[00:00:08] Here is the latest Higher Summits forecast brought to you by our friends at the Mt. 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 MtWashington.org.

[00:00:31] Weather observers working at the non-profit Mt. Washington Observatory write this elevation-based forecast every morning and afternoon. Search and Rescue teams, avalanche experts, and backcountry guides all rely on the Higher Summits forecast to anticipate weather conditions above treeline.

[00:00:51] You should too. Go to Mt. Washington.org or text FORECAST to 603-356-2137. Hello listeners! Nick here with your forecast for the weekend of October 31st, 2026. Happy Halloween, everybody!

[00:01:19] Friday. In the clouds with a slight chance of a wintry mix in the morning, becoming a chance of snow showers in the afternoon. Possible snow and sleep accumulations but traced to one inch. Highs starting in the mid-30s then falling through the day to the lower 20s. Wind west shifting northwest at 50-70 mph with gusts up to 80 mph. Increasing to 60-80 mph with gusts up to 95 mph.

[00:02:03] And Saturday. In the clouds trending towards clearing under decreasing cloudy skies. High around 20. Wind north-20. Wind north-west at 45-60 mph with gusts up to 70 mph. Decreasing to 30-45 mph. Wind chill 15 below to 25 below. Rising to 5 below to 5 above. So it looks like winter is back up in the high peaks and on the rock pile this weekend. Hope you can get out there and crush some peaks. Again, happy Halloween. Stay safe. Happy hiking. Enjoy!

[00:02:29] From the Woodpecker's studio in the great live-free-or-die state of New Hampshire.

[00:03:09] Welcome to the Sounds Like A Search And Rescue Podcast. Where we discuss all things related to hiking and search and rescue in the White Mountains of New Hampshire and beyond.

[00:03:21] All right. Episode 251. Dave just made an odd noise. Oh, okay. What was the odd noise? I coughed. Oh, that was it? Okay.

[00:03:50] We'll try it again. No, no, that's fine. It sounds good. Is my nose whistling? I don't know. Can you whistle through your nose? Is that a thing? No. I don't know if that was a genuine nose whistle. No, I faked it. Do any of you guys have your Halloween costumes ready? Or picked out, I guess would be the question. I do.

[00:04:18] I was instructed to be a velociraptor so Rylan wanted us all to be dinosaurs. She's gonna be a pterodactyl. Ash is gonna be a pterodactyl that kind of looks maybe like a starfish costume. And I get a sort of a velociraptor head and I'm waiting on the claws that are supposed to come with the, with the costume. So see how that goes. Is it one of those ones that you see? I see those dinosaur, the pterodactyl or the, what are those called? It's like a guy riding a velociraptor. Tyrannosaurus Rex. I see those like on the mountains people will dress up as one of those.

[00:04:47] No, I didn't invest in one of those. That was a little bit steeper than I wanted to go. So I kind of got like a head and some claws and other things. Okay. Rylan may have been a little bit disappointed, but I didn't really want to spend like a couple hundred dollars on an adult velociraptor costume. It seemed like a pretty specific use case. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. I was at the Museum of Natural History at DC, not last week, in the weekend before.

[00:05:09] And I was like, immediately I went in there and my first thing that I had to share with my daughter's boyfriend, I was like, honestly, like if I got dropped back into like prehistoric times where dinosaurs are, I would absolutely survive. No problem. I don't think you'd survive, but I would survive. And then we started arguing about how, like how hard it would be to survive, like living with dinosaurs and stuff. It was pretty good. It was very guy conversation. I'm trying to visualize that. I just, I can't picture you surviving with dinosaurs.

[00:05:39] I, well, picture you in a loincloth, which makes me want to stab my eyes out to begin with, but that's a whole other problem. But that's, uh, I feel like I could just stay stealthy and they wouldn't notice me. I think you'd get killed pretty quick. No, that's women, not dinosaurs. That's true. That's true. Well, no, because I would immediately, like I would have to down a tree, I'd have to make a spear, and then I would make a shield. And then I would have my spear and my shield to protect me. And I would make multiple spears.

[00:06:09] And then if any dinosaurs came near me, obviously you get to stay away from like the crazy T-Rexes or whatever, but like a Velociraptor is not that big. Like you can take one on at a time. But they hunt in packs. You saw the movie, right? That's true. That's true. And would you have your silky? Is that how you time travel with your silky saw? Like how you got my silky saw? If I had my silky saw, then yeah, that would be. Well, then dinosaurs would have been extinct well before they really were extinct. I mean, they wouldn't have a shot now. True, true. So anyway, well. All right. So Nick, you're going to be a Velociraptor. And then Dave, what are you going to be?

[00:06:39] I'm probably just going to go as either sexy or slutty stomp. I'm not sure yet. I got some v-neck shirts and cleavage or no cleavage. Yeah. I'm trying to like see if I can, you know, get some cleavage going. Is there a way that you can differentiate between the sexy and slutty? That's a great question. What is the line? We're going to be asking you a lot of questions tonight. So this is the warm up. No, this is the front of the gate. This is a tough one. One has more eyes. How does one know?

[00:07:07] Nick, set this for explicit this episode, please. Yeah. What is it? Time. That's a record. Two minutes. Three minutes and 42 seconds. Well, actually, I don't know. Don't answer that question. My filter's smoking right now. Like I'm not going to answer that. All right. Well, welcome to episode 251 of the sounds like a search and rescue podcast this week. More tales from the Appalachian trail. And we got a ton of listener questions for Dave shits in the woods. So Dave's back.

[00:07:34] Dave also has some cool stats about his 207 day through hikes. 207 days, Dave. Excuse me. Yeah. 208, 207 nights. So yeah, got it. 207 day through hike that he'll get a lot of money. He'll break down for us. Plus, with September and October search and rescue media reports coming in for 2026, rescues have increased significantly. They're probably up like 15, 20% over the last five, six years have been pretty steady.

[00:08:03] And this year is breaking all of them. So we'll break down some of the trends on 2026. Plus Nick got out and hiked Mount Eisenhower, Mount Monroe on one of the most crystal clear days he's ever seen. All this plus notable hikes, pop culture talk, dad jokes, the government's increasing fees for some visitors in the U.S. national parks. And we've got rescues. We've got a white horse ledge rescue. And we've got a whole trail rescue on the cardigan.

[00:08:33] We've got a group of hikers lost on Pawtuckaway State Park. We've got a pine bend trail leg injury. We've got the other doublehead mountain needing a rescue. And then Mount Moriah. So a lot going on. I'm Mike. And I'm Nick. Let's get started. Let's get started. Did it.

[00:09:03] It did. Did it. All right. So starting things off. So we did, we did the happy Halloween Eve. I don't, I don't have a costume, Nick, just to wrap that up, put a pin in that. Okay. Yeah. I will just be disappointing. That is a little disappointing. I'm going to just dress up as a horse farmer. I have my overalls and my, my horse farming outfit. So, and I'll give out candy. Mom, pot, kettle. Yes. Are you guys doing anything? You guys just stay at home on Halloween handing out candy or?

[00:09:33] We'll stay at home. Um, we've got the, um, the plastic container that we use to make meatballs that the kids threw up in that we hand out Halloween candy. Wow. It's going to be loaded. That'll be loaded up to give candy away. I think it's had quite a life. Yes. Everyone has that plastic pocket, right? Yeah. We found ground zero for the next virus. I don't know. I don't know if we've had it. We haven't established a bucket like that in our house yet.

[00:10:01] Maybe the kids haven't thrown up enough, but I, we definitely had a, like a popcorn bowl at my, that's popcorn too. Big pink popcorn bowl. Yeah. That's corn. Me Paul bowl, anything mixing. Also can throw a lot of volume. We had a big five gallon drywall bucket. Cause my dad was a framer and my mother just, she just put like Lysol in it. So the more you threw up, it just smelled like those combinations which made you throw up. He's like, he's not getting any better. I'm like, well, yeah. Everybody has that bowl. Yeah.

[00:10:30] The combination popcorn, meatball, throw up. The Halloween candy bowl. Oh yeah. The vomit Tupperware. Yeah. Christian's come up with a line of that. No. So do you just leave the bowl out? The bowl just, it just stays underneath the sink and then we just bring it out. And then Mrs. Mike is, so we're a good house for Halloween. Mrs. Mike buys the good, the big candy. So we have Skittles, multiple things of Skittles, Starburst. Oh yeah. That's good.

[00:11:00] And then like Milky Way, Snickers, M&M. But like the big ones that you would go and pay like $3.75 at the hooks at rest stop for to get your thing. So yeah. So she has all good stuff. And then the, like the kids will come around. We get the, we get the, we get people driving in and dropping their kids off in our neighborhood because it's a nice loop in Eamesbury. Not after this podcast. No, I guess not. They're going to find out it's the old puke bucket candy.

[00:11:28] Like I heard your house is going to get egged. Yeah. So do you get trick or treaters Dave on your side or no? We used to get a ton, but we did. They've all kind of grown up. So we get a handful. We're actually probably not going to be around this year. Okay. For first, but we'll just, we'll yell at them through the ring camera. Get off my lawn. Do you leave candy? I've never, we've never not been home. Okay. So I want to, my wife's like, no. So we're going back and forth. So she's worried like the squirrels will eat them, which they probably will.

[00:11:56] But yeah, I have a good story. I have a good story. You know, you know, my friend Jay, who's gotten into hiking. Yes. We almost lost him to hypothermia. Oh, we know Jay. We know this Jay. So anyway, his neighborhood, he lives in like a, like a newer neighborhood. And it was when everybody moved in, it was all fun and games. They would have block parties and they would do all this stuff, whatever. So one of the neighbors, I don't know who the neighbor is. Hopefully they're not a listener, but they wanted to take their kids out around the neighborhood and go trick or treating.

[00:12:26] So they had left jello shots out for the parents, assuming like, oh, you know, this will be a great thing. Cause it was one of those neighborhoods where they would do trick or treating, but every house would have a drink or they would offer beer or margaritas or wine or whatever for the, so everyone was drinking while they were trick or treating with the kids. So this family decided they were going to leave jello shots that they had been giving out. Cause they were like, all right, the last hour we want to go. So that the jello shots.

[00:12:53] So these kids were going up to their, um, their house and seeing the jello shots there. And they were like, oh, these are jello shots. So some of the kids were actually eating them there, um, because they couldn't control themselves. And it turned out they were like alcoholic jello shots. So, and I guess it caused some neighborhood drama. Yeah. Um, so we're, I don't get any cause we have a pretty long driveway and we live on a main road, but, um, we're one of those, we're those people now that code in neighborhoods with like

[00:13:20] cul-de-sacs and stuff, but there's a neighborhood we went to last year and yeah, they had hay rides. And I think three of the houses they gave one had like syringes, uh, basically that had like Dr. Miguel Cuddy or something in it. And, uh, yeah, that one had jello shots. So there was like two or three houses that were that similar vibe. And I was like, oh, I didn't, I didn't expect this. Yeah. But, uh, it's pretty, especially on a Saturday night. I bet there'll be a lot of that. Yeah. Like a lot of people going all out. Yeah. I think so. But yeah, the, um, Halloween in my area, ebbs and flows over the years, but last year

[00:13:49] we got a ton and I expect that this year we'll probably get a ton. There's a lot of new, new families in my neighborhood. So. Nice. Yeah. You got a lot of, a lot of people in that area, right? Yeah, for sure.

[00:14:22] So Nick, uh, moving on from Halloween, we have, uh, I just want to do one search and rescue story here. So unroped main climber rescued on white horse ledge. So this happened on Sunday around 8 AM. Uh, there was a bunch of pictures of this one too. It was kind of cool. So I haven't really, I've done cathedral ledge quite a few times, just hiking up there. Um, there's little side trails that you can bypass it on, but I haven't done white horse. I've come from the top.

[00:14:46] Uh, but this guy's 30 year old, uh, guy from Portland, Maine was climbing alone and unroped on a climbing route named sliding board. He was about 500 feet up. And, um, I guess he reached a point that he was no longer comfortable going up and down. He was able to get to a spot where he felt secure and then placed a call for assistance. So fishing game and conservation officers and members of mountain rescue, uh, in North Conway fire and rescue responded.

[00:15:13] So nine climbers from mountain rescue quickly organized, work together to climb to the hiker's location, secure him and fix ropes back to the base of the cliff. So he got a, um, I guess he, he got his own climbing guide instructions, uh, out of this one, Dave. By default? By default. Is that, is that the way to like beat the system? I guess it is. I guess that is. So anyway, but he descended safely and was back on the ground before about 10 AM, but there's some cool pictures online about this one too.

[00:15:43] And it's like, it's kind of, I could, I guess I can kind of see how he could say like, all right, well, it's, I could go for it, but, um, it kind of looks like Huntington ravine, but I think that there's sections of that white horse ledge that are, do go straight up. So I'm assuming he got clipped out basically. And then rightly decided to just call, call for rescue. Is it normally a climbing like wall? I think it is. Yeah. So he was up there with no gear and just kind of. No gear. Yeah. And he just got stuck.

[00:16:12] So I think it's normally a climbing route. Yeah. I was talking to our buddy Jake, who does do some climbing, um, about this and with, with, for those of us not in the know of rock climbing, um, like cathedral as white horse ledge, there's almost, there's basically trails. Like there's guides that will map out the routes and standard climbing routes that you can go up there. So it sounded like he went up on this sliding board one and kind of just gotten a spot where again, like can't safely descend, can't safely climb. But, um, in general, that side of white horse ledge he was on and the trail he was on was

[00:16:40] a straight up like rope climbing trail. It's not, it's not something people hike. So not exactly sure how he ended up that far on it, but it looks like, uh, from the pictures, like if you fell, you would just keep going. So. Yeah. I mean, I, I read some comments that, um, back in the day that it used to be like more commonly, I guess you could climb it without a rope, but it's gotten so smooth and worn down and a lot of the handholds and stuff are cause those areas get a lot of traffic.

[00:17:07] So, uh, and then they also get a lot of like, um, erosion from water and whatnot. So that's the deal is it used to be, I guess possible, but now, um, somebody here is like, there are many bold climbers. There are far fewer old bold climbers and soloing is a, uh, risky proposition. So good, good, good stuff there, but yeah, he's all rescued. Excellent. You gotta get over that area, Nick.

[00:17:34] Um, white horse and cathedral ledges is a bunch of different little trails. It's actually really good for the kids. Yeah. One, one day, one day we'll get over there. I feel like the crowd factor always just makes me sway from going to those types of places and we just go. Yeah, that's true. Go do the double heads. That's true. So, all right. Um, and then we wanted to just give a shout out to the slasher, uh, Instagram page and Facebook page here. So we've been getting a lot of traffic.

