Episode 237 – Dave, Liz and Stomp are back - Appalachian Trail Update, Welcome Lori Goes Hiking, Close Call on Franconia Ridge

[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. Hello listeners! Nick here with your forecast for the weekend of June 27th, 2026. Friday, in the clouds with morning rain showers becoming a chance of rain showers and thunderstorms in the afternoon.

[00:01:21] A few thunderstorms may become strong to severe producing damaging winds and hail. High around 50. Winds, Southwest shifting west at 35-50 mph with gusts up to 60 mph early, 20-35 mph midday, and 30-45 mph later. Higher gusts possible with thunderstorm activity. Friday night, in the clouds with scattered rain showers tapering to isolated rain showers. A chance of evening thunderstorms. A few thunderstorms may become strong to severe producing damaging winds and hail.

[00:01:50] Low in the mid-40s. Winds, West shifting northwest at 30-45 mph decreasing to 20-35 mph. Higher gusts possible with thunderstorm activity. And Saturday, in and out of the clouds under mostly cloudy skies with scattered afternoon rain showers and thunderstorms. High in the lower 50s. Winds, Northwest shifting north at 20-35 mph decreasing to 5-20 mph. So a little interesting looking into Friday. Be safe out there, make good decisions, happy hiking, and hope you get to crush some peaks.

[00:02:20] From the Woodpecker Studio in the great live free or die state of New Hampshire.

[00:02:59] 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. Here are your hosts.

[00:03:30] Okay, we're live. Episode 237. We have a whole circus here. We have... I'm looking at a screen here. We have... This is the biggest group that we've had that's not a live show. So there's six of us here. So, Mike is here. That's me. And then Stomp is back. Stomp, how you been? Hey, good brother. Good to see ya. Had to jump in because we got a red alert on the trail. So a lot of lack of common sense going on out there. So I'm back to spread the alert. Right.

[00:03:59] Stomp's gonna give us a heads up. We had a near... A close call on Franconia this weekend. Plus he's back because our friend Dave of Dave Schitts in the Woods fame is back. Hey! Hi Dave. Hello. What have you learned so far? What have you learned on the Appalachian Trail so far? I have learned many, many things. There are a lot of snakes in Pennsylvania and Virginia. I am old and things do hurt. And it is a long way from Georgia to Maine. It's probably the top three.

[00:04:30] It is. We'll get into that. And then we have young Nick. Young Nick here. Still can't ride a bicycle, but he's getting there. Yep. Hey. Gatartan's coming up. I'm gonna learn. It is. And then we have Liz of Liz Faefane. Liz, two weeks in a row you're here with us. So Liz dialed it back. She's down in, what are you in Pennsylvania now? Yeah. Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania with Dave. So she's looking for some good weather. I don't know if she got any. And then we have a special guest. Yeah. Lori, are you, so you go by Mighty Mouse on, that's your trail name and then on YouTube.

[00:05:00] How famous are you on YouTube? Well, I just started my channel a year ago and I have over 5,000 subscribers now. Okay. So you're doing well. You're doing well. So you're chronicling. I did watch some of your videos. So you chronicle some of the stuff and Dave has appeared in some of your stuff, right? Yes, he has appeared. We've hiked together several times. And do you guys have like a, do you have a name for your trail family or is it just, is it, is it formal? Go ahead, say it.

[00:05:28] Well, Rattlesnake Patrol is one of them. Yeah. That's the PG version. And then we, we kind of had a half name. We threw up like, what was it? Don't be a bitch. That's referencing Dave. I'm sure. I'm sure. Yeah. Excellent. Yes. All right. Well, so yeah. So there's six of us here, so it's going to be a little wild, but welcome to episode 237 of the sounds like a search and rescue podcast. So this week again, Stomp is back. So he's going to join us to catch up.

[00:05:55] And then we've got our friend Dave here, uh, for an update on the Apple is Appalachian trail adventures. And then we've got, uh, Lori and Liz are joining us too. So they'll chime in to give their perspective. Plus we've got, uh, some updates on a close call on Franconia Ridge for Friday night. There was two separate groups that face cold conditions, rain and hypothermia coming down Greenleaf and old bridal trail. So we'll talk a little bit about that. And then we've got recent hikes. So Nick had done a very Dave and Stomp type of a hike. He was on the Osceola's and he bushwhacked out to, he did an East pond loop and then he

[00:06:24] bushwhacked out to middle and West Osceola. So he was doing some canister missions. And then I had gone out and done a 17 mile, what I'm calling a Pemi river traverse with a from Lincoln woods out to Ethan pond. So we've got that. Plus we've got notable hike of the week. We've got dad jokes and more. So I'm Mike. I'm Nick. And I'm Stomp. All right, let's get started. Let's get started.

[00:06:58] Let's get started. Excellent. All right. So this is the part of the show now where we talk about the Alzheimer's association, 48 peaks and Liz and Dave are both sporting their 48 peak shirts here. What summer are you climbing Dave for 48 peaks? Uh, all of them. Um, like I think there's really going for it. 2,362 peaks that I can't even list them all between here and there that I'm going to hike each individually. So if anybody wants a dollar and donate a dollar for each one, that would be great. Thank you. You would kill it.

[00:07:28] You would kill it. But, uh, so we did, we did our, uh, 48 peaks hike last weekend or we're recording on a Monday. So it's like 10 days ago. Uh, but there is still time for you to set up a team or, or get involved however you want. Right, Nick. Yep. So you can use your passion for hiking and Alzheimer's join 400 plus hikers as they climb New Hampshire's 4,000 footers to create their own challenge to support the mission of the Alzheimer's association. Fundraising ends August 31st. So still plenty of time to get out there and get involved.

[00:07:55] And for all of those of you who raise $125 or more, we'll receive the annual performance grade purple t-shirt. So let's turn the white mountains purple to end alls. Visit alls.org slash 48 peaks to learn more. Right. And if you check out our show notes, it's still time to donate to our team. We raised over $5,000, but if, if you want to put us up over 6,000, that would be great. So Lori, do you like beer and burgers? Um, no, I'm, I'm pescatarian.

[00:08:25] I don't, I haven't had any beef in 23 years. Dave, you should have got, you didn't give me this in the, the free, the free. And I saw a fresh beer. I forgot to mention that. It was, it was in the script. I stopped drinking a year and a half ago too, to be in the best shape I could to hike. I haven't had alcohol in like a year and a half. Well, I've got a place for you when you get to New Hampshire, there's a place called Reckless Brewing that even, even though, even though you don't drink. Yeah. They, they have Brussels sprouts.

[00:08:55] They have like a Buffalo Brussels sprouts that you can have over there. Okay. And water. You're going to, you're going to revert. You're going to have, you're going to get hammered and have like an entire burger. It's so good at this place. Yes. Yeah. We're going to convert you back. So Nick, cut this shit out. Cut this out. Anyway. Let's go to our friends, Reckless Brewing here. Yeah. Reckless Brewing Company. For those who spend their days navigating the granite peaks and unpredictable weather of

[00:09:24] the white mountains, the trail doesn't truly into the parking lot and 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. 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. What's that old actor thing? It's like never work with kids, animals and Lori.

[00:09:53] Right. She hasn't bit anyone yet. That's true. That's true. So welcome, welcome. But yeah, Reckless Brewing, they're great. And they've got their Wreckfest coming up. So we'll put that link in the show notes if people want to spend the weekend up there and it's going to be a fun adventure for sure. Um, all right. So I guess moving on to our first topic here, I guess, Stomp to start off with how you been? How's your hip? Everyone wants to know everyone.

[00:10:22] The first question everyone asks is when is Stomp going to start hiking again? Oh, I started hiking, but I'm sort of a prima donna now coming out of this. So the surgery was what? May 27th. I was in and out in three hours. They got me out in three hours, which is amazing. So I came out fully doped up and I felt like Superman. And then for six weeks, I could barely move. I was curious that I might've sprained or strained one of my hip rotators.

[00:10:49] But three days after I saw the doctor, I must've like reached a new threshold of strength and stability in my hip. And now it's like perfect. So I'm just ironing out the kinks from six months of doing nothing. Like my knees clicks and pops every now and then, but it's just my knees are so weak. So I'm getting back slowly. But I, uh, I went out, I did rattlesnake, went about halfway up over in Romney and the bugs are so bad. I'm like, ah, screw this. So I'm definitely prima donna. Okay.

[00:11:17] And you, you, you haven't done well sticking yet. No, but I am totally ready to do that. Um, Dave, you missed the Cirque series race. So I did go up to 3000 feet on Kinsman Ridge trail for the Cirque series race that Cannon had. And, um, I felt great, you know, strong going up. I feel like I didn't lose much cardio, which is really surprising. Um, well you've lost a bunch of weight too. So that helps. Oh yeah, dude. I cracked, uh, the one seventies. I'm like one 78 now, I think. So I'm a lot lighter.

[00:11:47] Yeah. Yeah. Stick. Yeah. So that's about it. Other than that, uh, you know, back to work and Pemi, Pemi search of rescues, rocking and rolling. That's taken up a lot of time. We're doing a lot of trainings and now they're the, unfortunately the, the rescues are coming in like wildfire. So, um, especially with the weather, you know, it's just so slippery out there. Right. So that's about it. Yeah.

[00:12:17] We have our typical, we have our typical June, um, cold weather, like rainy hypothermic event this week that happened this weekend. So that doesn't have fun. Yeah. Yeah. Getting ready for like some of the DJ gigs. Um, the cog was canceled. That's, that was moved. I think I made a note of when that was moved to somewhere on the script here, but that's moved to later in the fall. And then this coming weekend, I think Saturday after this is released is the Mount Washington road race. So I'll be jamming some tunes there.

[00:12:47] And, uh, a shout out to all the listeners for listening to that track for that, that Memorial Day track there, that thing got a ton of lessons. So that was pretty cool. Other than that, just sitting here wanting to murder my cats. I hadn't spent six weeks with my cats. I just was this close to murdering the little bastards. Sounds like such an old lady thing to say. I was binging TV and hanging out with the cats. There you go.

[00:13:18] Hey Dave, you look like Quint from Jaws. You know that every day that goes by, you look like Quint. Robert Shaw? You know Robert Shaw? Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah. He was the captain. You look just like him. Yeah. Pretty cool. And Liz looks like your handler, like behind you there. We're ready to shut you off. Yes. Like, like, like, he's just doing the cutthroat thing. Like, don't, don't say that. Stop. Nope. Nope. Uh, this interview is over. We gotta go.

[00:13:47] I told you not to take the green pills. So that's all I got guys. All right. Well, welcome. Welcome Stomp. So we had a rescue, um, on over the weekend. It was like two, uh, two, two separate groups on Franconia Ridge. Nick, what, what was the details on, uh, on this rescue? Sure. So it looks like, um, basically Friday night, there was a group going up there around Lafayette and they ended up getting hypothermic.

[00:14:14] It sounds like there was some sweeping rain that washed in, uh, Friday night as predicted to when I mentioned, this was kind of the weather was forecasted to be pretty shitty, uh, plainly and cold. Um, and just not a great situation. So we had multiple unprepared hikers rescued on Mount Lafayette. So this, uh, call came in around 8 PM. Uh, the New Hampshire fishing game, they were notified that there was a group of hikers on the summit of Mount Lafayette, Franconia, who are suffering from hyperthermia and the cold, wet and rainy conditions.

[00:14:43] The hikers had no visibility, no lights and no warm clothing. So not a great situation. Um, call was then made to AMC and Greenleaf hut on Mount Lafayette to have two crew members hike up and assist the crew hiked up towards the summit of Lafayette and located the hikers about 0.15 miles below the summit of Lafayette. Um, one hiker was identified as a 19 year old from New Jersey and he was unresponsive suffering from severe hyperthermia. The second hiker was a 19 year old also from New Jersey who was cold and wet, but still alert. Um, definitely hypothermic.

[00:15:12] Um, the crew began to process of warming the hikers bodies by providing shelter and dry clothing. Uh, due to the condition of the hikers, a call was placed to Pemi Valley search and rescue team and lake search and rescue team. And, um, basically to get them to help assist in carrying the unresponsive hiker down from the summit to Greenleaf hut. And while responding to the first call, a second rescue call came in on Mount Lafayette for another group of hikers who were also suffering from hypothermia. They were about 1.1 miles from the trailhead and on old bridal path.

[00:15:40] Um, rescuers were still responding to the first rescue call and were able to provide lights, dry clothing, and assist them back to the trailhead. Um, rescuers finally arrived at the, uh, hiker's location up on Lafayette around 1 10 AM. Hiker was carried down to Greenleaf hut arriving around 3 AM. And once they got him in the shelter, um, they were able to warm the hiker. And unfortunately, while descending Lafayette and, uh, the incapacitated hiker, um, a volunteer rescuer was severely injured and needed to be helped back to the trailhead.

