A throwback to earlier visits by Chris BB and humorist Ken Bosse.
[00:00:00] A pair of hikers from Rhode Island have been rescued after getting stuck in treacherous terrain on Mount Washington.
[00:00:05] At least one hiker expressed they were feeling symptoms of hypothermia.
[00:00:11] Officials tell us the hikers were brought to safety around 10pm and thankfully there were no injuries.
[00:00:18] This was no drill, but a real life emergency deep in the White Mountains.
[00:00:33] Broadcasting from the Woodpecker studio in the live free or die state of New Hampshire.
[00:00:39] Welcome to the Sounds Like A Search And Rescue Podcast.
[00:00:44] Where we discuss all things related to hiking and search and rescue in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.
[00:00:52] Occasionally including the counties of Belknap, I mean Belknap, Coos Coos, wait, or is it Coos County?
[00:01:05] Whatever! Here are your hosts, Mike and Stomp.
[00:01:09] And we are live!
[00:01:15] It is Stomp flying solo from behind the granite microphone at the original Woodpecker studio in the great state of New Hampshire in the town of Thornton by the WD.
[00:01:31] Mike is in London attending the Doctor Who cosplay convention, so he's having a good time out there.
[00:01:39] We're going to do something new tonight.
[00:01:41] We have two slasher throwbacks from the great year of 2021.
[00:01:46] We're going to hear from the first time Chris Beebe Bowden from Solo came on, and that was way back in episode 21, which goes way back to July of 2021.
[00:02:00] And then after that we're going to hear from Ken Bossie, humorist and author from episode 36.
[00:02:09] He showed up, let's see, I think it was November of 2021.
[00:02:13] And of course, Ken is going to be joining us at the Full Conditions event coming up on November 16th at Reckless for those that got tickets.
[00:02:23] So this will be a lot of fun.
[00:02:24] We'll just check out those two old broadcasts.
[00:02:27] And first, I just want to welcome back Christina Fulcic.
[00:02:32] She's got her new endurance coaching outfit happening, and it's called Wild Raven Endurance Coaching.
[00:02:40] So here it is.
[00:02:43] Hi, I'm Christina from Wild Raven Endurance Coaching.
[00:02:47] I work with athletes of all levels, from hikers to triathletes, helping you reach your goals with personalized guidance.
[00:02:53] With years of experience hiking, mountain biking, and trail running across New England, I also have a deep knowledge of the New Hampshire 4,000 footers and the surrounding trails.
[00:03:04] Whether you're a beginner hiker or a seasoned athlete, I'll guide you towards your goals, reducing injury risk and improving your performance through smart, tailored coaching.
[00:03:14] Are you looking to transition from hiking to mountain running?
[00:03:17] I'm here to make that journey easier too.
[00:03:19] My approach combines strength training, mindfulness, and life balance on and off the trail.
[00:03:26] Let me help you find more joy in your sport while getting stronger and healthier along the way.
[00:03:32] Visit www.coaching.christinafulcic.com and start your adventure today.
[00:03:42] All right.
[00:03:43] Thank you, Christina.
[00:03:44] Glad to have you back.
[00:03:45] So let's hear from Chris Beebe.
[00:03:51] It's time for Slasher's Guest of the Week.
[00:03:56] So you're funny, Beebe.
[00:03:58] I met this kid.
[00:03:59] I'm actually your student, which is really cool.
[00:04:02] I got to sit through the wilderness first aid two years back now.
[00:04:09] So we'll be redoing that soon enough.
[00:04:11] And you've taught the class for PEMI, which is fantastic.
[00:04:14] This kid crashed on my couch, which is probably the beginning of this crazy relationship here.
[00:04:20] But I love this kid.
[00:04:21] He's great.
[00:04:22] He's really funny.
[00:04:23] He's a fantastic educator.
[00:04:24] A hell of a lot of certificates and knowledge.
[00:04:27] And we're really glad to have you here talking.
[00:04:31] Thanks.
[00:04:31] Yeah, you bet.
[00:04:33] So I guess we should start with you.
[00:04:35] I mean, you mentioned Kentucky and stuff like that.
[00:04:37] If you can walk us through where you came from and how you ended up here and then go into
[00:04:42] solo and tell us a little bit about them and what you're doing for them, that'd be great.
[00:04:46] Sure.
[00:04:47] Yeah, it was sort of a long winding road.
