:15:30] But, you know, I actually used to ride a dirt bike too, but I had a moped for like street activity, which was pretty good. We had a little moped gang gang, Nick, when I was a kid. I like the idea of you riding a moped. Yeah. It was very fitting for some reason. I was a little guy too. I was like, I barely touched the pedals, but I was moving. So. That's awesome. Yeah. My dad rode dirt bikes, but that never, I think number one, he sold it probably when he started dating my mom. And number two, that never, that never like got in there.

[00:15:58] I think motorcycles and dirt bikes, like we're just, they were nixed out. That never happened. Good news is, is you can buy your e-bike in Massachusetts and then come up to New Hampshire. New Hampshire will pretty much be the last state that would regulate any of this stuff. Didn't they have some sort of, it was it, there was that Conway or there was some sort of like bike tax proposal, wasn't there? Maybe, I think that there was a bike proposal for the, the, the, the state parks in New Hampshire. Okay. I believe. Okay. Might have been regulating those.

[00:16:28] So. Um. Anyway. All right. So now I got a couple of things here, Nick. So I just want to get to the listeners because I've been seeing people asking this question on the 4,000 foot of Facebook pages. I just want to be clear to everybody. Sawyer Road is not coming back, you know, and it's, it's just not happening. So you're going to, Mount Kerrigan is a 12 mile hike now or whatever it is, 14 mile hike. So I think we just need to accept that. It is funny you say that.

[00:16:53] Cause I've definitely like when I have poked on there occasionally, usually I just like dump a photo and then I like, like some stuff from people I know. And then I kind of hop off or I'll congratulate, if I see someone finish it, I'll be like, congrats. But, um, you'll see people be like, oh, I'm going to wait till Kerrigan. Like, yeah. Yeah. Like if you've seen like the movie Godzilla, like imagine if Godzilla walked across the road, that's like what that indentation looks like. And also like we've covered the history many times. Like there was a, there was even a town that was in there at one point. And you know why the town isn't there anymore? Because it used to get flooded and washed out all the time.

[00:17:21] And it was impractical to have any sort of town or civilization there. Like it's just, it's a tough area and they, they, they rebuilt it like fairly recently in the grand scheme of things. Right. Like it got washed out. I don't know if it was Irene or whatever. And then they kind of rebuilt it. And then it was like six or five, it was good for four or five years. And then it kind of got knocked out again. So yeah. Um, it's over. Yeah. Over. Yeah. Just plan. It's not, not the longest hike in the way. It's just, it's a nice, it's a nice walk out there. It's not too bad. Right. Right. And you do it once.

[00:17:48] And then after that, you can take your unregulated e-bike and drive it down to a signal ridge trailhead and then park it there and then do the regular hike. If you want to do it that way. Just don't tell anybody. Don't tell anybody. Well, I mean, don't, don't put in for the 4,000 footer patch unless you've already done it or the grid. All right, Nick, the other thing, um, somebody had asked about this on the, uh, speaking of the Facebook, I took a little notes. I was on Facebook for a rare thing.

[00:18:16] I actually responded to this one, which is a rarity, but, um, somebody was asking about roadside camping. So, um, they were, they were basically saying that they wanted to be, they wanted to figure out a place that they were from out West and they were lamenting how terrible the white mountains are because there's no places to drive up to and camp or whatever they call that boondocking or anything. So, um, I did pull up a list here for people that are interested in that type of thing.

[00:18:44] So obviously you can go to any of the campgrounds. Like, uh, my, our friend, Steve eats shit from Cape Cod. He is not Dave. This is not Dave shits. And this is Steve eats shit who it's complicated, but Steve's his Instagram. You have to follow. It's fantastic. He, he takes a bite out of a cookie on a mountain and, and takes a photo and it just, I don't know. It works. He's really good. And he usually tries to find some sort of like pun or something.

[00:19:12] Like he did the watcher and he got, you got one of those like old school, like watch him and call it bars. Like he puts an effort or he'll like break out a block of cabbage. She's on Cabot. Like he, yes, he's fun to watch. Sometimes it's just a giant Italian sub. Yes. He's had a lot of his, the early days of Steve eats shit where a lot of Italian sandwiches. So, and I also, I just knew Steve is Steve from the Cape for the longest time. And he's actually still Steve from the Cape in my phone, all one word and camel case because I'm a computer science person.

[00:19:39] But I, you know, I, I, I interchange between Steve, Steve eats shit as his Instagram handle, but I call him Steve from the Cape. And Ash one time was like, why can't you just call him Steve? Like you've hiked with him enough at this point. And I'm like, I don't know, it's not like I know any other Steve's, but I think it's just, I don't know. Yeah. You just have to differentiate. Um, anyway, we still haven't figured out if he's a serial killer anyway, but I don't know, where was I going with this? Anyway, he, he is a car camper. That's what we were talking about.

[00:20:07] He's a car camper and he spends a lot of time at Hancock. Um, so you can go to any of those campsites instead. That's fine. This lady didn't want to pay. So, or she wanted to at least like have more privacy. So, uh, here's the list basically is, um, there are a few roads in forest protected areas that have designated sites where camping is allowed. You have to follow all the regulations that are posted at these sites, which means like be responsible for how you're storing your food and everything.

[00:20:35] And they're first come first serve and very popular. So Nick, do you want to, you want to get the breakdown on the, the three sites that you can, you can just drive up to first come first serve? Sure. So it looks like the first one we have is Gale River Loop Road. So the one that services Gale Head, um, Garfield pretty much. I don't think there's really many other trail heads off there, but it has 13 sites off there. I've noticed these in the woods. So I'm kind of glad you explained this because I always wondered what the deal was with it.

[00:21:01] Old Cherry Mountain Road, which you're going to have to help me on that one, Mike. Is that the one that goes off of like, is it 114A or something? Yeah. It's like the one heading off as a 115, I think. Or 115A. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's on the other side of Jefferson Notch. Check this up. Road MH. Yeah. Well, you're doing that. Uh, the other one here. So we said Gale River Loop Road. We said Old Cherry Mountain Road and then Haystack Road has 11 sites.

[00:21:31] So, um, again, these are first come first serve or first serve, first come first serve. Yep. Uh, and I don't know what the deal is with these. I'm assuming that some people will get there. Are you paying for them online? Or literally, you can just roll up, you don't have to make reservations or anything. I think so. Yeah. I don't know if there's a caretaker that comes around to collect money or what the story is, but I've definitely seen people parked here and had their be all set up and everything. So I don't know what the deal is if there's like limitations on how long you can be there or whatnot.

[00:22:01] But, um, not many sites, like maybe 10 or 12 sites, but you can, you can roll up, but I would not roll up on a Friday night expecting you're going to get one of these. No, no, for sure. Um, Haystack Road to, to just, uh, remind people that would be the one that goes out to the twins. Right. And, uh, yeah, Old Cherry Mountain Road is off of 115. So it's across from 115A, where if you took kind of north, you'd head to Jefferson and it's directly south across 115 from that. Um, I've never been down there before. So.

[00:22:31] Yeah. I mean, if you're going to, um, you know, if you're, if you're going from 93 to get to like Appalachia or you're going to Wambach or what, you're going to go past that area there. Very scenic road. It is. It is. Yeah. There's like an overlook that, that looks over the Kilkenny. That's beautiful over there. Uh, and then, so those are the three options you have for, uh, first come first serve that are, I think no money.

[00:22:55] Uh, the other option that I do see, I see people, I don't know what the deal is with it. People, I'm probably going to get in trouble. So somebody will message me and say, shut up. But Jefferson notch seems to have some pull-offs that look like they're either, either official sites or they're, um, allow you're allowed to set up there, but I don't know. I've seen, I've seen like multiple pull-offs with people camping on Jefferson notch. Yeah. Not to blow their cover too, but I definitely know people that have camped off of Jefferson notch road multiple times as well.

[00:23:23] I don't know if it's legal or not. That's why I'm not going to blow them up, but yeah. Yep. Um, and then, uh, and those people will probably yell at us as well to shut up, but probably. Right. And then the other one is Tripoli road has a reservation system that you can, um, you can go online and reserve. So.

[00:23:41] Okay. Yeah. So that, uh, that would be the one that's, uh, out between the, basically it connects, uh, Waterville Valley to Woodstock, but Osceola's are off that. There's like a couple of, one of my friends goes, uh, to, it's not like rent Randall pond or something. There's some pond over there. Campground. That's really a, that's nice that they like a lot. Yeah. Yeah. It's a nice road to go, go drive down. So, but like, I'm not a car camper, Nick. I'm either a, like, um, stay in the cabin or like, let's get the tent and go deep in the woods. That's the only two things that I'll do.

[00:24:11] Yeah. I feel like so far I'm like a hut camper or a car camper. Yeah. Yeah. Or I just rent a house or we just rent a place with some friends. That's kind of a drill. I like, I like cabins, Nick. I like huts. Cabins are nice. They are nice. They don't, I'm not, I'm not a car sleeper anyway. Um, so we've got that Nick, have you ever, I've ever seen a volcano before? I have not the only volcanoes that I've, the closest volcano I've seen is when you send me pictures of you going to like Hawaii's volcanoes, national park or whatever.

[00:24:40] That's like the closest thing I've seen to it. A volcano expert on the show here, Nick, because I've been to one volcano. Have you ever seen those videos of people that, um, there's, there's avalanches coming from like way far, like snow avalanches coming from way far away and they, they film it. And then you slowly come to the realization that those people better get the hell out of the way. Have you seen those videos? A hundred. Yeah. You can start, you start to see like, it slowly gets closer and then starts snowing over them a little bit and like the frame of the camera.

[00:25:08] And then, and they're like, Oh my God. And it's like, can you move? Like just move. And then it overtakes them sometimes. Exactly. And then there's the videos of the people in the tsunamis, like the water goes out and they all stand there and go, Oh, look at that. That's so interesting. There's no water there anymore. What, what, whatever could it be? Like, that's weird. It's like some giant current sucking up. Yes. So these people have no sense of like, um, self-preservation apparently.

[00:25:33] So the reason I bring this up, Nick, is that there's a video of three hikers that were killed during an Indonesian volcano eruption. And there's video of this volcano eruption. And some of the people that I don't know if these people died or not, but, um, they probably came close to it because they're, they're basically right on top of this mountain. That's exploding in a volcano and they're stopping and taking video instead of, um, running for their lives.

[00:26:03] Yeah. This whole thing was interesting to me. I looked this up when, uh, I think stomp had brought this to our attention. And this is actually one of the more active volcanoes in Indonesia. Like it's the first thing that comes up if you Google it. So I kind of questioned why people hike it. Maybe it doesn't, uh, erupt this violently all the time. It said that this one actually spewed kilometers, uh, spewed ash 10 kilometers into the air. So it was a giant eruption. Um, it's like a 2000, 3000 foot volcano. Um, and it does seem like it's commonly hiked despite the fact that it erupts all the time.

[00:26:32] I don't know. I don't know. I was saying it, it always seems cool to like, uh, when you see those videos, I think especially like South America, there's a couple where people hike next to volcanoes and it looks awesome, but I feel like it's also terrifying at the same time. And what I would always think in the back of my head is like, if the thing erupted and like I died, my last thought would probably be like, wow, that was kind of stupid. Uh, frankly, like I could, why did I put myself in this position? But I guess there's a lot of things though, where I've maybe thought about that different times of life.

[00:26:58] Um, but it is beautiful. It's very cool. But yeah, unfortunately three hikers got taken out by the volcano. I guess that's a rough way to go. I do know there's a, there's a, I'll have to pull it up and find it to put it in the show notes, but there was a, uh, like a three part series on Netflix about this tour company in maybe New Zealand or Australia, where they would take people to this Island. And it was a, it was a semi-active volcano,

[00:27:27] but they would take like cruise ship passengers to do these tours and they could walk along a boardwalk and then go look into the volcano and, uh, the damn thing erupted. Well, there was a, there was a big group of people out there and unfortunately a bunch of them got killed, but, uh, but there was a lot of survivors too, but it's, these things do happen. Not, not frequently, but you gotta be careful around the volcanoes. Was there any sort of like special waivers or anything you had to sign going into like that

[00:27:55] volcanoes national park? I know, I'm assuming too, when we like, you just pay in Joshua tree, like part of the deal of you entering in there is like, you are basically like forfeiting sort of any liability. I would imagine that must be sort of part of it. Yeah. They didn't even have the gate. Like it wasn't like Yosemite. You did have to pay to enter the park, but, um, they do have a gate system at volcanoes, but it wasn't, they weren't, there was nobody there. It's just drive right in. Huh? Okay. Seems like it's complicated for insurance purposes, but I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Um,

[00:28:25] but speaking of rescues, I just put this ahead because this is New Hampshire's search and rescue. Yeah. So, um, stop me if you've heard this before, but three unprepared hikers were rescued on Mont Lafayette and, uh, on Franconia Ridge on Monday. So we're recording this on Wednesday. So yeah, two days ago. So I don't know, Nick, what do you think? Um, it seems like a very long day. I'm sympathetic of them being out there. Uh, unfortunate that it sounds like they didn't have any

[00:28:53] sort of headlamps or any way to get down, but man, 12, 12 hours for that loop is a long, long time. And we're not talking from what I've seen. I think most of the snow and the treacherous conditions are gone. And Monday was, I mean, I was out on Monday. It was a pretty nice day. There was some flurries, but mostly just, I don't know, like normal temps for this time of year, blue skies, cloudy skies, nothing really crazy going on. So, uh, unfortunate situation.