[00:16:11] So for the next couple hours, rescuers treated the group of hikers for hyperthermia and cold related injuries. While at the hut, the, uh, unconscious hiker began to regain consciousness as he was warmed up. And once the group was warmed dry, the rescuers assisted the two hikers down Old Valle. Bridal path arriving back at almost 8 AM. So a very long night. Um, and then the hiker was transported from the trailhead to Linwood Ambulance to Littleton Regional Hospital for further medical treatment. Um, so just really, really rough night out there and a shout out to our search and rescue

[00:16:40] teams really going up in absolutely atrocious conditions, uh, this time of year. Yeah. Yeah. And just as a follow up to this, the, the, so the two young victims or the two young people that had to get rescued right below the summit of Lafayette, one of them posted a follow up message. Basically he was like, Hey, I left my backpack up there with my car keys. So if anyone's around, let me know. But the interesting thing about this is that it looks like what happened with these two

[00:17:09] is, and again, this is a classic mistake you see up here is they came across the ridge. I'm assuming they came up falling waters and across the ridge into Lafayette. But he, he posted his route and it looks like what they did is they went to Lafayette. They got through the summit of Lafayette and they continued down towards, uh, Garfield and they realized their mistake at the, at the Skookumchuck intersection. So they went down to Skook and then realized. Into the bowels of hell. Yeah.

[00:17:37] So they went seven tenths of a mile, 400 feet down and then realized they had to turn back up. So they added an extra, you know, 1.4 miles and a 400 foot climb to their, their situation in the rain, in cold conditions when they clearly didn't have any. I mean, he readily admits in this, he said that, um, you know, he said rather good weather got bad really quickly. We had to call SOS as we didn't have any proper gear.

[00:18:06] So they're up there with no proper gear, no rain gear or anything. And, um, then shout out to the AMC crew members for going up. I mean, from Greenleaf, people think, oh, Greenleaf to Lafayette. That's just a hop, skip and jump. It's a mile to get up there. It's a thousand foot climb in, in cold conditions that, you know, they've been working all night to help with the guests and they got to turn around, run out to, to triage these, these two folks. And they're lucky, the very lucky. Cause I think Stomp, you could probably speak to this better than I could, but I'm assuming

[00:18:34] if the crew's not getting out there to do the hasty search, then you're talking an extra hour and a half to two hours before a rescue team even gets to them. And who the hell knows what one of them was incapacitated. So it might've been way worse. Yeah. The biggest factor probably would have been body temperature and severity of hypothermia, which was definitely the main issue with this individual. Uh, no, no question about it.

[00:18:59] So they, they got there first, started warming them up, but several hours later, his body temp had only increased by like a point or two. So it is a hell of a slow process. And, uh, the intervention early definitely saved this kid's life. Yeah. And this is the nightmare scenario where a rescuer got severely injured based on the news reports here. So, um, this whole thing, I mean, it seems like every June we have these situations where temperature

[00:19:28] drops, rain comes in unprepared hikers. He's a two young kids. So I don't know. I'm, I have a little bit more grace for 19 year olds than I do for people that are a little bit older, but it just goes to show you again, we see these all the time stomp where these young guys just get in over their head and they don't know what they don't know. And I don't know how we, how we educate them. No, that's, that's my concern. That's, this is the red alert that I'm giving the listeners here. Um, I was, I would have been a liability going up.

[00:19:55] So it's like, you know, certainly I'm, I'm rebounding after the surgery, but I stayed low with, um, the sergeant and all night long. I'm not joking. It's starting at about midnight, every 40 minutes to an hour groups of hikers would show up and go up trail wearing shorts, sweatpants, teeny packs all night long. And I don't know what the hell was going on, but I've never seen anything like it.

[00:20:24] Um, flabbergasted, absolutely flabbergasted at how many people were going up trail. All night long. Like what is going on? Uh, despite the weather, despite the forecast. And you know, that morning when the light, when the, the light came back, they were pouring into that trailhead and most of them were unprepared. You know, you had the forest service there. You had the, the stewards couldn't even set their tent up because it was blowing so hard. And, uh, they were basically turning people back saying, Hey, listen, you can't go up today.

[00:20:54] We've got a major rescue going on. This is not the day to go hike. And they were telling people you really should think about what you're doing. I don't know. Hopefully it's not a trend, but it was not encouraging seeing what was coming up trail in the dark of the night. It's like midnight and three in the morning. And I mean, to, to refresh people too, on what the conditions were like, I think the observatory was talking wind gusts, 60 to 80 miles per hour, probably gusts hitting like the, the century mark or pretty close to it.

[00:21:22] Wind chill twenties, thirties pouring rain on and off. Um, high temps, probably in the forties, maybe standing temperatures when you're up to 5,000, 5,500 feet, like on Franconia Ridge and you're totally exposed up there. So I don't, I don't know. I'm kind of, I'd say after hearing about it, I'm a little dumbfounded as well. Like, obviously if you end up and you're cutting it close, like, and you got blasted by the rain before you're going below tree line, that's one thing. But to be planning on going up in the middle of the night when there's not going to be a sunrise or anything like that seems very strange. Insane. I don't know.

[00:21:50] Uh, it made me a little nervous, a little discouraged. Like how do you educate people? Um, is the word getting out there? I think, I think in my mind it took a step backwards in terms of making sure people know what the hell they're getting into and, uh, all the efforts that are going on out there, like hike safe and you know, you name it for education, but man, strange.

[00:22:15] Well, hats off to, uh, Pemisar and the conservation officers and the AMC crew members and everybody else that gets out there to, I guess, put their, put them their own safety at risk to, to rescue people and, and, uh, you know, this one, it sucks that the rescue team member got injured, but it is good that these young, young men can live to see another day, I guess, hike another day. Oh yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Excellent. All right. Um, so we'll see if there's any other updates. Actually, I do have a followup update.

[00:22:44] I'm moving on to another topic. We had, we had a dating segment, Nick, last week. Remember we talked about that guy that had said he met the girl on, on, on. We did. Whatever his name was. Yeah. Yeah. He fumbled. I guess he thought he put in the wrong phone number and he never heard back. He did post an edit at the bottom of that Reddit thing. And he said that he did hear from her. Oh, maybe, maybe, maybe she heard about it on the slasher podcast. Could be. Could be. Did she hear from her or her attorney? I don't know. I don't know. He said that they connected. So I think I'm rooting for the guy. Yeah.

[00:23:14] With a restraining order. Please stop stalking her. Stop texting. Have you, Dave, have you noticed like, I know. She didn't like you then. She doesn't like you now. Yeah. I know this isn't your area, but like, have you noticed a lot of like, has there been a lot of coupling up on the AT that you can tell? Or are you, are you so clueless that you wouldn't even know? Well, it's preexisting condition. I'm clueless, but there's a, there's a couple, there's a couple of pink blazes that me and some of the ladies have about.

[00:23:41] We're definitely like, Ooh, did you see so-and-so go back to pretty soon. But we don't want to name names cause it's, you know, trail code. We don't, we don't talk about that outside of the, you know, the other, the other people. It's trail code. But no, um, I mean, there's definitely pink blazes that go on. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. Well, this guy was trying to pink blaze up on Franconia. So we're rooting for him. We'll see. Maybe they'll have a love connection. Yes. Yeah, exactly. All right.

[00:24:10] So what do we got here next? So, all right. Fishing game. They are proposing fee increases, but governor A. It's governor. A. Is the governor up there, right? Stomp? Correct. Yeah. She opposes it. So, um, fishing game had floated a proposal to increase the cost of hunting and fishing. There are no hiking licenses. The only thing you can do for hiking is you can voluntarily purchase a hike safe card, which goes into, I think, a similar pool of money. Hunting and fishing licenses is the big bucket.

[00:24:40] And, um, the agency had received overall positive feedback from hunters and fishermen, uh, when they had proposed the changes. But, um, the governor has now come out and is put out a statement that they oppose any increasing fees for fishing licenses. Fishing game clearly didn't adequately consult as with stakeholders before bringing forward this proposal. So the governor's directed fishing game to pull back these proposed rules. So this is a twist that follows four discussion sessions that were held by fishing.

[00:25:09] Hey, governor, like how they got four, four sessions. Like how do they not follow the rules here? Um, I guess they had members of the public speak and, um, most people felt that it was long overdue and the proposals were actually not as enough of an increase. So in the wake of this pause now, the, the hunting and fishing lobbying group, Congressional Sportsman's Foundation has expressed concern that delaying the fee increases will exacerbate financial strain on fishing game.

[00:25:38] So the department self-funded meaning it must raise the majority of its own revenue through means such as licensing fees. And there hasn't been a substantial increase in 10 years. So they're overdue right now, the cost of a 16 year old to purchase a lifetime license for hunting, fishing, or both is the same as it was in 2016. So if you're, Oh, it's an age based thing here. So if you're 16 and you want to get a hunting license, it's $903. If you want fishing, it's 1200. That's for lifetime.

[00:26:07] And then if you want to do a combined, it's 1500. So you better off doing the combined. So, um, but the yearly increases, the fishing license would have increased from 43 to 45. And, um, so it's a $2 increase. And then hunting would also have increased by $2 as well. So nothing big here, but I don't really know. I can't understand this. Maybe the governor wants them to increase it even more, or maybe she's just not ready for it.

[00:26:35] I'm not sure, but this fight stopped is fighting here. They're arguing. Yes, yes, yes. Always. Yes. Well, it's certainly a valuable, uh, agency to support. And, um, you know, the, the, what these guys do out there 24 seven is just mind blowing. Uh, just the search and rescue category alone. I'm getting a gun stomp. Are you? Yeah. Yeah. Good luck with that. My brother, my brother just bought a farm in New Hampshire.

[00:27:05] So I need a gun to shoot. We're going to shoot cans in the farm. Uh, well, we're constitutional carry up here, Mike. So you don't got to worry about that once you get up here. What do I have to do to drive to New Hampshire and Maine with my gun? Can I just put it in my car? Uh, in New Hampshire, you're good to go, but I would not go to Maine. That's for sure. Don't go to Maine. Leave it at home. All right. Yeah. I'll keep people updated. I am to, I am taking a class. I'll keep people updated on how it goes. Oh, that's good. That's good.

[00:27:35] So I will say as someone I like have stayed up in New Hampshire, like I've paid money for the fishing license is multiple times for like a week or whatever. And they're pretty cheap. Like they really are. So it's kind of, well, even hike safe is pretty cheap. Yeah. When you think about it. Same deal. Same deal. Yeah. Yeah. It's very affordable. So I don't see why they wouldn't increase it. Yeah. Well, we'll see. Now's the time to buy a fishing license. It's going to be, it's going to get more expensive in the future. All right, Nick, Nick, you've got one of those fancy, um, Subaru's racer car thing.

[00:28:05] He's a WRX. So the car race is coming to Mount Washington this, this year. What's that all about? Yeah. So the 2026 climb to the clouds event, it's going to be August 7th, 8th and 9th. So this is basically when they have a bunch of fast cars, try to drive as quickly as possible to the summit of Washington back. It looks like they've got a pretty big field this year of cars that are going to take a basically one minute apart from each other. And I'm, I was actually looking. So the, the record was Travis Pastrana did it and I believed a modified Subaru WRX, um,

[00:28:35] 2017, five minutes and 44 seconds making his way up. So kind of insane since they, they said usually it takes most people around 30 minutes to get up there. So kind of wild. Um, and was saying, and he's done the Pike's peak climb and a couple others saying that it's probably one of the most dangerous really races in the world in terms of the road and stuff. So impressive kind of, kind of cool event. Have you guys watched the videos of his run? Yes. It's absolutely amazing, but I want to do it. Um, I want to get up there for this one.

[00:29:04] I've been waiting years for this one. So I was thinking maybe, maybe old Jackson road or maybe up tucks and go across, um, over to the auto road. I think that would be a good option or the other, other scenario would be a great golf up to the, that one trail that comes up to the four mile marker. Chandler, um, Chandler. Yeah. I'm definitely going, I'm not going to miss this. It should be awesome. Yeah. So it sounds like the practice runs will be on Friday and Saturday and then race day

[00:29:32] is actually the Sunday and they'll each, each competitor will have the chance to make two full runs of the technical steep and winding mountain road once in the morning and once in the afternoon. And I got to think too, that the weather must affect that pretty heavily too. Like if it's going to be wet and rainy, I wonder if there's any situation where they'd actually hold it off or I think most of these guys are probably rally drivers. So it probably doesn't really matter anyways, but cool stuff. Right. All right. Uh, Stomp, do you, do you protect your poultry up there in New Hampshire?

