[00:00:09] Here is the latest Higher Summits forecast brought to you by our friends at the Mount Washington Observatory. Weather above treeline in the White Mountains is often wildly different than at our trailheads. Before you hike, check the Higher Summits forecast at mountwashington.org.

[00:00:32] 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.

[00:00:52] You should too. Go to mountwashington.org or text FORECAST to 603-356-2137. Hey, hey, hey! This week you're stuck with the OGs, Mike and Stomp.

[00:01:15] But first we're going to do the forecast for the weekend of August 15th and 16th, 2026. Friday. Mostly in the clouds under partly cloudy skies with a high in the lower 40s. Winds will be northwest at 50-70 mph with gusts up to 80 mph early. 40-55 mph with gusts up to 65 mph midday.

[00:01:41] And 30-50 mph with gusts up to 60 mph later. And the wind chill will be rising, check this out, to 25-35 above. Friday night. Friday night. In and out of the clouds, trending towards clearing under decreasingly cloudy skies with a high... Oh, I'm sorry. A low in the upper 30s. Winds will be northwest at 40-55 mph with gusts up to 65 mph early.

[00:02:11] And then 30-50 mph midnight. And then 25-40 mph later. The wind chill again falling to 20-30 mph. And then Saturday. Mostly in the clear under partly sunny skies. High in the upper 40s. Winds will be northwest at 20-35 mph. Early decreasing to 10-25 mph by midday. And again, I mean, the cold is coming. Wind chill.

[00:02:40] 20-30 mph above early and then rising. So have a great weekend. Enjoy the show. A number of hikers from Rhode Island have been rescued after getting stuck in treacherous terrain on Mount Washington. At least one hiker expressed they were feeling symptoms of hypothermia. Officials tell us the hikers were brought to safety around 10 p.m. And thankfully, there were no injuries.

[00:03:10] This was no drill, but a real-life emergency deep in the woods. Broadcasting from the Woodpecker Studio in the live free or die state of New Hampshire. Welcome to the Sounds Like a Search and Rescue podcast.

[00:03:36] Where we discuss all things related to hiking and search and rescue in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Occasionally including the counties of Belknap. I mean, Belknap. Um, something like that. And Coos County Wait. Or is it Coos County? Whatever. Here are your hosts, Mike and Stump.

[00:04:01] All right, let's record the, uh, you getting back together. So... Oh my God, he's back! He's back! Yeah. Hell yeah. Good to be back. Remember, um, you have to press record. I did. I just did it a second ago. Thank God. I can see the beautiful waves scrolling across my screen. You're gonna do great, Stomp. I'm a little... I'm probably a little rusty, but... I'll give it a shot.

[00:04:31] Guess who's back! Welcome back! Back! Yeah. Remember, uh, do you have a favorite back? I was thinking about all the back songs. Like in the 90s, it was like a whole... You had Slim Shady or Eminem. Yeah. It was like, guess who's back, Shady? Oh yeah. And then you also had Back Streets, back, all right! Yeah, that's the one that comes to mind. And then you went way back to the 70s with Welcome Back Hotter. Mm-hmm. Yep. Goes to show you my age. Yes, yep. That's great. Getting older every day. That's true. Anyway, but how you doing? How is the hip doing?

[00:05:01] Everybody always asks about where the Stomp's back and hiking. It's doing really good. I can get into it in detail a little later, I guess. I just had a really phenomenal hike I just got back from. And I feel like I'm better than I was maybe back in 24. You know what I mean? Like, I feel really good. That's awesome. You look good. How much... What is the weight at right now? 175. So we're talking 45 pounds. That's pretty good.

[00:05:29] You doing a lot of weight lifting and stuff? So basically, I've eliminated processed food as much as I can. I mean, it's hard to avoid it. Right. Limited alcohol. And for the weights, I'm doing heavy weights but higher repetition. So I'm not really bulking up, but I have the strength, but it's like more of an endurance strength. It really serves me well with what I do out there with the team. That's great.

[00:05:58] And if you do want to get back into hiking, like being at 175, I mean, that's a huge advantage. I think that's part of it. Yeah. I feel like Bambi up there. I'm just like jumping rock to rock and frolicking around. It looks like, woo, defying gravity. That's awesome. And then can you tell the listeners, so why are you here and where is Nick? Oh, my goodness. Well, first of all, we all know Dave has been on his vision quest. Right. You know, it's so weird.

[00:06:25] It's like you and I are busy doing our jobs and living the family life. So we check in with Dave every now and then, but Dave is living the AT second to second to second. So like one second, he's down in the south to me like, oh yeah, he's down in Georgia somewhere eating lard or whatever. And then the next second, he's in my backyard. Like what? How'd that happen? Yeah, I know. It's amazing. So yeah, Dave reached out and was hitting us up to see if we could do some car spotting and some hikes with him.

[00:06:54] And Nick opted to go do, what was it, Cube today? I think smarts and Cube. Yeah. I don't know. He must've met them. I think I'm assuming Liz and him have some kind of a car spot going on. So one of them must've met at Dartmouth ski or they must've met at 25A and then drove down to Dartmouth ski way or something like that to slack pack him. Yeah, that's fantastic. Fantastic. So yeah, there's someone filling in the gap. Oh, Nick's getting his apostle points, of course, from Dave. So yeah. Right.

[00:07:24] Yeah. So Nick is out there with Dave. So, and then I got to figure out like this weekend, I don't know if he, cause it sounds like, and I didn't consider this, but Dave's strategy, it sounds like is to get as much like slack packing or people to meet him in the beginning of the day and then hike to the end of the day. But once he gets into, I think at some point this, he's going to be, um, into Franconia Ridge. And then from there, like, there's no, he's not going to do that whole section in one day. Yeah.

[00:08:21] Yeah. I don't know about next, late next week. Yeah. Maybe actually, because then that would be like 10 days, right? I'm thinking like maybe 12 days he'll get to Maine. If he's doing what? Seven miles a day on average or shooting for that? Something like that. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I really hope, I'm kind of hoping that he hits, um, a tide in around that October 3rd day where I have that parking pass. Is that his rough estimate? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:08:50] I mean, that was my, my estimate, but we'll, we'll see. And I think Paul Lamar also put in that, that contest about like when people, people bet on when he'll finish. Oh, if you're putting down wagers. Right. It was a fundraiser for Alzheimer's. So. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. That's super cool. Well, anyway, all right, well, we're going to interview you, Stomp. We'll get more details, but let me do my intro. Do you remember how we used to do this? Yeah. Yeah. I was looking for the music minute. Where'd that go? Because I actually have a legitimate 60 second music minute.

[00:09:20] Oh, do you want to put it, if you want to put in a music minute, we had one, but we didn't get to it last episode. And then Nick, I just, I didn't include it, but if you want to do a music minute, I'll add it in here. Yeah. It'll literally be 60 seconds. I'm going to put it like right by the pop culture. Music minute. That's false advertising this music minute thing. It takes like 20 minutes. He's been good. I would say like, I would say like about 70%. He's a hit rate. Like I, sometimes he'll get an indie band or something. And I'm like, I don't know what this one, Nick.

[00:09:51] Oh boy. But honestly, like if I was in charge of doing the music minute, I would definitely throw up some stinkers. And I mean, I like country music and Jake, Jake just rolls his eyes at my music. That's funny. Anyway. All right. So Stomp has a music minute. So welcome to episode 242 of the Sounds Like a Search and Rescue podcast. This is the episode where Stomp is back. Nick is out hiking with our friend Dave on the AT. So Stomp is going to be the co-host. So we'll catch up with all things Stomp.

[00:10:19] And he is also going to share some recent updates. He pulled a little segment for us about virtual hiking technology, which I think this is super cool, Stomp. I was looking at some of the links that you put in there. Yeah, it's neat. Yeah. I mean, we touched upon it years ago, but I think it's come a long way. I feel like as we get older too, like this, we may need this. I hate to say it. You can't get another hip replacement. I know. Honestly, that was one of my motivations. Like someday I won't be able to do this. And what are my options when I get there? Exactly. Exactly.

[00:10:48] So anyway, we'll get into virtual hiking. And then we've got a segment with Chris and Joe from Project Insul Nation. So anybody that's affected by type 1 diabetes, I have this all over my family, unfortunately. And it's definitely something you can live with and manage. And so our friends Chris and Joe from Project Insul Nation, this is an organization that creates life-changing, community-driven adventures designed to inspire bold living, build connections, and prove that nothing is off limits with the right support for adults with type 1 diabetes.

[00:11:17] So Chris and Joe, they're avid hikers, outdoor adventurers. They're going to be here to share their stories about growing up with type 1 diabetes. And they're going to share some resources and options for any listeners that might be interested in learning more about their organization. Very interesting discussion stomp with these guys about how they manage everything to do with type 1 diabetes when they're out on the trail. And then some of the things around what you can do in the field if you have issues with low blood sugar and stuff like that.

[00:11:47] And I'm sure you guys probably deal with that in search and rescue from time to time. Yeah, quite a bit, actually. Yeah, it's one of the things we try to screen for, you know. Yeah, so that's it. And then we've got some recent rescue stomp right up your alley. We've got a rescue on the link, which is a terrible trail to have to deal with. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And then we've got a rescue on Mount Adams. The Drain Knob crew helped out there.

[00:12:13] And then we had a long twinway carryout that happened. So all this plus, if we have time, I was going to throw out a little recap about swimming holes, waterfalls, and kids' hikes and find out a little bit of what your Pemi floats too, stomp. But we'll see if we get to it. So I'm Mike. And I'm stomp. Let's get started. Let's get started.

[00:12:46] Let's get started. Yay. And there was much rejoicing. Is that what you used to say? Yeah. Yay. So what is our first topic on the script, stomp? Well, first of all, I know you love feedback. And this one was actually positive. So it's a five out of five. Okay. Came in through the Apple reviews. And this is by a listener, John. And he writes, best podcast on the planet. Five out of five. Hello.

[00:13:15] I recently found your podcast a few months ago. I wish I had found it earlier. I've listened to a lot of hiking podcasts. This one takes the cake. Excellent advice, topics, and guests. I'm trying to play catch up. I'm on episode 75. I believe when you guys first went live at Reckless Brewery. Wow. That is way back. Way back. I did jump ahead to hear a few new ones. I heard about some. I'm not on the show as much. Sad. Anyway, I would love to meet you guys sometime on the trail or brewery.

[00:13:45] I know a few of the guests you guys had on. I could tell stories. Anyway, sorry for the long rant. Well done on this podcast and keep it going. Oh, get out there and crush some peaks. Take care, John. That's right. That's nice. Remember that crush some peaks? That was like our original catch line before we had the podcast. We were always crushing peaks. Nice. Yeah, yeah. That was Jimmy Chaga's brainchild, actually. He was actually pushing for shirts and he had it rolling.

[00:14:13] Yeah, I think that's got potential. Yeah. I sure am. Speaking of live events, I think we should just mention two seconds. The Full Conditions has a date. Oh, great. Yeah, so the details are like totally in the works right now, but it's set for the annual Full Conditions event with Reckless Brewery is set for, what is the date? Let me see if I can find it. Why can't I find it? I swear to God somebody. Oh, there it is.

[00:14:42] November, Saturday, November 21st at Reckless. So, you know, put a saver for that date and details will be coming. Perfect. Yeah, that's right around the time of live event. So it sounds like that's probably the weekend before Thanksgiving, right? Yeah, I believe so. Yeah. But it will be at the Bethlehem Colonial again. Oh, perfect. Yeah. They killed it last year and they were hoping to have an even bigger splash this year. So it should be really a great time. Awesome.

[00:15:11] We got to put together a plan, Stomp. Yeah, we sure do. I have faith. You always come up with it. You and Todd will come up with it. We need some riveting guests. We do. We do. We'll work it out. All right, Stomp. Well, let's talk about you a little bit. So you talked a little bit about this. So the hip update, would you say you're fully recovered? Looking back at it now, there's enough time since I think you went under the knife in April. How does this compare to the prior hip replacement?

[00:15:40] So for listeners, Stomp has two hip replacements and just recovered from the second one. My recollection with the first one was like you recovered very quickly, but then the issues were that the old hip was basically acting up right away. And then the risk is that if you don't address that, then your gait and everything about the new hip could be impacted. So now you have two new hips, right? It's funny you mention that because that's what happened with this one.

[00:16:08] So I had the right one done, geez, like four, four years ago at least by now. Left one was doing good after arthroscopic, but snowmobiling, I tore, in my opinion, I think I tore a labrum, which is a cartilage in the hip. And that's when it just went right downhill. So the surgery was April 27th. So it's been like three months or so.

[00:16:33] Today, honestly, today is the turnaround day for me where I really feel like I'm back, even sort of a little bit better than where I was back two years ago when everything was good before the labral tear. The only kinks I have, like my left lower back gets tight every now and then because you got to think like I was out for eight months literally doing nothing. And my SI joint and my knee was compensating. They were compensating for the lack of motion. So that the last three weeks, that's been what's stopping me.