[00:04:50] I grew up in Washington, D.C. and then moved from there, took a train out west to work with
[00:04:56] a western swing band when I was 18 and lived in L.A. for a while, then Philadelphia, which
[00:05:04] is, you know, that trifecta is where I got the bulk of my wilderness exposure.
[00:05:09] So none.
[00:05:13] And got involved in disaster response work.
[00:05:17] Um, specifically with animals.
[00:05:21] So between dealing with veterinarians and growing up in Chinatown in Washington, D.C., it's I think
[00:05:28] it's a pretty clear path to the White Mountains.
[00:05:31] Um, and I was actually living in Haiti, uh, training veterinarians and thought since I had
[00:05:40] no idea where a hospital was, getting some medical training wouldn't be a bad idea.
[00:05:46] And had a friend say, well, you should do a wilderness EMT program.
[00:05:50] That's, it would be a really cool option.
[00:05:51] I said, I have no idea what that is, but I'd love to check it out.
[00:05:57] And honestly, at the time, my only knowledge of New England was, um, Irving Berlin's White
[00:06:05] Christmas and the polar bear Coca-Cola commercials.
[00:06:09] That was the sum total of what I knew of New England to be.
[00:06:13] And so I was like, well, that place looks great.
[00:06:15] So I'll, I would love to check, you know, my, the other option was Wyoming.
[00:06:19] So it's cow town or white Christmas.
[00:06:24] Uh, so I came up to solo, did my EMT, fell in love with the program, fell in love with
[00:06:30] the area and had taken, uh, was working down in Kentucky at that point and was coming up
[00:06:41] to solo periodically to teach over the summers and just loved it.
[00:06:47] And finally was lucky enough that at one point they said, so when are you, when are you planning
[00:06:50] on staying up here?
[00:06:52] Which is if you've never had the opportunity to suggest an idea, uh, to a better half at
[00:06:59] the time, and now an ex when this may explain that, uh, and go, Hey, what if we moved to
[00:07:04] the mountains and have them?
[00:07:05] Oh, I love that idea.
[00:07:06] And then like three weeks later go, Hey, so about that.
[00:07:09] Uh, yeah, you have a steady job.
[00:07:12] I don't, but what if we just drop all that and I move up here?
[00:07:15] Um, which that went over wonderfully.
[00:07:19] Uh, but we came up to new England and I started working for solo full time.
[00:07:25] You know, the idea of doing search and rescue was something that didn't exist to me in the
[00:07:28] other place that lived that you don't have, you know, search and rescue in DC.
[00:07:33] It's just called like a missing person.
[00:07:36] Um, and, uh, a friend of mine through solo, Bill Auton, who's been sort of instrumental in
[00:07:43] the search and rescue community for decades now, uh, sort of coached me along and, and
[00:07:49] got me involved in, uh, my first search and rescue team and, and sort of introduced me
[00:07:54] to the community and, and also has been a mentor to me at solo for years.
[00:07:59] So that was in a nutshell, my very convoluted route to winding up both in New Hampshire at
[00:08:06] solo and with the, the SAR work that I do now.
[00:08:09] Mm-hmm.
[00:08:10] How long have you been at solo?
[00:08:12] I've been teaching for solo for 10 years now.
[00:08:14] Wow.
[00:08:15] That's excellent.
[00:08:16] Uh, started in 2011.
[00:08:18] And so this makes my, my decade anniversary.
[00:08:22] Can you tell us a little bit about your credentials?
[00:08:25] Sure.
[00:08:25] So I, uh, through my previous work doing disaster work had been trained in, uh, swift water rescue,
[00:08:33] technical ropes, um, high angle rescue, uh, and then some specialty offshoots with sort of animals
[00:08:41] and disaster and things like that.
[00:08:43] Mm-hmm.
[00:08:43] Um, and then when I was in Kentucky, went through the fire academy there and was trained as a
[00:08:52] firefighter and hazmat operations.
[00:08:55] Um, incident safety officer have done training with, um, the national guard and helicopter
[00:09:03] and landing zone operations and, uh, pretty much everything.
[00:09:08] I have done wildland fire training.
[00:09:12] Now I'm in, uh, paramedic school in between that did some, did my actual undergrad and some
[00:09:20] graduate work in wildlife conservation and, uh, spend a good chunk of time out in Southern
[00:09:25] Africa training, uh, anti-poaching units in, in first aid.
[00:09:30] Wow.
[00:09:30] Now how about, uh, EMT?
[00:09:32] Are you an EMT?
[00:09:33] Yeah.