[00:17:57] We got over 70, 750,000 views this month so far on the, uh, the Instagram, Facebook feeds. And, uh, we've been trying to put out like new content and unique content and good stuff. I got a lot of traction. I did, uh, a Michael Miller. I did a series of Michael Miller. As a matter of fact, I still have like, oh, three or four. I got a post. I just got lazy and busy. I was partying in North Carolina this weekend. So, um, more content coming out on that.

[00:18:22] I've gotten a bunch of good responses and, um, I'm going to try to do like a more of a detailed breakdown about like, uh, the, with a map and do some visuals there. So good stuff. But I don't know, Nick or Steve, if you, if you caught any of that stuff. I did. I did. Yeah. Fascinated. That's something that you and I had talked about before. I'm really fascinated that whole backstory and the details that came out. And, uh, I'd love to get up there with my metal detector and stuff. Yeah, I do too. I want to get out there. I mean, the sister reached out and she's convinced that he didn't have a lot of

[00:18:52] took his camera everywhere. So if there was something that could be found, it would be the camera. And the leather jacket too. Leather jacket with the zippers. Yeah. So, um, yeah. And then Nick put out a bunch of content as well on, um, you know, Mount Adams doing his trail work and then, uh, recently on the Eisenhower Monroe stuff. So we'll talk about that, but yeah, definitely if you're not following us, it's, um, slasher podcast, uh, or it's at slasher podcast. S L A S R.

[00:19:21] Um, is the, um, is the Instagram handle. And then you can just look for sounds like a search and rescue podcast on Facebook. Yeah. I want to, I want to give you a shout out Mike too. I thought you, I went through them and I thought you did a great job. I know you said you're thinking you're a little self-conscious. It is weird sort of talking to a phone, especially when you're in a parking lot of people and you're sort of reciting details about this case, but I think you did an excellent job and it's a credit to how well you understand the whole case and situation and everything too. It's, you can tell that you've spent a lot of time researching it and thinking about it.

[00:19:50] And it was cool to see you in real time, sort of reciting everything as you're hiking. I thought it was very neat and you'd very well done. Yeah. We're going to get to the point where I always, the videos that I like are the people that just can like, they can recite everything off the top of their head as best they can. So I try to do the research, but yeah, it's a little odd. Like I got out of the car in the parking lot and there's like literally like dozens and dozens of people. And I'm like, where am I going to park? I said, I want to get some parking lot footage. So I was like, where am I going to record this? And I just, I was like, screw it. I'm just going to start talking on the phone.

[00:20:20] Some people will like look at them like, what the hell was that guy doing or whatever? And I was, it feels a little douchey, honestly, like, but I just got over it. I get that. Yeah. I'm kind of douchey anyway, so it's fine. When I was doing the YouTube videos reminded me of, um, a thing. And I would like to get back to that again, too. I think even Jake was commenting. He's like, Oh, like I missed the one you did a cabit when we did it for Peter's thing. And it's fun. It's just a lot of work. I do enjoy it. But, um, when I was doing, uh, I filmed a loop of, uh, Pogus kind of going through

[00:20:49] like the Kelton box trail and like the box Canyon and like, um, the Kelly box Canyon Kelton, I'm having my head from last weekend. Um, but, uh, in doing square ledge, but anyways, I was in the parking lot in the morning. There's like nobody there. And while I set up the tripod and was like, Oh, I'm going to do like a little intro. And some guy like parked right next to me and started just like stretching his calves out and stuff like on film. And I was like, seriously, dude, like there's nobody here right now, except us. And like, you could see me set up and I'm like, I called him random calf stretch guy, but it was just kind of funny. It was like, Oh, like long ride. I was like, okay. It would have been worse.

[00:21:19] You could have filmed that guy on the trail that we ran into. Uh, that's, that's just the mesh pants. I'll just say mesh pants. It is already explicit. We can just call him his real name. Yeah. Yeah. But, uh, but I get that vibe, I guess is all I'm trying to say, but it's, if it's fun, you enjoy it and you're not being rude to people like who cares? Yeah. At a certain point, I'm doing a dance. Yeah. And not doing a dance. I've done, I've been around those before, but, um, yeah, at a certain point I just was like, I don't even care anymore. I just started going and like, I remember I passed two, two, uh, hikers and I was just

[00:21:49] rapping and they were kind of like looking at me and I don't know. I didn't give an explanation. I was just doing my thing. So now if they saw it online, they might be like, Oh, I remember that guy. What you need to do is put your phone like on your wrist and inside of like a peregrine Falcon on top of it. Yes. People can't see it. So when you're holding it up on your wrist, it looks like you're holding your Falcon and giving instructions. People are like, that guy's bad. Yeah, that's true. That's true. I need to get a, um, like a something that's like enough with the nose hairs.

[00:22:17] Like I got to get a little bit of distance from the phone, but I just, you can cut those, you know, I can, I can. So, um, but anyway, I needed to make sure I invited everyone. I do much better when I have someone to riff to and like, but none of our hiking friends would go to Franconia Ridge on peak foliage at 6am on a Saturday. So I don't, I don't understand. Man. That's crazy. So weird. So weird that all of us would avoid Franconia Ridge like the plague this time of year. I don't know why. That's so odd. They probably thought I would. Yeah.

[00:22:47] Probably thought I would. We rented that van. Yeah. Well, you get that van and went over to artist bluff to hang up with stomp and climb up there and get some free snacks. True. I don't know. I love hiking with thousands of people. I don't know about you guys. Yeah. That's the best. Honestly, though, I will say like I went up old bridal and I didn't see, I, there was three groups on old bridal, three total groups when I was on there and like everybody went up falling waters. Matter of fact, even when I got to the hut, the hut was open. It wasn't that going up to Lafayette. I did. I saw like maybe three other groups.

[00:23:16] That was it. And it wasn't until I got down from Lafayette. It was like the walking dead, like the hordes just started coming towards me. But, um, honestly, like I tell people, like if you are going to do Franconia Ridge, go up old bridal. I think that that's true even more now, given that, like that sketchy section by the agonies, I, there's nothing risky in all on falling waters anymore at this point with the reroute. So I've, I'm actually, I tell people like go up old bridal. I honestly think that's the better direction safety wise. Now at this point.

[00:23:48] Yeah. No, that's makes sense. I mean, you'll always run into Canadians. It doesn't matter which direction you go. There's a lot of French speaking people on there. They're all sweetened in the woods. Hey, we, we love our Canadian listeners. We do. I'm French Canadian. I grew up with multiple, multiple pronouns per sentence, you know, that guy, him over there, him, that guy, he, he told me not to talk to you, him, that guy. Yes. Uh, but anyway, I don't love doing these videos. I prefer to be in the moment. I do like to take pictures when I'm there, when I'm out.

[00:24:16] But, uh, anyway, I will do it for you, for the listeners. So I'll continue. Um, that's love right there. Everybody. That's a lot of dedication. Love more content, uh, going on. So anyway, so moving on to just a reminder on some upcoming events. And so the day that this is recording, uh, well, the day that this is released, it'll be Friday, October 30th, which will be tonight. Stomp, uh, will be the DJ at Reckless's Halloween party from 8 PM to 11 PM is at the Pine House. No tickets first come first serve.

[00:24:45] And, uh, you can come party with Stomp and then there's going to be a, like a Halloween, um, pageant, I think is what they're calling it. So you get to be vote. You can vote on the best Halloween costume. Yeah. Stomp would be a Viking, I believe he's going to, and, uh, hopefully he does okay with the, uh, mascara. And he's going to have like a plunging neckline is what, what he had said. He's going to stick with, he's going sexy, not slutty. Yes. Plunging neckline. Tastes full. All right.

[00:25:13] I gotta, I gotta get that out of my memory, but, uh, and then, uh, as a reminder on Saturday, November 7th, Stomp and Dave will be, um, at the annual Rescue Me 5K. I'm still up in the air on that. I think, I think I have a prior commitment on that day. I think I committed to going to, um, the University of New Hampshire football game that I have to go to. We're tailgating. So I'm supposed to bring a ladder. Fenway, Fenway's closed. Yeah.

[00:25:41] It's like a weird, like, um, I don't, we all just decided the Amesbury Dadbots guys decided we're going to go to like UNH. So. That's the new Fenway. That's the winter Fenway. That's where he's going to go. Yes. Do they serve there? Can you get Mai Tais and beer there? I think we just have to bring all that stuff. So we're bringing like, um, tailgate. We're going to do tailgating. Nothing could go wrong. I'm bringing tables. I'm bringing a ladder. It's going to be great. No. Anyway, but I think that I'll be missing that.

[00:26:10] But anyway, Saturday, November 7th, join members of the Slasher crew as they emcee the annual Rescue Me 5k in Lincoln, New Hampshire. Uh, we're a proud supporter of the volunteer efforts of the Lakes Region Search and Rescue. And you can sign up for this. It's November 7th at, uh, Rescue Me 5k, uh, website. And we'll include that in our show notes. It's a great race, flat race. So that even though we are up in the mountains, this race is pretty flat. So you can really cook on it. So relatively flat, relatively.

[00:26:38] And Dave, do you have any, um, do you have any jokes that you want to, um, disclose ahead of time? Are you holding them all for that day? Uh, no, that my material is, it's like, I don't, you're not allowed to record. Okay. Because I have all new material and I don't want it stolen. Okay. Um, but no, we got, we got some good stuff cooking for that one. Cell phones will be collected at the, at the point of entry. So you cannot steal Dave's material. So, all right. That's right. That's sarcasm. We're too hard on that. Not true. Yeah, very much.

[00:27:06] Uh, and then Saturday, November 21st, uh, the annual Reckless Brewings Full Conditions event featuring Ty Gagney, uh, the Slasher crew and, um, a bunch of great guests like Kate Ziliff. We're going to be watching the movie My Ride or Die. Um, we'll have, um, Ty there, Lieutenant James Nealon. Joe Roman of AMC and Paw Rescue. Dave's going to be there. Um, and then you, and me, Nick and Stomp will be there and there'll be a bunch of other, um, great guests.

[00:27:34] If you want to get tickets, there's still some available. I think we're getting close, uh, on the sellout. And then we really want to emphasize this is the donation part of this too. So if you could donate, your donations will go towards, so you buy a ticket and then there's a donation piece of it. Um, and you can, um, you can do that all on the tickets link that we will include in our show notes. So definitely check that out. Yep. And all, uh, all these donations go towards the New Hampshire Outdoor Council, which actually,

[00:28:01] uh, basically supports and funds all the search and rescue teams in New Hampshire. So it's a, it's a really, really good cause. And we want to make sure they get a lot of cash, a lot of dough. Yeah. You know, it's crazy that Michael Miller, um, case, there's a, um, uh, summer 1984 article about it at the very end of that article, they, they go into like two or three paragraphs about the tension around how search and rescue is funded. They were basically like, this was a very expensive and comprehensive search.

[00:28:30] It was funded by fishing game, which raises funds through hunting and fishing licenses. And then it went on to basically talk about like the tension around how, um, you know, many argue that, um, these rescues shouldn't be funded through fishing and hunting licenses because they don't get any benefit from it and that there should be a way to fund hiking rescues independently. So it's like this, these discussions have been going on for like 45 years, even longer, even

[00:28:59] than I've seen, I've seen talk about this in the seventies about how search and rescue was funded. So, um, I think we've come a long way, at least with like the, the hike safeguard, there is a way to raise funds that are dedicated for search and rescue, but this is another way to donate on the New Hampshire outdoor council. Basically they, they'll distribute funds to the volunteer search and rescue teams and, and, and other channels so that they can, they can fund rescues when needed. Um, all right.

[00:29:28] So that's it for the events here. Now we've got some New Hampshire stuff here. So I was taking a look at search and rescue data for September and October. So I think in August we had done a recap, Nick, about how things were trending. And at the time we had like 95 people involved in, uh, I don't even know how many rescues and something like 80 rescues, which was getting close to what the, the annual average is.

[00:29:52] In September, there were 15 hiking related, um, media reports, including one fatality. And then in October there was 17 hiking related, um, media reports, including two fatalities, which was the busiest October regular season since 2021. Um, and again, all these rescues that are make the news, like that doesn't include like the Monadnock stuff. Sometimes gets, it gets handled like by the local park staff.

[00:30:20] Artists bluff doesn't always make the news. And then there's a bunch of events in like the lakes region and other areas in like a Western and Northern New Hampshire that local police and fire might handle. So there's a lot of activity that goes on that doesn't hit the media reports, but the media reports are pretty consistently done over the last six or seven years. And by the end of this year, typically in November, December, you'll have November, you'll have about six or seven rescues in December.

[00:30:46] You'll have a handful of them by the end of this year will likely be somewhere around, um, I think 110 events maybe. And then 135, maybe 140 individuals involved, which typically you get somewhere between 90 to 95 events and maybe 105 to 110 individuals. So we're probably looking at around a 20% increase. Um, so 2026 will be the biggest search and rescue year.

[00:31:14] The funny thing about this year is I was looking at some of the trends. There really hasn't been like a lot of big rescues. Like there hasn't been an extended search for anybody in a while. It's mostly been a lot of lower leg injuries and poor decisions, you know, losing light and stuff like that. So nothing major. It's just a lot of minor leg injury things, carryouts and stuff like that.

[00:31:37] Well, I was just wondering, um, if it's, if there's an increase in the number of people hiking, like as a percentage of people hiking, has that stayed static or is like more people hiking more injuries? Cause I would have thought those numbers would have spiked during COVID. Right, right. Instead of 2026 where people seem to be, you know, almost over the hiking bug. Right. Yeah. We don't know like social media definitely like tips people off. I do think that like the artist bluff stuff definitely indicates that there's a lot of social media people out there.

[00:32:03] But, um, the problem that we have is there's no way to get that data. So the visitor user monitoring numbers typically get done every five years. And I keep looking for the white mountains one. And I thought that I read that UNH got the contract to basically do the visitor, um, monitoring numbers, but I haven't seen a report out. So that's the difficult part is you can look at like every five years on 2010, 2015, 2020.

[00:32:32] And then, uh, I'm waiting for 2025. I haven't got it. Uh, but 2020, the numbers did, the visitor numbers did spike up. Uh, I think that was pre COVID. And then, um, yeah, you should see proportionally if there's more hikers, then proportionally rescues would go up in theory, which that may be what's happening here is that there's just more hikers out on the trail, but we'll have to, um, we'll have to see.

[00:32:57] You'll have to ask around when you're up there in a couple of weeks when you're human age, be like, Hey, where are my numbers? Right. Start going through the halls. Right. Shaking people down. Yeah. I'll take a look. I haven't looked in a few weeks, but I look at the website, the, the visitor monitor, uh, the visitor usage monitor website. And, uh, it doesn't have anything for the white mountains. So I don't know, maybe that might be something that got like, maybe the funding got pulled by that. Cause the government, I know when the, the, the new regime came in, they, they pulled a lot of funding for, um, forest service stuff.