[00:30:02] My, I don't own any poultry at the moment. You don't. But if I did, I would, I would protect them. You don't leave the chicken out on your deck or anything like that. No, not yet. What about bird feeders? Do you have any bird feeders? No, we had to get rid of them because the, uh, the squirrels are going nuts, making a mess. Um, and I don't see how people do it. Like bears are always ripping my folks' feeders down that are in the yard. We saw that video of Eric Todd Sweet recently, the bear knocking his over. It's just not worth the aggravation.

[00:30:32] Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And the fishing, the reason I ask is fishing game had put out a warning to make sure that you protect your poultry and that bird feeders continue to cause human bear conflicts in New Hampshire. So a hundred percent. Yep. Yeah. A hundred percent. It's really frustrating. Yeah, it is. Um, all right. And a hundred and third annual motorcycle week wraps up with lowered attendance safety concerns. Uh, I'm not a bike week person, Nick, are you a bike week person?

[00:31:01] Like I could take it a leave it honestly. No, I mean, I, I know of cousins and stuff that ride bikes. I've never really been into motorcycles. Um, it came to mind too, just cause when we were coming down from the Osceola's over the weekend, they were ripping along the kink, uh, on, on Juneteenth, pretty much up and down. And I was like, my cousin asked me, she was like, why is there so many motorcycles? I'm like, it must be the Laconia bike week. Um, but they were kind of mentioning that they've seen decreased attendance over the years. They think that in general, younger folks, there's less of them that are buying motorcycles.

[00:31:28] Um, for multiple reasons, maybe safety concerns, also just the plain fact that they're more expensive, um, than they've been in the past. Um, and I guess just culturally, not as popular for the younger folks getting reset up over here in the background. Um, but, uh, the, the article is kind of mentioning too, that some of these, these events really make or break a lot of those lakes region businesses. So they're kind of want to see it continue and they want to do what they can really to encourage it to grow. Um, so we'll see what happens. Interesting point.

[00:31:58] It was a week of headaches, just noise, noise, noise. Yeah. Like even up here, like upper Matt river road by Welch Dickey, they were ripping down our roads. Like what the hell are you guys doing up here? You know, it was crazy. It's kind of a lot of accidents too, unfortunately, but that's part of the game, especially with all the rain. It was a rough week for motor cycle accidents. Yeah. Very good. All right.

[00:32:25] So, um, I think moving on here. So we have a stomp update, but we already did your update stomp. So I think we got this part covered, right? Moving, moving on, moving on. We all know that hiking a mountain can be hard at times. So here's a corny dad joke to help you get over it. Ba dum bum. All right. So we got some dad jokes here. So, um, these are, this is Dave on the Appalachian Trail edition dad jokes.

[00:32:54] So how do you know if Dave hiked the whole Appalachian Trail? How? Don't worry. He'll tell you. All right. These are dad jokes. They're not supposed to be that funny. So how does Dave spot trail magic on the Appalachian Trail? How? Easy. His shiny bald head acts like a beacon for the trail angels. I think he's missing half of these because he's fiddling with his tech, his tech issues.

[00:33:25] Dave's beard is so long. It has its own shelter reservations for the next 2,000 miles. I like that one. That's a good one. Dave's beard is so long. Hikers keep mistaking it for a section of the trail. Well, I just jumped back in at an audio problem. This is good. Dave's, I mean, I'm just Nick. Good luck putting piece in this thing together.

[00:33:53] Dave's beard is so long it got to Katahdin before he finished Virginia. I like that one a lot. Is this the chat GPT thing? No, no. We made this up ourselves. What are you talking about? How dare you? I selected from a cultivated list what I thought was the funniest. Good stuff.

[00:34:29] Hey, what's that sound? It must be time for the pop culture segment with Mike and Stop. Oh, House of Dragons. We got this pop culture here. So House of Dragons dropped a banger of a new episode. No spoilers. I'm watching this. We're recording on a Monday night. Usually like usually record on a Tuesday or Wednesday night, but like it's a Monday night here. So I haven't got a chance to watch House of Dragons. But I'm looking forward to it. Yeah, we're watching it again tonight. It was a killer, killer episode.

[00:34:57] Stomp, did you watch off campus with Mrs. Stomp? What's that? It's on Amazon Prime. It's a good one. Don't get them started about the fake boyfriend. It's a fake boyfriend routine. I love that. Oh, really? Yeah, I know. Interesting. I'll send you the link anyway. Okay. All right. Yeah, now stickers. If you want slasher stickers, you can go to Mountain Wanderer. You can go to Spinners, Pizza Parla in Andover. And then if you want swag, you can go to our bonfire shop.

[00:35:24] Choose between super popular hoodies, classics, or V-neck t-shirts and more. Dave, are you wearing slasher gear when you're out on the trail? I have my slasher thong, but not many people see it. You do? But I try to have my slasher stickers. Actually, I should put more stickers on my bottles, but... You should, yeah. Yeah, but I appreciate you testing out that perfect. Too warm for the slasher, like the bonfire sweatshirts, which are selling quickly. No, you take it from there, I guess. They're selling like hotcakes. So, all right.

[00:35:54] And then if you want to donate to us, and we're very highly technical here, and we never have any technical issues, and the reason because of that is our equipment. So, if you want to give us some money to make sure that we have no technical issues and we can buy cool stuff, you can donate to Slashers BuyMeACoffee. Donations help us pay for web hosting, distribution, live events. And then we're also going to pay for Dave's haircut when he gets off trail. Yeah, that's going to be expensive. That's like super, super cuts.

[00:36:22] And what's with the trying to whore me out for coffees the other week there? You know, like you guys pretending you didn't know what OnlyFans was. Like, oh, isn't that like when like women try to like do things online to like, they try to raise money for countries that don't have air conditioning. So they had this OnlyFans. Like, yeah, like you guys didn't know what that was. Apparently, I'm very familiar with OnlyFans. Yeah, exactly. I figured Nick's young, he knows. He's like, you know your OnlyFans addiction?

[00:36:49] You know, you know where all your money goes? That thing. Your secret credit card. So, but shout out to Doug from Brownfield, Maine for five coffees. So I was, I took a Father's Day hike up to my little, close to the camp mountain, Burnt Meadow. And I was sitting there relaxing in my heel annex chair. And I look over to my left and there was a gentleman that said hello to me. And I immediately started selling him on it.

[00:37:17] He should get his own chair because it's like really comfortable up here. And then he, he introduced himself. He said, oh, are you Mike? And I said, yeah. And we had met before last year. So he lived, he's a listener of the podcast. And then he very nicely sent us five coffees, which was good. So it was nice to see a listener out in the woods, Dave. Yeah. I'm, I'm promoting it up and down the trail. I'm like, you guys get bored on trail. You got to listen to this podcast. Yeah. Yeah. It'll get put you right to sleep. Yeah.

[00:37:45] As you show, as you show them your thong. We have to show them. I'm wearing a clear poncho. Nevermind. It shows itself. Hey, hold my bed. It's time to find out what Mike and Stomp are drinking on this week's beer talk.

[00:38:15] Um, and now it's a part of the show where usually we talk about what beer we're drinking. Uh, we already touched on that a little bit. I'm just drinking water. I don't know if anybody else is. Stomp, did you make a Mai Tai for tonight? No, I've got a San Pellegrino. Ciao. Yeah. All water, water straight around. Did you stop drinking too? Is that one of the secrets of losing the weight? Who me? Um, yeah, definitely. A hundred percent. Yeah.

[00:38:43] No GLP one for this, this Adonis body. Nope. It's just pure natural foods and water and movement. We don't need to talk about your bowel movements. That's a little too deep in there. And young Nick, you got anything tonight? No, I've got a raspberry lime seltzer. So I don't have anything tonight. Do you guys have, hopefully you've got some beers over there in the hotel room. The seltzer segment. There we go. Cider. Yeah. What is that? This is a,

[00:39:13] Carlson orchards, honey crisp. It's really good. This is always good for a sour. And, and I brought- I got, as Mike would call it, a Magna's. It's a Magna's cider. It's a little tart. It's wicked good. You like the cider. It's not a bear. It's not a bear. It's a cider. Oh, I missed you, Dave. I missed you. No kidding.

[00:39:42] Keep this asshole in Pennsylvania. Yeah. I knew we should have gone left 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.

[00:40:09] 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 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. Whatever, mister. Do you know me?

[00:40:39] I have a podcast. Whatever. Let's find out what Mike and Stomp have been hiking. All right. Well, now's the part of the show. We talk about what we've been doing recently for hiking. We will typically, uh, one of us will get out or both of us will get out into different areas of the whites and we will discuss different routes that listeners can take and, and hopefully will inspire some people. So Nick was inspired.

[00:41:07] Nick did a very, very Stomp Dave type of hike this weekend. What, what, what got you? Really? How did you come up with the idea to do this? So the one was that, uh, Sarah Beth, my cousins, Sarah Beth and Jay reached out. Jay's going to do the Jigger Johnson 50 and was looking to do part of the route. He hadn't done before. Then I was looking to get some more spring 4,000 footers and I needed the Osceola's and part of the Jigger Johnson, the very end of it that I'm supposed to help him out on goes up from basically the kank. You go up over the Osceola's to come. So then Waterville Valley is like the final, I don't know, like third or so.

[00:41:36] Um, supposed to be helping pay some on that. So we wanted to hit it together for all those reasons. Um, and then I was thinking to make it a little bit longer and get some elevation and just do something different. Uh, we try the quote unquote bushwhack to West Osceola out to like Peggy's perch. Um, had talked to our friend, Steve from the caper, Steve eats shit, depending where you know him from. Um, he said that it was a pretty well defined herd path. Um, for parts of it, there was definitely parts where it was a little bushwhacky where we kind of lost it where there were blow downs and stuff, but we were able to find our way out there.

[00:42:05] Um, and then yeah, just looping down East pond and I had Stomps mentioned, I think East pond a bunch of times on the podcast and how nice it was. Um, so we figured we'd make a loop car spot basically at East pond and Greeley. Um, we headed up, uh, clockwise pretty much over from Greeley to East Osceola, Osceola out and back to West. Um, and then back down to Tripoli road and back out over East pond of the kink. So it's a really nice loop. Um, yeah, West Osceola had stunning views. I kind of expected it to be really nice.

[00:42:35] Um, my cousin Sarah Beth was like a canister finder, I guess she found it on middle. We were both hunting around for like five minutes and we had to walk a little bit off where the summit was and found it. Um, the one in West was pretty obvious. Um, even I, I walked right by it. So maybe not so obvious. They're both painted black. So they weren't quite as obvious, uh, as I thought they would be. Um, but really awesome views up there. East pond was super cool. Um, the weather generally held out. It didn't rain on us. It was like almost like scary windy going up East Osceola a little bit. I'm glad we weren't on anything exposed.

[00:43:04] Um, earlier in the morning, it was pretty, it was gusty enough. Definitely. Um, enough to push you around a little bit. Um, but once we got past East, it kind of dropped, I think just cause the way it was blown up that ridge. Um, but it was super cool. Um, incidentally, I think I had, I had done a slasher podcast sort of, I've been doing those peak labeling posts and we did the Osceola. So it was kind of cool to hit all those peaks and like, no, and we could point up there and be like, Oh, I've been up to that West peak and kind of see it. So it was neat. And, uh, cool to get. Yeah. That's the first time I've tried sort of any sort of bushwhack thing like that.

[00:43:32] Like I said, most of it was a pretty well-defined herd path. There was one spot going to West where we kind of had to poke around and we were looking at our watches a little bit, but, uh, really fun and really nice. That's awesome. East Osceola is a bear, isn't it? Oof. Yeah. That's one. Yeah, he's good. So like I was looking on the route that he's got for the jigger and, um, the two parts that the two steepest climbs, I think he has that he hasn't been on yet or probably up Tremont. It goes up and then it goes down the backside and then that East Osceola I think has to be

[00:44:00] the steepest spot pretty much that he's going to hit. So I figured it'd be good for him to kind of hit that. He was funny. He was looking at the elevation profile. He's like, Oh, that's, that looks really steep. And I'm like, yep, it is. And I I'd never been on in the summer before too. I only did it from the winter. So it was kind of, kind of cool to see and, uh, see the views and whatnot, see the differences. So it was fun. And, um, I, while we were doing that, I think Mike was having like an adventure in the heart of the Pemi over there. We were. Yeah. I kept going back and forth. I was going to do a Pemi loop.

[00:44:29] So I was looking at the weather on Saturday and, um, I was just going to do a Pemi loop and go up Liberty Springs. Um, but I bailed on it cause the weather didn't look good. So that was the night that all those rescues happened. And then the, the clouds were kind of sticking to the, the higher summits in the morning. It rose up in the day, but I think that the choice we made was good. So I ended up hopping in with Jake and Peter and, um, we, and then Paul Gamal joined us too.