[00:09:34] So I'm, I was an EMT in wilderness EMT for years until about 2018 and then bumped it up a
[00:09:44] notch to what's called an advanced EMT.
[00:09:46] The main perk of that, especially in the search and rescue community is the ability to do, uh,
[00:09:53] IV fluid administration.
[00:09:55] You know, if we have someone who's dehydrated or a diabetic emergency and am currently in
[00:10:02] the last few months, which is what I've been saying for about eight months, but it's now
[00:10:07] actually down to the last few months of, uh, paramedic school.
[00:10:10] Uh, and my plan is to, after that, not think about medicine and I'm not even going to take
[00:10:15] Advil for like six months.
[00:10:18] I want to, I'm going to catch up on Netflix.
[00:10:22] Um, I may not leave the house.
[00:10:24] I hear that's a, a bear of a test.
[00:10:28] It's well, the best part is there's like four of them.
[00:10:30] There's the, the Portuguese man of war.
[00:10:34] That's, you know, one creature that's made out of like six symbiotic organisms, five, maybe
[00:10:40] that's what this is.
[00:10:41] That's a paramedic program.
[00:10:42] It's, you have to get like six individual credentials to qualify for this other big credential.
[00:10:49] Yeah.
[00:10:50] Uh, and it's, it's both anticlimactic and deflating when they go, Hey, you passed your exam on,
[00:10:56] uh, PHTLS.
[00:10:58] And at that point you're like, I don't even, I don't care.
[00:11:00] I don't remember.
[00:11:01] I, I'm not sure that I was there for it.
[00:11:04] I know I have another one next week that has other letters that I can't remember the name
[00:11:09] of at this point that all just qualify me to take yet another exam.
[00:11:14] Um, amazing.
[00:11:15] So yeah, it's, it's sort of a blur when I graduate, if I graduate in November, if someone has a
[00:11:20] splinter, they're on their own.
[00:11:21] Right.
[00:11:23] So how do you incorporate, um, your knowledge with, um, what solo expects and what do you
[00:11:28] guys teach or what, what's sort of the core curriculum between those different certificates?
[00:11:33] So one of the nice things about wilderness medicine and one of the things that drew me
[00:11:37] to it is that twofold one, it, it developed just as sort of a, you know, for anyone who's
[00:11:43] not, uh, familiar with it, it developed because a lot of what we have as pre-hospital care protocols
[00:11:52] are sort of designed around the idea that someone's going to be picked up and arrive in front of
[00:11:57] a doctor within about 30 minutes or so.
[00:12:00] And so, you know, in a wilderness setting that, that goes out the window that a protocol
[00:12:06] designed for 30 minutes can't be applied to a patient who needs care for five hours or
[00:12:11] three hours or even two hours.
[00:12:13] Um, and so a lot of it came down to treating the patient, not treating the numbers or treating
[00:12:19] a protocol, um, which I, I think is just holistically a more appropriate technique to take.
[00:12:28] The, uh, other side of it is that with teaching at solo, I think in general people in the United
[00:12:37] States, at least has been my experience of so much concern, uh, about making things worse by
[00:12:43] stepping in that it, it freezes them, um, liability.
[00:12:48] And so one thing that's been really advantageous to me with advancing my medical training is
[00:12:53] when someone goes, but couldn't this happen?
[00:12:56] Couldn't that happen?
[00:12:57] I know when I first started teaching, a lot of my answers were based on what I'd heard other
[00:13:01] people tell me.
[00:13:02] Um, and now it's kind of nice to go, no, I can actually, I can speak from the, what is
[00:13:09] considered like common medical practice from working in an emergency room or working on
[00:13:15] the ambulance or having done it for 10 years and seeing different trends evolve in, in
[00:13:19] medical care.
[00:13:22] And for me, the rewarding part is being able to tell someone like, Hey, there's a really
[00:13:26] technical answer as to why that's not an issue.
[00:13:29] We don't even need to get that technical, but how much can I give you to just reassure
[00:13:34] you that you following your gut and trying to help someone is probably the best thing
[00:13:38] for them.
[00:13:39] Yeah.
[00:13:40] Um, and so I feel like it's given me a few more tools in my tool chest to be able to
[00:13:46] give folks the confidence to step in and lend a hand.
[00:13:49] How about, um, I know this would, this would take a weekend or a week, but, um, can we just
[00:13:54] go over a couple of different things?
[00:13:55] Like how, how do you deal with orthopedic injuries or, you know, sprains, fractures,
[00:14:00] just briefly in the, in the wilderness?