[00:17:02] So I, you know, I would do Welch Dickey and just bind up and lay on the couch. But the lower back thing is actually disappearing. My hypothesis was if I get stronger in the hip, stronger in the legs, all that stuff will work out and it seems to be going that direction, which is great. Yeah, not carrying as much weight as well. So all things are working in your favor. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, today I was out with like a 30-pound pack, you know, back to regular weight. I was out with PEMI training. We did some bushwhacking up around Bald Mountain, which I'll tell you about that.

[00:17:32] You're going to be shocked. Bald is actually pretty wild for bushwhacking. But yeah, I'm getting back into it. Yeah, man, Bald is wild. Yeah, I can mention it now. It's like we had a Cal Topo training. So we all went out. We had the app on our phone and we had to put in two waypoints. They were all locations surrounding the cone of Bald Mountain. And we were out maybe like a half mile, maybe three-tenths of a mile, a half mile.

[00:18:01] And at points, it reminded me of the captain. I'm not kidding. So the southern side and the southwestern side of Bald Mountain is some of the most rugged terrain you'll ever see. It's amazing. So it was shocking. For the listeners, when you say Bald Mountain, because I know there's a few of them, but you're talking about Bald Mountain, Artist Bluff, below Kinsman's, Kiana, and that area there. Yeah. The one that's on the 52 with a view. 100%.

[00:18:29] So that's the big foliage spot for the fall. Yes. So that little teeny-weeny loop, what is it like? I don't know, 100 feet high or something, 200 feet high. Right. The surrounding terrain is just absolutely amazing. Wow. I guess that makes sense because it's just like no one's really, there's nothing out there. There's no trail system right there. Yeah. There's a lot of like climbing boulders. You can tell some climbers are sneaking in there doing some stuff.

[00:18:54] But there were points where we were coming down and we would get bottled up with like a 40, 50-foot cliff drop. And like, what the hell is this? It was amazing. So that was fun. I don't know if you've played around with Cal Topo, but that is an amazing app. I haven't. Like you send over, so that's where you, when you send over LiDAR stuff, is that what you're using? I do. Or is that a different app? So the app itself has multiple layers that you can add onto it.

[00:19:20] And then you can just adjust the luminosity of it or transparency of it. And that's just my preferred setting. It makes it more like a LiDAR type of look. But the free app is great. You can put in waypoints. You can track. And the team, Fish and Game, Search and Rescue in general in New Hampshire now is using that along with Fish and Game for their missions. So they're still using the handheld Garmins, but everybody is just holding their damn phone. And that's actually a problem.

[00:19:50] It's like you're holding your phone, bushwhacking through the woods. Right. It's a pain in the neck. So I've been doing some research about like cases and whatnot for the phones for the winter because that'll be a problem. You can't just walk with your phone in your hand, you know, going to a patient somewhere up at 5,000 feet. Your phone's going to die in a second. So anyway, beside that, it's a great, great app. So with Cal Topo, I haven't looked into this. I will look into this. But in theory, like I have Gaia.

[00:20:18] Like could I in theory like purchase Cal Topo layer to drop into my Gaia or does it have to be a separate? I'm not quite sure about that. I'm not sure about interchangeability. Do some research on it. Yeah. I mean, you're importing traditional maps, you know, whether it's Forest Service maps. So I'm sure they're the same. It's the same data. Okay. Yeah. That's awesome. So you've been doing bushwhacking. Do you and Dave, when Dave gets, obviously Dave's going to have to adjust back to civilian life, but when he gets back, do you have like a white whale?

[00:20:47] Do you know that saying? Like the white whale, like a target? Like what are some of the targets that you guys have? Yeah. So the big one is the Lost Pass. So we'll try number three and we'll take that from the Iron, what is it? The Iron Mountain Shelter or no, Flat Mountain. Flat Mountain Shelter? Flat Iron, flat, something like that. Flat Iron Pond. Yeah. Yeah. So we tried twice. We tried together once and then Nobby joined us a second time, both winter attempts.

[00:21:17] It's just this little beaver pond nestled in between Squam and Waterville Valley and you get this view of the Tri-Pyramids and you can approach it from Waterville, from Snow's Mountain or from the Flat Mountain. Sorry, I'm dropping that one. But Lost Pass 3 is probably the top of the bucket list. So this is the one that basically goes from Waterville up a drainage and it goes to Whiteface? You could.

[00:21:46] Yeah, exactly. Some of those old logging roads or trails that they talk about, it does connect somewhere up there. I'm not too familiar with where those start, but I think we were in the vicinity. But it's just really tough terrain. Things on your maps, on your phones do not show up. You know, there's these puds and just like dead ends, a lot of dead ends with brambles and just thick stuff. So that's about it, I think, you know? All right.

[00:22:14] Well, you guys will be scheming and scheming when he gets back. I'm guessing, I'm assuming he'll come back and then he's going to need a month or two to get settled or whatever. I don't know. And then winter will be here and you guys can get into it. Yeah, I have no idea. But the psychology, I mean, he's so into it right now. I hope he keeps it going because it's one of those things where I could imagine you just like hit the couch and drop it for a while. You might not come back. But he's just so into it now.

[00:22:39] I really appreciated his thoughtfulness and his conversation with us when we all joined him a few episodes back. That was a great listen. Yeah. It is a tough thing, I think, to just being life on the trail like that. And then you're dealing with all of us that have been just doing the normal nine to five. And it's going to be an interesting adjustment for him. We'll have to get his perspective. 100%. Yeah. Dedicating episode.

[00:23:08] What about the search and rescue stuff, Stomp? Well, it's been a busy summer, obviously. Like you basically staying home every weekend just like you get the – I know we've texted and you get the sixth sense where you're like, I know this is going to be a weekend. Like we talk about it all the time. We'll be like, oh boy, it's going to be rain. The last three weeks have been super busy. We're at the historical average. We're at like 22 to 25 missions or something like that. Yeah. Fall's coming, so it's going to be crazy. But the team's doing really great.

[00:23:36] I mean, we're expanding the core competencies at the base so there's more members that can do the belays. We're looking at avalanche awareness and this winter we're going into actual practical application. We're tackling river crossing. We're doing a lot of stuff and just really expanding the competence. And this team is great, man. I was thinking about it a lot today just like the difference between an occupation and a vocation.

[00:24:06] Vocation being something you're passionate about, deeper meaning, purpose. It's just so awesome being surrounded by like 120 people that are just absolutely hardcore, passionate. It's vocative for them. We're blessed to have the search and rescue community here in New Hampshire loaded with all these amazing people. So it just amazes me. It is unbelievable across like all the, you know, whatever, there's five or six volunteer organizations.

[00:24:35] And the idea that you've got like 100 plus people that are willing to just drop everything on a phone call and get out there. And obviously not everyone can make it. But like if you can rally 30, 40 people on a weekend and then probably a decent number midweek like this, it's huge. Oh, yeah. Even that link rescue the other night, there had to be like, I don't know, 30 plus people on that. But yeah, imagine 30 people squeezing in the link of a side hill nightmare. What a, oh.

[00:25:05] Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, well, that's all good stuff. So, and then you talked about your health and workouts. So anything else, anything else I'm supposed to, oh, Mount Washington Road Race and Jigger Johnson. Are you DJing for those? Well, I did the Mount Washington Road Race and I don't know if you heard, but it's completely different. I did hear about this. It was a ghost town.

[00:25:30] It was still a fantastic event, but they cut the numbers from what, like, was it like 1,200 last year or somewhere? I think it was 11 to 1,200, yeah. I think it was like 400. So you can imagine how that looked in the tent and everywhere else. It was really sparse. Yeah, I did the DJ thing. That was great and played up until the awards. So that was fun. But it's totally different.

[00:25:52] I think the people that decide everything that was happening up top decided that it was just a little rowdy with that many people up there. And it's just the facility can't handle it, especially if the weather's terrible. And the weather hasn't been great for the last couple of years. It's like that weekend has been the weekend where there's been fatalities because people have been, not because of the road race, but there's been associated fatalities in the presidentials because of that poor weather.

[00:26:20] So June is a risky period, unfortunately. It's just not reliable to assume that it's going to be safe up there. So I get it. Yeah, it was a good call. It kind of does suck. Like, it's the energy with the vault. I mean, I guess me and you can look back at it and say, well, the energy when we did it was great and will last it. But safety is always going to come first. Yeah. Well, the energy was there, but it was just a different vibe. And they didn't have the Hart's Turkey stuff.

[00:26:48] There was just like these random people just on grills cooking up hot dogs and hamburgers. Maybe it's the economy. Who knows? But it was different. Times are changing. I still think that like they, that lower section by the auto road there, like by the pont, like the acoustics there, like they need to have like, Noah Kahn should be playing down there. You should do a DJ, like you should do an EDM like rave down there. Can you imagine how sick that would be? Yeah, it would be wild. They could do shows there for sure.

[00:27:18] That's a huge venue. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I could see that. Maybe the powers of being listening. So. What would be your pick for an artist? There's like, if you could pick an artist and it would have to be somebody that like, obviously you're not going to get Noah Kahn because he's selling out Fenway and like stadiums. But like, what's a realistic group that you think you could get there that would be huge? Considering like conservation and just the aesthetic of the area and the, you know, trying to maintain it.

[00:27:45] I think it would have to be somebody like some old schooler, like James Taylor or something to start off with just to break the ice. You know what I mean? Just break the ice and then you can bring in some others and see how it responds. Yeah. That's a perfect, perfect place. Oh my God. Carly Simon and James Taylor. It could be the Tangwood of New Hampshire. Yes. I like that. That's a good pick. Awesome. And then any other DJ gigs coming up for you?

[00:28:12] Oh, well, tomorrow when people hear this Saturday, they'll be at the Waterville Jigar Johnson. So that's Saturday from 11 to four and then Sunday eight to one. So that's the ultra race that they do. So it's all weekend. I think it starts Friday. Yeah. Weather looks good. I think Nick's doing a section of that too. Really? Or maybe it's his cousin. I can't remember. He has some connection there. Yeah. I get to try out my new in-ear monitors. See, have you noticed?

[00:28:41] Oh yeah, you got those. Yeah, I'm trying them out. So you have these in-ear monitors. Those are, instead of headphones, you just wear those. They look like earbuds, but they isolate everything outside. So you get a really clear sound without the volume. I like them. They're pretty cool. It works great for this, but I love taking my headphones off when I'm listening to the music just so I can hear the noise and the loudness. But I'm going to give them a shot this weekend, see how they go. Okay. Yeah. All right. Well, check it out.

[00:29:10] If you're in the Jigger Johnson thing, Stomp will be there. And then, yeah. Well, I'm sure I'll have some more questions I'll just throw randomly. But that was the Stomp catch-up. Yeah. Anything else I should ask you? Mrs. Stomp is doing good. She's doing all right. Mrs. Stomp. Oh, what about Cats? Cats too? Cats are fine. Yeah. Executive producer's doing good. She's a little annoying, but Daphne's fine. Zyla's good. Yeah, it's good. What about Pemi floats? What's the Pemi float count so far this year?

[00:29:39] Honestly, I think we've gone once. We just did once. Yeah. But it was good. The water was high after like a two-inch rainfall. Got to go with one of my daughters and a friend of ours from the woodpecker's days. Really? Yeah. Kate. I don't know if you know Kate. I don't know. I don't know if I know that. But I'm sure if I met her, I'd probably know her. But Caroline and Devin, my daughter and her boyfriend, they drove past Socklebound on Sunday going into,

[00:30:08] they were going to the Met to get coffee in North Conway. Yeah. And they sent a picture and it was absolutely, like I was thinking, when she sent that to me, I was thinking, like, I was like, there's no, the crowds in the, on the, on the Ammanusic side where Stomp floats, or the Pemi side where Stomp floats are way easier than what you deal with in the Socko. It's better. The way it rolls here, you have to get to the lots by 11 or you won't get a parking spot. It is still pretty popular. Yep.

[00:30:38] So we start right here at exit 28, just past the Campton Fire Station, and then go down to the Covered River. That's three miles. Takes about three hours if you stop for. It's perfect. Yeah. It's great. You can also do, like, Woodstock. There's that, there's a bridge in a road called Death Valley Road. You put in there and you can get out at the Thornton Police Station, which is great early season, but right now you'd be dragging your tube. It's too low, yeah. It's too low.

[00:31:08] And, and to be honest with you, the Pemi's getting to that point now too. So there'd probably be like four or five sections out of that three miles that you'd be dragging or popping your tube. It's, it's low. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is the time of the year. I feel like when we went, the couple of times we went, like there was a couple of sections where you could drag a little bit, but not too bad. So. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. All right. We'll talk a little bit about that if we, if we have time, but Stomp,

[00:31:35] just, I got a couple of local New Hampshire news articles here. So this is a main, a main lifeguard was pulled underwater by a white shark. So it's doing some research on this and I feel like we've talked about this before, but you know what he was doing was he was, it doesn't, the article doesn't give details on why he was doing it. But do you know those safety buoys? They call them like a, um, uh, uh, um, float or, uh, they call them a rescue torpedo. Huh?