[00:29:18] Yeah. So the deal with this one is that they, uh, they started their hike at 9 AM. Presumably they went up falling waters. And then by 9 PM, they had, they had to call fishing game for assistance. Uh, they were, I guess a little bit below Mount Lafayette at that point. Conservation officers had to get to the trailhead and hike up old bridal for about two miles to locate these

[00:29:46] hikers. So there's like a lot of elements of common issues that we see here. So it's like out of state people, um, mixed age group, mixed age group. We got an older person, we got a middle-aged person and a young person. So, um, 71, 50, a 71 year old from Pennsylvania, a 52 year old from Texas, same last name. So maybe sisters, maybe mother, daughter, I don't know. And then a 21 year old, which I'm assuming might be a grandkid or a son or something like

[00:30:15] that. So he's from Connecticut. So, um, the group started at 9 AM and then called for rescue at 9 PM because they found themselves two miles from the trailhead with no lights and no way to locate the trail. Can you imagine the discussion that goes on when that happens? I'm always interested to hear that. I've never, we don't really chase people that get into rescues too much, but I'm always curious to know what the conversation is between the, the group when they realize that they're going to be stuck in the dark in the middle of the night.

[00:30:42] Yeah. I, I always think it's funny. Cause I mean the, the amount of times I've hiked out in the dark, I've definitely done it a few times, like in the Northern Prezies or wherever, but there is like a good amount of time where it doesn't seem like it's getting super dark. You're like, I can still kind of see. And then eventually you realize you're like, Oh, I really can't see that well at all. Like your trip or something stupid will happen. Um, and yeah, you really like, I think sometimes there is, we promote this. And I think a lot of other like hiking buddies, like your, your phone light, like, isn't going to do anything out in the middle of the way. It's like in the night, like it's going to let you see like a little

[00:31:11] bit of ground in front of you. Um, you're going to hit somewhere where there's going to be a steep descent and you're like, not going to be able to see anything. And it's just really dangerous. And really for how cheap headlamps can be like, just get a headlamp and keep it in your pocket. They're tiny. They don't weigh much. Make sure it has batteries go with Mike's adage of like two headlamps is only one headlamp. Um, you need to try to carry it back up. And even like you said, like if it, if someone had crossed them coming down, they could have given them a headlamp and been like, Hey, like you'll be good.

[00:31:41] Headlamp could have saved it, but I kind of do have that sort of like perverse kind of thing. I'm like, I wondered like at what point they were like, okay, we need to call a fishing game. Cause this isn't going to happen tonight. Right. And who gets the blame, you know, cause there's always going to be one person that gets the blame. It's never going to be me in that situation. I'm going to be like, it's all your fault, Nick. Uh, but the temperatures will get low for these folks. So they called it nine o'clock. They got no headlamp. It's getting dark, low twenties and, um, conservation

[00:32:07] officers. I guess they said, yeah, we got to hike up to these. So they got up to them and then they assisted the hikers down the trail. So even though I'm guessing if they got the call at nine o'clock, I'm guessing that a conservation officer probably could have got to them by 11 or so. And then even with that, they didn't get back to the trail head till, till 2 AM. So they were out there for 12, almost 18 hours out there hiking. Yeah. And I mean, if you're a sort of, um, guess too that they want to fall on waters

[00:32:37] coming down old bridal was right. Like I think old bridal is mostly like that nice sort of a grooms almost path now that goes up to my, I don't know how far in the switchback is, but like the bottom of that trail is super nice now. Like it's very easy going. Yeah. So I had, I don't know what the episode number is. I'll have to pull it, but I had my wife's cousin, Jessica and her dad, my wife's uncle, um, on the, I did a segment

[00:33:02] with them and they actually did this exact same thing where Jessica had, it's uncle Fran. So Jessica had decided like, she had no clue about the white. So she decided that she was going to go hike the Franconio loop because she saw that it was like a top 10 hike and that it was so close to where they were staying that they had, she had planned a trip with her friends and then they all built. So her, the father was like, uncle Fran being the nice guy that he is was like, I'll join you. But like, he wore like inappropriate shoes, had

[00:33:31] no clue what he's doing. And it took like, I think all day for them to, to, to get there. And then they just barely made it out before. Um, it was, I think she used to, I think she did use her phone. So I'll have to pull that episode and just put that in the show just to get into the head of like people that have absolutely no clue about hiking. And they just randomly look up something online and decide like, Oh, I'm going to do this hike. And then she, she went with her father who wasn't, I mean, uncle Fran, I love you, uncle

[00:33:58] Fran, but like, he just wasn't, wasn't ready for it. So. Yeah. I mean, it's, I mean, we've talked about maybe not recently as much, but I mean, it's the accessibility to that hike is so easy. I think that's when, like you said, it's right off the highway. It's close to a lot of places it's between Littleton and Lincoln and kind of a lot of these areas. So it gets hit. Um, and I mean, I, I, I did it pretty early on and I think I talked in a past episode of like, I went up there with my father-in-law, my dad, my sister-in-law Ash, um, and a friend. And like, we went up there and like

[00:34:25] got Columbus day weekend, God, like 2015 or 2016. And I mean, there was snow and frost on top and we didn't have spikes or anything. So, I mean, it's like, you know, like everybody kind of ends up in these situations. We did have headlamps at least we, we kind of had that going on, but, um, it's, it's not a great first hike if you've never hiked in the whites at all. Right. For sure. Right. All right. Um, what do we got next here?

[00:34:50] Mr. Nick. Oh, we have Dave Schitt's in the woods update. Yes. Yes. So we heard from our friend Dave today and he sent us a nice little essay by a text back. So thank you, Dave. So Dave said at this exact moment, I'm at mile 756.6 should be around 760 sometime by tonight and hopefully into Waynesboro just before the Shenandoahs. Last week was the Virginia triple

[00:35:17] crown, which I highly recommend to me. Dragon's tooth was the highlight. Tinker cliffs were amazing. McAfee knob was definitely cool, but kind of a touristy thing. Norovirus is raging. I listened to a guy puke at the hostel all night and got my, we'll just say it. We got my ass out of there. I think I caught a little bit of it and took a zero in Daleville past weekend, not feeling good at all, but back on trail. So it sounds like he got some Noro, which is not good. I've had

[00:35:43] that and it's pretty awful. Um, it seems like it always hits people on the trail too, at some point, or like it, there's like a bubble that it hits with people from all the documentaries I've watched. Yep. Um, so he continues. Will Peterson should catch me tomorrow or the next day. So we talked about will going for an FKT on the self-supported AT. So that's pretty neat. After last week's episode, I've been pulling, pulling everybody on the trail about how they store the food. And I would say at least 30% keep it in their tent. A good chunk

[00:36:11] use bear canisters, but the rest like me do the old fashioned bear hang trail will probably get quiet. We're going to say something. So that validates like the theory that there are a fair number of AT through hikers that are just sleeping with their food. Yeah. I mean, that's not 30% isn't nobody, especially when you consider the amount of people out there hiking. So, um, I was kind of surprised by that. I thought it would have been lower. Um, but now we know, and he was actually, he shot as a follow-up text, um, saying that the Appalachian trail commission actually does polls where you can not even read the results.

[00:36:41] Of each sort of hiker class going through. So I'm going to check that out at some point. I'm sure there'll be some interesting tidbits in there. We wouldn't think about, and maybe some interesting demographics. Um, so he said next, we'll probably get quiet towards the weekend with trail days in Damascus, but honestly, it's been pretty quiet out here going to be doing a bunch of stealth camping just to stay away from shelters and campsites for a while. One third of the way in two thirds to go. So great job, Dave. That's pretty

[00:37:06] exciting. Yeah. And he said, Oh, Oh, go ahead. Go ahead, Nick. Sorry. No, Oh, no problem. Um, he said two other things, uh, quick. I don't know why he said quick because he was texting as well. It was on trail. So it didn't really have to be quick, but anyways, um, I'm pretty sure I had to chase a bear away from camp last night. I put the headlamp on it, the eyes and everything indicated a bear. If P and he also added, this was funny and we know Dave's in good spirits still. Um, if people that follow the grateful dead

[00:37:34] are dead heads, are the people following me? Shit heads. Question. So that's true. If you're a fan of Dave shits in the woods, then that's your official fan group name is shit head. I am proud to be a shit head. We should get, we should get t-shirts and when we, uh, when we meet up with him, when he gets up to that, we should do the math on when, when is he going to get to the Massachusetts section? I don't know. I think I'm definitely going to try to, I think I'm going to try to meet him in the mass section or up in the weights. I mean, I want to meet him, but I think specifically, I think mass would be

[00:38:04] pretty cool. And maybe again, when he's here, yeah, I feel like I didn't plug it into the algorithm as it were again to, uh, to see his current velocity and his predictions, but I want to meet him, but I also feel like, um, there's like the horror, maybe some AT through hikers can give their advice. If you listen to this and you have some advice on what's the best approach to manage, like, cause I don't want to like, um, get Dave out of his routine. Like I would never want him to be like, Oh, wait for me. I would want to be chill about it and be like, all right, this is my plan. And

[00:38:34] let's meet up at the shelter and you can do your thing. I don't want to bother him or get him out of his rhythm. How stinky do you think Dave's going to be? I don't know. I don't know what that beard there, like holding on to two, three days worth of food. I don't know. It's going to be good. I mean, I've smelled, I've smelled the through hikers in shelters before. And I guess they smell kind of like a, you know, a beer, if you, if you, if a beer walks in front of you, they smell that same sort of musty smell. I was going to say, I had him, he sent a picture cause I was curious how his

[00:39:03] beard was doing. His beard is looking nice. Yes. It's a, it's grown out a bit. Um, it's looking good. Yeah. Yeah. So he's taking care of it. We're proud of Dave. Dave is, is our, uh, AT through hiker, um, correspondent. We will have to get him on the show at some point for an update. Yes. I need to set up probably a June date and we'll, right. We'll get here for it straight from the source, but thank you, Dave. We appreciate this. I feel like we need like a segment drop almost at this point. We do. We got to talk. We'll talk to Stomper while getting a segment drop.

[00:39:33] This is Dave shits of the week. Yeah. Exactly. Um, all right. So moving on here. So we're going to skip the forest road update. We talked about this. So, um, Mount Washington, so our wintry start to May. What, what, what do we get for snow on Mount Washington, Nick? So they started May with 4.7 inches of snow. I'm not sure what the, uh, the total accumulation is. It definitely has gone up since because it seems like the higher summits forecast for the past two weekends, um, when I've been doing it has included intermittent snow showers. Um,

[00:40:00] there was some flurries up there on Monday. I could see him sort of moving over the mountains. Um, not unusual though. I think they average like probably, I think it was like 18 inches of snow or something in May. I'll have to double check that stat from one that's just fresh from when we were looking up stuff, the other episode. So not unusual by any means. Um, it's cool when the observatory shares this, I do think it's funny when like all that you'll see the Boston news outlets will pick up like, Oh, Mount Washington got snow, but it's not unusual by any means for Mount Washington to get snow in May. Like it's, yeah, it's pretty much expected

[00:40:28] not a blizzard, but it definitely will get snow. Yeah. It's just a good reminder to, uh, to be prepared up there. Absolutely. All right. Uh, next up here is Vail. Uh, they own four ski resorts in New Hampshire and, um, some of the people that use their, I guess it's called the Epic Pass. Um, I'm trying to remember what, Oh, so it's Aditash, Wildcats, Sunapee and Crotchet Mountain. This is interesting. So

[00:40:56] you buy this Epic Pass and then it gets you access to a bunch of different resorts that the Vail Resorts owns. So Vail is out of Colorado. Uh, but they would, even if you bought this Epic Pass, they would charge you a tax on it. Um, it's a 3.2% blended tax. So what they would do is basically take the average of the tax that you have to pay in Colorado and Vermont, and they would

[00:41:25] charge pass holders in New Hampshire, um, that amount to cover whether or not they might, uh, go skiing in Vermont or, or Colorado. Cause a lot of people will buy this Epic Pass with the idea that they can, uh, then maybe they'll take a trip out West because they're already paying for the, um, the, the skiing around here. And this just adds options to go to different places in Colorado or Vermont. I don't know which Vermont resorts they own, but, um, the, the company decided

[00:41:53] they were going to attack on this 3.2% fee as a tax just to cover themselves from a compliance perspective. And then some people sued, or they put in a complaint with the state of New Hampshire, the state of New Hampshire was like, no, this is BS. And the settlement that they've had is that, uh, they will no longer, um, allow this tax. So, um, I guess the, the deal here is that, uh, there was an

[00:42:23] investigation launched by the office of the attorney general. And the settlement now is that Vail has adjusted and they say they understand the concerns raised by Governor Ayotte in the New Hampshire community and will offer pass holders the option to limit access to New Hampshire resorts only to avoid the blended tax entirely. So I guess they'll have a new product that will allow you to

[00:42:46] just say, I'm going to buy an Epic pass. That's just for New Hampshire. So that's the latest. So the consumer win one for the consumer, I guess. Yeah. It's good that they got called out when these big corporations kind of just do this stuff. It's, it's nice that, right. I mean, they got called out on it a little bit. Exactly. So I do think there's probably a lot of people in the Epic pass that, that will ski in Vermont and they'll just opt into the, uh, the blended fee. But, uh, for people that are only

[00:43:14] going to stick to add a tax and wildcat, then you've got the option to not pay that. So I think those passes are probably pretty expensive, so it's not insignificant. Oh yeah. I'm sure the, the 3.7 ish percent is a, is a, is a good chunk of change. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Built up over to, especially if you have a family, a lot of people buy, you know, four or five of these things. So. Oh yeah. Awesome. All right. So, uh, an update, we had done a segment on the, uh, U S

[00:43:38] forest service moving their headquarters to, uh, from Washington DC to Utah. And then as part of that, there was a number of research facilities that had been announced to be closed. One of which in New Hampshire is, uh, the Bartlett experimental forest. Uh, so that one is still to be determined what, what the fate is there, but they did hear it. We did hear an update. There was a news article that went out that the Hubbard, the Hubbard Brook, um, experimental

[00:44:05] forest, uh, will remain open after an announcement by the, uh, the U S forest service saying that they would not close this facility. So, um, the, the director of the, uh, the Hubbard Brook research foundation, um, I guess, uh, had, had, I guess advocated for this Hubbard Brook

[00:44:31] experimental forest to remain open in the government, um, had gotten lobbied by, uh, governor Kelly Ayotte and U S Senator Gene Shaheen. And, uh, there was a commitment, I guess, from the U S department of agriculture also as part of this announcement for Hubbard Brook that they're going to reevaluate the planned closure of the Bartlett experimental forest, which is on the other side. So this Hubbard Brook one is over by, it's like South of Moosalock neck. It's like in, uh, woods. I think it's a little bit South of Woodstock.