[00:33:27] So hopefully that's not the case, but we'll see. But that's a, that's an operating theory that we could, we could look at. But right now, all I can tell you is that like a lot of lower leg injuries. I also wonder whether or not cell phone connectivity is, uh, people are more likely to just call because they got an injury. There is a fear amount of like, oh, they were a half a mile from the trailhead and needed to carry out for a sprained ankle type of thing that I wonder whether or not if they didn't have cell connection, they would have just dragged themselves out.

[00:33:54] So yeah, I was, I was talking about, um, this with Jake and Paul a little bit, but it does seem like the crowds, even since I've been hiking, I don't know, since 2014, this time of year in the fall, like there's just seems to be a lot more people out. Like even when we were heading up on Saturday morning, early, um, I was talking to Jake, I'm like, do you think there's going to be people on artist bluff? And there was like probably a dozen or so people up there in the dark. And it's like, to me, it's past peak foliage. It's kind of past that type of season where I would have expected to see people really crowding up there still, but, um, it's great.

[00:34:23] People are getting out there, but I, I, and, um, I'm curious, uh, if yeah, if that's sort of like you said, Mike, if there's more numbers up there, so that's more people getting into trouble. There's sort of a direct correlation there or not, but it seems like you see more people in different places. And I mean, when we were out, we didn't see a ton of people. So it seems to be some different hotspot areas where, uh, you get a lot of those. Yeah.

[00:34:44] And I mean, in theory, um, I don't know how many rescues were on falling waters, but in theory, assume that you've got somewhere between 10 to 15 rescues on falling waters alone every year. In theory with that new reroute, those should all go away. So maybe the numbers will drop next year. Yeah. Hopefully I feel like, I feel like just watching it with what we go through, it seems like there's been a lot in Franconi notch. I mean, which is always, but a lot of like, um, the other side to like be like the basin cascade trail.

[00:35:11] Like, I feel like we saw a lot this year over there and the Kinsmans and things like that. Yeah. I think, um, Chikor has always got a lot too. So, um, I'll have to take a look. I haven't, I haven't double clicked into the data here, but just looking at, I mean, looking at 2026 right now, I can see, let me see three people in fall. Franconia Ridge, two more on Franconia Ridge. So yeah, there's a fair amount. There's five people on Franconia Ridge. So yeah.

[00:35:42] Um, Huntington Ravine was also a pretty big spot as well this year, but you know, we'll have to see how it goes. But 2026, I can tell you is the big year right now. That's the, from 2019 forward that I've been collecting this data, 2026 is the busiest year. Um, and just to run down some of the rescues that we had this week. So there was a hiker injured on Mount Cardigan coming down the whole trail. So I haven't been, I bypassed the whole trail when I did Cardigan. I've only been up there once.

[00:36:07] I know Stomp likes that trail and, uh, I know that it's, it's well regarded as like one of the steepest or sketchiest trails in the white side. I don't think it's on the terrifying 25. I think that people have always said like it should be, but it's not. Uh, but this was a 53 year old hiker from Massachusetts that was hiking down the whole trail when he fell. He's about 1.9 miles to the trailhead. So I'm assuming that that's like right up by the top. Yeah. Cause he's like 0.2 miles from the summit.

[00:36:35] So I think where it gets pretty steep is right around that area there. So I don't recommend going down the whole trail. And I think if you're going to use it, go up it. And then, uh, there's a bypass that goes around it. If you, uh, if you want to, and then you connect at the lower part of the whole trail before the sign that says like, this is a very dangerous trail. Uh, but I guess he got carried out and, um, it doesn't say where he got injured. It just says non life-threatening injury that required a carry out.

[00:37:03] So kudos to the, uh, upper Valley wilderness response team and the local fire departments that came out. Have you guys gone down or up the whole trail before? I haven't. No. I don't think I have. No. I've only done cardigan once and it was from the west side. I figure it's the popular route that everybody goes up. I know there's a pretty elaborate trail system over there and I just haven't gotten out there.

[00:37:30] I came in through the, like the AMC, um, build this, like a AMC camp there. And then I went over to fire screw and then came around and then looped around. So I think that that's like the Southeast part. Yeah. I think that's, yeah, the, correctly coming from like the new found lake side. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I did the whole fire screw mountain and this, uh, aerial's grotto or something like that. Or the grotto. We called it aerial's grotto, but it was the grotto. Yeah. Um, it's like this whole cave behind the back that you can like scramble up and into and

[00:38:00] stuff. We did that. Yeah. It's a nice area. I don't, I don't think to get over there, but I have to put it back on the list. There's a lot of good trails across from that too. Like out in that area in general. At one point me and Stomp were, uh, we were going to hike from like new found lake over to the Mowgli trail and then connect to Cardigan. But we, we never got that. We never got that put together. So. There's a hermit cave out there too in the Mowgli area. Yes. It's pretty neat to get down to, especially in the winter, if you can find it.

[00:38:28] There's some, uh, sugar, like I grew up staying over there and there's the sugar loaf over there and like the, not the Ellsworth, maybe it's the Ellsworth trail. I forget, but there's, there's, there is a really nice trail system on that west side of the lake and it does all connect through to Cardigan. I think there's like bear mountain and a couple other random mountains that you can, you go along on the Mowgli trail if you were to follow that. Okay. Anyway, well, this guy's okay, but yeah, don't go down the whole trail. And then, uh, next one up, there was a group of hikers, not a lot of detail here.

[00:38:55] Doesn't give the ages or anything, but this is in Pawtuckaway State Park. I don't know. This is again, another area that I don't really, I'm not familiar with if either one of you guys knows this, but it's in Nottingham. It was the Shaw Trail in Pawtuckaway Park. I feel like Dave, you would, you would, this would be a stomping ground that you've been in. Yeah. Yeah. We've, we've watched a couple of, um, those like a super moons come up on one side and this, you know, sunset on one side, super moon on the other. It's a fire tower out that way. And that it's a good, uh, like a beer hike. You go up to the sub in a beer, you watch the sunset, watch the moon come up. All right.

[00:39:24] What sub would you buy if you were going to go up to? I, I usually go with the cold sub, you know, cause it gets cold when you get up there and I probably go with like a turkey sub. Turkey. Turkey with like lettuce, pickles, and mayonnaise. Pickles. That'd be my go-to, I think. Yeah. Pickles. Yeah. You're gonna have the salt. Love pickles. Pickles. I don't like pickles. You can't ask me and then judge me. That's just, you know, that's just not. Did you hear the disdain in his voice when he said pickles? Yeah. That was, that was like subway bullying. I don't like pickles. What is wrong with you? I don't know. I don't like them. You like that crap. She's like, don't let them touch the turkey.

[00:39:54] Do you eat cucumbers? I do. I do. Yeah. I just don't like the slimy. Slimy. All right. I like pickled carrots. That doesn't make any sense. Nope. Would you put it on a turkey sub though? No, I usually put it in like, um. All right. Like there's this Mediterranean place and they'll have like, um, rice bowls and chicken and they'll have pickled carrots, which I like. Are they sour or are they sweet? Um, a mix of both. Okay.

[00:40:24] So. You're a very fancy guy, you know, like you do a lot of fancy things. I'm an aristocrat. I can see why you judge me on the pickle comment now. Like you're above pickles. You're very slimy. You're like next level. Cucumbers, not pickled carrots. Yeah, exactly. Right. Well, I was in, I was in North Carolina over that weekend and. Cucumbers is so like predictable. Somebody got like fried pickles at the table and I was like, the lady, the waitress lady put them down in front of me and I was like, get those out of my face.

[00:40:52] I feel like if you were like royalty, you'd be had a lot of people. I hope not. No, off with their head. How dare they bring me pickles? Death. Hang them, quarter them. But anyway, so this was a group of hikers on Shaw Trail on Pawtuckaway State Park. They had no, they had no turkey sandwiches to keep them alive. So they needed a rescue. So they called around seven. And, um, funny thing this time of the year, the lights go out, Dave.

[00:41:21] It's weird. I wish they would have a way to track that stuff. Yes. There was only some. You gotta like, it's so unpredictable. Like every day you just don't know. Yes. Like every day at noon, I'm eating my sandwich. Like I gotta get these pickles real quick. Cause like any minute it could be dark again. What do they call that night or something? Yeah. Yeah. So it doesn't say explicitly in this, but it just says the group of hikers could not find their way back to the car after the sunset. So I'm, I'm assuming that that means they had no lights or they had cell phone lights or whatever.

[00:41:50] So, uh, took them a while. I'm going to guess they had more edibles or smoking materials than they had. Um, rescue. I'm just going to go on a limb, but it's a very small park. Um, it's, you, you kind of have to earn a rescue there, in my opinion. Yeah. Um, if you just keep walking, you're going to hit, you can hear the road. It's, you know, but. I mean, that's probably why it took four hours to find them. So this call came in at seven and they didn't get out until four, uh, until 11 o'clock, which is four hours later.

[00:42:18] So I'm wondering maybe they tried to like direct them out on the phone and, and figured like, it's so small, they're never going to get lost out there. But eventually, right. Never, never underestimate the power. Police department, um, ended up going out there to, to help. So lack of situational awareness. Yeah. It doesn't give the ages here, but I'm going to go with young. It sounds like they're having a good time. Yes. Yeah. They're good. And then they weren't this next one.

[00:42:47] Um, so this was on Saturday, October 24th, around 8 PM. 22 year old hiker from Connecticut. Connecticut is the, uh, the bell of the ball this week on search and rescues. I think, uh, there's a couple more on here, but, um, decided to do a 20 mile loop. He's over by, so he's on Pine Bend Brook trail. He's doing a 20 mile loop. He was able to place a call from the ridge in the vicinity of North Tri-Pyramid.

[00:43:15] So I'm assuming he must've been doing some kind of a, like, uh, um, white face past a Conway sleeper route. Uh, but I don't know about a loop. Maybe, I guess if you go in through, um, God, I forget that trail. Yeah. You can come out by the UNH Durham trail. Yeah. Yeah. Something like that. Which is not much further away from Pine Bend. Yeah. So anyway, so Pine Bend Brook.

[00:43:41] So he's doing a long hike and, uh, he called in around eight o'clock from North Tri-Pyramid. That's about three miles from the trailhead. So he had a knee injury and he was making progress slowly. I wonder if he had like the same thing that I had earlier this year on isolation, Nick. Remember when my knee was just blowing up? It's like a muscle strain. Yeah. It was kind of a spasm type, but it like basically flared up while you were hiking sort of randomly. Well, it had, it had, um, started hitting me at the end of that, like, uh, Pemi river

[00:44:11] traverse that we did, which was like a 17, 18 mile hike when I was coming down to the Willie house. The last two miles, like all of a sudden my, my above my knee, it was like my inside quad. Like I couldn't barely step on it. And then I kind of ignored it. And then I did the isolation hike. Cause I was like, oh, I'll be fine. And then immediately coming back from that, that was, that started hurting. So, uh, but it was just an overuse injury and I rested and it was fine after that. Yeah. Good. You know, I'm glad this guy was okay too. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:44:39] So they were able to, so fishing game was able to get to him, um, pretty quickly. I guess he was, he made it about a mile and a half after he called and then fishing game conservation officers in lakes, lakes region, search and rescue responded and met him about a mile and a half up the trail. They stabilized his knee and then they were able to walk him out. So he got back to his car around, um, 11 PM. So that kind of sucks. He's three miles away. It took him a mile, an hour to get down, but that's also not terrible.

[00:45:09] So kudos to him for, um, getting out and then, you know, call if you think you're going to be in trouble. So he did what he needed to do. Cause he's not getting any cell phone connection after he leaves North Stry Pyramid. So that was the time to call. No, I was going to mention like that whole area. I'm assuming he was probably doing some sort of sandwich range loop, maybe like white face past the Conway or something and then coming back to his car. But yeah, there's not great self-service. Um, a lot of that areas, especially once you get like past the tries and towards, uh, yeah, the past the Conway side. Right.

[00:45:39] And then, uh, this next one also on Saturday at, uh, one 30 fishing game notified of a hiker had fallen and suffered a head injury near the summit of doublehead mountain. So this is the doublehead mountain that is, um, in the sandwich range between, uh, or it's not the sandwich range. It is the, what is that range called Dave? That's, um, Morgan and Percival. It's like the Squam range. Squam range. Squam. There you go. Yeah. I'm like, it's by rattlesnake on that side. It's the opposite side. Is it the Crawford Ridgepole trail that goes over?

[00:46:09] That's it. Like the entire. Okay. I had that in my brain, I think from maybe Nobby did a video of you guys or you just Me and Stomp did, uh, did that one time. So yeah, doublehead mountain, uh, that matter of fact, that's the mountain where, uh, we did that story a long time ago about the kid who was hiking with his camp counselor. And remember they saw a black bear and the kid like died of a, like a medical event. Um, he was like a young kid, I think like 17, 18 year old kid. I don't know if he had a heart attack or something happening. He just died of panic attack.

[00:46:39] So, um, but yeah, doublehead mountain. So this was a 22 year old hiker that was hiking with three friends and, uh, he had fallen and, uh, had a head injury. So they called 911. Um, initially they thought that it could have been pretty severe. Um, sandwich center Harbor and Ashland fire departments, along with conservation officers from fishing game responded. So at two miles from the trailhead. So with the help of his friends, he was able to get himself together and begin hiking down

[00:47:08] the trail rescues, met the group on the trail and assisted them back to the trailhead. They got back around 4 PM. So all's well that ends well there. You never want to get a head injury. And then this last one here was a, uh, a couple of backpackers from Connecticut. One of the guys slipped on the first day of his three day hiking trip with three other companions and had a lower leg injury. And he was, uh, called on third.

[00:47:35] It was Thursday, October 22nd, called around 2 PM and, uh, fishing game officers are on with Androscoggin Valley search and rescue and lakes region search and rescue responded. 24 volunteers responded. And, um, the crews were able to, um, I guess meet them. He was able, he was, this guy was crawling down the trail. So he made it about six tenths of a mile before the first rescue teams arrived. They got him in a litter and then he got back to the park around 11 o'clock fishing game.

[00:48:04] And the media reports gave the, the, the crew, uh, a shout out that they had plenty of gear and were able to stay out for several days if needed. So all's well that ends well there. And then moving on to national stuff here. Um, Nick, have you ever gone to a national park and paid a visitor's fee? Yes. I've, uh, only been to Joshua tree. That being said, but I paid the fees for whatever several day pass there, which I don't think it was really a lot of money. Yeah.