[00:32:03] And he was, he was using the rescue torpedo. So these are like, I think if people seen these, if you see like the, uh, triathlon swimmers, they'll, they'll pull these little orange buoys that look like, um, just like they look like a torpedo. They wrap around your waist. Yeah. They can wrap around your waist or like life, lifeguards will use them for rescues and they can drag behind you and they have a rope and then they can use them to have the victim hold onto them or they can hold, they're very like powerful foam.

[00:32:30] And I guess what happened on this one, it was the lifeguard was using that torpedo. He was out in the water somehow and a white shark attacked it and actually dragged the lifeguard underwater, um, with attached to the torpedo. Luckily, like, um, I guess they said that it was, uh, some juvenile white sharks. So six to eight feet long, they were spotted near the, uh, Pine Point beach, which is, um, in Scarborough, Maine.

[00:33:00] So yeah, it's a little bit scary. Uh, so following the incident, the public safety team in the area reminded beach goers to use caution and they shut the beach down for a while. The monitor, I guess it's back open at this point, but that's kind of scary, huh? Oh, that's terrifying. Yeah. I'd be really hesitant to go in the water too deep this time of the year, especially with the heat that we've had. Yeah. I was trying to do a little bit of research to understand, like, it's pretty basic.

[00:33:27] Like essentially what has happened with, with Cape Cod and the, the sea coast in the main region is that the, the sail population has recovered and rebounded so significantly in the last 20 years that it's pulled all the white sharks up into the Cape Cod area. And, uh, researchers seem to think they're like, yeah, they have kind of always been here. Part of it is they're better at monitoring and tracking these. And part of it is though, that the, the population has gotten denser.

[00:33:56] So it's not, it's not that white sharks were never in the area, but with the seal population growing, as it's a gray seal population, which rebounded in the 2010s and by the late 2010s, that's when, you know, the, the, the shark population in the Cape basically made swimming down the Cape. Like those beaches were constantly being closed. And there was a fatal attack in Maine, um, I guess a year or two ago.

[00:34:25] Um, I mean, they're still pretty rare. Very rare. Yeah. So, uh, but yeah, it was 2020, a white shark killed a swimmer off of Bailey Island, which was the first recorded fatal shark attack, um, in Maine's history. And, uh, that after that, they, they have a, they put in a dedicated coastal white shark monitoring program and, uh, they attacked 93 individual white sharks, uh, by the end of 2024.

[00:34:53] So, and they also, they said they averaged 28 individual sharks across 60 days of monitoring in August and September in 2024. Yeah. Wow. So they're in there. They're in the water for sure. Yeah. I opened up the report from Scarborough, Maine after this, and they give you practical tips to avoid getting in trouble. And the first one in here, don't go in the water. Well, this, no, this is even better.

[00:35:18] Beach goers are encouraged to, and this is the very first one that says it's perfect. Pay close attention to lifeguards. If they're going under, don't go in. Exactly. So just pay attention to them. Yeah. If you don't see them, get out. No, I know you were a surfer in your younger days and, uh, would you be hesitant to go in and surf at this point? Yeah. Yeah, I would. Yeah. My risk tolerance is so low. Yeah. Give me the fall. Give me the hurricane season.

[00:35:49] Yeah. When it's a lot cooler, the waves can be good. And when the storms come rolling in. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not a big, like I go in the ocean when I go in the Caribbean, which I feel like you're just as likely to get killed by something in the Caribbean, but at least in the Caribbean, you can see the water, something going at you in the water a little bit ahead of time. Like the New England, the water is just ink. Yeah. What's up there? Yeah. Oh my God. Well, good for that. I guess good for that lifeguard for not getting eaten. Yeah. That's a close one. Wow. All right, Tom.

[00:36:18] So next up, we've got a rescue on the link. So for listeners, if you're not familiar with this, the link is Mount Jefferson. It's Mount Jefferson. So it's basically the link connects from the, it's actually a super long trail. I think it connects from Caps Ridge Trail and then circles all the way across to close to Appalachia, I believe.

[00:36:40] So it basically goes kind of across the Castle Ravine, I guess. And then it comes down into Appalachia. So it's a, and it generally what it's known for is, and there's not a lot of trails in the whites like this stomp. I can't, I can think of a few. There's like the Cornish, there's the Parapet Trail, but there's not a lot of those trails that are sort of at the contour. They go along the contour line at elevation.

[00:37:09] So I think the link goes, it may be at like, I don't know, 3,500 or 3,200 feet contour line right on the, the, the Northern shoulder of Mount Jefferson, or I guess it's maybe the Western, Northwestern shoulder of Mount Jefferson. So it's kind of a, it's known as a nightmare trail because it's all side hill and rocky, right? Yeah. It's like, it's 3,900, but it's nice in the sense that it does bypass the, uh, the scrambles

[00:37:38] on caps, but it takes you to a whole different direction here. But you're right. It's so it's side slopes. If you're, if you're heading North, your left foot's going to be a little lower than the right. And I just, yeah. Yeah. Parapet, uh, surrounds Madison. Is that right? Um, yeah. Parapet, uh, surrounds Madison. And then I was trying to think of this other shows. There's the cornice, which is higher up on Mount Jefferson.

[00:38:04] That's at like, I think the cornice is at like 5,000 feet and it's a little bit shorter, but that's another side hill trail. And then I can't think I was looking around, stop to see if I could find any other like similar side hill trails like that. And, uh, I couldn't really find, I mean, I guess there's Gulf side, but that's not really a side hill. That's more on the top. So I'm sure there's others I'm not thinking of, but it's those side hill trails that are

[00:38:30] below the summits are typically like they're good in theory because you can bypass the summit, but they're typically not much faster because you're dealing with rocks. They don't usually, they're not maintained as well. I know the link was infamous for not being maintained. I do know they cleaned it up, but yeah, not a great place for rescue. Did you mention buttress off of star lake? So instead of going up to Adams, you take a left into the great Gulf. Buttress is very similar. Yeah. I haven't been on that one, but, uh, okay. It's brutal. Yeah.

[00:39:00] There's definitely a few, but I guess with this one here, so this was on Sunday. So we're recording this on a Tuesday. So this was two days ago. This was, um, a 65 year old from South Portland, Maine slipped and fell from a rock while traversing the link. I'm always curious about like why they ended up on the link. Like it's maybe the only people I know that do the link is like a red liner, but I don't know. That's true. Yeah. That's a good point. 65 year old. 65 year old. She was hiking with her daughter and, uh, she had the fall on the, the North, they say the North side of Mount Jefferson.

[00:39:30] And as a result of the fall, she was left unable to walk. So her daughter called 911 for help following the accident. I think cell connection is pretty good over there. Um, shortly before 7 PM fishing game and conservation officers were notified of the incident. The hiker was located about 1.6 miles from the Caps Ridge Trillhead. So that would put her maybe, uh, so the way that this works is you go up, you go Caps Ridge, which is Jefferson Notch Road from base road.

[00:39:56] So like you go into the cog and then you take that dirt road up to Caps Ridge, park in that parking lot. And then it's probably stopped maybe like a mile to get up to that first little viewpoint. And then you take the left to get on the link. So she's probably about six tenths of a mile down the link. Right. Um, or so, so, which is not a great spot to be in. So, uh, fishing game gets, gets on at around seven and then, uh, they had to activate Andrew

[00:40:24] Scoggin Valley search and rescue and Pemi Valley search and rescue team along with, um, the fishing game conservation officers. So by about 940, yeah, cause it's a, it's a Sunday night too. So, oh, that must be brutal for the CEOs because they're working all weekend and then they get that call on Sunday night. Yeah. This hats off to the CEOs. Um, seriously, I don't know.

[00:40:47] I, I, I got to spend the overnight at command for that, uh, Lafayette hypothermic mission. So I don't know. It's a toss up in my mind. Like, would I rather be in the car trying to stay, stay awake or be on trail? I know. Those guys, like they do, I think they do like 48 hour stints where they're on, they're on and then they're off. I can't even imagine there. And like, there was stuff coming in all the time.

[00:41:16] Like people getting stuck on islands on the Connecticut and just, it's amazing. It's crazy stuff. Yeah. Non-stop. It's crazy. But, uh, but anyway, it took them like, so the 630, the call came in seven o'clock fishing game gets on by nine 40, they ended up, they got 34 volunteers across, um, Andrew Scoggin Valley search and rescue and Pemi Valley search and rescue. And they got three conservation officers, 37 people carrying, um, her back to Caps Ridge trailhead.

[00:41:45] So, um, uh, so it took them three hours or four hours to get back. So, um, and I was at 1 47 AM in the morning of August 10th, the rescue crew arrived safely, um, with her at Caps Ridge trailhead. Uh, victim was evaluated and subsequently taken to Twin, uh, taken by Twin Mountain Ambulance to Littleton Regional Hospital for treatment. So, um, I don't know what happened on this one.

[00:42:13] I don't know what her condition was, but, um, that's just a tough, narrow side hill, rocky trail to navigate. So I can imagine that they, these guys had a nightmare of a time getting the litter down that trail. Yeah. That whole area is like the moon. I mean, Jefferson is, it's the moon. You might as well be up there. Right. Yeah. It's so rough and coarse, but the good news is they were able to use the wheel, which is great. You know, the wheel helps out a lot just to take the burden off of the carriers. Yeah, no, that's perfect.

[00:42:43] And then, um, just sticking in that same area stomp, there was another rescue on, um, like three days before there on Thursday, August 6th. This one's interesting. It was on the Gray Knob Trail, basically Mount Adams, um, by the perch, uh, which is one of the, uh, RMC, um, shelters. So this happened on August 6th. Conservation officers along with same, same setup, Andrew Scoggin Valley Search and Rescue

[00:43:10] and Pemi Valley Search and Rescue carried out an injured hiker from Gray Knob. So this was a 75 year old hiker from Vermont that had suffered a lower leg injury the previous night while descending the Gray Knob Trail. Listen to this one for a 75 year old hiker stomp. She was, she was hiking. Let me just see here. She hiked up the castle trail to Israel Ridge and her plan was to stay at the perch lean to.

[00:43:38] That's a, dude, that's a, that's a ball breaking hike. Oh yeah. A 75 year old. That's legit. Yeah, absolutely. So I guess she, I guess she got to the perch where she wanted to spend the night, ended up finding it full. So the perch stomp, have you, have you been to the perch? I have not. Nope. So. Have you? It's a, yeah, I have. It's, it's, I didn't stay there, but I've been over there a few times. It's, it's a lean to, and then I don't know how many tent platform, they might have five or six, but after that there's nothing.

[00:44:07] So if you're a crowd, so it must've been like a Boy Scout troop or a larger group or something that took it over. But anyway, she apparently, she found that it was full. So she was going to hike down to Gray Knob and then she ended up getting injured. So the Gray Knob caretaker came upon her shortly after the injury. He got a litter, grabbed a few other people to help carry her down to the cabin. So she spent the night there. And then the next day they got a rescue going.

[00:44:36] So they had over 20 volunteer rescuers and conservation officers hiking up at like three miles to get to Gray Knob. And then they secured her in a litter and then carried her down Lowe's path. And then they got to the road around 120. So that's kind of nice. They could like time it out. There was no big rush there. They could just get the crew. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the age doesn't throw me off. There's so many people out there of so many ages, even older, just crushing it. It's incredible. Right. You never know. I mean.

[00:45:06] We're no spring chicken stomp. We got to start dismissing anybody that makes fun of people in their seventies. We're going to be there soon. Yeah. Either that or virtual hiking. Yeah. We'll get to that in a minute. So that's pretty good. But I guess that's the warning though, Stomp is like, I don't love those. It stresses me out with the idea of like getting to a cabin or getting to a tent platform and being like, oh no, you're, you're, you can't stay here because you're too late.

[00:45:36] Out of luck. Yeah. That's tough. Well, that should be in your plan B. I mean, that should be a factor before you even put your boots on that you should consider. I think that's, I mean, this is a Thursday night. I guess you could probably, oh, Thursday afternoon, you could probably say like, oh, you probably, your odds are better, but maybe not. But I think that's one of the, one of the pluses on having a hammock. Then you've got all the flexibility in the world. Can you throw one up there at that elevation though? I mean, there's nothing up there. Just that low scrub.

[00:46:05] The perch is okay. Really? I think the perch is in the trees a little bit. But the only thing I don't know is like the rules say that you cannot camp on hard ground, but I'm assuming that there's nothing against just setting up a hammock right next to the tent platforms. Yeah. I suppose. Yeah. Either that or 200 feet off trail. Yeah. Yeah. So, but yeah, you're right. Like above treeline that the hammock's no good. Next one here, the Diana's Bath. There was a carrier.

[00:46:34] I don't know if I'm going to get into the details here because it was just a tourist, but I guess I did want to ask you, Storm, for litter options. And you talked about this, like this is the single wheel that you could use. I'm assuming for this one, like with the Diana's Bath, it's probably almost always like Bartlett or North Conway Fire Department. They're not sending conservation officers out there. I would assume so. I mean, they're probably involved. Do you guys ever look at like, yeah, do you look at wheelchairs? Like, is there a wheelchair option that you guys have?