[00:44:55] So we ended up, um, me and Paul met at the Willie house up on 302. And then I used a car spot cause I didn't want to drive back to Lincoln woods afterwards. So we use Mara at your service. She's a shuttle driver in the area. So I highly recommend that. Shout out to Mara. Super nice. She handles a lot of like Prezi traverse stuff and, uh, she's really good about safety and she pays attention. So I really appreciate her, um, jumping in and giving us a shuttle at the last minute, but we shuttled down there, met Jake and Peter at the parking lot of Lincoln woods.

[00:45:25] Lincoln woods was a ghost town because the, the trails now shut down. So there was only five cars in the, in the lot and there was a ranger there. I think just giving people a heads up if they mistakenly thought that they were going to be going out into the Pemi from that way. We explained to him that. So essentially our route was following the East branch of the Pemi river up the East side trail. So instead of going over the bridge, like most people, like 99% of the people do, we

[00:45:50] stayed on the east side of the Pemi and then hiked, I don't know, it's like three or four miles. Eventually there was a herd path that we took. We were like, let's cause we wanted to find some logging camps out there. So we were looking for camp 22 and then new camp 22. I don't know, Dave, you probably might be familiar with that area. Yeah. I think that's where we were last summer. Yeah. So near the plane crash, the plane crash. So that way. So, but we, we found a little herd path and we got out to, um, there's a little like

[00:46:18] opening where you can go and check out where the East branch and then the North fork go. So the North fork goes up to Thoreau Falls. So that's what we ended up following. And then the East branch open, it starts at, at Shoal Pond. So you can actually do a huge loop because that's what Peter and Jake ended up doing is coming back via Shoal Pond and reconnected that way. But overall it was good. It was like, there was some sketchy water crossings that I probably would, I wouldn't have done by myself.

[00:46:46] But, uh, when we had to cross the East branch, uh, after, after it breaks away from the North fork, that one was probably the sketchiest. Like, uh, I think Peter, who's a tall guy was up to about his hips. Luckily, like he went over first and then we realized that like right near him, there was some rocks that you could stand on that were underwater, but it was pretty stable. So I actually didn't get like more than my knees wet, but the power, the water was pretty powerful. So it was pretty scary.

[00:47:12] But the diciest part is we, we then we, you break away from the East branch and you follow the North fork of the Pemi up to Thoreau Falls. And when we got to Thoreau Falls, we couldn't get, we couldn't get over it. Yeah. We were like, so we were 12 miles in and we were just thinking like, well, how are we going to get over this? Because the only other option would have been to go 12 miles back. By the way, as we got to, um, Franconia Brook tent site, our friend Will, who we had

[00:47:41] hiked the Alzheimer's with, he was setting up right there. So we ended up picking him up and we were like, come with us. And, uh, cause those guys are all going to camp out. Me and Paul were doing a day hike. So we ended up having five of us. So shout out to Will for joining us. Will was probably like, what the hell did I get myself into with these guys? But with Thoreau Falls, we like the anywhere close to the falls, like it was so powerful. Like there's no way you could go in because if you got knocked over, you're going right over the falls. Like it was that sketchy.

[00:48:07] Um, but luckily we were able to bushwhack up, up the, um, up the falls a little bit, the drainage. And then I, I actually was the first one that went over. I found like a big boulder and I climbed up over that. And then there was a little like, um, nub that you could step on and then you had to jump across, which was relatively safe. But, um, it was like, we had to take off packs and pass the packs and everything. So, um, otherwise it was okay.

[00:48:34] I probably wouldn't have done any of this if I was by myself for sure, but with five people felt a little bit safer. Uh, and then we went up to Ethan pond and, um, Jake and Peter set up camp over there. And then me and me and Paul and Will went out via, uh, Kendron flume and went to the Willie house. So it was like 17 miles, 2,500 feet of elevation gain. Really cool. Just to get the lay of the land on how those drainages flow. I don't know, Dave, like you probably can speak to this.

[00:49:02] Like I never really think about drainages too much, but like this really gave me the lay of the land on how everything flows off of like Vosper on the east branch. And then you've got, um, the row falls, I think gets fed by like Tom Willie field and that whole area there. It's, it's pretty interesting. It's a pretty cool area too. Cause it's so flat. It's where are they all congregate. So you get a ton of water that flows down into that area, but you also have the whole railroad area, which you actually have camps that are up high too, if you can go find them.

[00:49:31] So that whole area was like really, really settled, which they obviously used a lot of the water resources too. Um, but you can go like last summer we crossed where you did. We literally stepped across the road and we stepped in a little basin up to our hips and stuff. There was no water. It was such a drought last summer that we crossed on rocks. We're feet didn't even get wet going out there. Right. If you can imagine that compared to like the road, you, you just, you literally have to almost get a running jump some days on the road to get to that rock. Um, and you're right. If you get caught, you're gone.

[00:50:00] There's no way like you're over that fall and you're done. Yeah. When you were sent, you had sent that video across. I kind of was looking at the map later and I'm like, okay, you're explaining that perspective of like, I'm like, that doesn't look too crazy. And you're like, Oh, like if you slipped, you would be going over the backside of like the row falls was like behind the perspective of like your, where you were kind of taking photos of people going across. Right. We were saying that like, if you jump, just make sure you're jumping so that you land forward. Cause if you slipped backwards, that's where you might get in trouble. I was like hanging out. Like I was a little bit further down and I had in my, my mind that like, Oh, I could like

[00:50:30] reach out and grab somebody if I needed to, but we didn't have to. Yeah. That's good. Probably would have taken two of us over the falls. You're right. That would not have been good. Yeah. We got lucky with like, we had, we had to walk through the last crossing coming down East pond. And that was a brook that I was looking on the map. It didn't show it as far as we saw, but again, I'm guessing it was just cause the, the rain event that happened, but it was maybe need to like above knee deep at worst. It wasn't awful. We kind of just at that point, we were like a mile out. So we're like, we'll just walk across. It's not a big deal. Right.

[00:50:58] Um, I did want to, I'd be remiss if I didn't shout out. Um, I crossed the same, two of the same listeners. We crossed way back on straight back, back before the mountain wanderer event. Um, I hope they remember their names correctly. It was Rhonda and Alicia. Um, but thanks for listening. And they kind of chatted us up for a little bit. It was kind of cool to cross them again. We're coming down from Osceola after we just went out to West. So it was neat. Usually I don't get recognized or people don't see me like Mike. So I'm not as forward about being like, I have a podcast with people either. I just kind of keep to myself and say hi.

[00:51:27] Come on, Nick. You're famous. You're famous. Um, yeah, no, that that's good. Uh, and that's one thing I would say to Nick is the, the hike that we just did. Like if you want to go to a place where there is nobody that we didn't see a single person until we got to Thoreau falls. So it was, it was funny. I feel like we saw like, I don't know, 60 or like literally 60, 70 people coming up Osceola when we were coming down it. But once we got up to Tripoli on East pond, like Sarah Beth actually had me and Jay swap in front at one point.

[00:51:55] Cause there were just spider webs across the trail for like five miles. You can tell no, it was really pretty out there. A lot of, uh, lady slippers and different flowers and stuff growing and, uh, definitely doesn't get traffic. I don't think. Excellent. Um, now it's a part of the show here. So yeah, we're, we're out there, Nick. What do you, where are you going next week? You got nothing. You got babysitting, babysitting. I have a dance recital. I have a dance recital this weekend. Yeah. My daughter's not, not my, not my own. My daughter, yeah.

[00:52:24] She's got her first dance recital coming up. So that'll be exciting. That's exciting. Wow. What are you guys going to do? You getting out? We're finishing up. Uh, so Jakester is finishing his 4,000 footer list. So we're going Glenn Boulder up to isolation. That should be fun. Yeah. I hope you, uh, hope you guys have a great day. Yeah. Which will be fun. You should call your hiking group, the apostles. I feel like they all have Bible names. Jake and Peter and Paul. That's true. That is very true. Mike, Nick. I didn't even think about that.

[00:52:54] I like that. I like that too. I don't think there was a Jake in the Bible. Jacob. Oh, it's Jake's. They called him Jake's. And then it turned into Jesus. It lost time. He's the leader, really. He's kind of in charge. No, I miss the random. Jake, for sure. I miss the random pontifications from Dave. We got a David in there. That's right. King, thank you. Thank you. That's right.

[00:53:27] 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. This is the part of the show where we do notable listener hike and then we're going to interview the AT crew here. So what do we get for notable listener hikes, Nick? All right. So we got one from my home state. I was, I was excited about this one. You got Kim K 10,000, the Rhode Island North South trail. So it's a 78 mile trail from the ocean to the mass state line.

[00:53:57] Must do a lot of twists and curves and stuff. Cause Rhode Island is not that long. Um, but finished the last leg doing 10 plus miles in the Buck Hill management area to include the tri-state marker side quest. And then they had a side quest afterwards to Jermith Hill, which is the highest point Rhode Island. Um, which I think is still not that high, but it's, it's something. So that was kind of neat. Um, I've checked out the ladder northern end of that where she was talking about before from the mid state trail. Um, it's a nice piece of woods. 802 trail pups.

[00:54:23] So he's tagging this, uh, exploring the Marsh Billings Rockefeller National Historic Park in Woodstock, Vermont. I was looking this one up. It looks like an interesting area. You got some peaks and loops and stuff. Um, heart disease hiker 75. I've got two tags. So this was neat. Their first 4,000 footer, um, for, uh, it is better half Aaron there. It looks like with Osceola. Um, and they stopped on the way home at last chair brewery for a celebratory beer and some nachos. So nice job getting up your first 4,000 footer Aaron.

[00:54:49] Um, then they tagged us again for what looks like, uh, tackling the grand traverse over an air stomp with Roger mainly hikes. Um, I was asking about it. He said they had a pretty easy time. I'm going through it. He said he could see how it could be very sketchy in the winter as you guys highlighted in that recent. So you want to Arlo, the, um, Arlo, the Beagle Piper Bell nap and gun stock loop for four to 12 bell laps. Um, and then they stopped at deciduous brewing co over a new market on the way home.

[00:55:18] Um, Matt D on 19, who is actually, uh, Matt that we met of the Vanderfest crew back, uh, when we were tackling Jefferson in January. Um, so long day with no views, but knocked out the Kinsman's for 18 and 19 of the 48 and the second of the 48 for his daughter Addison. Um, and they were up there on father's day. So that's pretty neat.

[00:55:37] Um, and H mountain goat girl, our summit sister, Jen, um, did the Osceola's, um, and posted a picture of her on the chimney and Christopher Haley 96 gray lock and Jack's hot dog stand on recommendation from Mike with his local hiking club. Um, went up the hopper trail and Haley farm trail. So I think, I don't know. I'm curious to see which one you're going to go with, or maybe we'll let Dave or someone else. Let's see if he likes hot dogs more than real dogs. I know. I know. I was thinking the same. It's a real pickle. Hot dogs are actual dogs.

[00:56:06] Arlo climbed the fire tower. That's amazing. Um, and then you got the 802 trail pops, but Matt did the, uh, he's one of the Vanderfest crew. So I like that. Now I got to go with Chris Haley with the gray lock and the Jack's hot dog stand. So let's give some love for Adams and Williamstown here. Nice. Our friend Steve was out there too. He, he got a summit hot dog too from Jack's. Yeah. Steve was on like an interesting quest.

[00:56:35] I just like looking at his stories. He was like over on fire towers and mass, and then he was on gray lock and Virginia for a while. He's all over the place. He's been exploring. He's mysterious. Well, Dave, I might as well ask you. I, it's, I hate like having personal interaction with you. It's easier to talk over like the podcast. I don't even know how to take that. What kind of sentence was that? What kind of lean is that? You know, I hate talking to you, but, um, I guess we have to. I want to plan to like come out and see you on the Appalachian trail, but I don't want it to be awkward. All right.

[00:57:04] But I was thinking that like we could do something in like the Northern part of Massachusetts, Southern Vermont, and add a visit to Jack's hot dog stand. That'd be great. If we got like an Airbnb in Williamstown or something that you could luxuriate for a day. I don't hear any complaints out of this guy. I mean, that sounds great. I mean, yeah. I mean, when we get closer, we can start to scope out some miles and figure that out. That'd be sick.

[00:57:48] It's time for Slasher's guest of the week. Very cool. Very cool. How do you like, well, we'll go right into your segment now at this point, but how do you, oh yeah. So shout out to Chris Haley. You got the notable hike of the week. Like, how do you, when friends are coming, like, let's pretend Liz is not here. We'll just talk about it.