[00:45:02] Yeah. If you've been to mirror, like I've, I've gone and swam and gone to the beach and mirror like a few times, um, which I think, yeah, it's like Woodstock Thornton. It's actually like just to the West of that. It looks like I was kind of looking up where it is. Yeah. Yeah. They're definitely important. They, I definitely was familiar with the Bartlett experimental forest driving past that. Um, kind of curious where they are, but they're, they're important research. I mean, it's good that, uh, someone's kind of fighting to keep it open. Cause I think it's really important. Right. Right. So these are these research facilities, like they maintain long-term

[00:45:31] data sets, um, around the health of the forest and things like that. So it's certainly helpful. Um, I don't think it would be prudent to close a lot of the, all of the, all the research facility locations in New Hampshire, just because you need to maintain this data to understand the health and the growth of the forest. So I think it's good. And they said in the article here that the Hubbard Brook experimental forest has a research foundation, which I guess is like a private

[00:45:58] communication arm. They were able to rally stakeholders in a grassroots effort to protect operations there. Um, and I guess Bartlett doesn't have a similar setup. So, um, Hubbard Brook got a little bit more, more love here, but, uh, you know, it was a bipartisan effort, um, across, uh, leaders in New Hampshire to get this done. So that's good news for the workers there. And I'm, I'm happy that that will stay open.

[00:46:21] Yeah, for sure. Right. Um, all right. Next up here, Nick, I got sent this from our friend Al, who Al sends a lot of interesting things over here. So he sent me a new AI tool, which tries to think like a missing hiker. So, uh, there's a white paper attached to this. And there's a tool that, uh, these researchers had used in, I think it's Ireland or the UK. They, they tested a region called the Isle of Aaron. Uh, it's not similar to like the White

[00:46:48] Mountains or Yosemite or the, uh, Adirondacks or Arizona desert or anything like that. So it's really just an experiment right now, but basically this is a virtual lost hiker simulator that tries to predict where people end up based on terrain and behavior. Uh, it still needs more validation against real world findings, um, before top SAR teams could really like, you know, be assured that this would be helpful. But what it does is it'll run thousands of simulations of lost

[00:47:17] hikers based on, um, data that they might get, uh, such as like last known location, last known site. Uh, and then it can estimate and come up with like all these different simulations. And then through that it can, um, look at different movement tendencies. It can move across, um, real terrain maps and then generate a probability heat map of where the missing person might be that will help

[00:47:42] search and rescue teams to isolate likely areas that people can look at. So it's still experimental, but I think this combined with like a drone technology would be interesting. You know, you load in, uh, the simulations based on whatever parameters, and then you let the drones follow up and look for people. Maybe they have like, um, heat sensor cameras and stuff like that. It might speed up search and rescue in the future. Yeah. I mean, I think the idea too, of building a data

[00:48:09] set to feed into a model like that of actual real world, like scenarios, like we were just talking about, like the people on Lafayette, like you could feed data in like that and kind of give it, um, maybe some sort of level of human predictability of what people are going to do in those situations. But yeah, to your point, like you could feed that into, you know, you got some sort of system that maybe assesses the three, like most likely scenarios that they did and kind of basis searches off that. Like it's, it's really neat stuff. Right. Right. So they'll like, I guess this thing models like different lost person behaviors,

[00:48:38] like, Oh, they'll head to water. They'll head to a structure. Um, they'll find, you know, they'll head to paths and roads and it'll, it'll simulate the movement and, you know, look at the different elevation profiles and whatnot, and then add realistic travel time as well as they're going through. And then it'll just start to parse this all out. So to be determined, I think there's probably still a lot of work on this, but it's, it's the ability to like create like thousands of

[00:49:05] different simulations and then see which ones most commonly hit might build that heat map out a little bit more efficiently to at least give people a start. But one thing I will say, Nick, is I, we've seen a lot of these cases where the multi-day searches, the reason those are multi-day searches because people do things that like you would never expect them to do. So. Oh yeah. Lions of winter, you know, Ty Gagne's latest book, like they never would have thought that they ended up in a, the great Gulf, like a hundred percent, like nobody thought that they

[00:49:32] ended up in there and they did. So. Right. People are, you can, you can predict, how do you build a, um, a prediction model that, um, factors in how unpredictable people are is the question. Yeah. It's a, it's a good question. I mean, um, I've been like, I work in IT for sort of a financial services company. Um, I'll keep it that big just for the podcast purposes, but, um, we've been working with Amazon web services, a good amount on different models and sort of

[00:49:59] setting up different agents and a big problem they do have with, um, the AI stuff is a lot of it tends to run wild when you run through a lot of permutations and it'll start to lose context. And like people will say, there's a lot of words like hallucinations, like things like that, but basically it'll start to lose context. And I had a fun one this week where I was working with something and actually started commenting out code on me because, um, it was like, Oh, like, well, I was trying to focus on this and you didn't want to focus on this. And I'm like, why did you comment out my API call to this, this other platform? And it's like, well, I did this.

[00:50:27] So it's, it's really powerful stuff. But I think, um, a lot of the data sets, I guess, is what I want to get back to are really important that they're refined in what you're feeding to this thing. And you can't like, they've been this kind of me like, well, it's thousands of permutations of like, you don't necessarily need like thousands of runs of this thing. Like you really want the data that we're basing things off of to be very structured and reliable before you kind of get into that. But that's my, that's my limited understanding of modeling.

[00:50:54] Very good. All right. So we'll keep an eye on that. And a lot of technology floating around between like satellite technology and drones, and now this AI stuff. So good stuff. Um, all right, Nick, moving on here. So we got this new story that somebody had sent over to us. There's a missing hiker was found deceased and it looks like, uh, it was a beer attack, a grizzly beer, Nick, I believe in a glacier national park, although they don't know for sure. I think the last I heard

[00:51:22] they were looking for, uh, the, the actual beer that they think had, uh, killed this hiker, but, uh, the body of a missing hiker was found on, uh, I guess last Wednesday. So this would be a week ago. So today's the 13th. So it would have been the sixth, Nick, is that right? Uh, yes, that's correct. It was at the seventh. The story came out on the seventh, but it was on the sixth. It looks like, yes. Right. This surprises me. Um, the last human fatality caused by a, uh, by a bear attack

[00:51:51] was in, in Galatia national park was in 1998. So it's been a long time since there's been a bear attack here, but, uh, unfortunately, uh, this. Well, specifically a human fatality caused by a bear. There was a bear attack, I guess, in August of 2025, the 1998 thing actually surprised me. Cause I feel like you hear so much about grizzlies and stuff. Like I would think it was more frequent. Not that I think like people are getting knocked off like left and right by grizzly bears at West, but it seems like they're like a big threat and I've watched the revenant. So that maybe that's why

[00:52:20] I just think of that. I know exactly that this sounds like similar to the remnant, but, uh, there is that guy that there was a guy that got attacked by a grizzly bear and then he escaped. His whole face was like falling off and then he got attacked again. Um, right before he got to his, yeah, this is crazy. But, but this one here, so, um, yeah, search and rescue crews located the victim about two and a half miles up the Mount Brown trail, about 50 feet off the trail in

[00:52:46] a densely wooded area with down timber. So wildlife and law enforcement, uh, personnel were assessing the area for bear activity and any ongoing public safety concerns as the, the investigation continues. So, um, we'll keep an eye on this one. If there's a follow up, but yeah, like we said, the last human fatality caused by a bear was in 1998 in that national park, but there has been some other attacks. So, uh, keep an eye out there. Stay safe. Yes. Uh, bring your bear spray.

[00:53:15] Do you ever think about bringing bear spray when you hike? I don't, I don't bring it. I don't use it. No, I don't think I'd ever, I don't think I'd ever think of it out here. I just feel like black, black bears are just no, I know they're just not, I think there's situations where I think you could end up with danger, but I honestly, I think I'd be way, and I, and I mean, Craig, I think straight up said this to us, but he's like the most dangerous animal you will ever see in the whites is a moose. He's like, they're legitimately very dangerous. Like if you're close to one and you're between one and it's calves, like they are very dangerous. Like black

[00:53:43] bears are generally more docile, but it's not, I know there's people that even wear bear bells and, or they have them on their dogs. Like it's not something that is really ever seriously crossed my mind. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I could take a black bear in a fight. I feel like I could hit it with my poles and it would run away or something. Yeah. I don't know if you poke it. Like, I don't know theoretically what I do. I feel like we had this conversation with someone before about feeling like they could probably take on. I would try to stab it with my hiking pole and scare it. Like I would stab it in the throat.

[00:54:12] That's a good story. I feel like you've thought about this before. I have. Yeah. I think about that sometimes, but, but the key is to hike with somebody that's slower than you. Yeah. That you can just run away. It's just sacrifice them. Oh, good. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe I'd throw, oh, we talked about throwing a Snickers bar before or something like that. Don't feed the bears. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Don't feed the bears for sure. Don't come after us. Exactly. It's a joke. Um, all right. And then we've got the, uh, there's a covered bridge of New Hampshire, Google map here. This is kind of cool. What's this all about, Nick?

[00:54:40] Yeah, this is neat. So, uh, it looks like, uh, someone took the time or maybe perhaps, uh, someone from the New Hampshire chamber of commerce took the time and there's, there's actually maps for like the 48, 4,000 footers and 52 with view, but in Google maps, there's, um, nice little pinpoints across New Hampshire of all the covered bridges of New Hampshire. This is actually really, really neat. I was kind of nerding out on this a little bit earlier. I didn't realize how many there still were, um, within New Hampshire, uh, but really cool. So, um, we'll kind of include the link from the show notes, but, uh, you can kind of click

[00:55:10] through and find all the covered bridges. If you just wanted to do a day, like I could see like just driving around in the fall and going to like some of these areas in Western New Hampshire and just like having a covered bridge day, take some pictures and have some fun. Yeah. Yeah. That would be fun. That's really cool. Very good. All right. Next up here, uh, we've kind of melded the, uh, national news with the New Hampshire stuff here, but, um, our friend Stomp is always looking out for us here. So he sends us good stuff. So he wants to give a warning out here. So the brain

[00:55:36] eating amoeba, when I go to Florida, Nick, this is one of my fears. Like I don't swim in Florida that much cause they have brain eating amoebas. This is like everybody's worst nightmare. What is an amoeba? Uh, a multicellular organism or maybe a single cell organism. No, generally for breathing. It's not like a worm or something. It's just like, it's, it's like something microscopic.

[00:56:01] It's a microscopic single celled eukaryotic organism known for its ability to constantly change shape and move by extending temporary footlight projections called pseudopods. Oh my God. All right. Anyway. So it's a, it's basically a cell that just invades your brain and eats it. What a nightmare. It's really disgusting. So brain eating amoeba. So a new federal study has found a rare but dangerous brain eating amoeba in warm. The key is don't go in warm recreational waters in several Western

[00:56:28] national parks, including Lake Mead, Yellowstone and Grand Teton. Yeah. So researchers detected the Nagleria fallera, a microscopic amoeba that causes a typically fatal brain infection. And, and these were found in water samples collected from thermally influenced recreation sites across the West. So, um, one time I, I, um, I swim in

[00:56:58] Lake Mead before, but I swim in the other one that is, um, down by Glen Canyon, Lake Powell. I think that is. So like, okay. I could have got a brain eating with me amoeba. You could don't open, don't open up your mouth when you're in those things. We don't have that. We just have Giardia here in New Hampshire. Yeah. Yeah. Beaver fever. Our water doesn't get hot enough to do any of this amoeba stuff. No, that's good. Um, I was curious while you were chatting about that a little bit,

[00:57:26] Sawyer water filters do filter out amoebas by the way. Okay. Good to know. They're too big for the pore size. So if you do need to drink from Lake Mead, I w I wouldn't advise it. I'm going to strongly say that, but if you had to, it looks like your Sawyer water filter would be good. I think you'd still be probably be pretty tough to keep, um, like you'd have to be very careful not to contaminate anything else while you were filtering the water, um, properly. So it doesn't like cross contaminate into what you're drinking, but just stay away from the brain and eating amoeba water bodies. Yeah. Don't swim in warm water.