[00:47:00] Not for our team in particular, because that's really not our forte, but I'm sure there are cases where that could plausibly come into play. I mean, think about like over at Cardigan Mountain, the AMC over there, they have an accessible paved path. So I could envision something like that if they're not already in a wheelchair being utilized. But I've never seen one, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:47:28] I do wonder if we're going to get like one of those wheelchairs with a tread on it that you could operate like on terrain like Diana's Bath. Huh. I mean, is it mostly paved or is it just sort of flat granite? It's well graded. Well graded, I think. And then this next one here, this was an interesting one. So there was a rescue of an injured hiker off of the Twinway. And the thing I don't know about this one is so this was on Wednesday, August 5th. This happened at 4.10 p.m.

[00:47:55] And this was a, let me see here, 73-year-old from Newark, New Jersey. She was doing a backpacking trip. She's on day two of a three-day hike. And she had an injury. I guess she was descending the Twinway Trail about a mile and a half above the New Zealand hut when she had fallen and suffered an injury preventing her from walking. She was with a hiking partner.

[00:48:22] So the hiking partner smartly left to go down to Zealand hut to get help. The AMC crew members from the Zealand hut hiked up, located the injured party, and were able to assess her condition and confirm a carryout would be required. So that's when they called conservation officers and Pemi Valley Search and Rescue Team, got organized and hiked in. This is an interesting statement. It says they hiked in three and a half miles up the trail to the injured hiker.

[00:48:50] I'm wondering if they were using ATVs to get them. I'm assuming they came down Gale River and maybe they used ATVs to get people up a little bit further because I think that's a long, I think at minimum the Twinway is like five miles. And then even Zealand hut is like a little over four miles. So maybe they're just doing the math on assuming that they were able to use an ATV or something a little ways up. I personally didn't make this one. I was watching it from afar, but I'm pretty sure they went to the end of Zealand and hiked in.

[00:49:21] The rescuers anyway. Yeah. So you save a little bit of distance there. Yeah. I'm not too, well, getting up to the end point, sure. But the rest of it was trail. You're familiar with like the bog ponds and the bridges and all that. Right. Yeah. Really gentle. Yeah. But it's still a long way to carry somebody out. So I guess they got on it at like 745 and then, oh no, I guess they got to her at 745

[00:49:48] and then she was able to get back to the trailhead by 1030 or so. So not too bad of a carry out. So she's, I guess she ended up going to Littleton Regional Hospital for further injury. So it is what it is. Typical, typical stuff you'll see stop in the White Mountains or rescues. Yeah. I'm trying to think if there are any other like snowmobile trails. They're scattered everywhere and you can get an ATV over those, but I'm not aware of any that would be helpful in that situation.

[00:50:18] Yeah. And the last one here. So we usually do these at the end, but I figured we'd get to them now just because they're kind of interesting. But this last one, I don't think we covered this one in the last show, but there was a 39 year old Massachusetts woman that was staying at Dolly Cop Campground on Saturday, Sunday or Saturday, August 1st. And then I guess somebody had reported her missing. So I don't know if she had a situation at the campground or whatever, but she had been

[00:50:48] missing, I think for 27 hours total. So she was then located, I guess, on a power line in the vicinity of a series of mountain bike trails. And they came upon her lying on her side in the access road. So no other details about how she ended up in this situation. No life-threatening injuries or anything like that. But she was transported to Andrew Scoggin Valley Hospital.

[00:51:14] So I don't know, maybe she had some kind of a mental issue. Maybe there was some sort of substance issue. Maybe she was just on a vision quest stomp. I don't know what happened there. Yeah, it's a strange story. Yeah, anything could be going on there. But she made it quite a ways out. Yeah, maybe she just got lost and just figured I'm going to sit where I am and wait for someone to rescue me. She did the right thing. Well, she wasn't even sitting. She was laying down. Yeah, laying. Like, was she just giving up? I don't know.

[00:51:41] Did you, by the way, speaking of sitting stomp, have you seen the crew? We've all embraced the Helinox chairs. I know. What are these? They're like these little camp chairs that weigh like about a pound. And we all take them. Like Jake has one. Peter has one. A bunch of the guys have them. And we take them hiking now. And we set up the chairs on the summit. And we sit in comfort on the summit. That's amazing.

[00:52:10] It's our luxury item. Do they have like three legs, like a tripod? No, it's four legs. They're set up like, you know how tents have those tent poles that all come together and they have little like bungee inside of them to hold them together. It's like that. And then it's just a piece of material that goes over the frame. And it's a little camp chair. That's amazing. Yeah, I'll check it out. What's the name again? Heliox? Helinox. Yeah, I may buy you one stomp. We may just buy you one.

[00:52:39] Because you need one to sit down. Early Christmas. Yes. Yeah. All right. There's a couple things here. Stump. I think, did you pull these? This Google Maps blame for recent rescue? Yes. What is this? Oh my goodness. It's the craziest thing. So this rescue happened because this group of people planned their trip out, a 17-mile trip using Google Maps.

[00:53:07] But what happened was Google Maps severely underestimated the time, the duration, and the distance and whatnot. So where is this? This is out in... It was Canada, British Columbia. Canada. Yeah. 17.1 mile. Well, they were hiking the Howe Sound Crest Trail. Lions Bay Search and Rescue warned that Google Maps severely underestimates the hike, estimating

[00:53:31] it would take about five hours when it typically requires 12 to 14 hours. So, I mean, long story short, they were fine. They got rescued. But that is not the app to use to plan out your trip. Wow. 1,300 meters of elevation. So that's like... That's like... Let me see here. 3,000... That's 4,000 meters of climbing. 4,000 feet of climbing, yeah. Yeah. And Google chimed in too.

[00:53:58] A spokesperson said basically, walking navigation on Google Maps is designed for streets. So they're assuming like 20, 23 minute, 24 minute miles or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. So they encourage hikers to use trail maps and apps. Yeah. Well, live and learn. Oh, yeah. Well, they have a story to tell. Oh, yeah. Hell yeah. And then what is this next one that you found? I just thought it was interesting.

[00:54:25] An Oscar winning animator was rescued out in California at Paradise Valley. So apparently this guy is known for his work on a bunch of Disney animated movies like Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Little Mermaid. Firefighters receive reports. He was having a medical emergency on top of Mummy Mountain, which is near Tatum Boulevard in Paradise Valley. So he was a 72-year-old man, Glenn Keane, stuck on a ridge on top of a mountain, started

[00:54:54] feeling dizzy, couldn't make his way down. So, yeah. A little different variation for a rescue. Even Oscar winners get in trouble. Right. And he's a Nepo baby too. You know who his dad is? His dad is... So this guy is 72 years old, so his dad must have been really old. But do you remember that cartoon? We're aging ourselves still. Probably a lot of listeners won't know this, but there's a cartoon on Sunday morning funnies, we used to call them. It was in the newspapers.

[00:55:20] There was one called Family Circus, which was in a circle, and it had like a little kid. And it wasn't a strip cartoon, it was like a one-picture cartoon called Family Circle, and they had like one thing of text, and it was always like some ironic, stupid thing that the kid was doing or whatever. But his father was the family circus guy. Okay. Wow. So, what an amazing fact. There you go. I'm sure he'll never live it down at the Oscar parties this year.

[00:55:50] Right, right. In non-hiking related Disney news stomp, this week the biggest news in the Disney fandom is that there's a Peter Pan stalker. There's a girl in Disneyland that apparently... I guess this is the thing here. It's like there's adult Disney fans that will go to the parks and stalk the character, the people that play the characters. Are you surprised? I mean, anything goes... Nothing surprises me with Disney adults. But this girl apparently has been stalking Peter...

[00:56:19] The people that play Peter Pan, she goes and stalks them and makes them do pictures and all this stuff. And there's a video montage of like the people that play Peter Pan are visibly uncomfortable with this girl. That's hilarious. And it's divided the fandom. Like some people are like, leave her alone. She's like, whatever. She's got her fixation. And then others are like, she shouldn't be allowed to make people feel uncomfortable. So I don't know. How old is this person? Do we know?

[00:56:47] She looks like she's probably in her late 20s, early 30s, I think. Sounds accurate. Yeah. So I don't know. Disney adult stomp. Well, she may have one of those passes that just like... I think she does, yeah. ...that to do everything. Yeah. She can go whenever she wants. Maybe they shouldn't sell those. Yeah. They have all kinds of funny deals here. Right. Disney day drinkers and like, oh, you name it. Exactly.

[00:57:17] A4 Slashers Air Review. This is the part of the show where we talk about gear stomp. All right. So Nick had put in a couple of things here. So he had used, when we went to Baxter State Park, he had used... We were talking about sleep pads. And we all came to the conclusion, like I use the Therm-a-Rest... I forget what it's called. It's X-Therm.

[00:57:47] X-Therm. And it's good because it's super light, but it's kind of crinkly and it's a... It's kind of narrow too. So we were all talking about like Peter was saying, Peter's a bigger guy. And Nick was saying, he was like, you know, my preference now is to get like a bigger sleep pad that's wider so that I don't have to worry about falling off of it. So he put in a plug for the Mega Mat sleeping pad. Which is by X-Ped.

[00:58:18] So, and it runs from like 259 to 279, depending on whether you get a long extra wide or... Looks nice. A medium wide. So yeah, it looks good. It looks good. So four inches thick. Is that accurate? It's pretty big. That's big. Yeah. Wow. That's deep. Right. I mean, that's what you need for the comfort. That's what he was saying.

[00:58:43] He's like, he just doesn't like falling off of the sleep pad anymore. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I use some winter one. I can't remember the brand, but it's definitely a winter. Super crinkly. Makes a lot of noise, but it's at least two and a half, three inches. Right. It's comfy. Yeah. So he enjoyed that. And then he also got the chance to use his REI Half Dome 210, which I think both of us have that, this 10 stop, right? I have it. Yeah, that's, I love it. I've had it for like a decade now. You use it forever. Yeah.

[00:59:13] Well, this is my second. So the first one got a little ratty. So I got a new one and I love it. It's great for one person. Easy to set up. Takes like five, 10 minutes to put it up and good to go. I feel like you and Mrs. Stomp have squeezed into that. Probably a million times. All right. Oh, did I tell you we camped out in the truck camper? It's a tent that you put in the bed of the Tacoma. It's amazing. You mentioned that before, but when did you get that? Yeah.

[00:59:44] So early this spring, we picked up, I forget the name of the brand. I'm forgetting all this stuff. We haven't used it since, but we went out to Tripoli Road and camped out Macbrook Road, which is that long spur. It's beautiful up there. So the truck bed tents are great. They just pop up in probably 10 minutes and you can get an air mattress that fits to the bed dimensions where the wheel well is. It's really great. It was super comfortable.

[01:00:13] Plenty of ventilation windows. It was a good time. And you feel a little more secure. It's a tent. 100% tent. It goes up. It rests on the top part of your bed with adjustable straps that hook under to your rocker panel and just the plastic underneath. It's great. Super cheap. Look at you guys. What is that called? Boondocking, right? I suppose. Yeah, we've been researching that. So we've done some research.

[01:00:41] There are tons of campsites around in New Hampshire and elsewhere. I mean, you could take it cross country and be fine. Hit the KOAs. Super cheap way to go. Yeah. Yeah, no, that's awesome. But I'll have to check that out. I'll just put a link to it in the show notes if you think about it. But the Half Dome tent, I will say to people that if you're looking for a... I have the Quarter Dome, which I use as a single person tent. I'm a smaller guy and it's lighter. The Half Dome is like...

[01:01:10] It's about four and a half, five pounds, I think, total. But it's good and it's roomy and it's easy to set up. And it can be set up basically anywhere. Really good for tent platform setup too. But good for two people. Good if you want to luxuriate and have plenty of room with one person. It works out well. So I'll recommend it. 329 Stomp is how much it goes for right now on REI. So I think that's pretty good. Yeah, that's about right. Yeah. So anyway, that's it.

[01:01:39] And then you have a couple of things here, Stomp. So a cold weather phone, cell phone case, which is something I think everybody should consider. But I don't know much about this one. Yeah, I started researching it after this Cal Topo thing. Like in the winter, this is not going to work holding your phone. So get some digging. There's plenty of those thermal cases that are just envelopes you slide your phone in. But I found this one by Hercher, H-E-R-C-H-R. It's a USB warming electric heated phone bag. Pretty cheap. It's like 16 bucks. But basically, it fits phones 5 inch to 7 inch.

[01:02:09] So it should take care of most people. It has a USB heated mobile phone charging thing that heats up the case itself. But the thing that got me the most was there's room enough for your phone. But behind it, you can actually stick a brick in there. And there's a front translucent screen so you can see what you're looking at if you're navigating with Gaia or Cal Topo or whatever. So check it out. Hercher USB cold-proof battery protection cell phone holder case. Super cool. Right. Yeah.