[00:58:14] But like, when friends come, how do they integrate with you without being annoying now that you're in your like routine of hiking? So we pretend Liz isn't here, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Pretend they're not annoying. All right. Well, it's hard. What's your best advice? Well, so I'm going to try to meet you on trail. What's your best advice for us to not be annoying and to just like be chill and not bother you?

[00:58:43] Well, I think that's rule number one is just ask, ask what the hiker wants. Like, like, what do you need? And I would say don't bring them anything to carry. Rule number one. Right. Take, take as much from them and carry as much for them as you can. Okay. Bring them power. And I don't mean like, yeah, you get the power. But bring them like electricity. Charge up their crap. Stuff like that. Take their trash. Carry the water weight. Things like that help a ton. Even if you carry pack weight or if you can slack pack them. That's just like, that is like the greatest thing in the world.

[00:59:12] And Lori, jump in too because you know that like when people come by and family come by, there's certain things that just make your day. Yeah. My cousin and his kids hiked with me for a day and I met them. You know, so great. You guys can be here. We did 10 miles and they told me it's our intention today to carry your whole pack for you. That was wonderful. Such a treat. Yeah. Okay. So we got to carry your pack, Dave. That's I can do that. Yeah.

[00:59:42] I mean, even if you just take a little bit of the water weight or you just bring a little bit of like, you don't have to, but the idea and the thing of it is just understand that like most hikers have a rhythm and that rhythm sometimes is chaos. Sometimes you're going to jump in the middle of a 20 mile push and other days you're going to be on a six mile. Ooh, look, a butterfly. You know, like, oh, I'm going to retie my shoes 20 times because I just, they're just not right today. Or like, you know what? That shelter looks cool. Let's stay here tonight.

[01:00:08] Um, it's not always the, you know, rigid 15 miles, so many feet of elevation. We hike until we die kind of thing. It's hard to say. And if they have a general plan, you just kind of stick to it, understanding that things are going to zig and zag and don't be afraid to let them go ahead or fall behind if you want to keep moving. Cause you kind of all catch up at the same place. Right. Right. Do you, um, have you seen any nightmare scenarios where people join hikers and then they're like,

[01:00:37] they're being like, oh my God, my, uh, my brother came and joined me hiking and it's driving me insane. Or is it mostly positive? Or like your friend Mike came to join you and he's driving you insane. And you'd rather hike with your friend Nick instead. That's where we should hike. We should hike separately and we can talk about each other. You know, like. We can score each of us. Yeah. You can score each of us. Yeah. That'll be a contest. Yeah. I don't think it's, I don't think it's a contest, but okay. It's always a contest with Mike. Are you kidding me? Stop it. Well, he thinks that's true.

[01:01:07] Don't think it's a contest. We got senior two hips over there. We're going to see if he does. We'll get him out on trail. I was actually going to offer, if you, uh, if you're looking for a slack or slack pack, I can cover you for the Kensington Ridge trail from Las River to, uh. Hell yeah. Especially coming up. Yeah. Yeah. And raging over through Wolf and all that crap. I'll reserve. Please. I'll reserve that for you. Yeah. Cause I've done that for others. Uh, I'm always driving through there and stuff. So.

[01:01:34] I feel like we could, we could slack pack you all the way through New Hampshire. Like I would be able to do that. So. I would love that. One of the hardest parts about hiking with other people is figuring out where you're going to be and when, and then trying to stick to that mileage to get there when their schedule matches yours. Right. That's really difficult. How far out do you guys plan? Like, I would assume, I mean, tell me if I'm wrong yet, but my guess is that you, you basically

[01:02:01] plan out like, all right, I, I, I have my town stop and then you guys are going to plan out your next four or five days. And then you'll start thinking about what happens after that. Like, as you get closer to like town, the next town, right? Is it every four or five days you figure out your plan? Yeah. Dave is an excellent planner. And my goal on the AT is to learn not to plan. I'm an over planner. So that's why we work well together. So he has immense plans, like very intricate, detailed plans.

[01:02:31] I look at today and tomorrow and then where's my next town? Yeah. I have ADD and OCD. So what happens is I talk a billion things out for days on end until I get a plan that fits based on mileage. But there's always like a plan B within the plan A. So day one, I'm going to hike 17 miles. But I know at mile 12, there's a killer shelter if I don't feel it and there's good water. So I can land there and have all these like sub notes.

[01:03:01] And then if I do that, then the mileage pushes. So it is very, it's a fluid plan, but it's a plan. And it's usually three days worth of food, maybe four with a resupply to get me at most six, seven days. That's a long plan. Like I have the next three days planned and that's it. Then I get off trail and I'll figure out, I'll cross over hopefully into New Jersey. And then I'll flip the map and figure out New Jersey. Because I have another friend in Connecticut that might jump out. So I got to figure that out.

[01:03:30] And as far as people, I haven't really seen anybody come out that's driven anybody nuts. I've seen people join different groups where people are like, yeah, well, you're going to go ahead, right? Like certain hikers are like, that guy hasn't showered in a month. I got, I hope he moves on, you know? Is the population of hikers, I would, I've read this and I've seen this online and I've heard people talk about it. Like there is a population of hikers that do tend to just sort of stay between that North Carolina and Virginia area.

[01:03:58] And they don't really move on or they get off trail. Has it sort of shaken out where the kind of the real deal hikers are going to finish the whole trail are now in the bubble? Or are you still getting people that may drop? I guess that's a good question. I would, I, I keep hearing about the bubble. I haven't seen the bubble. I keep seeing newer hikers once in a while, younger. They tend to fly by, you know, say, hey, how you doing? I'll never see you again.

[01:04:28] Like, yep. And they just, they're really cool, but they fly. I think there's a core group like us that had started at a certain time that just have their mileage figured out. They got their dings and dents and managing their ailments, so to speak, within reason. And they know what they can and can't handle. And they're pushing along, taking their breaks. And what I call the main math works out for them, where they all know by certain dates they can get to Maine if they stick to mileage and plans. And they're getting by.

[01:04:57] And then there's others, I think, that are just, you know, they're holding it together with duct tape and shoestrings. And, but they're on this side of it, so they got a chance. There's been a couple that were ahead of me that were flying, just stepped off, they're just done. And it's like, blows my mind. Like, what happened? You know? But it's mental. It's physical. And I think there is a core group that does fall apart heading into Virginia. And Cheswick said it best.

[01:05:26] He's like, Virginia either fixes you or if it Fs you. You know what I mean? He didn't quite say it that way, but it's true. If you have an injury heading in and you don't take care of it, it's going to eat you up. And mentally, I didn't think Virginia was bad. I don't know how you felt, Lori. I think Pennsylvania is more mental. Pennsylvania is draining. Yes. Pennsylvania is more of a green tunnel and it's more boring than Virginia. It is. Now, Lori, have you been to New England at all to hike? No. This is all new to me. All right.

[01:05:56] So this will be cool. So I'm sure that Dave's kind of prepared you for everything. But I do think like maybe, I don't know, maybe the way the trail's designed is that, you know, you have these nice experiences in North Carolina or Virginia, and then it mellows out in Pennsylvania and in Connecticut. Then you get a little taste of it in Mass and Vermont. And then it's like the highlight is New Hampshire and Maine, I would assume. I can't wait. I've been to Maine once and it wasn't on a trail. So I have no idea what I'm about to see. Very excited. Wow.

[01:06:26] Well, you picked a good guy to hang with because he knows all the nooks and crannies of the Northeast for sure. Dave, if you could go back to March in the beginning, if we have listeners that are thinking about doing the trail next year, what advice do you have for them to prepare? I guess to say the first thing you get to do is you get to like, you got to, you got to train mentally and physically. You got to, you got to, you know, and Lori, jump in please. Cause you probably did different things too.

[01:06:54] But if you're going to get ready, I would say the technology, first of all, is you get your far out app and you know how to use it. You know where your water supplies are. You know how to do mileage. You know how to plan a route. You understand what elevation, ascent and descent is, which is kind of common sense, but you learn what a grade is. If a grade is 500 feet, you're in for an ass whooping. If the grade is a hundred to 200, you know, you get a pretty good day as long as it's not rocky. Second, you get the AWOL guide, AWOL, and that'll help you with like how to get in and

[01:07:23] out of towns, how to get shuttles. It has all kinds of little details. That's like more on the technical side. Register your height, get alerts, do it with the ATC. That's kind of all the like, the easy part of it. I would say physically do your strength training. If you're like me and you got crappy knees and a bad hip and you're just weathered, you start doing training for the weaknesses around those joints. You build up the muscles. You do knees over toes.

[01:07:53] There's a good video series out there. You can actually get really into it and purchase it. But just the basics of building up muscles. And it's not like you have to push yourself to do 20 miles and you can do 20 miles at the drop of a hat. It's more what can you do when the shit hits the fan after seven miles? You got to cross a river. Now you're soaked all day and it's 50 degrees. You got to keep going. And you got to know your gear cold. You got to know how to put your hammock slash tent slash whatever you sleep in up and down.

[01:08:22] Rain, dark, sun, wind. You got to know how to pack it up in a hurricane, snowstorm. Doesn't matter. You got to be very comfortable without panicking and know your stuff. Give yourself a legitimate shakedown hike. Don't say, oh, I'm going to do like a Prezi Traverse and then I did a shakedown hike. Because you didn't. But Stomp helped me on mine. I did like a weird loop through Waterloo Valley up over Tecumseh. Did a couple random bushwhacks. It was about 45 degrees a couple days. Rained all day.

[01:08:51] Had to cross a river. Slept out in the rain three nights. And I said, if I do not make it, that's it. I don't go. And like, well, that seems harsh. But I'm like, that's reality. Because if you're not ready, you're not comfortable in those situations. You're not going to be comfortable. It's not the best word. But meaning if you don't accept that as normal and if you don't know your limits, if you've never pushed your limits to the point that you don't know your limits, you're going to get in trouble potentially. You don't want to figure out your limits when you're out there.

[01:09:21] You want to figure out your limits at home. You know, start with control of failure. Sleep in your backyard. Work your way to a campground. Work your way into the mountains. Work your way into bigger mountains. Work yourself into like, you know, really cold nights. Learn what your gear does. Learn what the failures are. Or that kind of stuff. My opinion. And you came into this as probably on the more experienced side compared to some other hikers. Did people hit you up for advice? Or did you give advice to anybody? Or did you just keep to yourself?

[01:09:51] You kind of keep to yourself because you don't want to be that guy. You know, like, hey. Yeah. You know, like, geez. You know, if you used a 40 degree quilt, you'd probably be warmer. It's like, yeah. You're the first guy voted off the island when you do that. You know. Right. You know, and then it's like, you know, you're like, oh, I'm pretty good at bear hangs. And you pull the branch and the whole branch comes down the first three nights. Like, now it looks like an ass. You know what I mean? That's kind of why I didn't say much about the hike in general is because you don't want to build. To me, I didn't want to build this thing up so much and go three days and come home.

[01:10:20] You're like, well, he's pathetic. You know. So you just kind of do your own thing. But yeah, you do see. I don't know. Lori, I'm sure you did too. I saw a bunch of people struggle in the beginning. In my head, I'm like, what are you doing? Yeah. Yeah. I section hiked for 10 years. I had already done 300 miles of trail and I love researching gear. So I knew my gear was set. Yeah. A lot of the people that go out, they don't do a lot of research and it could work or it could not.

[01:10:47] But I was determined not to fail and I'm not going to fail. So I'm 51. I started CrossFit three years ago for this purpose. I didn't even know what a burpee was three years ago, but I knew if I was going to do the AT, I had to be in the best physical shape that I possibly could. Then I started walking four miles a day. When I got closer, I started walking with a weighted vest on a treadmill.

[01:11:14] And the mental part of it, the year before, I did one thing a month that I had never done or that I was uncomfortable doing. I ran my first 5K. I did the CrossFit Murph. I volunteered at a homeless shelter. I learned how to line dance and I don't like country music. So every month I did something that made me uncomfortable. So when I came out here, I'd be okay with that. It's a lot of mental and physical prep.

[01:11:42] But I mean, some people do just walk on trail and make it. I didn't want to take that risk. So I did a lot of preparation. So you're ready to meet somebody like Dave. Oh, don't you think I'm going to be blaring some country music now and doing the two-step? Like, come on, learn this stuff in line. Call yourself a southerner and never line dance my ass. Like these guys are the only fans. Liars. All liars. All right.

[01:12:10] Well, I wanted to get to the important questions, Dave. So even though I'll hike a long hike and then I come home and my ass is all chapped up. And I think like, okay, well, how am I going to recover quickly on this? So if you have to do that day after day, like how do you keep it from your – and I know that you're a prolific shitter. So how do you keep your ass from not chapping up? Like what's the hygiene? But I swear to you, this is one of the most important questions you can ask. And I'm going to tell you a couple of – You'd be debilitated, right?