[00:14:02] Maybe we'll touch upon a couple of the highlights that you guys might cover it solo.
[00:14:05] I think one of the, the relaxing components about diagnosing or treating a, an orthopedic
[00:14:11] injury in the woods is that to me, the most important thing is to just be a hundred percent
[00:14:16] sure what you're treating for, not a hundred percent sure that you're correct about what
[00:14:21] the injury is.
[00:14:22] What I mean by that is if I have someone, I mean, I, I think you and I both have probably
[00:14:27] carried out way more patients treating them for fracture injuries.
[00:14:33] Um, and then found out that they had a bad sprain strain or, or a ligament tear or something.
[00:14:39] Sure.
[00:14:40] But looking at someone and going, well, how bad's your pain?
[00:14:43] Do you think he can stand on it?
[00:14:45] What did it feel like?
[00:14:46] Have you ever had an injury that felt anything like this?
[00:14:50] Oh, you have, this feels worse.
[00:14:52] Okay.
[00:14:53] Well, I'm a hundred percent sure now that I'm going to treat you as though you could have
[00:14:57] broken this.
[00:14:59] And maybe it means more wear and tear on my back, but it's going to be less wear and tear
[00:15:04] on your injury.
[00:15:06] Yeah.
[00:15:06] And then we get them out and somebody goes, yeah, it turns out they just had a sprain.
[00:15:09] And you go, well, well, whatever.
[00:15:11] Yeah.
[00:15:11] Just in case.
[00:15:12] So BB, one question I have is I've been for probably about two or three years now.
[00:15:18] I, anytime there's a media report about a search and rescue, like I just log it in a
[00:15:23] spreadsheet and sort of keep track of it.
[00:15:25] And I've categorized common issues.
[00:15:28] And I would say probably like, I'd say about 40% of the time, the search and rescue causes
[00:15:37] a lower leg injury.
[00:15:38] So probably about a year and a half, two years ago, I started like, you know, people would
[00:15:43] commonly on social media say like, oh, you have to, you know, carry the 10 essentials.
[00:15:48] And I started, anytime I saw that, I would always throw in, I'd say, you know, I honestly think
[00:15:52] like a field splint should be part of anybody's 10 or 11 essentials just because I felt like
[00:16:00] I, you'd see these lower leg injuries happen.
[00:16:03] So commonly, do you, you know, you've got a lot more experience than I have.
[00:16:07] I'm just looking at, you know, news reports and a spreadsheet that I put together.
[00:16:11] But do you, can you comment a little bit about your thoughts?
[00:16:15] Like, do you see a lot of like rescues that you, you go on that, that probably could have
[00:16:20] been avoided with somebody having knowledge of a field splint?
[00:16:26] Less so a field splint.
[00:16:28] And honestly, I think if the majority of the rescues that I've been on when people have
[00:16:36] musculoskeletal injuries, it's on the hike out, they're fatigued and you're going downhill.
[00:16:41] So you're dealing with gravity and low fuel.
[00:16:44] And I think honestly, if people took the time to sort of calorie load, once they got up,
[00:16:52] you know, everyone wants to, to get to the top.
[00:16:54] You want, whether it's because you're going for time or because you just want to get the
[00:16:59] uphill part over with, you burn through a lot getting up there.
[00:17:04] And then we always have it in our head, like, oh, the hike down is easy.
[00:17:07] The hike is down is the part that's like nature's bringing you to your knees.
[00:17:14] And I think if people took more time to go, okay, we got up now, let's sit for 20 or 30
[00:17:20] minutes, calm down, relax and eat something so that on the hike down, we're actually more
[00:17:27] juiced up and able to sustain ourselves.
[00:17:31] I think it would actually reduce some of the, the likelihood of people taking a tumble.
[00:17:36] Yeah, makes sense.
[00:17:37] All right.
[00:17:37] So you're actually, you're, so you're like two steps before my thought is like, okay,
[00:17:42] the injury's happening.
[00:17:43] Let's, let's address it.
[00:17:44] But you're sort of like taking two steps even before that to say, you know, you put yourself
[00:17:49] in the space where you'd be susceptible to a leg injury by not treating your, your calorie
[00:17:56] intake and, and you're sort of not as sharp as you should be coming down.
[00:18:00] Yeah.
[00:18:00] I mean, I've, without getting onto too long of a rant on this, I think one thing that
[00:18:07] a lot of people miss, I think there's a very fine line between what's an emergency and what
[00:18:15] is an occurrence that just makes for a good story later.