[01:02:38] So you can put your keys in there or whatever in the back of it, it looks like, too, to keep those warm if you want. Yeah. And it's not too big. I mean, it looks pretty manageable. It's definitely handheld. Yeah. I've been... No, this looks good. I'll put this in the show notes. I've been using those electric hand warmer, Stomp. I don't know how much this weighs, but they're not light. But they do work pretty well because they can generate heat almost immediately. But the battery life's, you know, I don't know, four hours maybe tops. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

[01:03:08] Which I think is okay. Yeah. Winter's coming. And then, Stomp, you pulled some... So we're calling this virtual hiking, but it's basically like in-home virtual reality placing the user into a hiking or outdoor experience. So we require equipment to put on like a mask or something like that. But I'm assuming you could also just play these games without the virtual reality if you want, right? Yeah.

[01:03:35] A few years back, there were a few different games that were out there and a few folks that were trying to put actual footage of hikes online that you could watch and whatnot. But now they're taking it a step further where it's with the goggles, the VR, virtual reality, and it's fully immersive. You know, 360, you're looking around and you're seeing the full thing. So this is, I think it's burgeoning for sure, and it's something to keep an eye on.

[01:04:03] There are a few companies that are working on this. Let me just list these off for you briefly. One company is Photogrammetry, and they provide 3D scan natural environments, highly immersive, limited walkable area. So you can tell it's sort of in its infancy, but there are some other companies.

[01:04:24] The second that I found was Brink Traveler, which works with the MetaQuest VR glasses, Steam glasses, Apple Vision Pro. And they're saying this stands out as the top-rated option focused on natural wonders. Check this out. It features dozens of meticulously captured locations, 58-plus environments reported in some updates, including the Italian Dolomites.

[01:04:50] Dolomites, let's see, Sequoia National Park, Antelope Canyon, Horseshoe Bend, Iceland sites, which you've probably been to. You should check this out. I've been to Horseshoe Bend. I've been to some of these Iceland sites as well. But yeah, this is super cool. I think where I would be interested in this is like as a research tool, stop, if I was going to the Dolomites, and I could basically do a virtual reality where I could scope out where I wanted to go, validate and say like, all right, yeah, this is definitely worth going. Oh, it's amazing.

[01:05:19] Yeah, it's so great. Other sites, Mount Whitney, Bryce Canyon. Moving on to another company, 360 VR180. It's a video hiking and it's more of a cinematic, quote unquote, you are there feel. And then the next company I found was Escape VR, and they also produce high resolution with spatial audio, which is amazing. Trail Video is optimized for Quest and Vision Pro VR glasses.

[01:05:46] And this covers places like Angels Landing. Can you imagine that? Angels Landing. That would be sick. Unbelievable. Zion Narrows, Swiss Alps, and places in Hawaii, including Maui and Oahu. Waterfall hikes and others. So it's pretty cool. And then you get into the really expensive zone here, and they have the full body treadmill experience, which is the latest thing. I've seen a few of these. You're staying on a treadmill, and it's multidirectional.

[01:06:14] And the treadmill adjusts according to where you trigger it to go. And the one company that I found offering this is Virtuix Omni Ones Trek Apps. Pairs real walking with immersive video of sites like Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, New York landmarks, Saudi Arabian historic spots. So very cool. That would be sick. Yeah, it's amazing. So the gear is the question, of course.

[01:06:43] We mentioned Meta. So Meta Quest 3 is the most affordable option, and it works on most practical platforms for most users. So this is like the goggles and the headset that you would use to actually use the software that you just talked about? Yeah, to tap into it. Yeah. So the graphics are solid, large app ecosystem, whatever the hell that is. And it's a reasonable price, I suppose.

[01:07:11] I did not add prices to this, but I'm sure listeners can dig in and check it out. And then, of course, there's the Apple Vision Pro. It offers higher visual fidelity for premium 8K, 16K, and VR 180 content. Other options include headsets, specialized systems, omnidirectional treadmill. It sounds amazing. So that's what I got for you. They actually trained it.

[01:07:40] The treadmill thing would be like a nice, if I retire and I have, if my kids don't make me completely broke by the time I retire, like that would be a nice setup to have like a luxury item to have like the treadmill virtual reality. And you'd be like, oh, I'm going to go virtually hike in Iceland today. Yeah, it's wild. They claim it's like true locomotion or ambulation. And you can burn up to 500 calories per hour in some apps. It's pretty cool.

[01:08:04] If you could get like a physical therapy stomp, like you could get a setup like this with physical therapy, get people more excited about wanting to actually get up and move. Yeah, that's what got me thinking about this over the last few weeks. Honestly, just thinking about patients and getting them engaged and just hyped up to come down to the gym and get moving. You know, we've in the past, like 10 years ago, maybe longer with they use the Wii.

[01:08:32] So the Wii was super popular and other various electronic means of engagement. But look where it's come. I think we'll see this in clinics at some point for sure. Yeah, yeah, it is. We'll keep an eye on it. I'm definitely going to do some more research about that treadmill option. I'm curious what the pricing is on it. You don't want to know. Send coffees, people. Honestly, I think when Steam came out with their first like Alex Half-Life game,

[01:09:00] it was probably $1,000 just to get your foot in the door. So I can imagine if you're talking about all this spatial stuff and treadmills and harnesses. I mean, it's probably a good chunk of change. Right. Wow. Okay. Wow. This is good stuff, Snob. So I'll put all the links to these products in the show notes for people to do their own research. And then, yeah, check it out and let us know if you're involved at all in any of this virtual reality stuff. I think it's very interesting. Yeah, it's super cool. Wave of the future.

[01:09:31] 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, Stomp. Now's the time, part of the show where we do a dad joke. So my daughter gave me a universal remote. This changes everything, Stomp. Get it? Get it? This changes everything?

[01:10:04] One of the best Christmas presents that you can give and receive. Tell me that one again. A broken drum is one of the best Christmas presents that you can give and receive. It's the best present because you can't beat it. Get it? Beat it like a drum? Yeah, you can't beat it. But normally we do a pop culture minute here, Stomp. I don't know. I didn't put anything in here.

[01:10:32] I haven't finished Game of, or not Game of Thrones, but the House of Dragons yet. So I haven't finished that. So don't give away spoilers. Anything good you've been watching? Yeah, well, we did finish that one. It's good. A little slow in the middle, but it was great. God, I just started watching something with Zendaya and Robert Pattinson called Drama. Just started it. So I'm going to go downstairs and finish it.

[01:11:02] It's actually really funny. Yeah, so not doing much. I've seen all the latest hoo-ha movies like Backrooms and Obsession. Obsession was pretty good. Have you seen that? I haven't seen that yet. I think it's on HBO. I need to watch it. Or maybe some Peacock. It's definitely worth it. That's a good one. Backrooms was like, meh. The first half was great. Second half just took a sharp left turn and made no sense. Like, all right, I'm done with this. But that's about it.

[01:11:31] Yeah, me and Mrs. Mike are watching a show called Sterling Point on Amazon. It's like a young adult coming of age type show, which is pretty good. And then I've mostly just been watching Tour de France this summer. So that's over. It just ended? It just ended around the 4th of July. So last month. Oh, right. The end of July. Starts at the 4th of July. Were you one of the World Cup fanatics, like watching all the soccer?

[01:11:59] You know, I was skeptical in the beginning, but it actually won me over. Like, I just thought, like, not so much the games. I did watch a bunch of the games. But just the, like, the stories of, like, how the Europeans embraced coming to the U.S. And how basically the Scots came in the Boston love affair and all that stuff. I thought it was really endearing. And I was very proud as an American that people got to experience the United States without the filter of,

[01:12:27] I guess I didn't really realize how bad our press was over in Europe. But it was nice to see people, like, giving, you know, setting aside all the noise in the media and just enjoying themselves and making connections. I thought that was really endearing. And I was proud to be an American. Yeah, it's fantastic. I was reading that the Scots aren't drying up all the bars. Yeah, they drank Boston out of beer, which is super impressive. Like, yeah. So, anyway.

[01:12:55] But, you know, I think it's been a great, and the energy of this summer has been great. Like, Fenway's been awesome. I've been going to Red Sox games and going to concerts. So, yeah. Tall ships? It's been a good summer. Tall ships. I didn't, yeah, the tall ships came in. I didn't experience those. My daughter, actually, she works on a sailing boat in Portsmouth. She's like a counselor at this place called the Gundalo. And they had a tall ship that came up to Portsmouth. And she was able to check it out and go down. It was beautiful.

[01:13:23] Now, aren't they making their way to Portsmouth, or is this just a one-off? I think that- Because the patient told me today that, like, the tall ships are coming to Portsmouth. I'm like, really? Well, maybe they're coming separately. I think this one was just a one-off visit from when they had come to Boston or something like that. But maybe they haven't come to Boston yet. I don't know. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah. I remember hanging out at, like, the end of Nahant, because there's no way I'm going to go to Boston to see that.

[01:13:50] So we would go to Nahant to the very end, and we could see them all. That was a long time ago. Yeah. I remember them coming before. I remember going in there before. But in Newburyport, we actually get some- We don't get the tall ships that often, but they do sometimes come in. But we get a lot of, like, big super yachts, like people that will come from Florida or whatever, and they park. So it's fun to look at those ships. Mm-hmm. That's great. Super cool. Anyway, stop. But all right. So we did the pop culture. This is the Music Minute.

[01:14:19] You wanted to do a Nick's Music Minute. So what do you have? This is it. I have 60 seconds. So today, for some reason, I had Michelle Mybel by The Beatles in my head. Oh, great song. All day long. You know why? Because at work, therapists will come walking into the gym, and the game is that they come in humming or singing like a terrible- That song's not terrible. But they purposely come in and just give you the worst song ever that gets stuck in your head.

[01:14:46] So I was doing Walt's Dickie, humming that damn song the whole time. Is that Michelle Mybel? That was pre-psychedelic. Well, that was Beatles. Yeah, that was- Oh, definitely. Like 69, 70, probably. Okay. All right. Yeah, that is- I don't hear that one that often. I'm going to have to pull that one up. So Michelle Mybel. I think it's karma. Because when I was a kid, I used to play flute, and there was a period, that was like

[01:15:15] elementary school, and I was practicing that for hours on the back deck, and neighbors are getting sort of annoyed by it. It's karma. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, that's a- So this was on the Rubber Soul album, which is Drive My Car, Norwegian Wood, Nowhere Man. Great album. Yeah. In My Life, Weight. Yeah. So there's a lot of-

[01:15:45] I mean, there's a lot of bangers on this one. Jesus. Yeah. It's probably pre-LSD. Right. I think this was pre-LSD. This is a Lennon-McCartney collaboration, but prior to them going to India, I believe. Yeah, that would make sense. Yeah. So that's my musical minute, and I came in on time. I'm impressed. I'm impressed. So I guess actually this was the Indian sitar band, Norwegian Wood, right?

[01:16:13] But yeah, so this was the first album that they were influenced by the trip to India. So that's cool. Wow. That's awesome. Yeah. Hmm. All right. A good pick, Stomp. Thanks. Maybe I'll do a music minute. I'll wait until Nick doesn't have one, and then I'll throw in a music minute. I think it would be hilarious if you set up a timer with a bell that goes off after 60 seconds. I know. I know. That's a good one. We'll have to do that. All right.

[01:16:42] So if you want free stickers, you can go to the Mountain Wanderer, or you can go to Spinner's Pizza Pilot in Andover, and Stomp is putting a new order for stickers right now. So I think has force run out or is getting low? He says they're just flying off the shelves. Yeah. So I just dropped off a bunch of new ones. So we've got the metallic ones, the paper ones, the window, don't smash my window, stick-ons, and other PR pamphlet things that are up there.

[01:17:11] So yeah, feel free to go by and support them because they do great work up there. The legacy continues at the Mountain Wanderer. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. And then if you want to get swag, you can go check out our bonfire shop. Choose between our super popular hoodies, classic or V-neck tees, and more. The color selection is great, and they have price to move. Mrs. Stomp picked out the color selection, so you cannot go wrong. So help spread the word about Slasher and represent today.

[01:17:36] And then if you want to show your support for the podcast, you can donate at Slasher's Buy Me a Coffee site. Donations help us pay for web hosting, distribution, and live events. And then you can also select to be a monthly supporter. We did get some coffees this week, but I forgot to add them to the scripts. So I'm going to just put a note in here to add those to next week's script stomped. Did you see Arlo? Arlo the Beagle. Do you have that in front of you? You want to read it off? I do, yeah.

[01:18:03] So Arlo the Beagle donated three coffees. I think that's the only one that came in this week. Okay. Perfect. Oh yeah, I see it here on the script. So shout out to Arlo the Beagle. I love Arlo. Yeah, thank you for the support. I love whenever Arlo comes up on our feed. Makes me happy. Good puppy. Yes. All right, now is the part of the show where we talk about what beer. We are drinking, Stomp. I am drinking a Maine Lunch IPA that Mrs. Mike got. And you said you're toning it down, right? Well, not purposely, but I'm just having a Cape Cod seltzer.