[00:48:33] And I don't know, I might not have been paying attention to this one or we may not have done this story, but I didn't realize this, but, um, the, uh, federal government issued an executive order in July of 2025 directing the department of interior to increase national park entrance fees and annual passes for non-US residents. Um, the national park service announced the exact amount in November, 2025, and it took effect in January.

[00:49:00] So essentially what they do is it's a hundred dollars surcharge for a single park for a foreign visitor. Um, and then you have the option, if you're a foreign visitor, you can buy an annual pass for $250. The annual pass will get you into, it'll get you and anybody that's in your vehicle into a national park and you can go up to a 15 passenger van. So, um, I didn't realize this, but like obviously a lot of foreign visitors when I've been to the Grand Canyon and Yosemite and whatnot.

[00:49:29] So if you have to pay individual entrance fees, you have to pay a hundred, a hundred dollars surcharge. I don't know if that's on top of the, in the, the, the normal fee as well. Um, but for us residents, the, usually the annual pass is the way to go. It's like $80 and then you can get everybody in your car in there. That's what I've done when I've gone to the Grand Canyon. And I think when me and Tom went to Yosemite, that's what we did. But, um, but this has raised some concerns around businesses that rely on the Grand Canyon

[00:49:58] and some of the other popular national parks that this new hundred dollar fee is suppressing the number of visitors. Uh, they don't give any metrics. Like I would assume that they'd have some monitoring metrics at the gate. They don't give any in this article. They just give anecdotes from a couple of tour organizers. One tour organizer indicates that, um, typically they do about 10 tours per year for German speaking visitors, but through October, they've only had one group.

[00:50:27] And he said that the Germans are not happy coming here. If they want to go to the Grand Canyon, it's two people. They have to pay $200 and they don't want to do that. So. Yeah, it's interesting. Um, the article does go on to mention, I guess, as, as a ground for this, a lot of it comparison was that it costs a lot of money to go to other national parks. Um, if you're foreign and other countries, um, my like initial gut check to it is that

[00:50:54] if you're, you're paying the money to fly out to the Grand Canyon from Germany, a hundred bucks per person probably isn't exorbitant amount, but yeah. Um, if you get a tour group, that's probably a little bit different consideration, but yeah, I'd like to see the metrics on, I'm sure it's affecting visitor status. Cause it's more expensive. Usually that'll drive it down a little bit, but it'd be interesting to see in a comparison of numbers. Right. Yeah. There's a local tour company that is suing to block the surcharge, calling it unprecedented and unlawful.

[00:51:22] Um, there is an entrance fee to get in the Grand Canyon. That's like $20 for pedestrian and then $35 for everyone in a private vehicle. So it, that the surcharge is on top. So it's actually like if you were two people coming from Germany, you would have to pay $270 to get into the Grand Canyon, which seems pretty steep to me. Um, you know, and the math doesn't work out to get the annual pass for them. So, um, not ideal. And this applies to 11 of the nation's 63 national parks.

[00:51:52] So it's Grand Canyon, Acadia, Bryce Canyon, Everglades, Glacier, Teton, or Grand Teton, Rocky Mountain, Sequoia, uh, and Kings Canyon, Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Zion. So the most popular ones basically. Cheaper than Vegas. Interesting, Acadia. That's, um, because the, uh, Canadians, that must hit them hard. Yeah. Can we do that with Artist Bluff? We should do that with Artist Bluff. That's a good idea. Can you imagine the revenue? It'd be crazy. A lot of money.

[00:52:22] It'd be, actually wouldn't be a bad idea to like charge people to go up Artist Bluff and use that for, um, to fund Search and Rescue. Absolutely. And you just, you have to buy a window. So you buy X number of hour. Right. So your time is, you can control, you know, the number of people going up. You go up, you have an X an hour at the top and you come down. Right. I think the issue with that, that location is that's owned by, uh, that's a New Hampshire State Park and not a, um. Oh, yes. Okay. So. Yeah. But yeah, I don't know how that works, but that'd be a good idea actually. Maybe you could do it on Mount Pemmy.

[00:52:52] I think Mount Pemmy is also in the New Hampshire State Park. So. But yeah, I do think that there's a way to monitor. The state could monetize the foliage season to fund search and rescue operations if they wanted to. So they could hire me. I'll figure something out. There you go. Uh, and then add to this, the, uh, keeping with the national park themes here, we've got a story. Um, oh boy.

[00:53:20] Nick, did you do this on purpose? No, I didn't, but I just opened it. So I know your apprehension. So why I'm like stumbling is because this, so there's a new national park that's, that's super cool announced by the U S department of the interior, but, um, it's got an interesting name. So it's, I'm going to, I'm going to go with Shirokawa. Yeah. Um, Shirokawa. We'll go with Shirokahu. I don't know. Um, advertises the wonderland of rocks.

[00:53:49] Um, so it looks like it will be a national park or is a national park now that's in Arizona. Um, basically there's these giant sort of rock pillars and interesting rock formations that were shaped by massive volcanic eruptions million in millions of years of erosions. Um, so there's a bunch of different rock pinnacles. Um, it looks kind of a otherworldly by some of the photos they're shown here, but it looks pretty neat. And, um, there's a lot of people lamenting that it should have been made a national park years ago. Um, so it's very impressive. Let's like wild.

[00:54:19] It looks like, um, yeah, yeah. It's, it's some of these rocks are just like, I don't know how they held up, but, um, and if I pronounce it wrong, I don't want to hear it from anybody. Cause I took one for the team from Mike. Um, so he didn't have to embarrass himself. God, I froze. You did? You did? AI tells me it's Shirokawa. Shirokawa. Yeah. Okay. Shirokawa. That was pretty close. Okay. Yeah. I don't know why I'm nodding when I say, but Shirokawa.

[00:54:48] Seems like the thing to do. Yep. Thank you for nodding, Dave. Yeah. I'm a linguist. We all know that hiking a mountain can be hard at times. So here's a corny dad joke to help you get over it. But I'm bummed. Um, Dave, how do trees get online? Oh, uh, got me. Log in.

[00:55:18] Oh, wow. Um, where do hamburgers go to dance? The meatball. A meatball. Get it? A ball? Like, a ball is the same thing as a dance. Call back to the throw of meatball bowl. All right. Why did the cleaner take early retirement? He realized that grime doesn't pay. Get it? Grime instead of crime. Wow. Yeah, no. I just switched the letter and made it funny.

[00:55:48] What kind of bird sticks to other birds? I give up. Velcro. A Velcro. Oh, Nick got it. All right. It's all right. He's good. Woo. Hey, what's that sound?

[00:56:16] It must be time for the pop culture segment with Mike and Stomp. All right. So, uh, pop culture talk here. So, um, just want to give a shout out. This is the, uh, somebody put this in here. This sounds like a, this is giving Stomp vibes. Cause I think that this is Nick is too young to know what's going on here. So, I'm, I'm, I'm, Hey, you have to cover his ears. I'm watching this movie. Don't listen, Nick. We're going to use adult words. Sorry. Sorry.

[00:56:42] Uh, Nick, Nick missed this, like this, uh, um, cultural phenomena, but like it is the anniversary. It's some kind of an anniversary of the Blair Witch Project. So, uh, we wanted to give this a shout. But it's sort of a, like a, a scary hiking movie. I think though, that's the way I look at it. Oh, it's the best worst movie ever made. Right. So for listeners that aren't familiar with this, this, this was released in 1999. This was, I think the last horror movie that Mrs. Mike agreed to go to with me when

[00:57:09] we were, we must've been engaged at this point, but, uh, the Blair Witch Project is one of the most unconventional and influential independent and profitable influence or independent films ever made produced on a tiny budget of like less than $700,000. Uh, it ultimately grossed 250 million worldwide. And this movie, I think if you're not familiar with it, the way I would describe it is it's like found footage. This was the very first sort of found footage.

[00:57:36] Like it molded the idea of like reality TV with, um, with the horror genre. And it was about three college students that were investigating this legend about a, uh, a witch from the 1700s that had been, I guess, killed in the area. And they went out to this like park in Maryland to tour around it. And then ultimately found themselves in this scary house. And, um, it didn't sound like they survived too well, but the, the, the footage was, they

[00:58:05] recorded a bunch of footage before they were killed. And then people found that footage, but it still didn't really answer exactly what happened. And the way that this was filmed was essentially that the, the directors gave three actors kind of cues about at a very high level, what was going to go on, but then they asked them to just basically improvise. So most of it's improvised, but pretty well done. I think at the time, Dave, it was a pretty groundbreaking sort of, um, a new format. I think it's not often that somebody actually does something truly original.

[00:58:36] It was, you get a picture of us before cell phones. So it was that constant question of, was this real? Is this not real? It's like the Bigfoot Sasquatch first pictures. Like people try, you didn't know if it was real or not. Was this real footage they found? Was it just a movie? Like, and then the, the rumor started, no one will go in the woods forever. Cause they thought it was real. Yeah, it was crazy. It was one, it was the very first sort of, um, viral internet driven, uh, marketing campaign as well. So they put together a website.

[00:59:05] Um, they presented it as like, okay, these, this actually, this was real events that we recorded. And then, um, you know, from a marketing perspective, it, it really took off. And matter of fact, I remember trying to get tickets to this. The only place that you could go see it was the old Kendall Square movie theater in Cambridge for a while. It was like an early release. So they, they kind of, they didn't do a wide release to start with because it was independent film. And I, I remember getting tickets for it and getting into Kendall Square and being like

[00:59:32] one of the very few that was able to see it early on. Eventually it got a wide release, but it took a while. And this thing was pretty viral for, uh, for at the time that it was never, there was never another example of something going viral over the internet. So this was the first real movie that got traction like that. Did you get motion sick at all? Uh, no, but that was one of the big things I remember them saying. A lot of people did. I didn't know if that's your first time you threw up in the popcorn bucket, but, um, but,

[01:00:02] but yeah, no, that was, that was definitely motion sickness was a side effect of going in the movie. It was like, it was just, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was just basically the, the camcorder, you know, that was how it was filmed for a good chunk of it and people running and like, it was, it, it was hard. Yeah. The, um, that was, I think that that was what precipitated, like now you will get these like motion warnings. Um, I think that that was one of the first films where, where they had that interesting little sidebar is the, the female lead.

[01:00:31] I think her name was Heather Donahue. She, um, sort of had an interesting life. I think she's retired. She got into, um, legalized marijuana for a while and eventually found her way. She became like a local politician in freedom, Maine, which is up North by Augusta. And then had some controversy in the local town as, as like, if you pay attention to local Maine politics and New Hampshire politics, like it's not uncommon for a local politician to get recalled because they piss enough people off in town with making a decision.

[01:01:01] And that's exactly what happened with hers. There was some sort of a dispute over like a, a road in freedom, Maine. And, um, the, the citizens put a recall petition together and removed her from whatever elected position she was in. So, yeah. So she's up in Maine now. So yeah, Blair Witch. And there's, there's two sequels. I think the, the, the 2016 sequel was the one that actually carries on the story, but, um,

[01:01:28] I definitely recommend it if you haven't seen it, it's worth checking out. And then somebody else put in a recommendation to check out the Mike Tyson documentary on Netflix. Yeah, I've been, uh, I've been watching that one. It's been interesting. I think I'm like through the, it's like four parts. I'm in the third part. This is kind of another one. Like I was so young when a lot of this was going on. I didn't realize like how crazy superstar he was and also like how crazy young he was and going to jail. And, uh, it's very, uh, interesting.

[01:01:56] Tyson was, he was unhinged back in the day. Uh, probably still is, but, uh, yeah, that's worth checking out too. Um, also worth checking out is if you want free stickers, you go to the Mountain Wander in Lincoln, New Hampshire or Spinner's Pizza Parlor in Andover. Uh, so we got stickers there. And then, uh, if you want to get swag, you can check out our bonfire shop. Choose between our super popular hoodies, classic or V-neck t-shirts. So more and more. The color selection is great and they are priced to move.

[01:02:25] And then, uh, if you want to help support the, the podcast, you can donate to Slashers Buy Me a Coffee site. Donations help us pay for web hosting, distribution, live events, and, um, haircuts for Dave Schitts in the Woods. Much needed. Uh, and then if you click a, click a little box, you can become a monthly, um, slasher. We call it a Senator. Uh, so Kevin Lawson, shout out as our newest slasher Senator.

[01:02:55] So thank you, Kevin, for the support. Uh, and, uh, yeah, you can, you can definitely, um, give us, give us money. We will appreciate it. We do. I'm happy to get. Grand Canyon trip. Yeah, I'm happy to get money. That's right. Prices are going up. Yep. Hey, hold my beer. It's time to find out what Mike and Stomp are drinking.

[01:03:25] On this week's Beer Talk. And then next up, beer talk here. Um, I'm not drinking anything right now, but I had a situation over the weekend that I shared with the guys. Oh boy. We were sworn to secrecy. We can't share. October, October was a disaster. Absolute feel. Like multiple. You know what comes up in November, right? November has another thing that guys try to do.

[01:03:54] I don't want to get too graphic. Oh yeah. Yeah. I don't. I, you're not doing very good with October. So I'd rather you don't keep me updated in November is all I'm saying. I'm not good at these monthly, like, um, no monthly challenges. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not good at these. Yeah. But I, yeah, I went to my daughter's, um, they call it dad's weekend. It's like a, um, sorority thing. So it was a bunch of dads and then college girls. And then we had these events.

[01:04:20] We went to like, so we had the, like an event and the, one of the dads brought, um, angels envy bourbon. And then I wanted to like show off in front of the hiking guy. So I sent a picture of it and then I had a thing of that on the rocks. And then I had beer at the frat parties. And then I got to the bar at night and I had gin and tonics. So it was kind of another situation where I drank too much. After the glass, you were done. The glass of that is.

[01:04:50] Yeah. It was getting me going. And then I kept drinking. And then, uh, some of the dads were doing beer, beer funnels. I was like, I'm not doing that. That's crazy. One dad fell down on the ground. He had dirt all over him. I was like, what is that dad? I'm like, can someone come get their dad, please? Like what is going on? See, here he goes again. Off with his head. It was kind of interesting. Like the college kids, like if a, if a parent showed up at a frat party, I would have lost my mind. But like, there's all parents walking around everywhere at the frat party and no one seemed to be bothered whatsoever.

[01:05:21] Huh. I can't even fathom that. Interesting. Yeah. But it was good. It was good to catch up. And, um, yeah, I met some, some good dads, a lot of dad chat. A lot of dad jokes. And like a 401ks and like, yeah, it was fun stuff. The latest guy go to bed at 11. Is that like he's the hero? I was back at the hotel by 1030. There you go. Anyway. That's when the real party started. Right.