[00:18:19] And it's just a culmination of small factors and whether or not we're able to manage them.
[00:18:27] And I had a friend in the Midwest who was out hiking on a trail.
[00:18:32] It was raining.
[00:18:33] There was a set of steps going down to this view and they took a tumble down them and then
[00:18:41] we're stuck in the rain.
[00:18:42] And for them, when it first happened, they thought, oh God, this is, this is bad.
[00:18:47] I'm in a lot of trouble.
[00:18:48] And they called me after the fact and wanted to sort of walk through it.
[00:18:51] And when you sort of break it down into, you know, well, do I have enough with me to keep
[00:18:57] me dry?
[00:18:58] If so, the rain doesn't really matter.
[00:19:01] Do I have enough food with me?
[00:19:03] Is it, you know, can I sustain myself overnight if I needed to absolute worst case scenario?
[00:19:08] And if the answer is yes, then you just bought yourself a ton of time.
[00:19:11] So it's no longer particularly emergent.
[00:19:15] And then the other two big ones are, can I get out and how do I get help?
[00:19:19] And they were on a very highly trafficked trail on a weekend.
[00:19:23] And so if they did nothing to self-advocate, someone's going to stumble across them.
[00:19:30] And with some rest and some food, they were able to stand up and slowly walk.
[00:19:36] And so all of a sudden, when you can start to look at each of those components of concern
[00:19:41] and go, well, I can manage each of them.
[00:19:43] So now maybe instead of having this catastrophic event, I just have the time that I took a hard
[00:19:48] fall in the woods and got myself out.
[00:19:51] And this is kind of a cool story.
[00:19:54] That's great.
[00:19:55] It's reminiscent of the Ty Gagney book there about Kate Matrasova.
[00:20:00] Decision points and just, you know, making the right decisions along the way.
[00:20:07] Excellent.
[00:20:07] I love dead air.
[00:20:14] Like every radio host I've ever heard, like always like talks about dead air.
[00:20:18] Like you can't have dead air.
[00:20:22] We're just all thinking just for the audience's sake.
[00:20:25] We're all just in deep thought.
[00:20:27] All right.
[00:20:28] How about, how about, we'll just zip through a couple of these.
[00:20:34] So how about heat and cold injuries?
[00:20:36] Yeah.
[00:20:36] I mean, it's interesting.
[00:20:37] I was actually doing some research recently on National Park Service stats on rescues.
[00:20:44] And the highest risk activity by numbers in the national parks is weekend hikers.
[00:20:51] Second highest risk is non-motorized watercraft.
[00:20:54] The number one leading cause of people requiring rescue was poor planning and poor decision making.
[00:21:04] So inadequate supplies going in and poor management of decisions once they're there.
[00:21:09] Mm-hmm.
[00:21:10] And a huge part of the decision making was, or of the planning was bringing enough supplies in and wearing enough clothes once you're there.
[00:21:20] Yeah.
[00:21:21] You know, I think there's a really interesting, I don't know why this is, but I think with cold injuries, there's a really interesting factor that people don't think about.
[00:21:31] But we, we set ourselves up to fail in the cold way more than we do in the heat.
[00:21:36] You know, if you leave your house with a hoodie on and realize that it's, it's 80 and humid, no one goes, well, these are the cards I've been dealt.
[00:21:47] I guess I'm just going to die today.
[00:21:49] You know, you take the hoodie off and maybe you go back in and change because it's going to be disgusting.
[00:21:55] But people commonly will go outside and go, oh God, it's colder than I thought.
[00:21:59] And be like, well, you want to run in and grab a jacket?
[00:22:01] They go, oh no, I'm good.
[00:22:04] And I think that's one of the big, we always underestimate the impact of the cold.
[00:22:12] And then when people start hiking, no one wants to start hiking uncomfortable.
[00:22:15] We always want to be comfy.
[00:22:17] So we start by hiking warm.
[00:22:22] We get 50 feet in.
[00:22:24] Now our base layers are wet with sweat.
[00:22:26] And then we peel off our shells.
[00:22:28] And so we start dumping heat aggressively.
[00:22:33] And I think a lot of times folks don't equate, like not to sound overly techie, but calorie intake with heat sustenance.
[00:22:42] And I actually, I hate the term heat exhaustion because it's, it's not heat exhaustion.
[00:22:48] It's, it's just exhaustion.