[01:18:33] I just got off the mountain, so I'm sort of wiped. Right. Sorry I let you down on this one. That's fine. And then now is the part of the show where we talk about recent hikes. So Stomp, you talked a little bit about a recent hike. Where did you go? Oh, I've done Welch Dickey three times since getting out of this surgery thing. And I was trying to get back to my two-hour time. First time was like 2, 2.05, 2.10, something like that.

[01:19:01] But today, I came in at 1 hour 46 minutes, which is honestly, I think that's my personal best. I don't think I've ever done it that fast. No pain, no back pain, no hip pain. Yeah, no hip pain, nothing. I was flying. And coming down Dickey, I was really pushing it. I was actually trying to do a little quick speed walk trail run just because I knew I had it. Like, oh, I'm going to... My goal was to break two.

[01:19:29] So yeah, the weather was perfect though because it was nice and cool. It's like mid-70s right now, so it was really nice. It was a nice breeze. But yeah, I'm aiming for big ones now. I think I can handle it, but I've been sort of hovering around the two to four miles without an issue. Not bad. No, I'm looking forward to getting out with you guys. But I think we'll have to... I mean, I'll join you for that lost pass, but we'll have to do... You'll have to do a 4,000... I want you to do a 4,000 footer. Yeah, I think I'm ready. I think I could do it.

[01:19:57] Have your triumphant return. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, just keep me in the loop. Yeah, that would be good. And then for me, I haven't been hiking. I didn't hike this weekend. My daughter's boyfriend and some of their friends came up to the camp. So we had just basically spent the weekend just drinking and eating and swimming at the pond. But I do have a little project that I've been working on, Stomp, with my... So my brother, Matt and Marissa, you've hiked with them, my sister-in-law. They bought this horse farm in Wakefield, New Hampshire.

[01:20:27] So it's like 40 acres. They just picked up a couple of horses. But one of the interesting things, and you'd have to... You probably would love to check this out, but the property's been logged. So they had a series of carriage roads around the property that, I don't know, 40 acres. It's probably like when the loop is done, when we bring it back to life, it'll be probably about a mile loop around the property.

[01:20:51] Right now, the challenge is that there's a carriage road that's grass that has been basically overgrown, not taken care of. So we were able to... I was actually able to... This device called the brush hog, I was able to clear about a, I don't know, maybe three-eighths of a mile down to the back of the property with this brush hog so that the first section of the trails will be good to go.

[01:21:17] And then the remaining sections, the problem I'm running into is that it was a logging operation. So there's all timber scrap everywhere. So we... That's a lot of work. If I do it by hand, it will take me forever to rake out this timber scrap and clear the road or whatnot. So I think we got to get a mini skid with a... They call it a grappling hook. It's basically one of those...

[01:21:40] It's got the claws and you can scrape under and clear all the timber scraps so that we can basically get the trail system back in place. But it's interesting to map it out and figure out, okay, what's the best way? What's the best tool to do this? We don't really have the constraints that you would have up in the White Mountains. Like, we can use heavy equipment. Yeah. But we've just got to map it out and figure out how we're going to do it. Which... It's in Wakefield, New Hampshire. Which is proximate to where? I'm just not familiar.

[01:22:09] Like Ossipi. Ossipi on Route 16. It's on the Route 16 side. So way on the other side of Winnipesaukee. Okay. Yeah. You know what they should do? I'd be curious to see if any of those trails connect to the snowmobile trails. Snowmobile trails. They absolutely do. Matter of fact, one of the people that used to live there, it said like they connect right to that snowmobile system. And you can see on the other side of their property, there's another carriage road that's actually taken care of that they can connect to.

[01:22:38] And I think that that gets them out to a snowmobile trail. So that eventually that will be the plan. But now we want to be able to like, I want to be able to work. And I've been doing some of the trail stuff to create a loop trail around the property so that they can actually use that for the horses. Right. Right. Makes sense. But it has to be like, you know, you have to make sure that everything's solid and that if it's all timber scrap and stuff like that, like the horses can't be stepping on all that. So it's got to be cleared. So their goal is to board?

[01:23:07] Or do lessons? No, they have six horses. I don't think that they have a plan yet. I think that they're talking about potentially, like they've got a couple of horses that they can ride. So they're talking about maybe riding lessons with those horses. And then I think maybe eventually, yeah, they will board. They've got six. They've got room for over 20 horses so they could board whatever they want. But right now they just have to get like the paddocks set up. They've got three already set up. They've got to set up more.

[01:23:36] The horses eat that grass like nothing. So you've got to have multiple paddocks for the horses to distribute against. But it's amazing how far they've come in a month. Talk about a vocation. I mean, that's a lot of work. Like that's going to be sunrise to sunset and plus. Wow. It's stomp like we need to do an event. Like we'll do, we have to do a slasher event there. Like you could do, like they have this indoor riding arena stomp. You could set up your like DJ equipment. It would be crazy.

[01:24:06] Yeah, count me in. That sounds amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Good for them. That's great. We'll see. But anything else before we get into our guest of the week? I think that should do it. I think the listeners are probably sick of hearing from me. No, I think they're going to be psyched to hear from you. And I'm hoping that I let you talk enough here. But it was good to update. So we were able to, Nick had coordinated with Chris and Joe who are from Project Insul Nation.

[01:24:33] So they are the founders of Insul Nation. So they do like projects and excursions with type 1 diabetes. So anybody that's a hiker that's got type 1 diabetes, I know I've got, I have a couple of friends that are type 1 diabetes hikers. And I know that it's a whole thing that they've got to manage. So it was interesting to talk to them to sort of get their history and get their perspective

[01:24:57] on how people manage outdoor activities and outdoor adventures with type 1 diabetes. So let's dump into that segment and then we'll come back on the other side, stomp, and just wrap it up. Awesome. So you still got it. Yes, exactly.

[01:25:32] It's time for Slasher's Guest of the Week. Very cool. Very cool. So here we go, guys. All right. So we are here with the Project Insul Nation crew here, Chris and Joe. Did I pronounce it correctly? My Massachusetts accent is terrible, Chris. Yeah. No, you're good. I got it good here. All right.

[01:26:01] So thanks, guys, for joining us. So we wanted to have you join us. Did we reach out to you? Chris, you reached out to us too, right? Yeah. Yeah. I reached out to you guys because I just wanted to try and get some ears on what we're doing up in the region. And I heard a lot of good things about your podcast. One of our participants' wives is actually a longtime listener of you guys. And that's how I first heard of you guys. Awesome. Well, we appreciate it.

[01:26:28] You make sure that next when you go hiking with him next time, you got to pay for dinner afterwards. Yeah. Very good. But Chris, why don't you start off, introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your background and a little bit about Project Insul Nation. Sure. So my name is Chris Rome. I live in northern New Jersey, right outside of New York City. I'm a type 1 diabetic and I have been for 26 years.

[01:26:57] Growing up with type 1, you know, I wasn't told no a lot, but I was cautioned against doing a lot of things that I wanted to do as a child. I was very outdoorsy, so I wanted to go hiking. I wanted to go backpacking and camping. You know, I wanted to take these destination trips and do these physically demanding things. And all the doctors along the way cautioned me against it. And as I got older, I kind of realized, you know, it didn't happen for me.

[01:27:25] But when people growing up with type 1 are constantly cautioned against doing things or told they shouldn't do things, it's very easy for that to become a limiting belief for them that they carry into adulthood. So now all of a sudden that caution becomes their concrete no for doing something. As children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes, there's camps and organizations all across the country that offer adventure type trips, adventure based camps, stuff like that.

[01:27:54] But the day you turn 18, that kind of vanishes for type 1 adults. There's not much out there. You have local meetups and little organizations that do things here and there. But as a whole, there really is not a let's get back to what we love. Let's get back outdoors. Let's challenge ourselves. Let's grow through the challenge and do the things we want to do and not let type 1 diabetes be the reason that we don't do it. And that's where the idea for Project Insulation came.

[01:28:22] You know, we host and curate backcountry expeditions for type 1s to help them build confidence and independence in their type 1 management so they can then leave our trips and go forward and continue to grow in life and not be stuck in that shell of fear, uncertainty that type 1, what am I going to do if this happens or what if that happens? We don't want that to be the reason that they don't go and experience things, which is why me and Joe are creating these trips for type 1s.

[01:28:52] How old were you when you were diagnosed, Chris? I was 12 years old. It was right after the new year of 2000. Pretty common. Yeah, that's and I was telling the so for the listeners, I was telling these guys before the show that my family, I have four cousins with type 1 diabetes. I got two uncles as well. So it just runs in my family quite a bit. I was actually joking that it's like we all wait for the cousins to get a little bit older to see who's going to get diagnosed because it's just so prevalent in my family.

[01:29:20] And I do remember it was around that age where a lot of my cousins would get diagnosed. And it was tough. My recollection of it was that, yeah, things change. You know, they were looked at differently and they were all of a sudden became like the fragile person in the family. But that's not true. Like one of my cousins is, you know, a good athlete and he didn't really stop him at all. But I don't know, Joe, if you had a similar experience, similar age diagnosis. Similar. Talk through that. Yeah, similar but different.

[01:29:47] I think that describes type 1 diabetes in general. It's all to all of us who have it. It's a condition that's so individualized but has similar concepts. I'll just give a little bit of background about who I am. And then that kind of will tell us about how I was diagnosed. I'm a type 1 diabetic mountaineer and endurance athlete. White Mountain's obviously my home from Massachusetts, born and raised. I climbed out in the Pacific Northwest, out in Alaska.

[01:30:14] Most recently have successfully summited Kilimanjaro. Certified personal trainer. Certified nutrition coach. Certified WFR, wilderness first responder that I actually recently got at Solo up in North Conway. And that all drives the passion of me wanting what Chris was talking about, wanting to help other type 1s kind of feel empowered and especially bring them to nature.

[01:30:43] And that is because I got diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at 21. I was a little bit later. And I did not have a kid's camp growing up. I said I was out in the Pacific Northwest, out in Alaska. Everything I was doing out in these quote unquote dangerous locations, even New Hampshire, as we know, Mount Washington can get to crazy sub-zero temperatures. I was learning on my own, which as a type 1 diabetic, when you have a condition that is so life and death sometimes.

[01:31:11] In society, it's hard to manage it. Out in the elements, it is 10 times more difficult to manage it. And then you learn it alone. There really is nothing that is out there that really helps curate backcountry trips for type 1s. So Chris and I kind of joined our passions and our missions together to create that something that the community really needs and hopefully get more type 1s out to be comfortable with

[01:31:36] spending multiple nights, day hikes, but also expeditions out in nature. Do you find in general, and I don't know all the details on this, but this is the medical community, and I know there's been a ton of advances in managing blood sugar levels and monitoring and everything over the last 10, 12 years. But in general, do you find that medical advice is encouraging for people to do endurance activities as a type 1?

[01:32:02] Or is that sort of a new change to the medical advice? I would say, I don't know, Chris, you can build off of this once I'm done answering, but I would say it is and it isn't. There is a bunch of information. I mean, we live with technology that has revolutionized this condition. I don't use insulin pumps, but insulin, I use multiple daily injections, but insulin pumps are revolutionary technology.

[01:32:31] Glucose monitors, continuous glucose monitors allow us to track our blood sugar every five minutes. And so I would say with the new technology and the new medical information out there, you really, at the best point in history to optimize this condition. That being said, there is no better opportunity to learn than being surrounded and being put in a group of type 1 diabetics. Just talking about the condition. And Chris, if you want to build off of that. Yeah.

[01:33:01] He's pretty much hit the nail on the head with the advances in technology now. It's become much more prevalent for type 1s to have access to do these things. But I would say the motivation and driving force generally comes from the type 1 community itself, more so than medical professionals. You know, you've got all kinds of groups out there of type 1s who run marathons or climb mountains. And those groups are where you really get the information that you need to go out and do it

[01:33:29] yourself compared to the medical professionals. You know, it's not a bash on medical professionals. They're great. They know exactly what they need to do. But at the end of the day, nobody knows your body like you. And a medical professional is a medical professional. He's not a mountaineer. He's not an endurance runner. Like you need to find the people who are doing what you want to do and find out what they're doing to get started in it. And type 1 is a giant chess game. You know, what works today may not work tomorrow.

[01:33:57] You've got to continue to change one variable at a time until you find what works the majority of the time for you. It doesn't always work day in and day out. And for no good reason, tomorrow could be completely different than today. So I might be taking a back step here. It sounds like, Mike, you're a little bit more familiar with type 1 diabetes than I am. But for the listeners that might not be familiar like I am myself, what kind of is the condition? What's some of the challenges that type 1 diabetes sort of introduces, I guess, into your lives?

[01:34:26] And maybe what's some of the misconceptions that sort of lead people to think like about this fragility or however you sort of want to phrase it related to the disease? How much time you got? Because we could go all day. Maybe we could do like a brief summary or whatever, but no rush. So type 1 in general, I'll start off with this, is I'll try to condense this into one sentence or maybe a couple. It's an autoimmune condition.