[01:05:50] So anyway, but that's it. So Nick, how are you doing with sober October? I'm still doing okay. I haven't drank since the Guinness's last Sunday, which brought up the question that I was saying this to Ash. How can I still have a near, how many beers does it take where it's still considered nearly sober October? Mike's sober October is out the window. I think we all can agree with that at this point. Because some people take sober as like, you don't drink. Mike goes all the way to like, he blows like a 0.50. Like he's like full on gone. Yeah.

[01:06:20] So I think if I make it to the end of October with four beers, is that still a nearly sober October? Or am I allowed a few more beers on Halloween? Yeah, I think. Yeah. If I want to. All right. It's over. It's over for all of us. All right. Okay. All right. Yeah. Fair enough. I'm going to have some pumpkin beer on Halloween. Yeah. I think that's good. And then Dave, anything that you're drinking right now? Yeah. Very good. Nick, nice lead. And drinking the shipyard smash pumpkin. It's a 9% they do for Halloween. It's a good one.

[01:06:48] With the big, the big manly sugar and caramel rim. Oh. Yeah. Those will sneak up on you. Those ones. Yeah. Feeling pretty good. You know? Might order myself a turkey sub with extra pickles tonight. I don't know. Let's see how it goes. Might get wild. I don't want to get carried away. They do a, they used, I'm assuming they still do it. They used to do a smash blueberry too. That was like same vibe where it's like a 9% blueberry. Yeah. It's almost like, it's not quite malt liquor, but it's very smooth. Booze. 9%. Yeah.

[01:07:17] It's right on that edge of being like boozy, but it's, it's still not, you know? It's good stuff. You just don't want to let it get warm. It's nasty, but it's very, it's very good. And you add the caramel, it's very sweet. It's very Halloween-y. You're making me salivate. It's good. I just have a diet coke. Let's see. I was raised to be like, if you're not good at something, don't try. So I didn't even try so brooked over. Yeah, whatever.

[01:07:49] I knew we should have gone left back there. Stomp, don't worry. I know it's this way. I've got a feeling in my gut. Uh, are you sure you're not about to have a bowel emergency? Uh, totally. We got this. But I just blew out my hip. Fell down that gully with my 40-year-old micro spikes. Suck it up, Stomp. It's 4 p.m. We're at 3,500 feet. We got nine miles back to the parking lot. Your leg may be broken. We got no cell connection and we can't feel our fingers.

[01:08:17] But we're finishing all of my list tonight. By the way, I need some water. I'm empty. I would if I could see what I'm doing, but my headlamp batteries are dead. You gotta be kidding me. What a chump. This is the last time I hike with you. Psh, ha. Whatever, Mr. Do you know me? I have a podcast. Whatever. Let's find out what Mike and Stomp have been hiking. What else do we have? Recent hikes. I got nothing. I didn't go hiking.

[01:08:47] Shame drop here. And then, Nick, you did some fun stuff. You had some awesome pictures, awesome videos. Like the clarity of the weather where you were up in the presidentials was amazing this weekend. So why don't you tell the listeners what you were up to? Sure. So I was poking around at my fall peak list. I'm working on the four season 48 list. Um, and shout out to our group text. And I think Jake was sort of pushing the Kinsman's wherever I kind of had, um, doing Eisenhower Monroe in my head just because I don't know. They're beautiful. I hadn't been over there in a bit.

[01:09:15] Um, and I just need them for fall. So, uh, we headed up Edmund's path, um, and decided we go out and back, um, more or less do kind of branch off to Eisenhower and go up to Monroe. Um, maybe go to Washington while I was chatting about that. We know Jake's kind of tentatively working on his redlining. And I guess maybe I'm starting to pay attention to it a little bit too. Um, and we both hadn't done the section of Crawford path that goes from Monroe to the Monroe loop junction where you branch off to start to head up little Monroe.

[01:09:42] Um, I hadn't done Crawford path below Eisenhower where it branches off from the Eisenhower loop and back. Um, so we, uh, both sort of checked out those trails and it went up Eisenhower first down the other side towards Crawford path, uh, back towards the coal made our way up. We did the Franklin spur, which is like a nice new, the Franklin, um, spur used to be the Franklin loop. Um, now it just is a short out and back and it looks like some really nice new trail. There's sort of little steps that go up to the summit of Franklin. Um, we looped over a little Monroe and Monroe.

[01:10:11] And then, um, kind of at that point we got to least, I wanted to go to lace at the clouds to get some picks. Um, and we sort of agreed as a group with the time of the day and what we were feeling where like, we'll just bail on Washington. It had already been a really nice day. Um, we made our way back on Crawford path, um, which is really pretty. And, um, yeah, just really nice day above treeline. The wind was a little chilly in the morning. Um, we saw a little bit of ice on Edmund's path, maybe around like the, I think it was around 4,000, 4,200 foot mark.

[01:10:38] Um, I see in the shade just cause it doesn't get a lot being on the North side. There was a little bit more tricky coming down that than going up, but not enough to put your spikes on. Um, just had to be careful. And, uh, like you mentioned, like, um, I'll be sharing pictures too and shared a bunch of video, but the visibility was like incredible. Um, looking into Vermont and even just looking at other peaks in the way it's like Kerrigan and stuff, um, the dew point was super low. So, um, kind of comparable, I'd say to like winter views where it's just incredible visibility. There's not much humidity or haze in the air to sort of scare views.

[01:11:09] And, um, really, really fun day. I hadn't actually hiked out with any of the so-called apostles, I think since we were up in Baxter, which seemed like that time flew by. Not that I haven't been getting up there, but it was good, good to catch up. Good, uh, fun on trail with the guys and, uh, fun day. Nice. Yeah. I like that Franklin area. Like it's just very flat. It's kind of a cool place to take some photos and, uh, it's, it's got some nice views out to the, you know, if you look out to Mount Washington and Monroe and stuff. So it's a cool area. Yeah. That whole area. Beautiful weather. Yeah.

[01:11:39] It was, it was a great day. It was, it was fantastic. I think Sunday was also like equally as nice. Um, yeah, Mike, like that whole area, like I've, I've gone southbound from Monroe to Eisenhower before, but I haven't gone northbound and, uh, that whole area. Like there's one spot where Washington actually peaks out between little Monroe and Monroe. And I think a lot of people, I also didn't, wasn't aware, but we had a couple of comments on Facebook. Like people didn't realize like there's two peaks, uh, that are named Monroe and like one's the 48. And then there's little Monroe.

[01:12:06] That's the bump to the left of it, or I guess Southwest of it. But it seems like a lot of people don't realize there's actually two little bumps up there. You can see them pretty clearly when you head up to it, but from far away, it's not as obvious, but there are two little, there's like a sub peak of Monroe up there. Right. Very good. Well, I'm glad you're on the move. I will be getting out, um, hopefully this weekend to, to do some hiking and some trail. I'm trying to get up to the bald face to do one more, um, trail maintenance session. So it sounds like I've got some interest there, Nick. So we'll see. Cool. Yeah. Hopefully you can get some helpers.

[01:12:37] Yes. That's my, that's my plan. And then Dave, you haven't gone anywhere. Uh, you're not ready to get back to out and hiking at this point. I'm still digging out. I just, I actually was going to try to sneak out and I had a, a massive job land in my lap or fall on my head, depending how you look at it. So it was like worst case scenario. I was like, I, you know, the worst thing I can do when I get back is a floor and I got a floor and it was in a basement. So it's all on concrete, which is awesome. Feels so good on my knees, but it is what it is. Yeah.

[01:13:07] Gotta eat. Sick of Stram. That's true. Although spam is good, better than pickles. But yeah, November gets busier and then late November through December, I'll be, I'll be back at it. It's time for Slasher's notable hike of the week. If you want to be considered for the hike of the week, simply tag Slasher on your social media post. All right, Nick, you want to do notable hikes? Sure.

[01:13:37] We, uh, we got some this week, so we'll roll through them and maybe, uh, we'll let you guys both vote. We'll see what happens here. I know who Mike's probably going to vote for, but alas, here we go. Uh, heart disease, like our 75 hiking out in the caribou speckled mountain wilderness looked really nice. Um, he hadn't tagged us in a bit. He's in a lead so far. I like that. Yeah. Okay. I don't know. Easy. Easy. That's Meredith sunshine, West quarry and random ended Piper and white face to close out the bell naps. I don't know why I put a question mark in there because it was definitely in the bell naps.

[01:14:06] So yeah, I say you doubting that proof. Is that like, are you sure? No. Did they really? I don't think so. So a lot of people, if you don't know the bell naps have their own list, that's got 12 peaks on it. So it's a, it's a fun little one that I think most of us have worked on at this point. Um, Jude hikes the whites bluebird day for 19 out of 52 with a view on Mount Israel. I feel like that's sort of the forgotten 52 with a view peak. I wasn't sure where she was until I was looking through the photos, but nice views from that. I like Israel kind of near a couple of times. Yeah.

[01:14:33] It's like, it's like between the like sandwich dome Jennings peak in the squam range kind of area. So we were talking about that doublehead rescue. It's like on the other side of that. Exactly. Some nice ledges and stuff. And views you don't get from anywhere else. Um, Rhonda will let 68 Washington on the same day that Nick, uh, Jake and Paul G were out. So she got some great shots too. Uh, Whitney, wit, Whitney, Nell Chuston. Um, this is a dog that's over halfway through the 48 with the Hancocks.

[01:15:00] Um, they said foliage was still gorgeous, which, um, maybe it's a little bit better down there. There was nothing in the presidential range. It is Brown even compared to when I was up, uh, the other Thursday doing trail maintenance like a week before or a little over a week before it's just, there's nothing left in the presidential range down low. There's no yellow or orange. It's just Brown. Um, how can the dog see foliage? Aren't they colorblind? I could tell Dave had something in mind just by it. I'm going to call bullshit on that one. I'm just saying that's what I'm saying. Okay. That's your thing.

[01:15:29] I'm not calling bullshit on anybody. Yeah. All right. Folks are, um, mentioned and lamented that they finally are getting to appreciate Galehead. I think they mentioned it was for like round three or four. Um, and they mentioned the peak of you, peak of view of Franconia Ridge past the summit. There is, I've gone to in the winter. If you do go past the summit of Galehead, um, in the right season, uh, there is a view out to Franconia Ridge. I'm sure back in like the 1950s, it was actually probably pretty decent.

[01:15:58] Um, but just do be careful if you're going out there in the winter because there's spruce traps and things like that. So, um, that's your warning. It's not really a trodden trail, but, uh, very cool that you're poking around and find the views out there and the twins are always excellent. Um, so nice job. Robot Dan, our buddy Dan, uh, was rowing on Pierce and Jackson for 18 out of 48 with a rower. So he is over a third of the way with his rower, which is pretty bad-ass. So good job, Dan. Diane Stewart, 2017.

[01:16:26] Uh, Diane and her friend Stacy were inspired to check out the trail improvements after listening to Slasher. Thanks guys for listening. Um, and they checked out the Franconia Ridge loop and, um, said, yeah, the trail improvements were super nice with old bridal path and falling waters trail. Um, and, uh, she got to 28 out of 48 for the month of October. So she must be gritting, um, going back and forth with Diane online here and there about trail info and stuff like that. She's always been super nice. So, uh, thanks for tagging us. So who gets it this week? Gentlemen?

[01:16:55] Uh, give it a row robot. I'll give it to our friend, Dan. He's making his way up there to carry that big row machine. I mean, and shout out to the doggy Whitney Nell Chustin. There it is. There it is. It's an honorable mention, so. And there was much rejoicing. You know, I, I don't mean to pick on the dog. I was just, we knew what was going on. I was trying to discredit the dog a little bit. So someone else had a shot. Dave's anti-dog. We're not picking on the dog. We're picking on the mic.

[01:17:25] Exactly. Just to be clear. All right. Well. I mean, I, I'm a notable hiker. Poor Jay will never get it. So I, I understand his situation. He's not on the list. So I'm just trying to, trying to help others along. You pull people up. You don't push them down. That's how we work here. Jay, man. I may give Jay a notable hike if he finishes his 4,000 footer list, but we'll see. May. May. Yeah. It depends. If a dog goes in that week, then maybe he'll lose out. So we'll see.

[01:18:07] It's time for Slasher's Guest of the Week. Very cool. Very cool. Dave, this is your moment. This is your time. So we got a lot of like great feedback when you were here last time when you break down, you broke down at a high level, your Appalachian Trail through hike. And we got a bunch of listener questions.

[01:18:34] So we wanted to have you back and respond to some of these. And then you've got some stats too, to share with us. So I think, Nick, do you want to, do you want to play host in this section? And then I'll just. Sure. I've been talking too much. Oh, it's fine. Yeah. I need a bourbon. Yeah. He's upset about that colorblind dog comment. He needs a minute. All right. First of all, I do want to shout out to everybody.

[01:19:03] Thank you for sending us your questions. Hopefully I got all these. But we asked for more questions like yesterday and y'all delivered whether it was messaging Dave directly or messaging us on Instagram. We appreciate it. I'm sorry that some of you were a little bit upset that I didn't want any more shit related questions related to Dave shits. Um, and some people were like, his name is Dave shit. So how can we not ask him about poop and things like that? So I'm, I'm glad. Fascinated and scared at what other questions could have. I thought we covered it all.

[01:19:31] I'm like, no, apparently we didn't. Um, yeah, scary aside from the passive aggressive tone that some of our listeners seem to have about me not asking for poop questions. Um, we'll proceed. So, uh, thank you for the responses and, uh, we'll shout out everybody as well. So here we go. Um, some of these might overlap Dave, so we'll see what happens. I think most of these are pretty unique. So first from Arlo the Beagle, Mike's favorite person. I love Arlo. How many dogs did you come?

[01:20:00] How many dogs did you come across on the trail? If any. Uh, I'd say maybe less than 10. Okay. Um, Waddlem was a service dog who was awesome. It was Shaman's dog. Um, or his name is, uh, Athena. She was awesome. Super great service dog. I had two dogs lunge at me. One was a pit bull. Another one was a nice, like random dog. The guy said he's super nice, which clearly didn't that he lounge, lunched at me.

[01:20:28] Um, and then you see dogs here and there, but I wouldn't, there was none super memorable. Um, of course, Miles, Miles is always memorable. How dare I even, I saw Stacy and Miles. So Miles is like the greatest dog ever. Is it based on your experience? Like, is it. Besides Arlo. Is it realistic that a dog could do a through hike or is it just like, I feel like it's asking a lot of a dog and you need to have like a very special dog and owner relationship to do the full through hike. Um. Agreed.

[01:20:57] Did you, did you get any vibe that might, there might've been some dogs out there on trail that shouldn't have been out there or the, the owners really weren't prepared for that? Yeah. I think there was, there's one in particular, the same one. It was Loki was the dog's name. No offense to Loki. Sorry if you're listening, but, um, Loki was on a trail and he was, the dog's name was Loki. And like, the guy was just every time it would bark every time he was like, oh no, he's friendly. And he's the one that lunged at me. And they're like, the dog's just, you know, he just barks a lot. I'm like, yeah, that's awesome when you're trying to sleep.