[00:58:01] Are you ready for slashers? Um, all right, Nick, moving on to, we'll have to skip this. We're running out of time here, but we want to get this. We have a new gear review where our friend Stomp has made a new product. Stomp is, is, is he's recovering from his hip injury and he's, he's, he's being

[00:58:26] an entrepreneur while he's, he's stuck home sitting on his butt. So what, what is this all about? So yeah, Stomp started. So I think if you've met Stomp in person before, um, he has a very nice mustache and I believe he was getting sick of buying the mustache wax, which I guess you use to sort of curl your mustachio or mustachio your mustache. Like, I don't know what the technical term is to actually sort of, to keep it shapely and keep

[00:58:52] it, uh, appealing to the eye. So he actually went out and got the ingredients, um, for some wax and he's actually making his own stash wax. So his company is called Stomp Wax and it's marketed as stash wax for hikers, premium stash wax for hikers who need a durable long lasting hold for their lip sweater, handmade and the great live for your dye state of New Hampshire. So we've got a link in the show notes. If you've got a mustache, check it out.

[00:59:21] Um, he's really put everything into this. I get it. Yeah. I mean, we've been giving him credit to like via text, but it looks awesome. Stomp like the, the packaging looks legit. The packaging looks awesome. Like everything looks really good. Like I think he is right in line, um, with what I'd kind of expect, like sort of a, a, a stomp wax company to look like, but it looks like even better than I possibly could have imagined. It looks pretty cool. So, um, it's making me debate growing some sort of mustache or growing out my facial hair again.

[00:59:49] Uh, maybe Dave, I was saying maybe Dave can use this. He could slick out his beard like that way. I don't know. Oh, he could do like a, yeah, he could do like a wizard, wizard of Oz beard. Mike just pulled out like a horizontally to his face. What's the other one? The, um, the night, no, no. What's the, the Grinch? The, uh, what's that town of the Grinches? Oh, Whoville? Yeah. Whoville. You can make a Whoville beard. Yeah. Yeah. Like straight up like Whoville kind of style. Um, yeah. And I did tell Stomp, I'm like when he's feeling better,

[01:00:19] I want to go to Welch Dickey and do like a photo shoot for his, for his stomp wax. So maybe we can find, if you're like a, maybe he's in need of like some models, I guess, or at some point, if you have like a crazy mustache, try this thing out and give him a good review and let him know how you like it. Right. Right. Good job, Stomp. Both genders too, by the way, can use this. You know, if you, if you have a girlfriend or a wife that has a mustache, you can use this too. It's the problem. Maybe don't recommend it to her, but, uh, just subtly drop hints. Can you use this stuff in

[01:00:46] your hair? Like, what if I grew my hair out and I want to do that slick lick, that slick look? So growing up in like the era that I did, like, I don't know, there was like hair gel in the 80s and 90s and stuff where you were growing up, but I feel like even in the 2000s, that was like definitely a thing where people would like spike, like, like you'd put up like the front of your hair, like, and like flip up the front. Like I definitely, um, used wax for a while, which I got to think it's kind of a similar product to like spike your hair or do things like that. Um,

[01:01:13] What if I wanted to just shine up my bald spot? I'll have to talk to Stomp and see how versatile this is. I don't like mustaches, so I don't grow a mustache, but. It's bad. You like buffing your head and you're like, you're what Mrs. Mike's like, what the hell are you doing? He's like, I want to shine. I want them to be able to see it from the moon. True, true. But we'll have, we'll get Stomp on to, uh, to give more details about this, but it's Stomp Wax NH is the Instagram site and, uh, it's going to be available soon in local shops

[01:01:42] and via the, uh, the Instagram site. So we'll, uh, we'll look forward to this, but you did a great job with it. Yes. Looks awesome. All right. Nick, it's music minute time. And I'm like, I'm shocked. Oh, I was, I had one gear thing to mention. Okay. Oh yeah. Sorry about that. Where are you jumping? Oh, it's fine. Um, I didn't want to shout these out cause I, I feel like it's like a recurring theme where I've just been talking about my journey with trail runners, but I picked up the topo athletic traverses. I really love these things.

[01:02:09] So I've been wearing them on the last two long hikes, 18 miles and like 17 and a half miles respectively out to sort of the bonds area. And they're great. I wore them in really slippery, messy conditions, um, more than with spikes. Uh, they worked really well, very comfortable. Um, I'm a big fan. I'm going to return my Hoka speed goats. I thought they kind of blew those things away a little bit, very happy with the souls and overall good. I'd recommend them. Um, just make sure if you need wide, click on the colors to see the wide, not wide, and then expect

[01:02:37] it to show you which colors are available and wide, but good stuff. All right, Nick, uh, this is good stuff. So yeah, we'll, um, I'm, I, I wish I could get excited about your trail runners, but I'm a Brooks Cascadia guy and I'm not changing. So. That's, that's fine. You don't have as wide, like wider feet though, right? No, I think I have regular, regular feet, I think. Yeah. I guess I got like fat feet, but, uh, but yeah, I guess I've never, I've never asked

[01:03:02] if I have wide feet or not. So, um, I know my older brother has wide feet. That's a, it's a topic of discussion amongst the family, but I, I don't think I do. I'll have to check it out next time we're in person. Yeah. Yeah. You can ask Joe if he's, uh, to see his wide platyfoot, platypus feet. Uh, all right, Nick, next up is a music minute. I'm shocked. I'm like, you, we, we, we, I would even let you do 90 seconds on this one.

[01:03:29] Okay. Okay. Noted. Um, yeah, I'm great. So I think you're excited probably cause I'm breaking the every other episode, any album streak. I hyphenated that all together this week and I'm just doing it cause honestly, I've just been listening to this album, um, lately and kind of been listening to some more seventies rock, um, intermingling. And so that's, what's been playing. Um, but this week I got led Zeppelin four by led Zeppelin 1971. So if you don't know about this album and you live under a rock, um, it was released

[01:03:55] in 1971, um, and led Zeppelin four somehow managed to be both massive and mysterious at the same time. It's no title on the cover, no band name, just music that ended up defining an era from the thunder of black dog and rock and roll to the acoustic pull of going to California and the epic weight of stairway to heaven. Probably one of the most popular rock songs of all time. It's one of those rare albums that's feels huge. No matter how many times you hear it over 50 years later, it still sounds timeless. Granted they've remastered it and gone back and done other things. So it's not like it's the

[01:04:24] original seventies recording that you hear nowadays. Um, when the levee breaks my hot take, that's probably my favorite song of this album. I think that's just a, it's just a bad-ass song like the drum B and everything else. And it is just great. Um, so it was released back November 8th, 1971 recorded, um, pretty famously at Headley Grange and old English country house that helped give the album its raw live sound. I was produced by Jimmy Page, the guitarist from Led Zeppelin and features classics like black dog rock and roll when the

[01:04:51] levee breaks and stairway to heaven. Um, a little bit on commercial success. Cause I know Mike always likes to see this, but no, not really a surprise here on this one. Um, it hit number one in the UK and number two on the U S billboard charts. It never hit number one in the U S, which is kind of like I want, I got to look back and like, who was on the billboard that beat them in 1971 at that time. It might be interesting to look up. Um, eventually became one of the bestselling albums ever moving over 37 million copies worldwide. That's nuts. Stairway to heaven was never released

[01:05:20] as a single yet. It became one of the most iconic rock songs ever made. And it's often considered one of the greatest rock albums of all time and a defining release of the 1970s music scene. And I think too, it's like this, this album too, really heavily influenced sort of hard rock and that whole genre and probably what would really become metal, um, maybe two or three years later. Though there was probably a couple of bands that were starting to come out in the sixties in that vein. But I think, um, that combined with Robert Plant's vocals, like he has to be one of the most

[01:05:48] influential vocalists of all time. I think you look at Steven Tyler. Um, I was actually listening to a podcast with, um, is it knit it with Nancy Wilson apart was talking about Ann Wilson and her like influence, uh, by Robert Plant, like was really, which isn't surprised if you listen to her singing on like Barracuda and some stuff like that, but super influential singer. I mean, he's still out there doing his own thing too, to this day. Um, and this was sort of just a fun fact, but I used to cover black dog with my band full void back in the day. Um, we had a really good basis

[01:06:16] and my drummer, Nate, who was sort of the all time drummer and one of my best friends, um, really did a great job holding it down. And I actually used to be able to hit the notes in black dog when I was probably in my early to mid twenties. Um, I kind of did it out of curiosity. I, I cannot hit that anymore. Uh, probably cause I'm 35 now and your voice sort of just changes. Um, but even back then, if we ever played it at a set, I would play it sort of later on when we weren't doing anything else. Um, and it would absolutely destroy my voice. Like the fact that

[01:06:44] Robert Plant could like sing that night after night when they were growing on tour in the seventies, like blows my mind. Um, I think it's probably one of the harder songs for him to sing. I think even if you look into like the physical graffiti era, he sort of started not screaming it as loud. He'd sing it like an octave down. Um, but I love that song. I love the guitar riffs so much iconic stuff on this album. Um, and I was listening to it while I was hiking out to the bonds. So that's kind of why I ended up on here, but great album. Very good. And then for hikers, I think that, uh, this is the

[01:07:11] album that has a lot of Tolkien, um, references to it. And then, um, they recorded it in, they didn't use a recording studio. They use like a mobile recording studio and set up in this like old house somewhere in England. So, uh, it has sort of that echoey roomy sort of feel to it because it was in these, these old hallways and stuff like that where they would record. Yeah. I know one of the things that always stuck out to me and it was probably from like some sort of Led Zepp doc. Um,

[01:07:38] but the drums that you hear and when the levee breaks, like they sound massive. And the, the legend behind that is that they had John Bonham put his drum sets in a stairwell that was in Hedley Grange, that big old house. And that's like how they got that enormous, like, just like, cement mixer type sound out of the drums and pretty, pretty incredible and really revolutionary at the time to sort of get a house and record a rock album there. Like, I don't think anybody else was really going out and doing that. Right. And I know Robert Plant, like he banged

[01:08:04] out Stairway to Heaven. I think he was just sitting in like the, the, the living room of that place and he just banged the lyrics out and what, I guess that's just the way creative stuff goes is it just flows out of you. So he just, uh, was able to write the, the lyrics for that pretty quickly. Yeah. It's awesome stuff. It still holds up really well to say, to say the least. I'm so excited, Nick, that you pick something. Yeah. I know I could tell you're all jazzed up. You just want to like go into that. Okay. That was the music, the

[01:08:29] music 90 seconds for Nick. So, um, all right. So if you want stickers, you can go get stickers at the mountain wanderer or Spinner's pizza parlor in Andover, Massa mountain wanderer in Lincoln. Say hi to our friends, Forrest and Caroline over there. And then if you want to get swag, you can order on the bonfire shop. You can get slasher swag, sweatshirts, t-shirts, hoodies, classics, V-necks, whatever you want, pick your color. And then a slasher patches are also

[01:08:56] available. They're going to be $2 and 50 cents each. You can get those mailed directly to your door. Uh, we'll accept the payments via slasher Venmo. So you can send us a payment and just note the amount of patches and be sure to include your name and address. Uh, you can also message us on Instagram and we'll help get them to you. If you want to, um, do a coffee donation, you can go ahead and show your support for the podcast and donate at slashers, buy me a coffee

[01:09:21] donations, help us pay for web hosting distribution, live events, and, um, registration for our e-bikes we'll be paying for as well. So, yes, but shout out, yeah. Shout out to Nancy M M V Y who, um, bought 10 coffees for us. So shout out, I think, I think Nancy hit me up on Facebook and gave me a friend request and I accepted. So, oh, nice. Yes. Very nice. Um, and then if you want to become a

[01:09:46] monthly supporter, you can tick a small box, uh, and it'll make a regular donation for you and, uh, you'll never be able to cancel it and we'll just continue to get your money for the rest of our lives. Like it's like a annuity for us, Nick. Yeah. Yes. Yes. I knew we should have gone left

[01:10:11] back there. Stomp. Don't worry. I know it's this way. I've got a feeling 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. Stomp. It's 4 PM. We're at 3,500 feet. We got nine miles back to the parking lot. Your leg may be broken. We got no cell

[01:10:36] connection and we can't feel our fingers, but we're finishing all of my list 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 you. Ha, whatever, Mr. Do you know me? I have a podcast. Whatever. Let's find out what Mike and Stomp

[01:11:02] have been hiking. Now is the part of the show where we talk about recent hikes, Nick. You've been everywhere. So where have you been? Um, so back on Sunday, the third, I got out to Bond cliff. Um, we were planning on doing all three bonds, but that didn't happen with our good friend, Paul Gamal. Um, he is the maintainer for the Bond cliff trail. So anytime you're out there and you see anything chopped down, um, you have our buddy Paul to thank for getting out on that super long trail. So he kind of wanted to do a scouting trip, I think too, out there and

[01:11:31] he's going to try to get out to it before the closure. Um, but yeah, we, we hit the trailhead, I think around 7am ish. It looked like it was going to be a pretty good day. It was supposed to clear up as the day went on. Um, the winds weren't supposed to be that bad in the afternoon. Um, and it was, it was pretty, uh, business as usual. We started hiking and, uh, making pretty good time. And I would say we hit snow around the 3,300 foot line. Um, sort of after you cross black brook the last time.