[01:34:57] So essentially our autoimmune systems have or are constantly attacking our pancreas, halting insulin production. Now insulin, the best way to put it, is the key to get carbohydrates, which is your energy source. So insulin is the key to get your energy source from your bloodstream into your muscles and into throughout the rest of your body.

[01:35:22] So in its most basic terms, and again, this is so complicated and we could go on for days and days and days. But we need to manually inject insulin into our bodies to compensate the meals and foods that we are eating. And we don't have as good control. Like we can control it, but we don't have that natural control of blood sugar. So it can fluctuate higher than a normal person and lower than a normal person, which presents complications.

[01:35:52] Yeah. And it's not just food that we have to watch too. Like, yes, we have to compensate for all the food we eat, but we also need to pay attention to stress. We need to pay attention to elevation, to heat. There are so many different other factors that go into the rising and lowering of blood sugar. And we essentially, we have to be a functioning walking organ of our own body day in and day out.

[01:36:16] Joe, I'm curious with Wilderness First Aid you had mentioned, is there anything like special or outside the norm that you would carry while out hiking? I'm assuming with insulination, you guys will have a group of type 1 diabetes that go hiking. It's probably a mix of experience. What outside the normal safety gear would you carry to just address any on-trail issues? So sounds strange, but it's not a bunch of sugar. Electrolyte gels.

[01:36:44] So if you're sugar, when you're out in the wilderness, the immediate danger would be a low, a low blood sugar. So low blood sugar means you could drop into a seizure, you could pass out, and you can get to death or in a situation where you risk death sooner and quicker. Whereas higher blood sugar, there is more of, and I won't go all into the details of it, but there is a window where you can have higher blood sugar for longer without seeing

[01:37:13] more severe complications. So sugar, in case you do go low, and then also glucagon. So glucagon, what it does, we carry, we'll be carrying ones that are nasal injections. You can just, like a nasal spray, there's other ones that you can inject into your muscle. It's called, Buscemi is the one that I use, but we'll have variations of other companies with us. Essentially, it allows the liver to release its excess store of glucose.

[01:37:43] So if somebody with us does drop low, you inject that and it'll release blood glucose throughout the whole body, bringing them back to a stable state. Do they cover this at all in solo or is this... No, no. I was the one to stand up in front of the classroom and give the whole spiel. Yeah. I bet they were interested though, because it's something they were. But it's absolutely something that could happen on trail, even in cases where people are undiagnosed and they don't realize it. So... Totally. And that's not an entire no.

[01:38:12] We did talk about diabetes and their type 2 seems is more prevalent than type 1. And it has some similar information in it. But it was... Like my instructor, she said it was nice to have experience from a type 1 to explain it. Because you... I mean, when you're on a trail and you cross paths with somebody, you cannot tell if they're type 1 or not. Right. Right. So Chris, I want to talk about hiking now, guys. I want to talk a little bit...

[01:38:42] So with Insul Nation that you guys do, like group hikes and whatnot, can you run down, like where have you guys done some of these group hikes? And can you tell me just personally some of your favorite hikes in the Northeast? You know, you can talk about the Adirondacks. Nick likes the Adirondacks. I haven't been there. I like New Hampshire, but you pick where you want to choose. So I've been hiking for as long as I can remember. You know, I said I was from New Jersey. I've done a lot of the trails in around here. I worked my way up into the Catskills, into the Adirondacks.

[01:39:11] I've done a whole bunch of them. And I set my sights on the whites because I just kept going bigger in the region. Unfortunately, the whites are more than a day trip away. But, you know, I've also traveled around the country doing a lot of different hikes too. My favorite park, and I tell Joe all the time we need to run a trip here, is to the North Cascades. I absolutely love the North Cascades. We ran our first trip the end of May. Project Insulation came to be less than a year ago. We ran our first trip the end of May.

[01:39:41] We planned on doing the Penny Gwasset Loop up by you guys in the whites. But unfortunately, that weekend in May slash June, it snowed six inches up on top of the ridge line. So yeah. We had some friends up there, actually, that weekend. Yeah. So we backtracked. We stayed at the Notch Hostel. We ran a couple day hikes. I think we had seven type ones with us that day. It was an awesome trip.

[01:40:07] We learned that trip to sell a region instead of a trail because we can't predict weather and other circumstances. Especially in the whites. Yeah. Especially in the whites. Our second trip is coming up in three and a half weeks. We're going out to the Tetons. The plan is to do the Teton Crest. But again, we're just going to sell the Tetons and have multiple contingency options. We actually applied, Joe applied for some guiding permits in the winter to lead ascents up Mount

[01:40:36] Washington up by you guys. So we're hoping to get approved for those, lead some winter ascents there. And we've got trips as big as we're planning on putting together a team to climb at Concagua as the first ever autonomous type one team to ever summon a major mountain in the world. So we're ranging from local day hikes all the way to large scale expedition type trips. Wow. And so both of you guys have experience hiking in many different parts of the world and it

[01:41:06] sounds like, but with the Tetons coming up, how many people are going to be joining you? Right now we're looking at five of us going. Yeah. Yeah. I'm curious because I was actually looking at that trip with a friend of mine, but what's your strategy for the Grizzlies out there? You just bring in bear spray or you got a guy that's got something more powerful for you? No, we're going to bring bear spray. You know, you got the bear cans. It's a bear spray. Yeah. So I get a little scared about grizzly territory, but I'm sure you guys will be fine.

[01:41:36] Yeah. And it's, it's a busier time in the season too. There's going to be a lot of people on the trail. You know, it's really going to lower our chances of running into a grizzly and going there in August doing that trail. And if we were going in the off season. Yeah, exactly. So how did you guys, I am curious, how did you guys meet? How did you connect? So I ran an ultra endurance 50 mile trail race and Joe reached out to me with his podcast to interview about how I handle it as a type one.

[01:42:05] And that was the first time we met. And we started talking at the end of the recording about just passion projects. And I laid my project installation plans out there. He laid out his plans for T1 Determined and we were clearly aligned. And a couple months later, I asked him if he wanted to help guide some trips. And he came back and said, why don't we just do this together? So we merged and here we are building this together. Awesome.

[01:42:32] And it all started from a conversation that was after the podcast recording that I wish I didn't hit stop on because that would be amazing to have today. Yeah, sometimes those are the best conversations. So you've had one group trip under your belt. How did it go sort of in terms of like the group dynamic? I kind of was looking over your website and you're sort of mentioning like it's not really necessarily a leadership program or sort of a coaching program, but it's kind of like you're just sort of looking to foster, I guess, sort of a sense of community and a sense of dependability within the group.

[01:43:02] How did it go? Did it kind of meet your expectations or any sort of hurdles having the first kind of time out with a group or how'd that go? So other than not being able to do the Pemi-Gawasset loop, I think it far exceeded expectations. We know the community for type 1 diabetics is the backbone. It's the strength. It's the support. It's everything you need for type 1. But to see it live in person on trail was really magical for us.

[01:43:31] Every time we hit a turn or a junction in the trail, the group would wait for each other to catch up. And every time we were all together, a conversation would break out about type 1. Who handles this in that situation? Who does this? What do you do for travel? And to just watch everyone be both the student and the teacher on the trip was absolutely awesome. You know, we're not with Project Insulation. We're not looking to build like a guiding business. We're more our job is to get people to the trailhead.

[01:44:01] And the magic is going to happen when 8, 10, 12 type 1s are together on the trail. Whatever is going to transpire through those days is going to be the magic of what we're doing. Totally. And that's really because type 1 is such an individualized condition. Chris and I obviously want to make sure everybody's safe, but he's right. Our goal is to get people together. And then they can learn how to manage their type 1 with each other. We're not here to teach you.

[01:44:29] I mean, I think we see in the future having specialized guests like endocrinologists and cardiologists teach you the science behind type 1. But I can't tell you, and I've been hiking for years with type 1, the amount of stuff that I've learned. Like one of our members brought a brand new electrolyte concoction that had just the perfect amount of sugar in it. And he allowed me to try it. And like for me, that was awesome. It was new information that I would have never found out. Also, the variations of guests that we have on our trip.

[01:44:59] We have people that have been diagnosed at 12 years old like Chris. People who've had type 1 diabetes for 40 plus years. But also individuals who have just been diagnosed. We've had an individual who was diagnosed in their 60s, one in his 40s that was less than 18 months. So this was his first big trip. So it was also unique and really cool to see people at different journeys within their type 1 life.

[01:45:27] And people who have seen type 1 diabetes and the management of type 1 diabetes progress over decades. And people who are just learning it who have lived without type 1 diabetes for decades. It almost doesn't sound that much different than like, you know, when I learned to do winter hiking and I would go. And over time you could just collect friends that have a common interest. And you learn about like, okay, this is the gear to use. This is the technique to use to keep warm. Or this is the tips and tricks. So it's like the same idea.

[01:45:56] It's just a medical condition that you've got to sort out. So it's no different, it doesn't sound like to me, than just talking about gear on the trail if you have a group of friends. Yeah. And the magic behind it is it's the first time or one of very few times in our participants' lives where they're completely submerged with people who understand every aspect of what they deal with day to day.

[01:46:25] You know, it's very easy to put diabetes in my back pocket and go hike with a bunch of non-diabetics. But they don't understand all of the sugar checks, the snacks, the timing, all the stuff that I have to do on top of just going on a hike that everyone else gets to do. You know, and to put eight people together who just understand each other to that level really made a difference in everything that we're doing. Yeah. I was curious, too.

[01:46:51] So for both of you living with it for a good chunk of time, does it become sort of second nature? Because to me, it sounds so complicated as someone that hasn't kind of dealt with that. Like, does it become sort of second nature, like breathing to you guys to just know, like, hey, I'm checking my blood sugar, I'm doing this? Or is there any point that you're still kind of thinking about that? I got to imagine, Chris, too, like doing a 50-miler, you must have had to calculate out a little bit differently. Oh, my God. I was kind of curious what that sort of looks like from your end.

[01:47:22] So having it for 26 years, I want to say, yeah, it becomes second nature. A lot of it does. But with it becoming second nature, there's times where it's not even on my mind and I forget to do something. Like I'll go out and eat a meal and an hour later I'll be 300. You know, your blood sugar is supposed to be between like 80 and 120. As a diabetic, maybe like 70 and 140. I'll be in the 300. And it's like, oh, my God, I forgot to take insulin for that meal.

[01:47:49] You know, it's because it's with especially with all the technology today. Like when I was first diagnosed, you had to inject your insulin. You had to inject the long-acting insulin to keep you steady throughout the day. And then every time you ate, you had to compensate for the carbs with the short-acting insulin. So my meals had to be at certain times a certain level of carbohydrates to balance out the insulin. Now with the insulin pump, I can pretty much eat what I want when I want.

[01:48:14] And it just automatically reads to the CGM on my arm and it'll adjust my insulin levels. I just have to plug in the carbohydrates that I eat. And there's times where it's so automated and I'm so comfortable with it that I actually forget to do it. You know, and then when you go into the hiking and the endurance world, you know, it's completely different. I had training for these things. It was like 18 months of training where I had to run different insulin profiles.

[01:48:45] And by profile, I mean like I get a certain amount of insulin every hour that keeps my blood sugar level. And then I compensate for different ratios to carbohydrates. I had to play with all of those until I found what worked the majority of the time for me to be able to run these things. And this is just giving you the best chance for success. It's no guarantee. And then you have all the stuff that happens on race day.

[01:49:08] It's like on my 50 mile race, it completely downpoured on us on the ridgeline and my pump site ripped out. So now I had all the stuff that I was using. I had to switch course and go to injections and microdose every 15, 20 minutes to make sure I had insulin. Because at that point, I need the insulin to carry the fuel to my muscles. So I can't just not eat. I need the insulin in my body.

[01:49:33] But with having to microdose, I had to eat a lot more food because I no longer have the CGM connection to my pump that allows my pump to regulate itself based off of the sugar trends. So it's like I sound like a mad scientist. I don't know type one.

[01:49:48] But like there are so many more decisions and little things that I constantly have to pay attention to day in and day out just to be able to maintain a close enough level of control to get me through the days. Wow. And just building off of that just a little bit, I've never learned so much about nutrition and health and just kind of the science of the body until I was diagnosed with type one at 21.

[01:50:18] The way that I manage things, my motto is discipline leads me to freedom, which means I do restrict myself on everything that I eat. So I've kind of integrated my management. Yes, it's kind of in the back of my mind, but I've implemented a lifestyle that fits my management. Some type ones are comfortable with this. Some type ones are not and to each his own.

[01:50:40] But this strictness of having very similar variation of meals every day, having certain complex carbs, it allows me to go into the mountains. And I almost treat type one as if it's a sport within itself. So I'm like an athlete training to get to the big arena.