[01:21:24] And then he lets it off the leash and he's like, there's this huge black snake in the trail. And the guy's like, oh, he's going after that snake. And I'm like, yeah, I'm watching it. I know. And he's like, is that poisonous? I'm like, I have no idea. He's like, really? I'm like, dude, it's your dog. I'm like, I, what do you want me to? I'm like, shit's going to go down here. And the dog was like right next to the snake. And I'm like, this is going to be wild and maybe it's venomous. We're going to find out together. Um, and then the dog panicked and ran back and he finally grabbed it and leashed it. But I'm like, if you let it off the leash, what did you think was going to happen?

[01:21:54] Um, and there, there was actually one morning there was a woman, she was like, uh, walking dog, it's big shepherd. And the dog went by, said good morning. It was very early. And then no more than 20 steps later, I stepped over a log and there was a huge rattlesnake curled up. And I'm like, damn, I'm like, I'm surprised the dog didn't send it or attack it or the snake bite the dog. Um, and up in Maine, there was a guy who had a dog. We were coming back off, um, the goose goose eye in that area. And it's really steep. Might've been ball pate.

[01:22:23] Really, really street steep. And, uh, those guys carried his dog and like moving up to the different levels. And I'm like, man, that's just, that's a lot. Um, a couple others sent their dog home for New Hampshire and Maine, which made the most sense to me. Um, so to answer your question. Yeah, definitely. There are definitely dogs. It's not that the dog shouldn't be out there. The owner shouldn't be putting the dogs out there. In my opinion, there's certain areas. It's just, you know, how do you do the music? Who's a notch with a dog?

[01:22:50] So, yeah, the, uh, yeah, I mean, I think day hikes and whatnot, that's fine. It's just, I'm thinking more in terms of like the, the, I've seen stories where the, the dogs are on through hikes and it doesn't go well. So hopefully they're keeping them safe out there. Yeah. The dogs get into everything too. Some of them like they, you know, someone craps in the woods, they go find it. It's just, you know, especially like somebody that's been taking edibles and then they crap in the woods and then the dog gets high. Right.

[01:23:19] Which actually, and then off they go. Everybody's zooming. Um, all right. R B R T C T L D. Um, so this was his, uh, his comment, which I thought was humorous, but all right. Cause I got backlash for asking a shit question to the shit King himself. I have another, I respect, I respect this because even though I asked not for no more shit questions, he didn't care and he just did it anyways. So I kind of, kind of like this guy. Um, they should have said that if they donate a coffee, they can ask a shit question.

[01:23:48] That's, that would have been a great idea. Um, for Dave's next hike. Um, so besides eating during resupplies, what was your go-to meal? Um, and they put in parentheses, dehydrated cold soak on the trail. Um, and they didn't want snacks. They wanted specifically meals that were your favorite meals. All right. This is a very structured question. Don't get it wrong. No. Um, you know, include illustrations if helpful. Um, I was a cold soaker, I guess you'd say. I did not bring a stove.

[01:24:17] So from day one, I did not have any, I didn't have hot meals. I think I had maybe 15 to 20 hot meals when somebody would join me on trail with, with a stove or jet boiler, et cetera, or somebody had an extra ramen and they threw it at me, but I didn't, I didn't have a lot of that. My go-to was basically spam, uh, in the, you know, the spam packages with the Idahoan potatoes. Um, so I just make cold potatoes, soak them, cut up spam, put it in. Uh, that was a huge chunk of my dinners for lunches.

[01:24:46] I had Jiff chocolate peanut butter, which if you've never had it as amazing, it's kind of like chocolate frosting, but it's not a sugary. Um, it's delicious, high protein, huge fat that I would have with peanut butter and a little bit of honey. I'd mix those together. So I had a huge fat sugar and protein. That was kind of my lunch. That was more of my go-to. All right. Um, Paul Lamar, our friend, Paul, uh, one of the Pauls, how has the transition off trail been?

[01:25:15] Um, and I guess this is, this is sort of part of the whole thing, but have there been any specific challenges you've had to confront when returning to a quote unquote society? Yeah. And go back to Paul's gross question. He last a couple of weeks ago was the grossest thing on the trail or whatever. Uh, somebody left a, a, a used hygiene product in the wood chips and one of the privies. Oh, okay. Um, and that one, when I thought about that, it stuck me all week. So I just wanted to share that one. So thanks for bringing up that nightmare again, Paul. I feel like maybe you told me about that. Oh, it was, it was. Yeah.

[01:25:44] I feel like that's definitely not the first time I've heard that from you. So scarred. Okay. I probably told everybody when I was crying. Anyways, sorry. It's nasty. Uh, so the question was with Paul. Yeah. Re-entering during election year. Freaking awesome. Um, it's so, it's so good to see everybody get along and agree on different topics, uh, talk things out like civil humans, um, you know, and just really just be all about togetherness. Yeah. I'm being totally sarcastic. Uh, it's been rugged. People talk about trail depression and all that stuff.

[01:26:13] It is a real thing. Um, it's kind of like high school. If you're really, really into high school and graduating sucks. And if you're really, really into college and graduating sucks, but like, and this isn't, this is going to sound very condescending, but what I mean is like, as a middle-aged grown adult, I have kids that are adults now. I've kind of done all this stuff. So to me, this was like an adventure and I knew it was going to come to an end. Um, my life is still an adventure. So weird shit happens to me on a daily basis.

[01:26:43] So you never know what you're going to get. So the void of not being on trail is a lot, but it's not, it wasn't my whole life. It wasn't everything. It wasn't like, Oh, how am I ever going to live now that I'm not on trail? And some people, it is a big chunk of their life. And I totally respect that. I get it. Um, but I had to come back to my real world and my adventures. So it's, it's been a rugged re-entry. I'm not going to lie. Um, being social is definitely way harder than it's ever been.

[01:27:11] Um, and just, again, a political election year, it's just, it's gross. Just, just getting flyers and texts constantly and just listen to people want to fight about everything. And, um, I, I didn't miss it to say the least. I had my own follow-up. I guess I'm part of that. Um, and hearing you respond to that, but, uh, do you think being older and doing the trail at your age contributes to the ability to, do you think you're more likely to have that sort of trail of depression harder if you're a younger person and you're sort of doing it

[01:27:41] for the first time? Or do you think the fact that you've already had all, all these life experiences are kind of like, yeah, like I did the thing that I set out to do. And now it's time to sort of go back to daily life. I do. Yes. Yes. Is the answer. I would say to a degree only because life has already like kicked me in the ball so many times that like, you know, you've already been through so much hardship and challenges and life and adventures and highs and lows that the trail is, is absolutely a huge life

[01:28:11] changing event, but it, it not in the way that it changes everything. It just changes some things for me. Um, but to somebody that maybe doesn't have as much life experience in there, you know, for me, I come back to a house and, and responsibility and my, my business and all this stuff. And I have to kind of pick up where I left off and keep going. Whereas other people might just go home and they're between college or maybe whatever it might be.

[01:28:37] And I'm not, I'm not downplaying that depression on any level at all, because there's a big piece that misses. It's just when, when you go on that adventure and it's such a, like, it's huge. I think when you're younger, it's a bigger percentage of what your life is at this point. Whereas me, I've, I've seen good shit and bad shit. So this was just another, probably the biggest, but an adventure as part of that on my way to the grave, so to speak, that's awfully depressing.

[01:29:07] But, uh, it's a piece of the adventure. It's not my whole life. All right. Cool. Stacy and Miles, we were just talking about Miles the dog. What was your worst day on the trail and your best day on the trail? Uh, best day is always the easiest because you, you know, you always remember the good one. It's going to be Kraft and Notch. I think it's probably top 200. All right. Easily. It was definitely top 200. It was a day.

[01:29:37] That's right. I got a chance. That I was on the AT. That's right. It was a really good burger that day. I'll say that. That's for sure. One of the best resupplies I've ever had. Amazing. Uh, uh, presidential, the cog railway, that whole Washington that day was insane. That's when, uh, Paul, Stevie chick came up. Um, those free bacon at Lake of the clouds. I mean, you start with free bacon. Where do you go from there?

[01:30:05] Uh, caught the cog. Just, just a stunning day. Beautiful weather. That was probably one of the best days on trail all around. Um, um, one of the worst. There's, there's a handful getting sick on trail. That was not fun at all. Dealing with that for three days and, um, have my feet torn up. That sucked. Uh, those are, those are probably the worst. Most of the days were, you know, there was never really, really incredible. Amazing. Oh my God.

[01:30:34] I can't have, you know, the cog was probably it, but there was never so many lows that it was unbearable either. Most of the days were, were good. Okay. What is the biggest piece of advice you can give to someone entertaining a through hike? Uh, do it because carrying regret is just so much harder than failure. Um, I think I've said that a hundred times to people. And, um, and if you scroll through your phone, I always say that to look at the names, how many people would actually have the balls to go do it.

[01:31:04] If you're thinking about doing it, why wouldn't you be that person to go do it? And I'm not saying you have bigger balls because you did it. I'm saying that if, if you're questioning whether you should, why, why not? What's stopping you? And then, um, if you're debating whether you should or shouldn't, it'll come down to why, why wouldn't you? I mean, worst case you go home and what's the failure? What's the worst? People are gonna be like, oh, you tried to hike 2000 miles and you didn't. Oh, you're, you're, you're pathetic. Like, really?

[01:31:32] Um, I don't think so. I mean, you know, it's like running a marathon. It's like doing even a 5k or a 1k or just going to get the mail. If that's your adventure for the day, who gives a shit what anyone thinks? And I mean, having known you and hiked with you and stuff and been involved in this, like none of us would have, if you thought less of you because you didn't finish the AT, then you're kind of an asshole. Like none of us were like, oh, Dave didn't finish. He ate the AT, but he didn't finish. Like who? It's such a weird like thing to call someone out on. Like, oh, he didn't finish the 2000 mile hike up the Eastern seaboard of the United States.

[01:32:02] Like agreed. But that, that is, if you think about the way people are, and I've already said it before is people, people consider my failure, their success. Sometimes it's like, it's kind of like sports, you know, like, Hey, the jets lose. It's awesome. Like, yeah, screw the jets or something, you know, in new England where it's like, nobody really wins or loses, but that sometimes is the mentality. Um, and it's the classic, you know, you're, you're the one stopping you. All right. So, um, their last question, not sure how comfortable you are answering this.

[01:32:30] Um, but what was the approximate cost to do this? Um, hostels, hotels, food, shuttles, et cetera. And that's optional. That's up to you, Dave, if you want to answer. Yeah, no, I'll share with it because like, that is something I scratched out real quick. And, um, it is, it, it is north of 10 grand. Um, it's probably closer to 14, but I am going to backpedal and say, that includes some, some, uh, treats. My wife took a train out, um, something she's always wanted to do. So we squirreled some money.

[01:33:00] She went, you know, first class, all that stuff. Uh, there's some extra hotels. There's a $300 deductible for a medical visit when I had to get into the hospital at Great Barrington. Um, so there's a lot of those kinds of things in there, but I would say realistically, if you stripped it down and kept it simple, you're probably between 10 and 12. You can do it for a lot less. You could probably do it for twice that too. Right. And I will, um, I did not. And I'll tell you right now, like I've seen on these like Facebook groups, like I can't

[01:33:28] tell you how many times I'll see people that are like, they're at Harper's Ferry or they're, uh, you know, somewhere in Virginia or Pennsylvania and they're low, you know, I ran out of money, you know, asking for free stuff, this, that, and the other, like, you've got enough stress doing a through hike that the last thing you want to do is commit to doing a through hike and not having some buffer of funds for you. So I think 10 grand makes a lot of sense. It depends on how fast you're going to, I think. Uh, but, but. It's a good point.

[01:33:58] But yeah, but 10 grand, I mean, I think I forget what the rule is. They used to break it down by miles. Um, but if you break it down by days here, Dave, then you're looking at, um, around 50 bucks a day on average. But you, you know, you, you stay at hotels, you know, for your own sanity and your own mental health. Like it's, it's, you got, you've got to stay at hotels and hostels, get yourself cleaned up and get yourself feeling better, get yourself resupplied.

[01:34:24] So, um, to me, 50 bucks a day to do a through hike seems pretty reasonable. And I mean, I, I feel like you two, like having to, having to make a trip basically to the hospital or whatever, like, I mean, how many hikers get Noro and they're dehydrated? So it's like that having to do that once along your trip, I got to think, isn't that unusual, whether it's like a lower leg injury or something happens, like it's money. You gotta, you gotta kind of plan for it in that budget. Yeah, true. And my good point, I never really actually thought of it from that perspective.

[01:34:53] Like I was a slower hike or more days. So yeah, you're right. I'm going to spend a little bit more. Um, we splurged when we got together, my wife and I, like, cause it's like I said, it's an adventure. And, um, yeah, I got sick where I needed a hotel room in New York. Good luck in New York around fourth July weekend, getting a hotel. I mean, what do you think you're going to pay? You know, um, it's just not necessarily cheap, but I also didn't platinum blaze. I did not stay in hostels and hotels constantly. Um, but it does add up and you're right.

[01:35:21] It is not a cheap endeavor unless you really stick to it. If you're going to stick to it, then yeah, you're going to, you're going to have to suck it up and you're going to be eating spam and sleeping in the woods for extra days. Yeah. And I think that like the traditional, um, assumption was something like, um, it used to be like $2 or $2 and 50 cents per mile was the assumption, which would bring you somewhere around like four to five grand, I think. But like, that's, that was a while ago. Like inflation has picked up.

[01:35:51] I think that, like I said, like, uh, I just see it all the time with the, on social media with people just, oh, I don't think I can keep going because, um, you know, I don't have any money or can someone give me a ride because I can't afford a shuttle driver or, um, get all this stuff. So you don't want that stress. Like, I feel like you should save up and have at least 10 grand going into this to spend on the through hike.

[01:36:16] And I, I'll disclose too, that includes everything that includes like 29 99 or something a month for garment subscription because I had people tracking me and I wanted unlimited text, um, that kind of stuff. So yeah, there's $30 a month for what, six and a half months or whatever it is. Um, so, I mean, yeah, things add up and then you get those expenses you don't expect. Right. And that does not include all the gear cause I already owned it all.

[01:36:45] So if you're starting out brand new and you're buying all this stuff brand new, you know, you're going to drop $500 or so on a pairs of shoes to get through this. Um, you're going to drop probably close to five, $700 on a tent sleeping bags or another couple hundred bucks. Like that number gets huge. I just happen to have all my stuff already. And you, so you basically, you're a little bit above average. So the treks through hiker survey, the last date, I just pulled this up as we're talking, the average was around $7,600.