[01:11:57] A rotting monorail, um, nothing too bad to contend with. We definitely didn't need spikes or anything. Um, and it started snowing at that point a little bit further up. So there's maybe one, two inches of fresh wet snow on everything. Um, right before we got to sort of the Hillary step section, we had a gust of wind sort of hit through the trees that just knocked snow and powder everywhere. Um, that was kind of a little bit of foreshadowing. Um, we bundled up, uh, cause it was probably, I think he had a

[01:12:24] thermometer. It was around like 30 ish degrees when we were around the Hillary step section. So it was a little chilly and we could hear the wind really ripping above us, which was interesting. Cause we couldn't hear it down below like at all. And, uh, we started to approach bond cliff and maybe within, I don't know, like a minute or two past the Hillary step where you're sort of crossing along the edge, um, to the summit of bond cliff, we got hit by a wind gust that was so hard that we literally couldn't move. Uh, Paul was

[01:12:50] kind of just digging in with his trekking poles. I actually dug down cause it scared me enough to be like, I need to get lower to the ground right now. Cause I'm, it's moving me sideways. And I mean, I'm not like a small, I'm not a huge guy, but I'm not small. I'm like one 85, like five 11. So like the thing, the snow, like the, the wind just shoved me sideways across the wet snow. Um, so at that point we're kind of looking at each other. We, we kept going to bond cliff. Um, the visibility was kind of in and out. You could see, um, a little bit underneath with a low cloud ceiling, really good

[01:13:17] views of, uh, the Hancocks and kind of across that way. And Osceola is, it was a little bit more clouded towards the ridge and stuff. And once we got to bond cliff, um, we kind of just decided right there, we're going to pull the plug, like with the wet, slippery snow and the fact that, and I never want to like try to guess the wind speeds. Cause I honestly don't know the wind was enough though, that it hit us that first time. Then it hit us again around the summit of bond cliff. And that one was like even a little bit worse where it was like, probably like, I don't know, 10, 15 seconds. We just couldn't move.

[01:13:45] And I was like, again, low to the ground and Paul's digging in. We're like, we're, we're not going to go across the bond and West bond. Like all we could think about is trying to go up that last little scramble up West bond or something with wet snow and just get hit. And like something stupid happens like it, it just wasn't a good decision. So as rough as it is to hike all the way out there and not hit all three bonds. Um, we just pulled the plug right there and, uh, bailed, had a pretty unventful hike down. Um, and one thing I did want to call it, I shared this on the slasher Instagram, but because of how the snow is coating everything, um, it was very obvious

[01:14:15] in my pictures later on that you could see all the logging cuts and the old like sked roads from the logging on Hancock. Like it was, it was pretty amazing. Um, you can find that post and like kind of look more into it. I said some of the history, but it was pretty wild to see that really cool stuff. Yeah. You got a lot of engagement on that too. People were, um, interested in it. It is like when you, when you step back and you look at those, those cuts, you can really see how they traveled across the wilderness there. And, uh, it makes you sort of understand

[01:14:42] like guys like Dave and stomp how they, they, they find their way through bushwhacking. I also noticed being out there again, that you can't like unsee, I can't unsee them now. Like you kind of just notice them. Um, so that was a fun day. We, we got out, made good time and stuff. And, uh, we debated doing something later, but it was still raining. Like I never really cleared up. Um, it was kind of raining and snowing on and off all day. So good safe day out. Um, and then I was, I was getting itchy. I ended up getting some earned time at work and, uh, got out this

[01:15:12] past Monday and decided to hit, um, Zealand and then bond and West bond, which I need for spring slash may, I guess. Um, and yeah, I learned you've told me this and a lot of people I've heard them say this, but like, there's probably going to be a lot of snow on Gio and boy, was there a shit ton of snow on the backside of Gio is I started maybe like, I don't know, like seven 45, eight o'clock ish. I got to the Zealand trailhead, um, smooth sailing all the way up to Z cliff. And this was

[01:15:39] night. I kind of looked at the weather. I'm like, okay, it's going to be a nice day. Like it was blue skies. Um, really sunny when I got started in the morning, definitely warmer too. Then when we went the previous weekend and a Z cliff was absolutely stunning. Every time I go up there, I'm like, holy crap, this view is like just incredible. I think to the more I understand and what the peaks look like. Um, it just like, I can kind of name everything and I'm like, wow, you really can see so much and like white wall below you just looks like completely epic. Um, but hit Z cliff, started to see a little bit of monorail, um, heading up to Zealand,

[01:16:09] maybe about half a mile past Z cliff. Um, not enough to need spikes and then up to Zealand. Um, nothing really too eventful there. The sign was cool. And that was about all I really noted. Um, and made my way across a twin way from Zealand to Gio, which I hadn't been on in like nine years. I've only been on it once before. And that's where like sort of the fun started. Like it was a little bit of monorail. I'm like, Oh, hopefully this doesn't last. And then like, there was just

[01:16:35] straight up three or four feet of snow. Like I'm like, some of it was packed enough up towards the top of Gio that, uh, it was nice. You weren't punching through. Um, but there was just really thin monorail and it was really tedious to walk across in sections. I'd say from like the coal between Zealand and Gio all the way up Gio, um, popped out on Gio. Um, just nice up there. There was no snow anywhere that pretty much that was in the sun. Uh, great views, a lot of wind, but I feel like it's always expected there. Um, nothing like we saw the previous Sunday,

[01:17:03] um, made my way down. I made it without spikes all day until the Gio 10 slate after that, there was just, there's sort of a steep uphill going up, um, on the bond cliff trail. And I, I threw my spikes on my trail runners, um, went out to bond pretty much a mix of solid monorail, um, solid snow, and then just mud and like everything, all of the above bond summit had nothing on it. Um, really good views hung out there for a while, snapped way too many pictures and then made my way back down to West bond. I kind of had been saving it for last because the trail report

[01:17:32] I read said that had razor thin monorail that was not fun to deal with. And that was, that was true. I still think the Gio section was much worse to deal with. Um, but just really thin monorail, um, hadn't been back there since my winter finish on West bond. And it was amazing to think we lost the trail. I was talking with you guys about this, but it was crazy how much snow was out there. Like I talked about falling that spruce trap before and saw the section that it happened in. Um, but great views out there was cool to be up there in a less intense situation and like chill for like 15, 20 minutes and just taking the views and the view of bond cliff is so nice up there. Uh,

[01:18:02] yeah. And went back down, back up and over Gio. I left my like Cotula rocks bikes on basically until I got back to Zealand, um, coming down Gio and in between Gio and Zealand, like absolutely sucked. Like I was trying to like be positive after a while. Like it was still a great day out. Like it's, I always love hiking, but it was very tedious hiking. Um, I could do without doing that again for a bit. I think, um, I pulsed hold and like had bloody shins by the end of it. Um, yeah. And then back out to Z cliff and out and it was a good day. It was, it was an adventure.

[01:18:33] Um, more so than the other day, but it was absolutely gorgeous. So Zealand road is open now. Yes. And Zealand road's open. So that saves it. And then did you stop at the cabin at all or does cabin's not open yet? Well, cabin's open. Yeah. Cabin's open all the time. Yeah. Yeah. The, yeah, the hut's open all the time. I didn't actually stop in there and I didn't see anybody all day. And, uh, one funny anecdote I had is I was coming down off Z cliff and like a spruce grouse. I must've scared it. And it equally decided it was going to scare me. And like, I thought I was

[01:19:01] going to have like a heart attack out there. Like the thing like flew up in my face almost. I must've almost literally stepped on it. Um, but it did stay in the woods for a second. I got a nice little picture of, of the spruce grouse. That's cool. Awesome. Yeah, no, that's good. You got it from both ways. You got it done. So is this like the, was the goal to get this done for your grid or you just wanted to get out there? Um, just the, for the, I'm working on the season. So I have summer and winter done. Um, I think it puts me at 37 out of 48 for spring peaks now. Um, and I, I mean, I

[01:19:29] did want to just get out there. I hadn't been out there in forever. And, um, I gotta say too, it is a long day, but like, there's no parts that are like overwhelmingly steep. Like the conditions made it much more difficult. Like my moving time wasn't really that bad. Like when I was looking at Strava, um, it probably would have been an hour or so quicker if I hadn't had to deal with rotting monorail. One thing I will say is my leg, there were all sorts of like quad muscles and things that were sore that I like, I'm still feeling even today. I think just from like balancing

[01:19:54] and I was grabbing spruces like all day, like thankful. I'm so thankful for those trees everywhere. Right. So, well, very good. I gotta get out in that area there. Caroline needs her, um, needs to finish her list and she needs all those. So we'll be going out there this summer at some point. But, um, but I did get out, Nick, I got out on, um, uh, last week I got out for a day. So my friend Jay is, he's, he's about halfway through the 52 with a view list. So I think Nick, you've hiked with Jay a little bit now. So, but he's really into it. So I got him and Tom

[01:20:24] and, uh, the Tom joined us. So we, we had two cars because I was up in Brownfield, um, for the night. So I drove down to, um, Ferncroft and then they met me and then we left my car at the Ferncroft parking lot. And then we drove down to the trailhead for the cabin trail, which is, it's only like not even a, maybe a half a mile, about a mile or so. And then we did a traverse over, um, from,

[01:20:52] we went up the cabin trail and then, so you park on the, across the street is where, you know, five or six parking spots and then, um, up the cabin trail. And then that splits off to big cave and then went, um, over Mount Mexico and then down Mount Mexico. So with Pogus, if you're hiking it, we did a traverse. So we come, we're going to come out, um, through the Kelly trail and out to Ferncroft again. So it's a little bit of a traverse, which is nice, but it doesn't matter. You can do a

[01:21:19] loop that way, or you can come in, or you can go out and back via Ferncroft. It's all about eight and a half to nine miles, no matter which way you do it. It doesn't matter. So we, we decided to do the traverse just because we had two cars and we were like, why not? Um, but yeah, we went up, it's, it's a, the, the hike in the beginning is pretty gradual. Like it's just, you go up to Mount Mexico and then you come down a little bit and then you go into the, these caves, which it's really

[01:21:45] an interesting cave system. Cause what it is, is it's a giant granite, um, erratic, I guess. And you can just look at it and you can basically see that this giant, I mean, this thing is probably like I would say like, I don't know if you've been out there or not, but it's probably 10 stories high, not 10 stories high, but it's probably like seven or eight stories high. And it literally is just like,

[01:22:10] you can see it just cracks like a, like a straight line and then another crack. And then because of those cracks, it forms this sort of like slabs of rocks fall on top of each other. And you've got this like triangle cave that you can walk under. So, uh, but you can really see the lines on how they cracked and then they fell on top of each other. And the way they fell on top of each other, they just left open caves that you can crawl through, not crawl through, but you can walk through,

[01:22:38] which is, it's amazing. Yeah. It looks, yeah. I didn't, I didn't check that out. Is there any views from Mount Mexico when you go over that or? No views. Yeah. No, you don't get any views until you get into the, um, the upper ledges of Pogas. So, okay. Um, but yeah, then you drop down. So you, you hike up Mount Mexico, you hit the caves on the way down, then you drop down to the drainage, which, um, which I forget the name of that trail that goes, it goes over there. Damn,

[01:23:05] that's going to, that's going to bother me. But anyway, drop down to the drainage, go across the drainage and then, um, you are always at the B it's a B line cutoff, I think. Is down there, but then you, uh, so it's not the B line trail from Chakora, but it's the cutoff, which goes that way. Then you, um, hike up this really steep, uh, slide on Pogas and then you sort of get halfway up that slide. Then you go off to the right and then you hike the, the backside

[01:23:35] of Pogas where you connect with the B line trail that, um, actually will connect to Chakora. Oh, okay. Oh yeah. So you guys went that way. Okay. I'm looking on a map now. Right. Yeah. It looks like old, old Pogas trail connects back to B line cutoff. Okay. Yeah. That's what it's. I think it's, it's old Pogas, but yeah, there's a whole network of trails out there, but, uh, it's beautiful open forest too. It's like, it's, it's, it's open forest. It's not too bad. Uh, it does get steep on that slide that you go. It's not

[01:24:02] a slide. It's like a, it's like a drainage that, um, is pretty steep. Kind of reminds me of the old, uh, climb up South moat before they redirected. It's similar to that, but you go off the backside and then there were a lot of moose activity. We saw a lot of evidence of moose that live up in that area. We didn't see any. And then from there, it's, um, a couple of scrambles up rock chimneys. You get to one view that has like awesome views out into

[01:24:27] the Ossipy range. You can look over, um, into the bell naps as well. Great view there. And then you just climb up to the top and then the, the summit itself of Pogas really doesn't have a lot of views. It's getting grown in, but the gem of it is, um, there's a little opening that you can walk out to that has an open slab that overlooks the, um, the, uh, white face past a Conway circle and you can get, you can look down into, or you can look

[01:24:55] over across the sandwich range directly down to it. It's awesome views. It's funny. You, uh, you say that cause I came up from the Lawrence trail side and I remember popping out there and I'm like, what the hell? I'm like, where's this? I'm like, what? And I'm like, this is just like a clearing with like trees around it. I'm like, this is not. And then kind of, I found my way and I'm like, oh, this is amazing. Yeah. Like there's like ledges that just seem to go on forever. And like, you're looking around that. Like it's almost like a, it probably is just like a big glacial circle with that, like that whole area. It's really, really neat.