[00:22:50] People burn through what they need to sustain and you do it just as fast in the cold, just for different reasons.
[00:22:56] We're not sweating it out, but our furnace is going into overdrive trying to stay warm.
[00:23:01] Yeah, that's excellent.
[00:23:03] Do you have any memorable rescues or events in your own personal life dealing with heat?
[00:23:12] I won't say exhaustion.
[00:23:17] Yeah.
[00:23:18] I mean, I can think of two as far as the cold, actually one recently.
[00:23:22] And I think this is the more problematic setting was the one we did on Crawford Path, where it wasn't a particularly cold day, but it was drizzly and gray and a little humid.
[00:23:39] And a lot of folks on that were wearing fairly minimal layers.
[00:23:44] Right.
[00:23:44] But then I noticed by the time a number of us got down, everyone was pretty cold, myself included.
[00:23:50] Right.
[00:23:51] Um, and I think that's the really tricky part with cold environments is that it's a, you know, it's a very fickle mistress.
[00:23:59] It doesn't take a lot for, you know, it doesn't need to be an Arctic chill for people to have problems with the cold.
[00:24:06] Um, and you know, springtime is number one high risk season for it because one, everyone's celebrating the fact that it's not cold anymore.
[00:24:16] Um, and so we prematurely de-layer and then we get rained on.
[00:24:22] Um, and you're out there for several hours.
[00:24:25] I mean, just soaked.
[00:24:26] I mean, your clothes only do so much to keep you dry.
[00:24:31] Um, for heat, I, uh, this is still, you know, and I, I'm sure when my better half listens to this podcast, she's going to start rolling her eyes because she's heard me reference this in classes too many times.
[00:24:44] But I think one of the most miserable, let me rephrase that the most miserable carryout I ever did was up on Glen Boulder trail, uh, in the middle of summer.
[00:24:56] And it was so humid that it wasn't raining as much as just the sky was sweating.
[00:25:02] Um, and when we were coming back down Glen Boulder trail, it was just a miserable slog and people kept sort of toppling, uh, trying to stay on the litter.
[00:25:17] And a huge part of it, I think was just that we dumped so much sweat and, and fuel going up, um, that, that people were really struggling on the way out.
[00:25:28] Yeah.
[00:25:30] Glen Boulder is awesome.
[00:25:35] So BB question for you.
[00:25:37] Um, yeah, Glenn Boulder is just, that's a steep haul anyway, getting up there.
[00:25:42] Um, but the question for you.
[00:25:44] So, oh, I was just going to say my, I, I've been thinking about this a lot.
[00:25:48] Cause I, I feel bad when I have students that say, what's your favorite hike?
[00:25:52] And I go, I don't know, let's work backwards.
[00:25:55] I hate Glen Boulder trail.
[00:25:57] It's, it's a miserable slog.
[00:26:01] And I had someone point out once, and I thought this was interesting that I grew up in, in sort of the Appalachian region hiking in, in Harper's Ferry area.
[00:26:12] Yeah.
[00:26:13] And someone said, you know, well, if you, if you go to an area that was developed by Puritans were just backbreaking.
[00:26:20] Hard labor was the fast track to, to God.
[00:26:26] You get trails like Glen Boulder.
[00:26:29] You go to the mid Atlantic Appalachia where people had moonshine stills and couldn't walk a straight line.
[00:26:34] You get the most amazing switchback trails ever.
[00:26:38] That's awesome.
[00:26:39] It's like, I think someone's onto something.
[00:26:46] Yeah.
[00:26:47] That, that, that makes an odd, uh, that makes sense in an odd way for sure.
[00:26:51] Um, no question I have for you about solo is if I'm looking to sort of get my feet wet in learning about wilderness first responder or wilderness first aid, what is like the, the one-on-one course with, with solo that I would take to, to sort of be starting my journey and getting competent in helping save somebody in the wilderness?
[00:27:16] I would say, uh, sort of, uh, especially for folks that are just getting their, getting their feet wet.
[00:27:24] I, you know, I can't harp on it enough, but when you're, if you find yourself buying your first set of nice boots and a, and a good pack, cause you really want to make sure you can spend some time out there taking the wilderness first aid course.
[00:27:39] It's a two day class.
[00:27:41] The majority of them are taught over a weekend.
[00:27:45] Um, and it's, it really gives you a sense.
[00:27:47] A foundation on how to avoid some of the most common problems and how to play a valuable role in stabilizing some of the more extreme ones.