[01:12:39] It is – you can. I call it – what do they call those? The monkeys at the zoo, the mandrills. They have the big red asses that walk around, you know, like all irritated. Like, oh my God. It's like, yeah, I know that feeling. There is a product. It is a gold bond. It is in a pump. It is like a gel. It's almost like a hand lotion. It comes in a green bottle. It is gold bond. You take the little towel, the little coin things, the dry towels. You put water on them. You do your maintenance. Get everything prepped.

[01:13:10] And then you take a little TP and you put a shot of the gold bond on it. And you do a couple ATM swipes. And it is like your ass smokes a menthol cigarette because it's like, whoo. And it just kind of burns and stings. And then it's that cool, refreshing, soothing. And the next morning it's like it was never there. And you keep laughing. I'm telling you. I've been called – what do they call those? The medicine man, the shamans.

[01:13:38] Because word got out that I had this stuff that helps. It works with chasing. It works with everything. I had a guy come up and he's like, hey, man, I heard you got some stuff. And I'm like, what? What? What do you mean, what stuff? He's like, I heard you got stuff like chafing and stuff like that. I'm like, who the F told you that? Like, yeah, all right. What do you need? He's like, well, yeah, I got something. Like, well, I'll put a little bit on some toilet paper for you. It costs extra if I put it on. But we'll put a little bit on some toilet paper.

[01:14:07] I said, just go in your tent and rub it on. And like I said, you're going to feel like a menthol cigarette in certain areas. I said, but tomorrow morning, it'll be great. So the next morning, the guy got out and he's like, oh, my God. He's like, you're like a medicine man. And then it was like three weeks later, Crush was at one of the shelters. And he's like, hey, man, I heard you got some stuff. I'm like, what the hell is going up the trail? I'm like, you've got to be shitting me. And I'm like, yeah, here's the deal. Costs extra if I do it, blah, blah, blah.

[01:14:37] And same thing. It is gold bond. It's like a greenish. I keep it in a little plastic canister. And when you get it, it works. And I know this is a weird conversation. But I know there's at least 20 people out there writing down gold bond, green bottom. And maybe I'll miss it. It may be. Well, yeah. We're disgusting. It's gross. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you had testicles, you might chafe too. But it does work for like thigh chafing and butt chafing.

[01:15:06] And like, I mean, it's. Pack rash. It does work for pack rash. It actually works for just about everything. Yep. So I'm bringing a rechargeable power brick and a green bottle of gold bond when I. You don't have to bring the whole bottle. I got plenty. But. And if you bring it, it makes it a little weird because I have my own. I was going to give you. And I don't know what your price chart is to put stuff on. So I'm like. If you show up at the 11 apostles, I'll be like, wait a minute.

[01:15:37] Let me slip the ATM. This wasn't in the Bible. What about, you know, another question I had here. So Nick. I'm getting hit by lightning now. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, God. The generational divide on trail. So I'm assuming you've got that. I've always assumed like there's the college kids that are, you know, sowing their wild oats before they go in and start their career. And then you've got the older folks that are retired or have enough free time to be able to get this.

[01:16:06] So you've got an older group. You've got a younger group. I'm assuming there's probably an in-between group. But what's the generational divide on the trail? And do the people of the same age group tend to stick together? I don't see any divide. It makes no difference out here. Male, female age. Everyone has their own ailments, young and old. And we're all out here doing the same thing. We have so much in common. It doesn't matter what age you are. That's what I see. I think there's three groups, but they're not necessarily divided.

[01:16:36] I would say like you have like you have your older engineer guys, as I call them. They tend to be like there's a lot of older, taller, white engineer dudes that are just like gung ho. Then you have a lot of the younger college kids, like you said. But they're not sowing their wild oats. I feel like they're all I don't know what they're doing. I feel like they're all like they all have PhDs. They're very smart. Very smart. I feel like the dumbest. The other night we were sitting there and it was Frankenstein and these two other guys. I can't remember the other guy's name.

[01:17:07] And they were talking about the different animals and the noises they make. And the guy took out his windscreen to protect his jet boil. And it was like a polymer metal and it was made with a bicarbonate. The reason he brought it was because of flexibility and the melting point. And I'm like, it was like an episode of like the Big Bang Theory. And I felt like Penny. I'm like, I don't understand a word you guys are saying. Like at all. It was like Sheldon and they're all hanging. I'm like, holy crap. But the younger ones aren't as wild. There's a handful.

[01:17:37] Like Getsa Steppen's a good time. He just turns 30 today. He's a fun dude. But most of them are just, it's kind of like they're all business. They're all moving along. The older engineer guys are moving along. I'd say you have a third of everything. A third of 20-year-olds. A third of 30 to 40. And then 50 to 60. And everybody moves in groups differently. You see people, then you don't. You hike with certain people, then you don't.

[01:18:07] You know, and you do get certain age groups that do stick together a little bit more. But I haven't seen, I don't know about you, I haven't seen any bigger tramleys or any bigger groups or any of that. But generally a good sense of camaraderie out on the trail. Yeah. It is the only place, I wish the real world could be like Trail World. It is the only place in the world where everybody wants you to succeed. And they will help you get there. They will give you what you need. They will share information. They want you to get to Maine and succeed.

[01:18:36] Unlike the real world where if you fail, I win. Right. And I wish that whole support system could transfer to the real world where everybody wants everybody to do good and be good and be happy. And it's not hippie la-la crap. It's like, it's just legit like support.

[01:18:53] Yeah, I wonder if that's why some people have a hard time transitioning back into normal world because you come from this world where everything's a little bit more pure and then you get back out in the real world and you've got all of these issues and conflicts that just can't be solved. Yeah. I think in the real world, everybody's an asshole and it's rare when you find a nice person. And here, everybody's really nice and it's rare you find the asshole. And they tend to get pushed out. Everyone's like, why don't you just move along?

[01:19:23] Whereas in the real world, he's just like, yeah, whatever. Well, we'll try to, we won't bring any of the asshole stuff to your world when we come visit you. Just the gold bond. That's the good asshole stuff. The gold bond, yeah. I'll carry your electric bricks too. T-D-O. What are some recommended hostels, trail towns, any good food experiences that you guys have had? Lori's the foodie. You're the food.

[01:19:51] You go to all the places. So you do the food. I only had a couple of them. Yeah. I don't eat very well on trail. I just don't care to eat the trail food. So when I go to town, I do eat that. I do look for the nice food, the salmon and healthy stuff. But I can't remember any towns that are great for food though. But there are a lot of places I want to bring my daughter back to. She's 21 in hikes. And Woods Hole Hostel is my number one hostel.

[01:20:21] I loved the town of Damascus and Marion. Really, all the small towns so far I have wanted to go back to. I just love exploring them. Okay, there's a couple lately that I want to forget. Like the further north I get, like the less friendly they seem to be. But all the southern states and small towns just, I don't know. They're just so cute and everybody is so happy and will talk to you on the street. And the little diners. Yeah, I love it all. That's, Hot Springs was my favorite for the diner.

[01:20:51] Smoky Mountain Diner. That's where we met. We met in Hot Springs, right? That's right. Yeah, because it was actually at one of the Vinyl Pies Pizza, which was a delicious pizza. That's where you first came in. You had the spider bite. And then you took off. And we kept crossing after that. And it was Smoky Mountain Diner. You drop $12 and you can eat until you have a heart attack. The best biscuit I've ever had in my whole life. Yeah, I will go back there. You should drive down there just to go to breakfast there. And they're not open on Sundays. That was like, I think it's Sundays.

[01:21:20] That was so heartbreaking to people to get in and be like, no! Like you hike and hurry up to get there for breakfast and they're closed. And if you just sit there and listen to conversations, they walk in and say, hey, how's your mama doing? You know, how's your sister? What's going on? Like they just all know each other. I love it. It's a tiny little town with a massive breakfast and just the nicest, nicest people ever. And there's a nice brewery there too. I didn't get into it because I stayed at the pizza place. But that's where a guy bought me dinner on his birthday because I was through hiking.

[01:21:50] It was a really cool town. I liked it. I love the Green Dragon Hostel in Hiawassee, Georgia. That's kind of like your first introduction to hostels. And man, do they do it right. They're fantastic. They just, they walk you through everything. Like here's the deal. Here's your shower. Throw your stuff in there. Put your name on the board. Shuttle comes in. We'll get you into town. You want to go here. Those burgers are the best. Don't go there. They rip you off. Come, you know, they just were really, really good about it.

[01:22:18] Four Pines and Catawba was amazing. They had breakfast and dinner. That's where the Noro hit when I got there. That's when Turtle went down. Not Turtle, Snail. He went down. Snail and Emily both got Noro there. And that lady went on like bleach patrol, like nobody's business, and took over and cleaned everything up. And just they do the meals there, like breakfast and dinner, ridiculous. And it's all donation based. You decide what you want to donate to stay. Wow. Which is wild.

[01:22:46] Wilds, you know, and actually they probably get more money out of people because it's so good. And they do such a good job. They let me sleep in the barn that night. Pucked my hammock up in there because I didn't want to stay inside. And they're like, no, you're better off in the barn. So I slept out with the chickens. It was great. Do you? We recently stayed at the lookout hostel. Yeah. And because we have like 900 miles to go, we don't need to be told how to do things. They aren't even there. The owners, there was no one there to tell us what to do. We just walk in. It's set up so nice and so well.

[01:23:15] I stayed there an extra day. Like we just, we know our stuff now. So we don't need to be told how to do everything. And I loved that about this place. You text them and then they text you back with a code and that allows you to open the key lock and it lets you in the hostel. You let yourself in. There's a full resupply. You buy your own stuff. You fill out your receipt. The fridge is full. Your laundry. Yeah. You got a shower, laundry, bunks, private rooms. You pick the room. You fill out your receipt. You can buy milk or whatever out of the fridge.

[01:23:45] You can make pizzas. They got ice cream. You keep track of everything. You pay them by Venmo or cash. And then you lock the door if you last one out and make sure the key's away. It's like really cool. And it's a nice, clean place. It was awesome. Yeah, that was a good stop too. And you're right. It's more just like there's no more handholding. It's like, you know what you need. You know you need rest. Get in. Take a shower. Do your laundry. Get out. It's great. How do you do sleeping, Dave? Have you had to sleep in the shelter with random people?

[01:24:13] Or have you mostly been able to set up your hammock? Smokies was the only place I stayed in a shelter because you had to. Right. And I'm a rule follower. And so, yeah, that was some nights were good. I only had one night that was a disaster with the kid next to me. I'll tell you the quick story. And it's, you know, we've already gone past the E for everybody rating. So it was, we were there and I think there was 13 or 14 crammed into a cold night. It was in the 20s. It rained.

[01:24:43] It was starting to ice over. And this group of like six came in last minute and piled in next to everybody. And I slept with my head the other way. Right. In the middle of the night, all I hear is the fabric doing this pattern. Like, and I'm like, is this kid really taking care of his business in the shelter right now? And just kept going and going and going. And I'm like, all right, dude, just finish. Just do your thing. This is disgusting. I can't believe he's doing this. I'm like, you know, I'm under my quilt. I'm hiding. I'm like, all right, I got to say something. This is ridiculous.

[01:25:12] When I lifted my quilt, I realized that he put his head the other way and he basically just had restless leg and he was just moving his foot. And I was like, all right, that's awkward. Nope. All right. You're fine. So I just like, that's weird. And I just went back to sleep and I was like, that saved the bullet there. But that was the only time that I, most of the shelters and smokies were pretty quiet for me. I had a handful of people, two, three people, four at the most, I think on the last night.

[01:25:42] So those are the only nights I stayed in the shelter. The rest, I've been able to hammock around everything, which has been great. A lot of nights, if I had to break it down by percentages, you know, in the beginning, you're kind of always camping near somebody or by shelters. And then once you get past Damascus, it drops quickly. And now even more so, I probably spent, of the last 20 days, I'd probably say at least 10 to 13 alone, like just random sites by myself and even a shelter by myself up behind it.

[01:26:11] Because I'm in that void where I'm in between everybody who picks up and moves the number of miles. I'm moving the same, but I'm just in between everybody, which has been kind of nice. So I sleep like the dead most nights. What's the weirdest experience you've had so far? Oh my God. No. Besides the guy standing there? Yeah. That was weird. That was, that's the whole long story about the hospital. That's your true name. You might as well share that with everyone.

[01:26:39] Well, that's a long story if you want me to add that at the end. But yeah. Well, the quick rundown is we came out of the Smoky Mountains. We were told by the hostel driver to wait under the bridge. So the four of us come out of the woods and we wait under the bridge. She pulls up. She says, what the hell are you doing? Like what? She's like, why are you here? Like you were waiting where you told us. She's like, you guys are idiots. You're not supposed to wait here. It's dangerous. You're going to get hit by a car. We hadn't seen a car in like a half an hour. So she finally is like, listen, I got to go find a lost hiker.