[01:25:24] Yeah. Yeah. No, it's great views. And then, um, heading down. So then we headed out to, um, I guess connect with, I don't know what the trail is, but I think it's eventually we connect with the, um, maybe it's old Pogas, but we connect with the Kelly trail. But as you go down, that section behind Pogas is interesting because it's like, it's loose scree. It's not a scree feel, but it's loose scree going all the way down. And then they've got switchbacks going back and

[01:25:50] forth there, which is like a pretty, it's a rarity in the white mountain. So, um, but then you make your way down into the Kelly trail and then the Kelly trail is, uh, like a box Canyon and it's, it's a, like a Jurassic park feel in there. So you just basically following this drainage and it's a nice hike. It sort of feels like a Lord of the Rings type of hike out there and then out to the parking lot, but it was a good day. And you know, we had good company. The pace

[01:26:15] was fine. And, uh, Jay and Tom seemed to get along pretty well. So it's kind of like my, my Amesbury friends meeting my work friends that meet my hike friends. Now they're all like, it's all melding into one. That's cool. I was surprised they haven't hiked together yet, but I know Jay's a little bit newer. Well, they did, they did, they hiked cube together, but they drove up this time together. So. Gotcha. So they got the full, the full collaborative experience. Like don't talk about me when you're driving. Like, don't, don't, don't do that. So.

[01:26:46] Yeah. And that Kelly trail section is super beautiful. Maybe on one of these like throwback Thursdays, I'll throw up a video I did of like going out to Squirrel Edge and going through there and stuff and then hitting Pogges, but it's, it's really nice. And like, you're probably not going to see a lot of people out there on those trails either, which is kind of fun sometimes. Exactly. All right, Nick. And then, uh, future plans here. So I'm getting out to, um, maybe Monroe or Flume or something like that with my daughter over the weekend, but you've got, you've got a better trip coming up, right?

[01:27:12] Yeah. So not this, this weekend I'll be around, but, um, we're going to be scoping out. I'll be going up to the Adirondacks Memorial Day weekend, uh, Friday through like the Tuesday. I think we're coming back on Tuesday. So, uh, hopefully there's some good weather. I'm trying not to look at the weather and like, cause I'm a weather fiend and not, I guess, I don't know what you want to call it, but, uh, hopefully it'll be a good time. I want to, I really want to knock off cold. And finally, maybe third time will be the charm for me. Um, and we'll probably get out and do some smaller hikes too. Awesome. So it

[01:27:38] should be fun. It's time for Slasher's notable hike of the week. If you want to be considered for the hike of the week, simply tag Slasher on your social media post. All right. You want to bang out the, uh, the notable, um, listener hikes and then we can get to, um, Megan and Cindy. Sure. That sounds good. So notable listener hike of the week

[01:28:05] tag Slasher on your adventure to be considered for Slasher's hike of the week. No guarantees to be plugged on the show. So our friend Jude hike, the whites is out. It looks like she's out in a trip in Ireland. She was on Dunmore head, which apparently, uh, it looked like it was used for some of the star Wars, the newer trilogy out there for filming. So beautiful location out there. It looks like you're having a lot of fun. Uh, enjoy, um, LB boy devil's bridge and Sedona, which looked pretty wild. I know you've been to Sedona, right? Yes.

[01:28:31] I've been to Sedona and I've been to devil's bridge, um, two, two times. I've been to Sedona twice and I've been there both times. Yeah. It's a fun hike out there. So it's like, it's just, it's a road walk to begin with. And then, um, you go up to this like arch that's just, um, Oh, the first matter of fact, first time me and Kristen went out, me and Mrs. Mike went out there. Um, there was a wedding going on up there. So we just basically sat there and watched the wedding ceremony and everybody clapped like on, on the, on like the arch, on the arch. Yeah. So we were like, well, we want to go out on the arch, but

[01:29:00] we're not going to interrupt. Is it wide? Oh yeah. Or is it like, oh, it is. Oh, okay. Yeah. Cause I feel like the picture I saw that they posted, I'm like, is that like a foot wide or is it like a, no, it's, it's wide enough to walk. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Very, very cool. Nonetheless, um, our friend Andy summit snack attack green leaf to Lafayette to meet Riley and Bailey, um, look like a fun day. Marley Sue to bell nap range traverse with what Donna Hamilton photographs ending with sunset on Mount major. That sounds like a lot

[01:29:29] of fun. We have to do that one day, uh, like 12 peaks or whatever she was saying. The stats pretty, pretty beast of a hike. I'm sure. So nice job heart disease hiker 75, um, tagged us twice. So first for Mount Cardigan and then second Mount Tremont after work and sunset with Roger mainly hikes. And it sounds like they were both lamenting about, um, if you haven't done Mount Tremont before, I feel like it's very gradual. And then all of a sudden it just shoots straight up. If you're coming from the three or two side, like don't, that thing is not a sleeper of a 52 with a view that had that climb will

[01:29:56] compete with like anything in the Northern prezies for steep stretches for sure. Um, but really cool views, um, the backside of sort of the Pemi in the Waterville area. Um, very neat. So nice job guys. Um, eight Oh two trail pup six Mount Pitska in Vermont with radar. And then tagged us again for round four up to Mount Cardigan with radar and expedition 1079. Go ask Brian revisited the Wapak trail and did the whole traverse. It looks like, which

[01:30:24] looked pretty neat. Folk star scrambly slide views from the tri pyramids. And then Liz Faye did sandwich dome the long way with Nick Faye skiing. Um, I was looking at this on the map cause I'm not familiar at all, but Guinea pond trail, the Algonquin trail, which, um, I think we did a, so you want on and then to Bennett street trail. So it looked like a path less traveled and then look like they were having fun out there. Nice. So who's going to get it this week? I would say that, uh, Jude hikes, the whites in Marley Sue are going to, even

[01:30:51] though the separate hikes will give them a tie, their friends. And then both of them look like they had some good adventures here. So congratulations ladies. And there was much rejoicing. Excellent. Um, all right. So, um, I think now's a part of the show, Nick, where we're going to move into, uh, you were able to do a segment with our friend Cindy and Megan on the Alzheimer's hike. Uh, so why don't we move into that and then we'll come out the

[01:31:13] other side and wrap it up. All right. Sounds good. So we're here with Megan and Cindy from Alzheimer's association, 48 peaks. How's it going guys? Doing good. Awesome. How are you? It's a beautiful day out. Good. Doing well. Yeah. It is absolutely gorgeous. So I was just, uh, actually planting a little garden outside that me and my daughter picked out. So I blame her for getting all the plants. We have like 20 tomato plants. I don't know how that. Oh my gosh.

[01:31:43] There we go. Yeah. It'll be the tomato queen. Yeah. She just kept throwing stuff in the basket, I guess kind of what happened, but, uh, it's good stuff. Yeah. So, uh, in light of, we're about a month. Make a lot of caprices. Yes. Hopefully. Yeah. I gotta get some basil too. Um, but so we're about a month out, I think at this point, which is exciting from sort of the, the main hiker celebrations last hike day for 48 peaks. We got June 13th. We got the gathering at ledge brewing happening.

[01:32:12] So that's pretty exciting. And, um, actually when this episode's dropping or today, I guess if you're listening to it, May 15th is the deadline for your t-shirts. So we kind of wanted to shout that out. If you, if you get $125, you get your nice Alzheimer's t-shirt. So today is the time to scramble and get those donations. So you get your t-shirt. Um, but, uh, without further ado, I'll kind of let both of you talk a little bit more about 48 peaks since that's sort of your deal. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for, thanks for kicking it off and great work. You're so well

[01:32:42] versed in everything going on. I had notes. Tried to be like Mike today. There you go. Yes. Yes. Um, yeah. So just, just a quick note on the t-shirts. If you raise $125 by May 15th, then you're guaranteed for it to arrive by June 10th. When majority of people are hiking, um, we will certainly still send the shirts afterwards, but it just might not arrive in

[01:33:08] time. So, um, just to keep that in mind. So yeah, push for, push for today. Uh, it's not too, too hard to raise 125. You could donate yourself, you know, send a text to 10 friends and ask for $10. And then, um, you know, it's not as difficult as you think. And then we have lots of people who do crazy things like dye their hair purple or Cindy wore a tutu last year. I don't know if that was

[01:33:33] just crazy or just for fun, but you know, it's not a bad idea. Exactly. So there's all kinds of fun things you can do to kind of pick up the fundraising in a fun, creative way. Uh, if that's an area of concern. Um, but yeah, anything you'd like to add there, Cindy? Yeah. Um, Nick, did you want us to get into like what 48 peaks is or just like that? Yes, sure. Absolutely. I I'm, I'm sure we have some listeners that are a little bit new. I'm

[01:34:02] sure they've heard maybe, uh, sort of the different ad drops be sort of work as sponsors for each other, which is super cool. And we have a great relationship there, but yeah, if you want to sort of underline a little bit more, what 48 peaks is about, how it came to be and all that great stuff, that would be fantastic. Yeah. So 48 peaks has been around over 10 years now. Um, we're a do it, your, do it yourself kind of fundraiser under the Alzheimer's association. Um, previously the longest day now it's under do what you love. And our goal is to have one team

[01:34:31] on each of the 48 peaks up in New Hampshire during the course of the summer, but most of our teams hike in June as we were talking about. So, um, oftentimes now we have like multiple teams on each peak, like Pierce is common to have like five teams. So as like moose, you know, I think we might have a peak with eight teams this year. Megan can correct me, but like there's one with a whole bunch of teams. It's kind of crazy, but, um, you know, it's a lot. Pierce and moose. Yeah. So the goal is this

[01:35:01] year is to raise $225,000 for Alzheimer's association. We recently crossed the $100,000 mark, which is fantastic. So nearly halfway there, the first big milestone for us. And, um, yeah, the, like I said, the goal is to raise money, but we have a really great community. So we like to celebrate everyone at the hiker celebration come June 13th at ledge, like Nick mentioned. Right. Yeah. And it's such a, it's such a fun way to get everyone together to celebrate

[01:35:30] their accomplishments, hiking, but of course also fundraising in honor of their loved ones. Uh, and unfortunately Alzheimer's affects everyone. So it is, uh, a weird situation where we're all in a room together sharing very similar stories, uh, but in a great way to bring us together. So, um, it's a really special opportunity to kind of connect with similar people on the hiking passion and ending Alzheimer's passion as well. Um, so it's pretty cool. I also did want

[01:35:59] to mention, as Cindy mentioned, our goal is to have at least one team on each of the 48. Um, and we do still have some 48 that are, or some 4,000 footers that are not covered. Can you guess which ones they are, Nick? I'm going to guess Owl's Head is one of them. You know what? Actually, no. We did have, we did have someone hike that briefly. And then I also brought, you know, a little 48 Peaks memento with me when I did it last weekend, a couple weekends ago. So no, but usually that is on the end. Yeah.

[01:36:27] Yeah. So do we, do we know what's left of the current time? Yes, but you keep guessing. All right. I'm going to go with isolation. Yes. Yep. Okay. And then how many are left? There's five left. Five? Okay. Let me, Cabot? No, Cabot is covered. Wombeck? That one too is covered. Wow, I missed it. Um, let's go with, how about the Kinsmans? Those are covered. Wow. Okay.

[01:36:56] Let me give you some geography. Okay. They are in the, one's in the Waterville Valley area, two of them technically. Okay. And then the other two would be near Mariah. Yeah. Wildcat Traverse area. So Osteolas? Nope, those are good. Oh, Tripyramids? Tripyramids. Yep. Okay, Tripyramids and the Carters. So, Carters and Tripyramids and isolation. That's surprising. I know.

[01:37:26] Surprising, yeah. Actually, it's only two of the Carters too. Carter Dome got picked, but Middle and South have not gotten picked. No love. No love for them. They're not bad peeks. They're not too bad. There's few peeks here and there. Yeah. I am surprised about the Tripyramids because I feel like for people who like a slide, it's a really cool adventure. So, you know, maybe people listening to this will be like, oh, I have to do that as part of my 48, I might as well, you know, participate.

[01:37:53] So, and as a reminder, you don't have to participate in June. If you want to hike in July or August, that's okay too. So, help us cover the 48. And I mean, yeah. And more. And more. Two. Be the 10th team on Pierce for all we care. I know. There's nine? There's nine. Oh my gosh. Wow. That's going to be a party up there that day. Seriously. Only. That'll be a lot of fun. Only three of them are hiking on the 13th of June. But still, I think it's kind of fun though.

[01:38:22] Just seeing other people in their purple shirts and you're like, oh, we're all here for the same reason. No, absolutely. And like you were saying, it's kind of, I guess people probably don't think of this as like sort of a make new friends event, but I've made a lot of friends through these hiking events, which is really nice. And like you said, it is great how, it's not great for the cause of like sort of Alzheimer's and people going through these tragic circumstances for getting to know each other and share those things.

[01:38:50] But I got to imagine it's very therapeutic for a lot of people to sort of be able to talk and share their experiences in a sort of lighthearted, fun event and kind of get to comb through those things. Right. Like Mark on your team, right? He usually does some sort of speech. Uh, and I'm sure it is very helpful for him to kind of share about his experience with you guys. Yeah, absolutely. Mark. Um, and I know he was kind of going through it. I think when I had first hiked kind of with one of the 48 peaks teams, I think probably three years ago now.