[00:27:59] And I think it really should be on, on sort of your, your shopping checklist as it were, you know, okay, I got my stove, my bottle, my pack, my boots, and some basic training to stay safe.
[00:28:14] Mm-hmm.
[00:28:16] But that would be your, your, your icebreaker course.
[00:28:19] And it's, it's over a weekend.
[00:28:21] Do you, is it, I've seen people, I've, I know a lot of people that have, have taken various courses.
[00:28:27] Is it, um, do you actually host people at the location?
[00:28:30] Like you stay overnight at, at solo or do you have to get your own lodging?
[00:28:35] No, solo, uh, when we have courses on site, solo has, um, a dormitory on, on the facility.
[00:28:46] Um, and I think honestly, that's one of the most, for lack of a better word, romantic ways to do it.
[00:28:51] You've got a, a dorm tucked back on a hillside, a, a dead end dirt road in the middle of the whites.
[00:29:00] Um, the building was built by hand by the owners.
[00:29:03] It sits on 300 acres of a wonderful hill, uh, that we do all of our training on.
[00:29:10] And it really does feel like more of an experience than just, uh, a transactional, like, I, you know, like your classic CPR class or something.
[00:29:21] Got it. So if you, if you have a loved one that you think would be interested in this, um, it sounds like it would be a great, like father's day or mother's day or birthday present for someone to, to get them a weekend course.
[00:29:33] And, um, if my wife's listening to this, that's a, that's a solid hint for you.
[00:29:40] That's great.
[00:29:42] Yeah. I mean, I can, I can say, plus you get to get rid of me.
[00:29:46] For sure. My experience at solo as a student is why I've been in New Hampshire for the majority of the past 10 years.
[00:29:55] That's great.
[00:29:56] Now, how about, um, solo and SAR?
[00:29:59] How long have you guys been, um, working with fish and game and how did that relationship develop?
[00:30:05] So solo has the school itself.
[00:30:09] And then there's also they're licensed within the stadium S system is what's called a non-transport, um, facility or non-transport service.
[00:30:19] Um, and that has gone back as long as I've been with solo and for years preceding that to, to varying degrees.
[00:30:30] One of the nice things about it, um, and I, it would be hard for us to pull off our involvement without the support of the, the search and rescue teams in the area is that it gives our students an opportunity to not only see the patient care and assessment that we teach them on a live patient.
[00:30:53] It gives them a great clinical opportunity, but they also get to see what is actually involved in doing, uh, a carry out and a rescue.
[00:31:05] The upside is that oftentimes, you know, for any team, someone gets injured.
[00:31:12] They call nine one one, nine one one realizes it's the trail that bumps it over to fish and game, fish and game puts out a call to search and rescue.
[00:31:21] Now they have to hit their call list and see who's available and then get them from wherever they are to the trailhead.
[00:31:28] And with solo, since we have essentially a, uh, you know, everyone's fixed in one location, taking their class.
[00:31:36] It's called a captive audience.
[00:31:38] Oftentimes.
[00:31:40] Exactly.
[00:31:41] It's a captive audience that may not in exact words, but be under the impression that they're required to do this.
[00:31:49] Um, which is fantastic.
[00:31:53] Um, but instead we get, you know, anywhere from 15 to 20 people in one spot that we can take all at once.
[00:32:03] Um, and so it, I would definitely stray away from saying that solo bringing a class replaces the need for other teams.
[00:32:14] But one thing we've been incredibly lucky with is that teams have been so supportive in taking our students under their wing during carry outs and coaching them along as, as, you know, sort of, uh, green thumbs to the field.
[00:32:31] So how about, uh, your curriculum curriculum, knowing that you may be called out with a bunch of, uh, green, maybe, maybe not green hikers in this, in this realm of, um, wilderness medicine.
[00:32:44] Do you, have you changed your curriculum to prepare them for the fact that they may have to, you know, put a nylon strap over their shoulder and carry 200 pounds or how what's happened there?
[00:32:54] I think honestly, the, the trickiest part is that students get very, very comfortable, you know, um, with like, well, I'll just grab stuff from the classroom or, well, I don't need to bring my pack out on this scenario.
[00:33:08] And, um, so we, we try to make sure that we're highlighting the, the need to treat everything in real time.
[00:33:20] I think one of the best examples is when we go over how to do a litter carry, I'll watch a lot of students drop their packs with the thought that, well, we're only a hundred feet from the classroom.