[01:27:09] I can only take four. I can only take three. What do you want to do? Like what? Well, there's four. She goes, I got to go find a hiker. I'll be back. And just takes off. So we're like, what the hell? We're all sitting on the island. She comes back. She found the lost hiker. And she's like, I'll be back in two hours. And just takes off. And we're like, what is going on right now? So she takes off. And the three of us, four of us, the young guy's like, screw her. I'm done. The other guy walks up the road. And basically, she just dropped him off without a phone. That was Swanson.

[01:27:38] Without a phone and without any money. His phone broke. And she just said, tough shit. Figure it out. So they said, we're done. They took off. So it was just a three. It was me, serial killer, and Sid the sloth. Which was a wild scene. And I don't know if we want to get into the descriptors of that group. But that was a crazy scene. Basically, I look like a homeless gnome. Serial killer was brushing her teeth. And Sid the sloth had a gigantic leather sorting hat on. And he was just sitting crisscross on an island. And the sheriff went by and didn't even bat an eye. But we sat there.

[01:28:07] And that's when this little Prius comes out of the woods with his gut Jesus stickers on it. And this guy says, hey, what are you guys doing? My name's Dave. I'm up at the Standing Bear Hostel. And we're just waiting for a ride. He's like, oh, where are you going? We're going to a hostel. And he starts to get into like, oh, we got a hostel up the street. You want to come up there? We're all set. He's like, we got beers and hot showers. We're all set. He's like, we party. We have a good time. It's a lot of fun. We're all set. We're going to stay at a different hostel. He's like, what's the name of it? We told him. And he just goes off.

[01:28:36] He goes, those F and N words? And we were like, what? And he's like, well, I don't mean any disrespect. I'm like, pretty sure you do. Because that's not a word that usually encourages respect in my world. So he drops it again. And we're just like, hey, we're good. We got a hostel. He takes off. He circles back again about 45 minutes later. And he rolls down the window. And he's like, hey, need any weed? And we're all set. We don't need any weed.

[01:29:06] He's like, do you need anything else? We don't need anything else. He's like, I can get you anything you want. And I'm like, we're exhausted. We're cold. And I'm finally like, dude, listen, we're all set. I'm actually smuggling a shit ton of cocaine up my ass right now. And he just kind of stared at me and then gave me the real slow thumbs up and drove away. And we were like, what the hell was that? So then our hostel driver comes back, finally picks us up, gets us in. We go to the place. We stay at her little shack.

[01:29:34] It's a shed with bunks in it. And that's when somebody was just like, hey, the whole cocaine and the bear thing, it kind of makes you like cocaine bear. And that's where the name came from. And then that stuck. And then the hostel thing was a train wreck off the rails later for some other people. But that's the whole short story. The weirdest thing was like, she was bipolar and that guy was nuts. And then the three of us just sitting on the island was just like, literally, I'm like, what am I doing?

[01:30:03] Like, where am I in life right now? That's pretty weird. It was definitely one of the weirder experiences. You have any weird stuff, Lori? Did you run into anybody? No, I can't think of anything. I don't stand out as much as you. I'm a magnet for it. I have that shirt. It's like, yeah, tell me everything. Talk to me. Good.

[01:30:31] What are you doing for mileage at this point, you guys? You're doing, what, 15 a day or something? A little bit less? That's where we differ a little bit. Our paces are good together. We walk the same speed. But I want to do 16 to 18. That's, I mean, that's what I prefer. I've done some 20s and I did the Damascus Marathon 26 miles into the town of Damascus. And that was a lot. That was hard. But I like 16 to 18.

[01:31:02] I'm a 10 to 15. Dave likes 10. Dave likes 10. 10 will get him there. Bye, October. I was going to say. I have my permit for a guy with two real hips. You know, I'm doing all right. Is that... I want to get home sooner. I want to get home like then. This is August 1st to September. It's looking like September now. But not October. So you'll... I mean, you guys will break apart eventually then at some point?

[01:31:31] We come together and we break apart already. I know. We... I don't know. He's trying to break up. He's trying to break up team don't be a bitch. I just see it already. He's doing the Hallmark thing. He's trying to create strife and drama. And it's not going to happen. No. You don't know. You don't know. Somebody gets a pulled muscle, a hangnail, an affected toe, a broken... You don't know. And that's the thing is like you hike with people, but you can't hike for people. And I do 10 to 15.

[01:32:00] She does 18. She's a day ahead. She's been a day ahead since Harper's Ferry. But then it worked out. She took a zero because of weather and it all fit together. Liz was coming to town and saved our butts again. And it all... Like you don't... It fits. And going back to the whole training thing. And like you said, Lori, you're 50 something years old. And that if you decide you want something, there are things you do to go get those things. And just say, I'm too old. I'm too whatever. The minute you put yourself in that box, you're absolutely right. You are too whatever because you decided it. You're not.

[01:32:30] If you want something, you build to it. You don't just go hike 2,000 miles. And I do not think I have done a 20-mile day yet. I did a 19.9 or something. And you don't need 20, 25 miles a day. If you have the time and you have the plan and you stick to your plan and you find your speed, you find your rhythm. If I go over two miles an hour, it's like I'm a 72 Dodge Dart. Shit starts to fall off. The front wheels rattle. I got to slow down. I got to stretch. I got to soak in water. But I can do it.

[01:33:00] And I know I can do it. And I know if I do too much, it hurts. If I do too little, then I'm not going to get there. So there's that balance. And that's where the pushing your limits, knowing your limits, and understanding how to fuel yourself, how to offset pain, how to manage. But you can do it. So you watch YouTube videos. And I highly recommend Lori Goes Hiking. Watch her YouTube. They're realistic. Absolutely realistic. It's not like, oh, it's beautiful today.

[01:33:29] I ripped off a 25. The sun came out. I pet a rattlesnake. And then there was a unicorn. And we hung out for a while. And I went to the Privy. And it was nice and clean. It's like, yeah, no. You're a liar. It's the real deal. But you can do it. And you don't need the 20-plus miles a day. You get to the point where you do the main math. If you're under 900 miles and you can do 10 miles a day for 90 days, you did it. You'll get there. Speaking of. October 3rd. That's when I put my Alzheimer's money in.

[01:33:59] I'm going to make that date. Speaking of fueling yourselves, and you guys can all talk about your. Your strategies, too. But I know there's like. It seems like NBA 8's sort of AT doc. I've watched. There's like this point where you guys are just hiking so much that your body isn't just in calorie deficit all the time. You guys just get to town and you just crush whatever you want. I'm hungry as soon as I eat. Yes. The minute I'm eating, where am I eating next? I've lost 23 pounds. And I do eat. Yeah, it's endless. You're always hungry. Yeah.

[01:34:29] I mean, I dropped 20-something pounds. I'm under 150 pounds now, which is insane. Like the wind moves me. I got more. Look at this. I got more hair than like. Looking good, Dave. As good as you can. Yeah, I know, right? You're almost four by now. It's almost there. The comb over is almost full. It's almost ready. Like, but she's dead on that like there are days when you're like you wake up and you have two honey buns. You're starting a breakfast of 960 calories. Then I'm eating M&Ms on the trail.

[01:34:59] Then I'm eating, you know, two of the peanut butter jar things. And I'm eating chocolate peanut butter, 220 calories per every two tablespoons. And I'm eating half a jar of that. And then you get to a town and it's like, yep. You know, and you do the half gallon challenge. You can just eat ice cream. Like you could just the amount of volume of food you can eat. You do reach a point where you're full. But she's right. After that digest, like an hour later, you're just like next. You're ready to eat again.

[01:35:26] So as far as what you guys are packing for food on trail, has that changed since the beginning? Or is it kind of the same stuff you've all been eating? Do you guys get sick of what you've been eating and you switch it up? Or how has that worked? I don't have a stove. I cold soak my food. So it's a little bit different. But yeah, I don't bring as much as I used to. I just, nothing sounds appealing. It's just calories. So I just eat it because I have to. I only enjoy town food really.

[01:35:51] Like this is, you can only have so many bars, but I eat three a day because, you know, I need to. Yeah. Yeah, dead on. And my food is drastic. I'm cold soaker slash, you know, not stover, whatever you want to call it. But yeah, you start to find, like I'm a big spam and potatoes guy right now. I find the Idahoan potatoes and a little pre-made little packages of spam. And I can whip that up and eat that in a half an hour and go to bed.

[01:36:18] And it's like, well, there's like, you know, 1500 calories in like 20 bites. And you find so many ways to cram calories in without eating a lot of food. And yeah, the stupid, if I eat another frigging tuna or chicken pouch, I'm going to lose my mind. So I stopped. I stopped getting them. And then you got to watch certain stuff. Like eat a lot of the bars. They have a lot of fiber. And for a guy named Dave shits in the woods, you don't want a lot of fiber. Or, you know, you start shitting like a squirrel.

[01:36:47] See nuts and everything. And then the gold bond price goes through the roof because the demand's so high. Dave, do you think that when you get back, will you still have the same passion for getting out into the whites like you had before? The bushwhacking and everything? More so. More so. Okay. So you're not going to lose it. More so. I like trail hiking. The monotony of following White Blazes wears on you after a while. The views are incredible. I love, I've loved what I've seen. Georgia was a bunch of puds.

[01:37:17] North Carolina walks around every mountain. She'll be coming around the mountain is legit the theme song because they don't summon anything. They just go around everything. But ass kicking mountains in North Carolina. Virginia's very long, but had some nice stuff. Ton of history. Pennsylvania, it sucks. So far, I'm not a Pennsylvania guy. But it's, I want that mystery of like, I don't know where I'm going and I don't know what I'm going to see. I want to go off trail and maybe walk where nobody's walked. Maybe find an old camp. Maybe find an artifact.

[01:37:47] Maybe, you know, go find a canister. See a moose. The trail is cool, but it's kind of eighth grade schoolyardish with the chatter and the people. Whereas when you bushwhack, it's just you. If you see anybody, usually they're probably going to kill you or they're lost. But, so yeah, I look forward to it actually more so, to be honest. They're two different things and they're very separate and distinct and I enjoy them both differently.

[01:38:16] But I don't think, I think I look more forward to getting home and doing some bushwhacking. We look forward to having you. Liar. We'll get you out there. Well. Has there been any particular part of the trail so far that's kind of blown you away more than you thought it would? Like, I don't know. I feel like watching a lot of those docks, it seems like a lot of those balds in the highlands kind of like down south seem really cool. Yeah.

[01:38:44] But I was curious, like, if there was a spot where you're like, I guess maybe a spot that you thought was going to look really cool and it was like not as great as you thought it would be. And then maybe a spot that was unexpectedly just like, wow, this is crazy. Yeah, I got a bunch. Go ahead. The Rhone Highlands, I did not expect that. That was a wonderful day. The Grayston Highlands. Yeah, I'm going back to both of those places. Loved it. Yeah, Rhone Highlands is like, a lot of the highlands are named highlands because a lot of Scots settled here because of the rocky features.

[01:39:14] They're very comfortable in the Amaritan. And that's why there's a lot of them that were highlands and they're very open ball. It's very different from what we have at home. Which is, it's cool. And then in the Grayston Highlands, they had the ponies. So that's like an added bonus if you get to see the ponies in that. Both beautiful. Dragon's Tooth blew me away. I thought that was one of the coolest things on trail. It's so big. I didn't expect it to be that monstrous. You get to climb on it.

[01:39:42] Max Patch, I had a gorgeous sunset. And with the burnt meadow with that, that was an amazing place. And you can drive up to it. So if you're in the area, drive. You can go up and hang out on top. Big open area. You can have picnics. Kids are playing baseball up there. It's so big. McAfee Knob was a dud for me. It was cool to take the picture. But it was like, just a postcard. It just didn't have that like, blow me away feeling.

[01:40:11] But seeing the rattlesnakes has been a pretty cool experience too. Those things are freaking huge when they're not behind glass. I didn't realize there was so many of them. It's like, it sounds like it's pretty common to see them around. Yeah, a little too common. I think I've seen six so far. And they don't rattle all the time. They'll be right off trail and not rattle. You almost stepped one in. We were going to Elk Wallow. And she stepped off trail to let somebody go by. And then I went by.

[01:40:39] And as I went to put the pole down, there was a rattlesnake in the grass right on the trail. And it just wasn't moving. I recently had somebody stop me because there was one in the trail that was rattling and wouldn't let anybody go by. So I had to go around, bushwhack around it. Most of them are on the rocks. They're usually very passive. But man, it just, it gets your attention. It's really cool to see them though. They're beautiful animals, as scary as they are. Do you have contingency plans in case you get bitten by a rattlesnake, Dave?