[01:37:13] Um, and then backpacker magazine estimates like around 8,000. Um, and then, yeah. And I think if I was faster, it'd be around 8 or 9. And the Appalachian Trail Conservatory, they recommend anticipating about $1,200 per month during the hike, excluding all the gear purchases and whatnot. And the, the, the cost per mile, the old rule used to be $2. Now it's like three to $4, $4 is comfortable. And then $5 is generous, but essentially like $2 is about $4,400.

[01:37:42] $3 is $6,600, $350 is $7,700. So, I mean, it's not cheap, but it's also, I feel like this is just a general rule. Like if you're doing any sort of vacation type or anything like that, I always tell people like, don't go unless you, the last thing you want to do is go on vacation and have to worry about whether or not like you, you know, you don't want to be arguing about spending $12 for margarita at the, at the pool bar or something like that stuff. You do not stress over that at all.

[01:38:09] And I think the AT sort of, I feel like it's the same way as like, you do not want to be stressing over money. You nailed it. And that's the thing. It's like, Oh, I could walk another four miles or grab an Uber for 30 bucks or, or get, you know, get a shuttle. I can get a shuttle for $60 in car spot with somebody who has a car and save myself a ton of work. It's worth it. Um, but it adds up. Right. And then if you're, did you ever have run into people that would like, um, have tension because in their hiking group, there was like one person that was sort of mooching off

[01:38:38] everybody else or needed money. I'm imagining like, I don't feel like you had that wide of a tramley where you had to worry about that, but I could imagine that's another issue that comes up. Well, I saw it the old, you know, I'll Venmo you. Yeah. Yeah. I'll Venmo you. Like, sure you will. They were gone. You know, they don't have a phone. They don't even know what Venmo is. And, uh, you know, they're paying you an acorns like here, this is good. Right. All right. What else? All right.

[01:39:05] Um, Carolyn, did it live up to expectations? And, uh, yes. Okay. Um, two, two part series. Yep. Yep. Follow up. So was there anything you were looking forward to that was a disappointment or was there anything that you thought would be lame, but turned out to be spectacular? Give a little bit more context there. That's an excellent question, but to live up to expectations. Yes, because I expected to have an adventure.

[01:39:30] And I think I said that last time, uh, I, my goal was to get to the finish line, but see everything on the way. And if I didn't make it, as long as I saw everything I wanted to see, I'm fine with going home. So yeah, it totally lived up to expectations, the highs and the lows. I expected to have amazing things and, and really, really shitty days. Um, and, and they weren't even that bad. I'm exaggerating. There were just days that just weren't as great. And some days were rugged, but overall, yeah, it was so worth it. My opinion.

[01:39:58] Um, and things that were amazing that, that I didn't expect to be, there was a lot of those. Um, the whole Virginia area, I mentioned, um, the triple crown was just so worth it, uh, that I didn't expect anything out of it. Um, Vermont was a disappointment this time around. I mentioned that as well before, uh, Pennsylvania was just, I didn't enjoy that at all. Certain things were just kind of like, I looked forward to, and then just weren't, uh, as great.

[01:40:27] And a lot of the, a lot of the hostels that people hype up, some of them were like hippie communes and that, and then, you know, it's emperor's new clothes. Like, oh, you're going to love it. The food's amazing. You get there. And it's like, this food sucks. Like it's, you know, it's all vegan and soy. And I'm not, if that's not the problem. The problem is it tastes like dirt. And it was like, just not prepared well in certain places or certain foods were just, people would hype it up because everybody said it was great. They weren't always great.

[01:40:52] Um, but, but overall, mostly everything, it's kind of like, you know, you make your own adventure. So I enjoyed the hell out of everything I did. There was just some things like McAfee knob was blah. Vermont was kind of meh. Whereas dragon's tooth was mind blowing. Maine was incredible. And even just random waterfalls on the right day. You just go and soak your feet in it. It was just, it was awesome. Cool. So, um, keeping the, this is kind of a, um, I guess we sort of already answered this,

[01:41:21] but in the woods, 29 favorite camp meal, um, maybe different than like your standard was your, was your favorite meal, sort of the mashed potatoes and the spam or what did you have? Like a favorite, like splurge, like I just resupplied kind of meal. That was your favorite. Oh, I mountain house meals, uh, beef stroganoff. I could, I would eat that at home. I would have that for my anniversary dinner, my birthday. Like for God, I would eat that at home that when somebody had a stove or they came out to meet me or whatever, that was my go-to.

[01:41:49] I love the mountain house beef stroganoff all day. I got, I'm drooling. I sound, I sound like a, such a, like I'm obsessed with, I'm a stalker, but it's so good. Such a through hiker. Oh yeah. I burned the shit out of my mouth. I can't tell you how many times cause I couldn't wait till it cooled down. Like, oh my God, it's a hot meal. Like, it was good. It's good stuff. All right. Mass to fields. At what point did you feel like you got your trail legs? Uh, still waiting.

[01:42:18] Um, all right. No, I would say I felt good once I got through probably just about North Carolina. I started to hit a really stride. Like Georgia was kind of, you're figuring it out. And once you get to North Carolina and you, you kind of cross the line and you go by that tree and I forget what the name of the tree is there. It's a big, cool tree at the top of a hill. And you, you started to pick up miles and then you jump by the NOC and you're doing Jacob's ladder and all that. I started to feel like, all right, I'm at a rhythm now.

[01:42:48] And now I feel like I'm hiking like the adrenaline wore off and you hit a stride. That's when I felt pretty good. I was starting to get bigger miles. Uh, was there a piece of gear or equipment that you could not leave it at home with? You could not leave home without that you did not end up using and could have gotten rid of. They said in parentheses, I'm sure it was the gold bond. No, the gold bond. That's no, that's, that's absolutely will always be with me. That stuff was amazing. Uh, this, the seal skin socks sucked. They failed miserably.

[01:43:17] I do have a gear breakdown with grades. I can share however, but, um, yeah, that, that was disappointing. Something I thought that I, that I brought with me, um, my raincoat I brought like as a must have, and I don't think I wore it. I wore, I just wore a cheap poncho like a, you know, Ozark County Walmart special that I threw over my pack. And I use that on the cold days. I throw my raincoat under it, but my raincoat was a windbreaker.

[01:43:43] And as far as a must have, it was, it really was just a weight in my bag to keep me warm. It didn't, I didn't use it. David was a low ski asked and also ignored my quote. So good for you. Um, what was your favorite poop location? Which I don't think we actually answered yet. But there was, um, there was a, the last day at, uh, Antler Pond is a double shitter. So it was basically two toilet seats next to each other. So I like, you know, I could go back and forth between seats. Um, yeah.

[01:44:12] And there was a notebook in there. So I, what I would do is I just, you know, I, I'd bounce back and forth and I'd play like, um, tic-tac-toe with myself and just kind of like use the notepad. Uh, that was nice. There was a couple of views. Blood Mountain had a nice lookout where it peaks over the mountain. Um, I call them peek-a-poos. It's like, you know, I get a peek-a-view, peek-a-boo view and I call them peek-a-poos. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'll put a book out maybe someday. I don't know. Coffee table book. Sounds like it'd be a good one. The place is ice shit.

[01:44:41] Uh, and they also asked what was your most memorable day on the ATU, which I think you sort of, uh. Yeah. The Cog Rail was definitely top three and obviously finishing there cause that's a given. Like that day was crazy. Um, yep. Right. Denise Bolton. Was there any point where you actually considered quitting? And if so, how do you push through that? Uh, great question. Denise, I ran into on the Kinsman's. Um, I talked to her and it was interactions like that that helped keep me going. And I, I joked with her. I was like, no, you saved my hike.

[01:45:10] But like, no, just talking to people like herself and just, it was cool interacting with people that helped a lot. I did not, there was never a day I said I was going to quit, but there was like a handful of days I thought I was going home. Um, where I, I found a way to keep going. I found, I found a little bit of life to just get up the next morning. Like I said in the last episode where it was just, it'll be better tomorrow. It's not, then deal with it. And it got better every time.

[01:45:38] Um, so there was never a day where I was like, I'm done. I hate this. I want to quit. Never. Um, it creeped in my head. Like, this isn't going to work. I'm going to run out of time or I'm hurt or I'm sick. Those got my attention, but I'd never really hit that low where I wanted to quit, which is, which is good. Yeah, that's, that's awesome. Yeah. I was curious if you ever actually, I know you mentioned too, in the last podcast, some low moments. So I was curious how, yeah, that was, it was, yeah, no, it was just, it was defeating,

[01:46:07] but never to the point, like I said, I might go home, but I'm not going to quit. Yeah. Um, what section of trail would you recommend to someone who wanted to section hike for a week or two? Uh, Connecticut. If you're from New England, I say go to Connecticut. It's worth it. It's a, it's a good four. Yeah. Surprising answer. Yeah. Yeah. That's yep. Four or five days. You can spend great campsites. Um, pretty rugged elevation, pretty good scrambling, pretty good. A rock, um, cool stuff to see.

[01:46:37] You can, uh, soak your legs. What is the Housatonic there? Some nice, nice camp areas. Uh, good road walk. Like it's flat. It's as rugged as it is flat too, which is worth it. New Jersey is another one, which again, I know two for two in the what? Yeah. Doesn't smell like they said, like it doesn't smell at all. Uh, Maine is also another one. Vermont's a good one. If you want to do part of the long trail, not what I remember, but it is nice. It's convenient. They do have good, um, shelters. Maine's rugged, but it's worth it.

[01:47:07] Like, especially the a hundred mile wilderness. Uh, that's probably closer to a good eight days though. Right. Um, moving on to our next person. So our friend, Dan Vanderbilt, uh, Dan VDV. What were some of the most memorable trail names that you remember besides your own? Of course. Oh, it was some great was a blue juice was one of my favorites. He, uh, he was hearing that name by he, he christened a brand new port-a-potty, um, a little aggressively.

[01:47:37] Oh no. Yeah. That's awesome. That's awesome. Oh yeah. Next story. He had some, he had some splash back and, uh, blue juice. Hero blue juice came out. We're like, oh no. Like what? This smurf fall out of your ass. What happened there? Like, like, yeah. Um, serial killer was the name that I bestowed on someone. That was one of my favorites. Cause it was so funny to watch her. They're like, oh, serial killer. Cause like, you eat a lot of cereal and she would just smile and walk away and they're like, cause, cause you're a lot of cereal. Right.

[01:48:07] And they would move their tent. She would never tell them. And if she just moved and they move away, like she's okay. Right. I'm like, yeah, I don't know, man. Um, there was some good ones. There was a guy and I wish I could remember the name of it. Um, but it was something like, it was like, um, like missile, like mother-in-law in so long. Like his mother-in-law moved in like on Friday and he left on Saturday to hike the AT. He's like done.

[01:48:33] And it was like the initials of like mother, mother-in-law moved in. I'm gone. Or so it was like missile or Migo or, and it was, I was like, that's awesome. All right. Um, did you discover ramen bombs? I don't know what that is. I didn't cause I didn't really soak much. So I had cold ramen. Oh, as in like, what is a ramen bomb? I guess. Ramen bombs. Like when you take ramen and you drop other stuff in the ramen. Some people do like ramen bombs or peanut butter, ramen bombs with like other stuff that they drop in. So I had like cold ramen.

[01:49:03] I had like ramen, like snaps, like real ramen caps, not even fire crackers. I had no bombs. I did not. A lot of people have them. A lot of people really enjoyed them. They dump a bunch of good stuff in it. All right. Um, I did. I missed it. Okay. So we answered, uh, he asked, were you sad at the end? Which I think Rudy answered a bit as well. Um, or I guess not really. We sort of talked about depression, but were you, were you sad at the end? Like immediately when you finished or like how were the emotions on your finishing day? We haven't really talked about that yet.

[01:49:33] The finishing day was wild because I'm first of all, it was with Paul Gamal. Gamal. So, you know, you're five, eight days in the woods with Paul in the hundred mile wilderness. So you're ready to, you know, you know, like I said, he makes me look like Helen Kellett. No offense, Helen, if she's listening. Um, so, so, uh, you know, um, no, Paul's an awesome guy. I loved every minute of Paul. We had some great conversations. We had some wild conversations. Neither one of us will ever be president. That's all I'm going to say. It was so, we had some great talks.

[01:50:02] Um, but like we go up there and we climb up and it's like, holy shit, I'm at the summit or eating spam as usual. And it's just a gorgeous, gorgeous day. And it's like, it's amazing. Then we go back down, we go to dinner and that's, you know, I'm in my living room, like two in the morning. And it's like, shit. It's like, so you wake up at three in the morning, you leave this shelter. These people hooked you up with, you know, this hut right on, on Abel, not Abel, um, Hunt Trail. You get up there, you touch the summit. You just accomplished this thing. You go to dinner, you have a beer or two, and then you drive the five, six hours home.

[01:50:33] And you go to bed in your own house and you're like, it's over. That's it. It's done. Done. Everything. You're like, you're home now. And it was a lot. It was such an abrupt ending with not a lot of time to unpack what the hell just happened. So that was tough. It's still tough. Cause it's like, you're not going to get parades. You're not, you know, outside of the hiking community, absolutely nobody gives a shit what you did. And even most people in the community don't really give a shit what you did. You just walked a lot.

[01:51:02] There's no stickers. There's no parades. It's a personal accomplishment. And that's why I did it. So it's awesome. But then it just ends and you're like back to reality. And it's like, shit, it's a lot. Um, it's almost harder because your day to day was wake up, eat, don't die. You know, go to the bathroom, eat dinner, go to bed. All right. Good, good questions there. That was a good angle on that one.

[01:51:29] Um, I'm not sure if this was B Bill Freeman or B Frillman, free ma'am and Dave, uh, misspelled there, but either way we'll go with it. Yeah. Um, sorry. Yeah. I'm still learning to read. It's Bill Freeman. Uh, item you wished you had dumped earlier. Yeah. Sealskin socks should have gone right away. Um, my water pump, I had a Katahdin like hip shot or whatever it was called. Shot something sure shot. It's like more of a, like a hand pump. And that was just way too slow.