[01:39:19] Um, but yeah, he always does a really beautiful speech and kind of reminds us while we're there. Cause I, I am always thinking about like, just like, oh yeah, we're going hiking together. Like this is great. And, um, to not lose sight of sort of the bigger purpose. And also, like you said, when you get really good perspective, when you see all these people in purple shirts and everybody that's been affected by Alzheimer's, it's really tough to find people who haven't been directly affected by it, um, in the life or, or know someone personally that has been affected by it, like a friend or, or kind of second cousin or things like that. So. Absolutely.

[01:39:48] It also helps just strike up conversations with people on trail, those who aren't even, you know, hiking with 48 peaks that day. I've made so many new connections because of that, or like they've come to join the event in the, like, uh, I can't talk right now, you know, subsequent years, you know, or they donated. I had, um, I think it was when I was hiking Garfield one year, there was someone who saw my shirt and we ended up chatting.

[01:40:14] They took the little card with my team information and they donated by the time I got back down. So it's really neat. The connections you can make. Yeah. That's awesome. I had a sort of similar thing happen a couple of years ago when I was doing isolation with my buddy, Mike and someone saw my purple shirt, like when we were hanging out on boot spur and they were like, what, why are you wearing? Like, that's a really bright shirt. And it kind of struck up a little bit of conversation of like, oh yeah, it's for 48 peaks. And that's why I'm wearing it. It's like a good cause and you should go donate. And they actually did end up making a donation.

[01:40:44] So it's new and stuff like that. That's how that happens. I love that. I love those little connections. I think it's so cool. And I've run into people on the trail multiple times and I usually wear my 48 peak shirt because it's comfortable to hike in. But yeah, I've met so many people on the trail who have been like, I participated in that event. And, you know, as a staff member, I'm like, who are you? Cause I know everyone's names very well. So it's always like very exciting for me.

[01:41:12] But it's, it's just such a cool experience to see that. So, and yeah, so many friends made along the way. I just, I hiked with Jake and Peter, you know, after listening to the Owl's Head podcast, like eight times, um, because it was really needed information. It was funny when you were kind of mentioning that you were going to hike that I was thinking, I'm like, this is pretty timely that, uh, we kind of put this out for certain people. Exactly. Actually, Jeremy, one of our volunteers sent it to me like right after it came out and he

[01:41:40] was like, for your Owl's Head hike. And I was like, oh my God, this is so helpful. How did the hike go by the way? It was great. Yeah. Um, it was good company. So we were very well distracted, uh, for the long, long haul, but, um, it rained for like the good first seven miles. So that was not fun, but, and then it got, you know, snowier and colder as we went up,

[01:42:04] um, which was fun, you know, in May, but, uh, the, the slide was really hard, obviously. Um, but the rest of it was great. The water crossings were like just slightly not a fun time for people with shorter legs. Um, but everybody was really helpful in helping each other. So it was good. I'm really glad it's done. And it was like multiple people's fourth, third or fourth time hiking Owl's Head, which was kind of crazy. Yeah. You think when, I think a lot of times you go out there your first time, you're like,

[01:42:33] I'm never going to come back out here and then you find yourself out there again. You're like, why am I out here? Yeah. Kind of deal. Um, yeah. And that's a, I mean, it is definitely one you want good company on. I'm curious too, from your perspective to doing it your first time, like how did it, uh, did it live up to all the hype, I guess, that I think you hear about with maybe being long or maybe being a super arduous hike or being boring or whatever. Yeah. I mean, like this is why I specifically sought out like a semi normal sized group of people to go with because I knew I needed to keep myself distracted.

[01:43:03] So, um, we went with like four people from hiking buddies and then me and then, uh, Peter and Jake. So it was a good group and we kept each other distracted. Uh, but I think that helped on the like longer strength strength. What's the word I'm looking for? Strides. Oh, the stretch on Lincoln woods. Yeah. Brain. Not working right now. No, it's okay. But the other thing that wasn't as bad is I'm used to coming down from the bonds.

[01:43:29] And so when we took a left to go to the black pond bush back very shortly in, I was like, Oh, this is so much better. Cause it, I thought it was going to be like that five mile stretch of straight in front of you. And it wasn't. So that actually think made it a lot better. The scenery changes. Um, so yeah, I would go that way. If I redid it, I would have gone with Megan, but we were in the middle of moving. So like, I couldn't go, but, um, I did owls head during back in 2020 and my friend and her

[01:43:59] mom and I went and it was just three of us. And it's like, it was such a slog for me. And I, I'll go ahead. I was going to say, did you do, you didn't do the black pond bush back? You're saying? No, we did just stuck with the trails. I was following my friend and her mom and, um, I don't like slides. I learned, uh, I did not like not having firm footing, you know, as we were going up and then there was rain coming in on the way down. So that made it even better. Cause I was even more terrified of falling. Totally.

[01:44:28] Especially with rain. And then it did downpour on the way out. So the bugs were pretty awful. It was awful too. So I would like to do it again to make better memories, but at least like, it was still a good time. It just, it was one of those that made it not so fun. Yeah. You're like, why do I do, why do I, how did I get into this? How am I doing this on my Saturday? What, what, how did we get here? And it was like, oh, go ahead. No, I was going to say, at least you didn't save it for the very last peak.

[01:44:55] I know it's, it's, it is like, I'll say, I think it was in the 40, probably not to be redundant with the podcast episode we just had on, but it was probably in like the 40s for us. Like it was kind of near the end. But we, we did it like the old school way as well. The first two times I went out there and then I did the bushwhack in the winter. I'm like, this is much better to do this. And it seems like nobody, nobody takes the other way. I don't think any at all now. It seems like it's pretty commonplace. We were like, I wonder if this will eventually become an official trail just because it's a much more well-traveled and cuts off some mileage.

[01:45:24] And I think from Black Pond, if it is clear, you can see up to, I think Bond or Bond Cliff. You can't really see the top of it, but it is like a nice little view in there. So I've been told I haven't seen it myself yet. I've seen kind of the snow clouds in the winter. Yeah. Yeah. I kind of wish I waited. I did mine. It was number 18 for me. It's really early. So I kind of ripped the bandaid off really early. I'll go back and do it again. Yeah. I think a lot of people look at the distance and they think that's really the intimidating

[01:45:52] factor, but it's really not a bad hike. Like it's, it's similar. It is similar in vibes to the Bonds, except there's not like the payoff that you have when you get out to like Bond Cliff. And you're like, oh my God, I'm in like this middle of this geological like amphitheater. It's, it's not like, I mean, it is nice. Like were you guys able to see out to like the, the Lincoln slide? Not really. I did. Okay. Yeah. Ours was like, it was literally like a mini snowstorm. I mean, it was the whole viewpoint was covered in snow, which was gorgeous, but yeah, we couldn't see the slide. No.

[01:46:21] So you'll have to get back. It's a neat view. Yeah. Yeah. I'll get back there. Oops. Never say never. Like, like I enjoyed it despite being terrified at the same time. Yeah. Yeah. The slide was crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. One of the most remote areas, the whites, like you can kind of get up there and not really see much, which is something that you don't really see. And usually you see roads or something in the white. So that's always pretty neat. Yeah. That's true.

[01:46:51] It was nice. So, so yeah. But as of right now, we only have that one guy who will, who already hiked Owl's Head. He did it earlier this year, but nobody else signed up for it. So, but we technically it's covered through our 48 peaks. Um, but we got those extras if anybody's dying to get out there on the carters or the tripyramids or isolation. And then technically you can, you can hike anything you want, right? As well. It doesn't have to be one of the 48. Yes. Yeah.

[01:47:18] We have a team every year as, as we've talked about that does watch you sit twice, um, up and down and, uh, a couple other things. Let me see. I'm looking at my list right now. We have, we have a, we have a handful of teams that will do like long traverses or sunrise traverses or big hikes through that. Um, and then we have some people doing old spec and Mount Willard and table mountain.

[01:47:41] So, um, you know, always an option for families to get involved if you want to do something a little smaller, but want your family to participate. We totally get that. So it's a nice way to get them involved. Yeah. And we have a watch you sit team as well. They're really awesome. And then we have a very unique hiker this year. I think you guys have talked about him. Uh, he rose on the top of the 48. Was it nook 603? I think is his handle. Yeah.

[01:48:09] So he's joining in this year and he's, I don't know which peak he's doing off the top of my head, but I think he's on Meg team, our volunteer Meg, but yeah, he's got this really cool thing going on right now where I think he's trying to row like a hundred thousand meters or maybe it's, maybe it's 10,000 or maybe it's a thousand. I don't know, but something going on. Yeah. A hundred thousand is crazy, but I feel like that is something he would do because he's, he's built different. Yeah. It's, it's funny.

[01:48:38] He mentioned, so if we're, if we're lucky, he might be one of the next guests on the slasher podcast. So I actually, I actually met him at the, um, the live event we did pretty recently and seemed like a really nice dude. So we're going to, we're going to hear about his, uh, his rowing kind of deal. And yeah, I remember he said like whatever the, uh, meter, the meterage is, um, it's like some sort of standard distance. I think that they measure speed and rowing, but it's still, I kind of was asking him these logistical questions and we, I'm looking forward to getting into it to see his mindset. Yeah.

[01:49:05] He, um, he came to our 48 peaks kickoff at spyglass in February and we were just asking him, peppering him with questions and like, it's heavy. Like this thing he has to carry in addition to his backpack with everything. Like, I can't believe he does this. I can't, I'm looking forward to that episode. That'll be good to listen to. Yes. Yeah. So I did want to, we sort of talked about all the hiking, but do you want to highlight a little bit about what the Alzheimer's association association gives in terms of support for people

[01:49:35] that might be going through Alzheimer's directly themselves or perhaps a family member or friend that's helping that person? Yeah. Yeah. Cindy, you want to, you want to take this one and I'll chime in if need. Did I'll give it a go. I would say probably one of the biggest resources Alzheimer's association offers is a 24 seven helpline. So if you or a loved one or family or friends need some listening ear or support to figure out, you know, maybe you're starting this journey of caring for a loved one who's been

[01:50:04] diagnosed or you're maybe trying to figure it out for yourself. There's always someone on the other end of the line who will pick it up, pick up the phone and speak with you. There's, I think about 200 languages available. So also no matter what language you speak, there will be someone who can talk with you. They can point you to good resources, perhaps like local hospitals you could go to in the

[01:50:29] area, like where to even begin to get, you know, the steps to take to care for your loved one. There's also support for research. So the money that we raise will help support ongoing, you know, research into new drug treatments, the ongoing trials. And then there's also advocacy both at the state and the federal level. I actually had the opportunity to go to the Mass State House back in April.

[01:50:58] I believe it was, maybe March. I forget. It was the spring. I got to go and talk with my legislators about some ongoing bills that were at Ways and Means and encourage them to vote for them and push them through so that the governor can sign it into law. And it just has, those bills have to do with making sure we're ready to both diagnose people with, for example, biomarker testing, which is blood tests, and make sure that insurance

[01:51:26] is covering them and also to support caregivers as well. Because this is largely unpaid help, you know, it's family members and it's stressful. It's financially a huge burden as well. So we just want to be able to support people where they are so that everyone is cared for properly. So I think that's, Megan can fill it in. I think that's mostly what comes to mind. That was perfect. Yeah. Everything we do is free of charge.

[01:51:56] You know, families are already going through enough. We're here to help them navigate this journey and, you know, build a roadmap because there isn't one and every journey is different. And it's a lot to deal with. So we are here to support those people, those living with Alzheimer's and dementia as well as their loved ones and, you know, do what we can to make the journey slightly easier. But yeah, lots of good things going on. Lots of good research. We're actively working on something called the ASAP Act.

[01:52:26] And I am still learning the ins and outs of it. But we're really trying to get this passed to access what we call our mammogram moment. So like when you would that became a thing where now it's regularly scheduled at a certain age to get a mammogram or other very similar screenings. So we're trying to get that passed right now, similarly to screening for Alzheimer's during your regular checkup and getting it covered by Medicare and Medicaid. So big things coming down the road with that.

[01:52:55] But it's just one step in the right direction for early detection, which is pivotal with every disease. So yeah. Yeah, that was going to be my question is that it and I don't know too, in terms of with drugs potentially to treat Alzheimer's, it is much more beneficial. I'm assuming basically the earlier you know, the better off you potentially can be like, how does that exactly work? Right? Yep. Yep. So we currently have two FDA approved treatments, not us, the Alzheimer's Association, just in general, that tackle the underlying causes.

[01:53:24] So they are reducing the inflammation in the brain. And that is as good as we've got right now. But it basically helps kind of slow down the progression at an earlier stage. And the drugs do not work after a certain point in your diagnosis. But yeah, very similar to a lot of other cancer and other situations. Like the earlier you catch it, the better you have of delaying the growth of this onset.

[01:53:51] And eventually, hopefully we'll get to a point where you take a blood test. It says you're likely to develop Alzheimer's, even if you have no symptoms and you start taking drugs right away to prevent the buildup in your brain in general, which is a really interesting thing to think about coming down the road. And it's pretty cool that we're now getting to this point. But we have a little bit of ways to go still. Yeah.

[01:54:17] And also part of that, we talked about it in terms of coverage, making sure Medicare and Medicaid cover this. But there was also a story on, I think it was WCBB. It was either Ben Got Your Back or some other segment. It had to do with a woman who was in her 30s. And she was diagnosed with very early onset rear form. And her insurance coverage denied the treatment. I don't know if it was Kisunla or which specific one. It might have been Lakembi.