[01:50:58] I love that viewpoint of type one because, again, that strictness and that discipline leads me to be able to start this with Chris and allows us to help others just get information and education out there about type one. Right. I'd imagine, too, like you find a system that works for you, like you stick to it as for as long as you can, you know, within reason. You know, you got to look, Joe, you got to have some variety. A little bit. I do. My correction is if my sugar goes low, I will eat chocolate.

[01:51:27] But so well, I will have five cups of coffee a day. So that's my. I don't know. That's I don't think I could give that up either. But I am curious, Joe, about the winter hiking. Like what what changes in winter? Like, is there any impact with the cold weather or is that not really matter that much? On in. So two things and I'll try to keep this brief. So insulin sensitivity. So my body becomes more sensitive in the winter. And that is because I tend to be more cold in the winter.

[01:51:56] And your body just either whether the cold from the environment or the fact you have more layers on your body's just burning more energy. But the biggest I almost want to call it threat. But there's a very easy solution to this threat is insulin freezing in sub like sub freezing temperatures. So below 32 degrees Fahrenheit.

[01:52:22] You if insulin freezes, that is the worst scenario that you have in winter to prevent that. I used to it's so funny, like I used to when I first started hiking, just get hand warmers and throw it in my bag and just hope and pray. Actually, I was on Mount Washington once and I got back to the car at the end of the day and I opened my insulin bag and all of it was frozen. I was like, well, thank goodness I didn't need my excess insulin. But actually, if you keep insulin on your body.

[01:52:47] So now either in a like a North Face jacket or I actually wear a vest on me during wintertime, the body heat will keep the insulin warm enough. Yeah. Well, I didn't even I mean, that makes sense for sure. I guess you could I you know, I always I'm a big fan of electric hand warmers. They just although, you know, they can they can stop working. So it is a little bit of a risk. But I like those better than the regular chemical hand warmers just because they heat up immediately. But still, I think putting them against the body makes sense.

[01:53:15] Yeah, I usually strap it right to my torso. So I went I went dog sledding in Sweden and I had like multiple ace bandages where I had my insulin pump wrapped to my rib cage. I had my glucose meter wrapped to my rib cage. I had the bottle of insulin wrapped on the other side. The body heat was enough to keep it warm, but I had to have a direct skin contact to to keep it from freezing in the elements. I think it was like negative 70 Fahrenheit when I was doing that. So like any outside exposure and that would have been it for most of it.

[01:53:46] And it's ironic because, I mean, winter presents a double edged sword, especially out where you get to Western United States and you're on glaciers. Just being out and I don't know how many times you guys been above treeline in winter on a bluebird day. That sun can get hot and it doesn't feel like winter at all.

[01:54:06] So like I've had situations where I've actually had to hide my insulin in a snow cooler just to keep it from overheating because that direct sunlight almost overheats. And then the sun goes behind a rock and you sprint to that snow cooler and grab it and throw it to your body. So it's it's a synthetic insulin is something you don't want to overheat and you don't want to freeze. So much like type one diabetes, you want to keep it in general. You want to keep it within a relative zone. Yeah, which can be tricky in the winter.

[01:54:36] Luckily, we have experienced a lot of those bluebird days, but I get it. Like the sun reflecting off the snow sometimes can can be pretty warm as well. Wow. So, Chris, I am curious, like at what point did you really start picking up like your passion for more extreme outdoor activities? It sounds like you've been doing this for your whole life, but when did it really take off for you? I would say COVID. Yeah.

[01:55:02] You know, I always like I always went national park hiking and car camping and exploring and everything like that. But when when COVID hit, I got the gym closed down and I didn't really have anything else to do. So I kind of started getting into Spartan races and I'm a bigger guy. I am like six, just under six foot, about 230 pounds. I was going to say you're kind of like you're more fullback than you are in terms of athletes. Yeah.

[01:55:25] So I just started pushing distances because I knew I wasn't going to I wasn't going to podium on a race with some of these people like this guys that are 140 pounds running up these mountains. There was no chance. So I figured like the best way to challenge myself was to continue to push distances. So I started five K's, went to 10 K's, ran the Spartan Beast, ran a then I got selected to run the New York City Marathon. And that's kind of where it really took off for me.

[01:55:54] You know, I ran that with a type one organization beyond type one and it kind of opened my eyes to what was really possible with type one diabetes. You know, before I ran that, if you asked me if I could run 26 miles and manage my blood sugars the whole time and finish the race at a good time, I would have thought it was impossible. But not only did it show me, but it opened me up to that whole endurance athlete community of type ones.

[01:56:19] And the more I looked into it, the more I really saw a gap in like what we're doing with the multi-day backpacking backcountry stuff. You know, there's there's plenty out there for runs and relays and stuff like that. But to take type ones and really put them in the backcountry where help isn't on the sideline watching you and you really have to learn how to manage yourself. You know, there's very few organizations around the globe doing that.

[01:56:49] I'm kind of just ran with the idea. And that's that's kind of where it's turned into for me. You know, now I continue to push the endurance level stuff. My next goal is I've got my eyes on the 100 mile blackbeard race down in North Carolina in the Outer Banks. I'd like to do 100 mile race. When I set out, I said that was going to be it. That was the end goal. But every time I hit a goal, I see what the next option is. So we'll see if it ends there. Joe, what are we going to get him to do up in the whites?

[01:57:19] We could get him to do this Jigger Johnson. You got the Kilkenny Ridge. What can we convince him to do up here? Let's get him to do a whole winter. How do you pronounce it? Deratisma? Deratisma. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's get him to do a whole solo. And then we'll just we'll just monitor him with we can do the day hikes and we'll just check it out. He really wants to throw you in the deep end. Yeah. I can tell by the smile on his face there that it was a painful, painful option he was bringing up here.

[01:57:49] Yes. Yeah. That's all. I think that's all the 48 4,000ers in one go, Chris. Continuous. Yeah. Thanks, buddy. In winter. So what's the long term plan for insulation? And then what can anybody that listens to this that might have a relative or they themselves may be dealing with this? What can they do to get involved to connect with you guys? So big grand vision. We want this to be a global movement.

[01:58:17] You know, we don't want to hold this down to just what we can handle. We want Project Insulation to be complete global organization where you've got trips running on all six, seven, if we can figure out how to do Antarctica, continents, four type ones in whatever region they're in. We want anyone who's local and this strikes a chord to them to lead trips. You know, I was referencing earlier how one of the participants on our trip, his wife was a longtime listener.

[01:58:46] They live up in the whites and he's interested in running trips for us. So now we can just hand off weekend trips up in the whites to him. So it allows us to open up the doors to more people and more trips as we're expanding what we're doing. Anyone who's interested in what we're doing, you know, we're very active on Instagram and Facebook. We have our website.

[01:59:08] We're building right now a community, a subscription-based community where not only will you have nonstop resources, interviews, live Q&As, we're also going to bring to the table possible lifestyle coaching within there and how to really handle the day in and day out stressors of type one. We're going to bring, you know, our personal training backgrounds.

[01:59:31] If there's something you want to train for, whether it's one of our trips or not within that community, we can offer you custom built plans to get after whatever you want to do with type one diabetes. You know, we want to really build something that really encompasses holistically the wellness and betterment of lives for type one diabetics across the globe. Do you find, is there a willingness for organizations that are well-established that you get referrals a lot from them or is you just starting that off?

[02:00:00] We're just starting that off, but it's been very, very strong early on. We have a lot of people who partnered brand partners with us right off the bat. We've got, there's one organization up in Canada who does some similar stuff, very localized, who just reached out today and just want to talk to see if there's something there between us.

[02:00:20] You know, when we start talking about doing the bigger expeditions like the Aconcagua trip, you know, when you label something as the first of its kind attempt, it draws eyes from all over the place. You know, so we've got a lot of early attention from a lot of bigger companies that we really never even thought would pay attention to us in the beginning. And we're just kind of trying to sort all that out and build this the right way to not lose sight of why we set out to build this.

[02:00:49] I hope they open their checkbooks for you guys and it grows and grows and grows for sure. But Nick, I'm kind of hoping that the other thing in my family is everyone's got type 2 diabetes. So maybe I can get on one of these trips. I mean, I don't want to have to do that, but you guys have some cool trips and some cool ideas here. But I definitely, like I said, my family's been impacted by this. I mean, I've had relatives that have had their last rights read to them with ketoacitosis and it's terrible.

[02:01:19] It's very difficult. So to be a resource and to get, I guess one other thing I would say is I would imagine that younger people, maybe they don't gravitate towards team sports. So they didn't feel like, okay, I can't be an athlete because there's too many barriers for me because of this diagnosis. And maybe as they get a little bit older and they realize like I can do these endurance sports because it's sort of on my own and I can network.

[02:01:44] So you guys might be able to pick up some people that hadn't ever thought that they could be athletes before. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's the power of the community too. You know, when you see other people who are living what you live, doing things that you didn't think you could do, it kind of gives you that spark. You need to go out and get after it. I think all of us are inspired by seeing others with conditions in general just do really amazing athletic beats.

[02:02:13] I mean, it's an underdog story at the end of the day. Right. All right. So Project Insolation. Somebody's upset in the bathroom. Something like my house like 50 years ago. Yeah. Yeah. I got four under four. That's my youngest. Oh, my God. That's another four? Another endurance. That's another podcast. Wow. I've got two under four. I'm hoping there's twins involved there or triplets or something. Yeah. There's twins in the middle. Bonus. Oh, wow. Awesome. Well, good.

[02:02:41] Well, if people want to reach to you guys, so it's ProjectInsolation.com. We'll make sure that we link the Instagram. We'll link the website and the Facebook page. And then you guys have an open invitation to come back anytime you want. Absolutely. And we'll stay in touch for sure. If you just need some company, I don't have much to add. I don't think for advice, but I'm happy to hike with you guys anytime. Likewise. We do a ton of winter hiking too. We love going to Mount Washington.

[02:03:07] One thing that we're doing on our trips is actually the guests on our trips. We're sending them down for podcast episodes, and we're just trying to get real life stories of type one. So I'll just throw the tidbit of we have the – Chris and I are now hosting the T1 Determined podcast, which is the conversation about type one diabetes and endurance sports. And we talk with professional endurance athletes with type one diabetes ranging from NBA players to collegiate players to Chris who has ran a 50-miler.

[02:03:37] So all different levels. But we're also starting a series of sitting down with our guests on a trip and getting, I don't want to say everyday people, but different life stories with type one diabetes. So knowing you guys are podcast guys, the invitation is more than welcome to have a Fireside Chat podcast up in the whites with a whole group of people. Yeah. Yeah. Anytime. Stay in touch with us, and we'll be watching your progress over time.

[02:04:04] And anything you need, just let us know, and we'll make sure that we get this out to our listeners. And I'm sure you're going to get contacted because I'm sure that there's listeners out there that probably didn't know about this as a resource, and we'll be excited to hear it. Awesome. We appreciate you guys having us on here. This was great. Totally. Awesome. All right. Thanks, guys. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Okay. All right, Stomp. So pretty good. Pretty good there. That was amazing. I'm flying.

[02:04:33] Do you have any diabetes in your family at all? No. It was just type two. You know, my grandmother, my nana, but that was just more of the sedentary, poor lifestyle type of thing. I have known several type one diabetics, and it's no joke. Nope. It is a very, very difficult thing to manage, and it's just absolutely fantastic that these

[02:05:00] folks are offering this and looking into this and working with people with type one, especially like brittle diabetics. I mean, it's unbelievable. Yeah. I mean, you must run into that a lot in physical therapy as well. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I talked about it with Chris and Joe. Like, I have a ton of cousins and uncles and stuff with type one diabetes. It runs in my family heavily. Luckily, none of my kids have had it, but I always, in the back of my mind, is like, oh,

[02:05:29] you know, what's going on with the kids? We always keep an eye on them, but so far. So good. But it was great, and we'll put all the links in the show notes so people can check it out. And then, yeah, Stomp, I think anything else we need to cover? I think we ran out of time, but it was great to have you back. Anything else you want to share with the listeners? No, I'll be back a little more often. And my schedule's been a little nuts lately, but yeah, I'll be back a little more frequently. I hope to anyway.

[02:05:57] Yeah, we're definitely going to have to have like the post-Dave finishing the AT like mega extravaganza show. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Can't wait to sit down and listen with him. Maybe I can get him here. We can sit down and get him on the real mic or something. Right. And then you guys will, I think your creative juices with Dave will start flowing again, and you guys will stomp with the listeners. Everyone's going to all stomp and be like, me and Dave did a little something, and then next thing you know, it's like a whole episode. So I'm sure it'll be happening.

[02:06:26] Yeah, it's too funny. Yeah, looking forward to it. You guys are killing it. Thanks for having me back. I'm looking forward to it. You come back all the time from now on. We're going to drag you back. Awesome. I'll be here. Awesome. Later. Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed the show, you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podbean, YouTube,

[02:06:54] or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you want to learn more about the topics covered in today's show, please check out the show notes and safety information at slasherpodcast.com. 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,

[02:07:22] get out there and crush some mega heats. 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.

[02:07:53] And there's three words to describe this race. Do we all know who they are? Holy words! Lieutenant James Neeland from 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? It 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.