[01:51:58] I got rid of that at Neil's gap and bought a filter system. The seal skins would have, they cost me a couple of days of comfort to say the least by ripping my feet apart. Um, those are, those are the two big ones. Um, okay. Item you wish you had earlier. Uh, I love my bird. I love my bird version. Plug, plug, plug. Alpha. But the, the alpha was awesome. I had that from the get go. Like once I mailed it to myself when I got, you know, I mailed it back home when it got

[01:52:27] warm and I picked up a sun hoodie and that was gold. Okay. So good. Um, yeah, mostly everything I had, my gear was pretty dialed in, not to sound like that it was perfect, but I had pretty much everything I needed, but those two were very timely when they arrived. I'll give a shout. All of us have version hoodies when we hike together. It's kind of crazy. Um, well not crazy. They're good products. So yeah, that's the thing is they, you know, the thing is the AT is going to expose like

[01:52:55] shit that doesn't work right away. You put it through more than anybody. And then, yeah. And if you wear it, it doesn't work. I had one that failed and I did send it back and get another one. And that's my own fault because I think I got like the, I forget what it was. It was the sun hoodie. And I can't remember which line Liberty or something, but it's more for kayaking and light recreation. So I sent that back and bought a different one, which was more of a backpacker hiking one. And that made all the difference to just so much easier than sunscreen. It's so light. It was really good.

[01:53:25] Item you couldn't live without and would suggest to other AT hikers. Hmm. That's a good one. Gold bond is obviously number one. You got to have that. That's going to solve all your problems. Yeah. I mean, it's all joking aside. I mean, if you're dealing with that day after day, that must get old real quick. It is. It goes. Yep. It just fixes it overnight somehow. Some kind of miracle gel. It really is gold. It is worth it.

[01:53:54] It is something I would recommend having your bag, whether it's your foot, your knees, or your, your bits or your nethers or whatever you want to call it. I mean, it fixes all ailments. Splash them. Yep. That. But the cheap, cheap rain ponchos don't, don't leave home without them. I carry two in case one rip. They're no weight and they keep you dry. Plus they're extra lining. That's worth it. Couldn't leave home without that one. Yeah. Those, those are the big ones.

[01:54:25] Cool. Outside of the basics. All right. Great tidbits here. Patrice field. Favorite trail snack. I love me some of that Jif chocolate peanut butter. Yeah. Write it down. It's like the gold bond. I'm not going to steer you wrong here. Uh, no, it's very good. I enjoyed that with peanut butter and honey. Like I said, other snacks, uh, that, those, that was pretty much the big one. I get so sick of most of my snack because you can't really do a lot of the chocolate bars

[01:54:53] once it gets into summer because they become chocolate blobs. And it basically your plastic bags don't look so good. And the chocolate melts. It's gross. So a lot of the snacks were processed crap. Not super enjoyable. Did love the honey buns in the morning. The glazed honey buns were awesome in the morning. All right. Um, so this is, this is a two-parter. I, I am interested to hear your angle on sort of the latter portion of this.

[01:55:23] So it's a little bit of what we covered already. Um, but we'll see about the second part. If you care to share, at what point did you think of seriously stopping? Which it sounds like wasn't really a thing. Um, maybe you got close, but you didn't. But they did, uh, ask what mental mantra or message, uh, kept you going. So did you have any sort of internal monologue? Was that part of your motivation to get this done? Where you're sort of talking to yourself? Like I'm someone where I talk to myself. I think maybe because I was an only child, I talked to myself. Like when I'm alone, still I'll catch myself doing it. Cause I think I just was alone growing up sometimes in like a house.

[01:55:51] And I would just talk to myself and actually be like, what are you doing? I'm like, Oh shit, I'm doing it again. I'm talking to myself. But did, did you do anything like that while you were out on the AT and spending time alone? Absolutely. Yes. And I got caught talking to myself more often than not. And just dead, like just eating shit. Yeah. Cause, um, uh, I would say I definitely mother's day was rugged. And I thought like that, this is brutal when I was, I was sick and my sister was in a car accident. She was okay. Uh, but I felt so far away. That was a struggle. And I thought about like, you know, is this worth it?

[01:56:21] And you know, the answer was yes. And I plowed through it. We talked about that. I, I, the injuries were tough. My mantra, my mantra is just as like disturbing as I am at times where I was like, just, I would just say to myself, don't be a bitch. It was like, you know, what is the big deal? Like if you're not hurt and you're not sick, what is your problem? Like, don't be a bitch. Just keep moving. Like, it's not a big deal. You're just in your own head.

[01:56:46] And, um, and not to get too far into a tangent, but like my father, my father's 84 and he was, he had a national geographic map. That's probably like 20 feet long. And he folded in half and he would go day by day and track me on my garment and move that every day. And he would text me about every shelter and about everything I saw. And he'd be like, you'll be coming up on this tour and you're going to cross. I actually paid someone to do donuts.

[01:57:12] Like I told you when we crossed the Canabec river, cause I wanted to mess with them because he was, when they're tracking me, like just do a huge donut. And he's going to be like, what happened? Cause he'd always ask, you know, how'd you cross that river? And it was like, is there a bridge? I'm like, dad, there's always bridges. And I was like, there was no bridge there. I had to forward that thing. I almost died. Did you see my track? It didn't quite come across, but he was so into it. And my father is, you know, cliche. He is my hero, but my father was drafted. He went to Vietnam. He was in early. He served his term.

[01:57:42] He saw a lot of things he does not talk about. He came home. He started his own company. He's an amazing person. He's a, he was a, he is an incredible father. He didn't go down the road. A lot of people do with PTSD. And I always said to myself, if that man can go to a foreign country, carry a gun through a swamp, get shot at, do what he had to do to survive, lose most of people. Shut your mouth and walk 2000 miles. Stop being a baby. People do harder things than you're doing.

[01:58:12] This is a choice you made. Enjoy it. And don't be a bitch. Yeah, that's a solid, that's a solid insight. I mean, yeah. You know, it's not going to make a bumper sticker, but it's what kept me going. And knowing that that, he was so vested in this trip and loved it. I like, I got to keep going because he's so into it and I'm so into it. It's like, it's true though. Like my, my problems were first world problems. That was a really. His problems were a lot more rugged. So there's no reason to be like, Ooh, I'm tired.

[01:58:41] I don't feel good. I eat too much spam. And I walked, you know, like, dude, think about what you're doing. When you're with Nobby and you. You know what he had to do. And just keep going. If you lose one layer of skin off your feet, then, you know, you're approaching second world issues there. Yeah. We're getting there. You know, if shots are fired. Yeah. That's a different story. We're going home. Like I'm probably going to like, yeah, I'm out. That is cool. Your dad was in there. He's basically like coaching you and stuff. So, but it must've given him like a lot of like, uh, you know, 84, it's tough to get around.

[01:59:12] You're less mobile. Your world shrinks. So it's good for him to have that sort of mental, uh, process every day to like, okay, well, let's monitor this. Let's think about like, let's visualize where he is and what he's doing. And my dad is super active to this day. I still work with him. Like I worked with him framing years ago before I went to school. And then afterwards, when I started doing some of this work, I'll still hire him to do decks and stuff. The man just, he's unstoppable. He's an amazing person.

[01:59:41] He's such an inspiration, but really it's that mentality. And he always does the same thing. And I remember we, it was a friend of mine who's in the military and he gets called. He was special services, special ops, all kinds of crazy stuff. And he sees shit. And he asked him, he said, you know, how do you do it? How do you come back after seeing all this shit? How do you do it? He just looked at him dead in the eye and just said, you just do. He's like, what choice do you have? He's like, you either climb in a bottle or you escape the world. He's like, you just accept that that's what happened.

[02:00:10] This is what your life is. This is what your life was. You either didn't have a choice and you got through it. You're still here. Why are you going to look backwards? Make the most of it. It is what it is. You just move on. To move forward is, especially when you've dealt with adversity, like that is life. I think that's the point. That's sort of the purpose of life is for you to be able to continue to move forward no matter how bad the pain. Not to say that you have to ignore everything and keep it inside, but being able to at least

[02:00:39] function and find a way, find a path. That's what life is. Exactly. You accept it for what it is. You're going to feel the emotion. You're going to go through it. You're going to have an emotion. But at the time you deal with it, then afterwards you have the emotion. Then when you're done, you move. You have to move in a direction. If you want to move backwards and let it consume you, that's a choice. It is a choice.

[02:01:03] Or you don't and you suck it up and you move forward and you don't look back. Those are your choices. Every day everybody goes through it. It's easy to say in words. And I understand and respect how hard it must have been for him. I can't sit here and say you just do it like he can because he's done it. But as far as a choice of like hiking the Appalachian Trail or doing it in the alts, if you're presented with the opportunity, you're blessed. Take it and don't look at it as like, oh, no, I had to leave because I got hurt.

[02:01:33] No, you had to leave because you got hurt. But what an experience you had. You didn't get shot at. You didn't die. You weren't on death's door. You weren't like, you know, stepping on mines or whatever it might be. You had an opportunity. You're blessed to have it. Make the most of it and don't look back. And same thing, you know, if you do make it, enjoy it. No matter what happens in your life, just keep moving forward. It's your choice. You can dwell on it, but make the most of it. He was a huge inspiration.

[02:02:02] So, yeah, the mantra was don't be a bitch. And that vision is like, you know, thinking about what he must have gone through as such a younger guy being drafted and not knowing if you're coming home. And I'm just going out for a walk with a backpack and eating ramen noodles and crap. I'm like, stop it. It's perspective. Damn. That was a great answer. Thank you, Patrice, for that question. That was unexpectedly heartwarming. Interesting. We're peeling back the onions on Dave and it doesn't smell as bad as I expected. We are. Right?

[02:02:31] Hey, assholes have feelings too. I think we got time for me. One more question here, Nick. Yeah. I'll do it. We'll do just the last two because one was a dupe. So, Abom Graham, who Adrian, who you crossed on the trail, he said, knowing what you know now, what would you do differently? And he said just for some topics like gear, training, mileage, zero days, et cetera. I mean, if you want to pick one of those and dive into it, that's fine too. I could be real quick on a bunch of them. But as far as gear, it's like I would ditch the waterproof stuff.

[02:03:01] Like I said, waterproof just means water gets in, you suffer. Cheap waterproof is the way to go, in my opinion. Or just suck it up and you're going to be wet. Deal with it. Mileage. My mileage, my plan, my layout, all great. My shakedown hike, no problems with that. I really like what I did. It did pay off training. I would have spent a bunch more time flat land training, training my quads to take more of the knees, training my calves more than I expected.

[02:03:29] Really, not necessarily hiking a lot more miles, but doing a lot more stretching, a lot more yoga type strength training. Interesting. So, I have like more durability, not necessarily like stretching or like hitting weights or any of that kind of stuff or being like, hey, I could do 50 miles. You're going to do 50 miles. Don't worry about it. You're going to do a lot of miles. That is going to happen.

[02:03:52] It was more getting my muscles stretched and ready and maybe a little bit more prepping and bringing more stuff on trail, like more creatine, more muscle building. So, like as you get into it, you feel your body mass starting to fade because it does. You start to lose muscle mass. You start to lose a lot of strength because of the calorie deficit you put yourself in.

[02:04:16] So, timing that stuff, vitamins, magnesium for the joints, timing that with more stretching and training would have probably benefited me in the long run without question. Gear-wise, I like my gear. Everything worked out great there. And mileage, no questions or regrets on any of that. Cool. All right. And our final question from listener Melanie. Any scary or memorable animal encounters on trail? Oh, yeah.

[02:04:47] Like I said, rattlesnakes, man, when you take them out from the zoo, they are freaking huge. Skittles was ahead of me and said, hey, cocaine bear, there's a snake in the trail. And I said, oh, is it a good one? And she said, no. And sure, it was a rattlesnake coiled up in the middle of the trail. And it would not let anybody buy. How many feet long if you had to guesstimate on this guy? A minimum of six feet is a guess. Yeah. Yeah, that's definitely a guess.

[02:05:13] I feel like when you start to see snakes that are like thick, like girthy snakes, for lack of a better word. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It was thick with three C's. Yeah. But yeah. This baby had back. It was concerned. I'm like, we don't have those in Massachusetts as much. We do not. And it's like, it's so humbling. Or New Hampshire. Yeah. When you see those things too. Yeah. Like, especially when you don't see it and then you see it, it's that holy shit moment where you're like, and you just freeze because they're just, they're scary.

[02:05:42] I also had a black bear that was probably the size of a good size fridge step in front of me, walked right out of the woods. And I just froze. And he kept walking. And we just kind of like, I didn't do anything at first because I didn't want to scare it. And then when it started sniffing the air, I was like, okay, he's on to me. And as soon as we made eye contact, I just yelled and he ran away probably for about 40 seconds and then smelled blueberries and started eating. Nice. So, but I was like, yeah, that's enough. And when I was, I told you about the one when I was taking a leak, right?

[02:06:10] With the, there was a bear and I was, I stopped to relieve myself on the side of the trail and I heard a sapling bend. So I turned around and the one sapling on the side was just bouncing back and forth. So I thought it was a squirrel. And that's when I saw the bear's face stick out from behind the tree. Yeah. Midstream. So I was like, oh God, like, do you run? Do you pee on the bear? Like do you pinch and run? Like, what do you do? The answer is just piss on yourself and run. But I had to make a choice. I had to make a choice.

[02:06:40] Awesome. Those are definitely the scariest, Dana. That and the mystery noise, which I couldn't figure out. Yep. All right. Well, thank you listeners for all the great questions. Those are great questions. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Dave, too. That was some great conversation. Some unexpectedly heartwarming turns. Some unexpectedly silly turns. Five or six different things we didn't get to here. Yeah. I have all kinds of stats I can put you to sleep with, but we'll see. Yeah. That's true. We didn't get to the stats. So we'll break all that stuff down. Dave, you'll be back. So we'll hold that for the next time.

[02:07:11] We'll negotiate. Yeah. Exactly. We'll see if those coffee donations come in. I'll talk to your agent, see what we can get going. Okay. But until next time, listeners, we'll see you in episode 252. And then we got to get some So You Wanters out there soon enough. So thank you for listening. And we will be back soon. Thank you, everybody. Bye, everybody. Thank you for listening.

[02:07:35] If you enjoyed the show, you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podbean, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you want to learn more about the topics covered in today's show, please check out the show notes and safety information at slasherpodcast.com. That's S-L-A-S-R podcast.com. You can also follow the show on Facebook and Instagram.

[02:08:03] We hope you'll join us next week for another great show. Until then, on behalf of Mike and Stomp, get out there and crush some mega peaks. Now covered in scratches, blisters, and bug bites, 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 started to get worse.

[02:08:33] Officials say the snow was piled up to three feet in some spots, and there was a wind chill of minus one degree. And there's three words to describe this race. Do we all know who they are? Holy one! Lieutenant James Neeland, New Hampshire Fish and Game. Lieutenant, thanks for being with us today. Thanks for having me. What are some of the most common mistakes you see people make when they're heading out on the trails to hike here in New Hampshire? Seems to me the most common is being unprepared.

[02:08:59] I think if they just simply visited hikesafe.com and got a list of the 10 essential items and had those in their packs, they probably would have no need to ever call us at all.