[01:54:46] But she was denied because she was, quote unquote, too young to receive the medication. And her doctor had to write a letter and say, no, she really needs it. And then it took, I think, going to the TV station to make sure the insurance actually covered it. So this is an issue, no matter your age, to make sure that these drugs will be covered because they're not cheap. And we know that. Yeah. Yeah. That's incredibly frustrating.

[01:55:13] I can't imagine why you would deny someone. Because, I mean, to me, it's like you know that they have it. So that doesn't make any sense. I mean, it's a common issue with a lot of people with younger onset is they're often misdiagnosed because it's less common. I feel like, unfortunately, becoming more common. But when you're inattentive at work or you are struggling to remember things, like they might be like, oh, you have ADHD or something. And you're like, what?

[01:55:40] No, this is something that, you know, really we need to look into. And a lot of people have been misdiagnosed and have to kind of go back to the drawing board because it's still, we're still catching up to understanding this disease. But it's a journey. That's for sure. And we're constantly advocating for better policy locally and federally.

[01:56:06] And what other resource the association offers that I didn't mention? There are support groups. So that could be for caregivers, be, you know, sandwich generation or even young caregivers, like one of our volunteers, Alana, who you've spoken with. She is part of a young caregivers group. And then there's also for patients, there's groups for them and just anyone who needs the resource.

[01:56:33] So there's a lot of really great work being done by the Alzheimer's Association. And I know, like I've volunteered with various organizations or like raise money for other groups before. But I would say this is like, I know where the money's going. It's going to go help someone when I'm fundraising for Alzheimer's Association. Yeah. Yeah. It's great to hear. I wanted to retouch upon that because I know it's benefited some of you that I know personally. So it seems like it's a great resource. And that's definitely not something that's out there for a lot of like different types

[01:57:02] of cancers and things specifically. So it's kind of cool that though, I think also like just the nature of Alzheimer's is really like this sort of heart wrenching thing that kind of just isn't, isn't great. I don't know how to describe it adequately. I guess it's pretty horrible. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, so many people who now hike with us have come from the show because, you know, like I said, everybody knows someone who has been affected, whether it's you directly through a family member or, you know, somebody who has a close family member.

[01:57:30] And so, so many of our hikers have come to us because they love listening to Slasher and are personally connected to this as well. So it's been a really cool way to, you know, get this communal support together. And we're so grateful for that and for all that you guys do. But yeah, it's, it's, it's a helpful little community we got here. It's also funny when people recognize us, they'll be like, oh wait, you're from 48 Peaks. And I'm like, what? Yeah.

[01:58:00] I saw your face. Yeah. Does that happen to you, Nick? Like, are people like, oh, you're from Slasher? Um, it's, it's happened to me like three times so far. Yeah. That's cool. Not, not, not as frequently as Mike. I think Mike also is more like rocking the Slasher patch on his backpack and he's kind of, um, maybe a little bit, he's a little bit more forthcoming on like trail than I probably, like, I'll say hi to you and chat with you, but like, Mike will absolutely talk your ear off for a little bit if you want to talk about that. And he'll be like, Hey, I have a podcast. Yeah. Hey, I have a podcast.

[01:58:28] I need to, I need to probably be better at doing that and plugging the podcast. But, uh, it's, it's happened a few times for sure. But yeah, it's, it's our pleasure to be able to help promote, um, and kind of work with you guys. And like you said, we have an awesome community in the white. It's like, I'll continue to shout that out. It's not just sort of hyperbole. Um, I really do believe we have a great community, whether even like Megan, when you were looking to like hike with us or kind of from our group, it was cool that you got to meet Peter and Jake. Uh, they're definitely fun to hike with and I've spent my, spend my share of time on trail with them so far. They're two great guys.

[01:58:58] But if you're, if you're looking to people to hike with, there's kind of always people that are willing to help you and kind of give you advice or what to do or what not to do. So that's fantastic. And yeah, it's always great to connect through all this. So what else do you have? Okay. I was going to say it's also helped me like learn about other fundraisers as well. Like I've participated in hike for mental health and seek the peak as well, um, last year. So I've met people through that. And then we got to table at like AMC awards the past two years.

[01:59:26] Uh, reckless is really big in supporting us as well. And we're going to be at rec fest, uh, in August. We're going to have a table there. So it's just really neat. There's always like friends at these events and we're like, okay, we can go say hi to people. You know, it's not just, we're reaching out to new people to get them to join the event, but it's seeing a lot of familiar faces and friends and just reconnecting in that way too. Yeah. I'll always, uh, jokingly say growing up in Rhode Island, they kind of joke about like, you got to be careful who you might talk crap about because like, they'll find out,

[01:59:56] but it's kind of like that in the way it's like, you get it. You got to be careful because everybody kind of ends up knowing each other, especially as you start to like meet gritters and people like that. You're like, everybody kind of gets to know each other and what's going on. It's sort of funny. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Um, well also we, we always need volunteers. So, um, if you guys, if there's any listeners looking for a volunteer opportunity, you know, talk to me or, you know, Cindy's been a volunteer for years now. She does an amazing job.

[02:00:24] And, um, these, these volunteers help us, you know, spread the word about 48 peaks in the community through these tabling events, for example, or social media, or just making connections, you know, with other people and getting more awareness and more involvement through 48 peaks and everybody has become such great friends. And, um, so we're always looking for volunteers. That was, that was kind of the other thing we were just going to briefly mention, um, reach out to Cindy and I, our contact info is all on the website.

[02:00:50] Um, but yeah, always happy to chat more about what that looks like if anybody's interested to learn more, but it's a great group of people. Awesome. Awesome. And I was going to ask, what do you both have left? So I know Megan's at 46. What do you, I know Cindy, you're close too, right? You've been close for a bit for finishing your 48, but what have you both got left? I guess. Mike will never let me hear the end of it. I remember he kept asking me. I have to check, I have to check in cause I know he would do that. Yeah, no, thank you, Nick. No problem.

[02:01:18] I'm at 39, uh, and I have all the tough ones left. So I have, uh, the bonds, uh, jam, caragane and ISO and cabot. But those are my last batch and I don't know what I'm finishing on yet, but I did pick, um, Madison is going to be my peak this year for 48 peaks though. I hike multiple times over the summer, but that's like what I picked this year.

[02:01:43] Um, for a couple of different reasons, not just because I, I need it for the list, you know, but, um, I, I typically pick peaks that have like a hut somewhere. Cause some of my friends, they, um, a lot of them have had kids and they're getting back into hiking. So like a lot of them don't summit with me, but they'll go to the hut and then be able to relax and then I'll go and come back kind of thing. So I like that there's a hut, but I also wanted to go start to star Lake because of, um, you

[02:02:11] know, reading Ty's book about Kate Matrazova. I want to go and like pay my respects, but, um, kind of a other side of that too. I, I hike from my grand Marion who I've talked about in the past and I learned that Marion actually means star. So it feels extra fitting in that way. And, um, I also, I want to take a chance to mention it, but I also hike from my grand aunt who I've mentioned too. Um, and she unfortunately passed away last week. Oh, I'm sorry.

[02:02:42] So this will be, uh, you know, the first year I'll be hiking in memory of both of them. Um, and so it'll be an especially, uh, special hike come whenever I actually get around to it. So yeah, that is, yeah. Star Lake is absolutely beautiful. I'm very sorry to hear about your grand aunt as well. Yeah. We were, we're, uh, heading down to Florida on the 28th. We were hoping to see her. Um, but unfortunately she had a fall and, uh, didn't make it.

[02:03:10] So yeah, but, um, it's okay. I've, I've been very fortunate. I've had a handful of friends, uh, they've donated in her memory within the last week and a half. Um, and we'll still go and like see my mom's cousins and thank them because they were her caregivers for many years. So it'll, it'll still be a worthwhile trip. Uh, unfortunately she just won't be there. Yeah. So I'll be hiking for her as always. Do you have an idea of which one you want to finish on?

[02:03:38] I'm like between the bonds would be awesome. Like if I did a backpacking, uh, trip for that or maybe jam, like I haven't done the Northern prezzies, but Washington blew me away last year. Like the views were fantastic. So we'll see. I got some good choices left. Yeah. And they're all going to kick my butt in the process, but it'll be worth it. Yeah. Well, you don't have a choice. So. No, I don't.

[02:04:08] What have you got left, Megan? I have Kerrigan and Cannon. Um, and for literally this entire six year journey, could somebody ask me very shortly into this hiking process, like, Oh, what are you going to finish on? And I was like, Oh, I really thought about that. So I settled on Cannon with the intention that my family could join me at the summit because of the tram. And then all my dreams were crushed. So whatever. I'm remembering this vaguely now that yeah, the tram closed. Oh boy. Yeah.

[02:04:35] But it's, it's nice because it's a short day. Um, and I want my friends to come with me who don't hike. And so, I mean, Cannon is not easy by any means. We all know that, but it's at least we're not going to be hiking for 10 hours. Um, so that's kind of the goal so that we could, you know, have a nice cookout afterwards or do something to celebrate. Um, so I'm hoping to hike Kerrigan sometime in July. I also signed up for Seek the Peak, the fundraiser for the Mount Washington Observatory.

[02:05:04] Um, and I'm hoping to hike Kerrigan and that way that's good to go. And then I can just focus on Cannon sometime this summer. So I can't believe it's almost there. I know. I'll do Kerrigan with you. I know I kept keep saying it cause I need it too. Yeah. That would be a fun one. I have the, um, the little puzzle thing. Oh, right. You know, see, you can see the two left. Oh yeah. Very cool. Almost there. Very exciting. Yeah. Those are all good choices to finish on for sure.

[02:05:34] What'd you, what did you, which one did you finish on? I finished on South Kinsman. Um, so not, not a normal, not a usual one. And that started because we initially our first 4,000 footer was North Kinsman and we were supposed to go to South and it was like the weather looked like crap. And even though we didn't know a lot back then, we knew that it looked like rain was moving and we're like, we're going to go down. So, um, we decided that we'd save South Kinsman for last, um, hiking over North Kinsman again and doing that. So not, not one of the more common orphans that you kind of end up with.

[02:06:01] I think in the numbers I had looked, I looked at one time and it's not like the lowest that people finish on, but it's not one of the more common ones. So that was cool. But I mean, I think, I think those are all, I mean, Canon's awesome. And Cindy, you've got, you've got a wide variety. I mean, I love Madison and Adams and that, that area. So I think jam or the, I mean, Boncliffe, I feel like it's such an epic. Like Kerrigan people will say, because you can see most of the 48 from them. Um, I don't, I would pick Boncliffe if I had to do it again. Um, but you'll be happy. I go back and forth.

[02:06:28] I'm like, I know people like to have their friends join and I keep going back and forth. Like I could get to be such a big group and I kind of want it to be a small group maybe so that it's, you know, I really enjoy it. You know, I don't know. Yeah. Well, I, I don't have any now left that have the, like the ski lift like that. I wish I thought about that earlier. Canon was like my 14th peak. It was my first, um, 48 peaks fundraising hike was Canon, but you know, you can't change what I already did.

[02:06:58] Yeah. It's already done. The bonds would be really cool though. Yeah. I feel like you have plenty of really great options to choose from. So that's awesome. I know. I think it's just going to come down to weather, like what looks the best. Okay. Go get it. You know, don't maybe not cab it. That's kind of boring. Not cab it or ISO. So I'm a, yeah, we're going to take those out of the picture. That cabin up there is creepy. I don't care what people say. I don't like going in that cab. It is creepy. Awesome. Awesome. Well, this has been great.

[02:07:26] Thank you very, uh, very much both for coming on and kind of sharing and plugging the word. It's going to be a fun summer. And I always feel, I always feel like sort of this event is kind of the kickoff into the thick of summer, which I kind of enjoy. Yeah. Hopefully it's a great weather day for all of us. We'll be on Adams, Cindy. So we'll wave to you or probably pass you. I imagine there might be people that are trying to go to Madison as well, since some people do both, but, uh. Which day are you hiking on the 13th? Yeah, we're doing the 13th. I might not be hiking till July 4th, but I will still wave. Yeah.

[02:07:56] I'll be helping set up at a ledge. Yeah. We have some people on Jefferson. I'm sure there will be some crossovers. You guys will see some people from afar. Um, but yeah, thank you so much for having us. We always greatly appreciate it. And I'm sure you'll put our link in the show notes. It's already probably there for the sponsor stuff. So we will. We will. Awesome. All right. Thank you. All right. Thank you. All right. Bye. All right, Nick.

[02:08:26] So, uh, it's, it, I always know summer is on the way because the, uh, the, the 48 peaks Alzheimer's hike is, is coming up. So I'm excited to get, get going next month. Yeah. It's a, it seems like all of a sudden it's right around the corner. I feel like it always sneaks up on me, but very much looking forward to it. Should be a really fun time. Despite talking about the cold hike to Owl's Head, you know, it's, it's going to warm up soon enough. Yes. Or, you know, right. So, all right.

[02:08:52] Well, why don't we, um, why don't we wrap it up here and then we'll come back in, uh, soon enough with episode 234. Sounds good. Bye everybody. Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed the show, you can subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Podbean, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

[02:09:22] 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. 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-heats.

[02:09:51] Now covered in scratches, blisters, and bug bites, Chris Staff wanted to complete his most challenging day hike ever. Fish and 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 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?

[02:10:21] Oh, yeah! This is Lieutenant James Neeland of New Hampshire Fish and Game. Lucinda, thanks for being with us today. 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? Seems to me the most common is being unprepared. I think if they just simply visited 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.