[01:41:09] Oh, absolutely. You're going to douse yourself with gold bond? Yeah, I'm probably going to, first I'm going to cry. And then I'm going to probably suck the poison out. I'm going to use my slasher thong as a tourniquet. Oh, nice. Please don't. Actually, here's the funny thing is, copperheads are not as poisonous as rattlesnakes. And rattlesnakes only emit poison, sorry, venom. They only emit their venom 70% of the time they bite you. They don't always emit them. You do not immediately die.

[01:41:37] You should immediately calm yourself down. Obviously, get away from the damn snake. But get away, calm yourself down so the blood flow isn't. Call 911. Do not try to suck the poison out. Do not put a tourniquet on it. They say basically just get away. And what you're going to do is hurry up and get the antivenom as soon as possible. And then that is how you basically will recover. But it's not like, oh, you have 20 steps or an hour. You're going to die.

[01:42:01] Usually, it's the after effect and the antibiotics because their mouths are so bacteria ridden that you'll actually get post-bite infections if it's not treated correctly. Yes, the venom will kill you over time. But like you would have to just basically stay in you, emit all its poison. You'd have to then run, pump it through your system and all that for it to kill you. To say if you have pre-existing conditions, you're as good as gone. But so, yeah, I kind of have a plan.

[01:42:28] And the biggest part of my plan is to make Mighty Mouse walk in front. And she's usually the point on rattlesnake patrol. We do take turns. We do take turns. We call it rattlesnake patrol. The sweeper. The mind sweeper. Yes, but Dave can't see bears. He sees snakes very well, but he cannot see a bear. If it's far away and not moving, I can't see shit. But if it's like not correct, like an eye spy and I see it, I freeze immediately. My brain can pick up on those patterns.

[01:42:58] So good at that. Yeah. Or when it's in the distance, like there's the bear and she's like, do you see it? I'm like, nope. She actually did the, like the mom thing and grabbed me by the elbow and pulled me over. Like, it's right there. It's like, I still don't see. Oh my God, I see it. I'll just send you the picture of it. So what has Dave told you about New Hampshire in your mind? What do you, what do you expect when you get up here? He's told me so much and it goes right over my head. It does.

[01:43:29] Have you met my tail wife? Yeah. But no, I don't understand the terms that you all use. I've asked him about the hike safe card. Do I need one of those? Because I don't know what I'm doing either. I know I'm a thru hiker and I haven't done a lot of miles, but I've never been to New Hampshire. So it does scare me. I know it's going to be pretty and it's going to be tough. I'm ready for that. I do one day at a time. I'm not going to do anything that's going to hurt myself, but I do not give up. So I'm, I'm ready for the physical.

[01:43:58] I just, I don't know. We need to get you on top of Moose Lock and then you'll, you'll be able to see the trail laid out in front of you. If you get a good day, you have the views of what 40, 50 miles worth of Appalachian trail in front of you. Yeah. It's pretty awesome. Cause the joke is out here. It's like, which way are you going? Like, I don't know. Where's the biggest ass mountain ahead of us? Like, Oh, there it is. That's the way we're going. That's New Hampshire. They don't avoid any of it. Like, it's like, let's go over the next stupid range and then the next stupid range and then the next stupid range.

[01:44:28] And now you're good. Now you're in Maine. Good luck. Dave, are you going to go right through New Hampshire? Are you going to stop and go home and take some time or what is your plan? Well, I got a place in Vermont that's not too far from that. So I'm going to try to like, if there's anybody still on trail that wants to, I'll slack pack as many people as I can. If Liz wants to come up and be one end of a shuttle and if I can get, you know, if any listeners want to slack pack, that would be fantastic. I would even donate coffees possibly or something.

[01:44:56] But, but yeah, if they wanted to, you know, help slack pack and move around, that would be great. So my, my plan is to kind of move through New Hampshire without, you know, I want to visit my parents. I haven't seen them, you know, in over three months. That's been hard to be honest. So I want to keep moving, but I want to like, if Mrs. Schitts is around for the weekend, I'll take a zero at the cabin with her.

[01:45:18] But if I can bang out as many miles as I can, the more, the further I go and the quicker I go, the more time I get to spend on the other side of this, you know, and kind of readjust and work on things we want to work on when I get home. Right. You know, as far as couples and house stuff and just kind of like, kind of a, you know, a different start after a bunch of months out. Right. Stomp, what are you thinking here? What, what, how do we wrap this up?

[01:45:44] What, what are your thoughts on Dave and Lori and Liz and this whole, this whole cockamamie adventure of theirs? Oh man, I'm just actually really floored by the input and the, the thoughtfulness of the whole adventure. It's been great listening to both of you. It's been great. Um, I, I was laughing at your comment, Dave, when you saw that Pemi rescue, uh, carrying that guy down off Lafayette and you were like, yeah, that happens every day and you will die.

[01:46:13] This is the advice I'm getting too. She's not wrong. If I don't like somebody, I'm like, oh, you're going to die. I'm like, I'm like, no shit. People die up there in Lafayette, like almost every other day. It's crazy. Like it snows pretty much every other day in August. And if that's not the lightning, it'll get you. And then the pit vipers are everywhere. But you'll be fine. Yes, I hear this. But then I've watched people do it for 10 years on YouTube and none of that ever happens on their videos.

[01:46:43] So I can't wait to see what my videos are. The people I like, I do tell them like, it's not, you got to take it in sections. And the biggest rule of thumb is you got to check the weather at high elevations. You got to know the higher elevations forecast and you got to pay attention to windchill. And if you're a tent camper, you got to know where you're camping because there's certain areas you got to have to make big miles to get up and down. Just basic stuff like that.

[01:47:10] And like there was one, it was a young woman who came off Dragon's Tooth. And you remember the drop off Dragon's Tooth. It's a little bit technical, but it's like I would equate it to like, I don't even know what a good explanation be. It's not like Jigger Johnson dropping off that or it's not like, you know, it's got a little bit of a, you kind of sit in your body if you want to, but you can walk laterally along the ridge, kind of like a chimney, but not even. It's, God, maybe 500 feet of rock.

[01:47:39] And she was going on about how dangerous it was and, you know, it shouldn't be like that. And it seems, especially if it's raining and in my head, I'm like, you're going to die. Like you were in for us. You're going to die when you look at the crap you're going to have to do. When they paint the white blazes up the side of these slabs, you're going to be like, no. So it's humbling. But people, it's not, by then you'll have done everything. So it won't be anything new.

[01:48:04] It'll just be harder and more planning, more like understanding how far you can go, where you're going to stay and what the weather's going to be. That kind of, that kind of rounds it out to where I was going to ask you, like being on the flip side of having mostly hiked to New Hampshire in the Northeast. Like, how does it, is it real? Is the rest of the AT really that quote unquote, like easy compared to what New Hampshire has been or has there been some really gnarly sections? Compared to New Hampshire. And that's the funny thing is like, oh, it'll be easier for you. Lies.

[01:48:34] Georgia is a bunch of pods in shorter days and colder weather. And I hadn't walked in dirt in like three months because we had so much snow this year. So all my calves and all the joints are like, what are we doing? Why are we taking full steps? Like, what are you doing for eight miles? It was different. And it was a completely with that much weight was a learning curve. Then you get to North Carolina. North Carolina is not a joke. I mean, you look at the mountains in North Carolina, you're between four and 6,000 feet.

[01:49:03] And you're camping at four and 6,000 feet on a lot of nights. And you're sleeping, you know, in the teens. So people are like, yeah, but it's easier. Like, how is that easier? Like, you do an eight-mile day in 4,000 feet of elevation. You get your ass handed to you. Like, yeah, but it's easier because you step over rocks. Like, yeah, okay, sure. There's some technical parts. Carolina coming down too. Virginia is just longer. But by that point, you're trying to do 15, 60 miles a day.

[01:49:31] Now your joints are just getting beat to crap because you're walking in a monotony. It's repetition. It just starts tearing apart joints. So yes and no. Like, through Pennsylvania, the rocks have been my friend. Like, I'm comfortable with a lot of the rock stepping. I actually feel better in my joints to not walk like a damn canyon at, like, three miles an hour in a flat line. I like the, like, stepping here and there. You know, that's helped me. Yeah. Cool. Well, we've learned a lot tonight.

[01:50:01] We've learned that Lori and Liz and Dave have been out on the adventure of a lifetime. Stomp has been sitting home for the last two months with his cats. Made up. That's a crazy cat. Quite a dynamic. Would I trade it? That's a tough one. Are you going to get out with Dave Stomp when he comes up? Oh, 100%. Yeah, 100%. We have Lost Pass Part 3 to finish.

[01:50:29] That'll be my side quest in the middle of all this. Yeah. Yeah, right. But what would you say to me to convince me to do the AT? Assuming you wanted to do it, that's the biggest hurdle. If you wanted to do it... Is that the biggest hurdle? Yeah, well, that is one of them. And then all the permission slips that come with it. Trust me, there's a lot.

[01:50:53] But if you wanted to do it and you had full permission and you wanted to go, but you weren't sure, I would say why... There's the list of reasons why you should do it far outweigh the list of why you shouldn't, in my opinion. And everybody fears failure. And to me, I'm a Chesuit guy. If I don't make it to Maine, I have failed. And I don't look at that as I'm a failure. It's just that was my goal and I failed at my goal. I will also enjoy every step of this adventure.

[01:51:21] I will take every little side trip for a view and go back to the AT. I'm not a purist, but I'm not cutting any miles off. Yeah, I mean, the bottom line is just, you know, however you want to word it. It's doable. Keep it goal-oriented. Get your permission slip. Yeah. First of all, want to do it. Know you can do it. And yeah, failure is a possible outcome, but you're not a failure for trying. And enjoy the adventure. Yeah. Like if it becomes work... Yep. Carry the pack, not your fears.

[01:51:51] Don't be afraid of failing. And if you fail, don't have any regrets. Because go through your phone. I tell people out here, go through your phone and find 10 people that have the balls to do what you're doing right now. Yeah, yeah. And it's not an insult to those people. It's just more that if you were taking on an adventure of your lifetime, so don't look back. Just do it because you want to. Everyone gets the same damn sticker, but die with the adventure and the memories. Yeah, yeah. That's awesome. Cool, man. Just had to finish my thought of closure. You know, I feel better now. That's right.

[01:52:21] Yeah, absolutely. Well, safe trails and definitely hit me up when you get closer for some of these slack packs because I'm always kicking around. I'll be abusing that. Sounds good. If you guys can throw Lori's YouTube link up there, that'd be cool too. Yeah, I will. I'm going to plug that. I may even add that as a separate intro for her, but I'll make sure that I plug that and we'll get that up on all the socials and everything. But yeah, that's all we got. So Dave, I'll be in touch with you.

[01:52:46] I do want to coordinate something in Massachusetts, Southern Vermont, come out for a couple of days and catch up. Even if I shuttle you. Even if I get an Airbnb and just shuttle you and slack pack or whatever. Yeah, whatever works. So we could car spot and hike back to a car. We could do day hikes. Yeah, exactly. But like you had two people. If two people came out, we put one car at one end and we slack pack to the other. And then we go into town and have some beers and dump me off the next day or a couple of days. We could do two days, like do an overnight, whatever you want.

[01:53:15] I got New Jersey, New York coming up and then Connecticut, like 78, 77 and then like 50 miles. So 200 miles away. I'm a good couple of weeks away at least. You know, I'm hoping to crack Massachusetts by mid-July, something like that. Yeah, I mean the only expatures I've got, I got Katahdin at the end of the month, but maybe if it turns out, we'll see what the timing looks like. Yeah, and it's a crapshoot. I don't know what the body's going to do. So I just walked the miles.

[01:53:42] I'm looking to wrap up by the end of this week, early next week. I should be in New Jersey. Awesome. Nice. All right, Nick. So I'll upload all of this and then we're going to have to piece it together. There was like people jumping in, jumping out. So we'll sort it out. Yeah, sorry. Limited. Yeah, no worries. We appreciate you taking the time. So we'll piece this together. I had fun. That was good. Thanks. Jumping in, stomp. Always good to see you guys. Good job with the questions. That was a lot of fun. Yeah.

[01:54:12] Hopefully it all translates. We're rooting for you and everybody asks. So you're kicking ass out there. Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed the show, you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podbean, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you want to learn more about the topics covered in today's show, please check out the

[01:54:39] 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 peaks.

[01:55:04] 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 describe this race. Do we all know who they are?

[01:55:34] The only one! Lieutenant James Neeland, 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 ten essential items and had those in their packs, they probably would have no need to ever call us at all.