[00:33:33] I'll leave my pack here, do the litter carry and come back and get it. Um, and it's always funny to point out to them, like you, you plan on leaving the pack at the top of the mountain so that you can go back up and get it afterwards.
[00:33:45] Cause that's, that's what you're doing right now. And you just see those wheels turn a little bit. Oh, you want us to wear these? Like, well, I'm not carrying seven of them. So yes.
[00:33:58] Um, and it is funny when we do a carry out and then efforts like, man, that was, that was a lot of work. Yeah. Yeah. There's, it's literally the opposite of everything you could possibly want to do all at once.
[00:34:14] Yeah. There's never a time when I've wanted to lift something only with one hand. There's never a time that I've wanted to go downhill with more weight.
[00:34:24] And there's never a time that I thought, you know, what would make hiking better is to do it with 30 people that I don't know all at once.
[00:34:32] And one person that's particularly miserable. It's literally, it's the best way to make all of those things less ideal.
[00:34:41] And then we're just going to do it for a really long drawn out period of time.
[00:34:47] That's so funny. Oh man. Gotta love it.
[00:34:54] So, um, no, obviously you guys are covered under the New Hampshire or the state, uh, indemnity and, um, work workers compensation, right? For these students. Is that how it would work or is this?
[00:35:11] Yep. It all falls under fish and games.
[00:35:14] Except for if you're practicing medicine. Now that's another question. I, I, you and I have talked about this on the trail a little bit, but, uh, just the, the legal,
[00:35:22] the distinction is between being, uh, um, just a good Samaritan on the trail, uh, versus somebody that has a license. Can you talk about that a little bit?
[00:35:30] Yeah, that's one thing that's, it's, uh, it's an interesting world because it's wilderness medicine in general has been, and I don't mean for this to sound boastful or, um, irreverent,
[00:35:44] but wilderness medicine has always been something that has been, has taken what is on the books and gone, well, that doesn't apply. How do we make it work?
[00:35:53] Mm-hmm.
[00:35:54] And so to, to look at a wilderness setting and go, okay, well, how do scope of practice modules and, uh, medical licensure apply in a realm that they weren't designed for without breaking rules?
[00:36:11] Uh, it's become a tricky one because, you know, as I, it's something that I've started to look into recently as we've talked about.
[00:36:19] Um, but you're roping in, uh, essentially recognition by the state board of EMS insurance policies that are managed by the state, you know, whether it's fishing game or whoever is calling you out.
[00:36:35] And then what protocols they've intended to cover or are prepared to cover.
[00:36:41] Yeah.
[00:36:42] And then also there's a certain level of duty to act, you know, if, if you're going in as part of a rescue, it goes sort of both ways as far as someone needing to go, well, here's what I'd like to be able to do.
[00:36:58] Uh, and I'm, I'm licensed to do it in the state, although not in this setting.
[00:37:03] And mainly if I'm only working for this ambulance service or this fire department, but then the other side of it that I haven't been able to get a particularly clear answer on is what liability does a provider have?
[00:37:18] Who's trained to provide care, who's licensed to provide it is on scene to render aid and doesn't provide it because they're concerned with whether they might be covered.
[00:37:31] So I get, I wonder if, uh, does good Samaritan shut off at your license or does it reside concurrently with your license?
[00:37:40] Um, that's one thing that actually changes state to state, um, as far as how, like, who's considered a good Samaritan.
[00:37:48] Um, my understanding is that in New Hampshire, if you're responding as part of an organized team, you're generally not considered a good Samaritan.
[00:38:01] Whereas in the state of Maine, you could respond on an ambulance service in uniform.
[00:38:09] And if you're not getting paid for it may fall under good Samaritan protection because you're now a volunteer.
[00:38:16] Um, so every state's identification and sort of recognition of good Samaritan coverage differs as well.
[00:38:23] Um, the, for you, the one question that I'm curious about BB is the, you know, there's probably anywhere from, I don't know, six to 10, um, major sort of medical incidents that a lot of that will result in fatalities annually in the, in the New Hampshire region.
[00:38:43] And essentially, you know, you're talking about heart attacks, strokes, when you're out in the, um, out in the wilderness.
[00:38:50] And typically, you know, those happen where nobody's on scene to sort of assist with, uh, any sort of prevention of that.
[00:38:58] And the, you know, the, the hikers will, for whatever reason will, um, you know, experience these major medical injuries and it'll, it'll result in a fatality.
[00:39:07] But is there any, um, any thoughts from your perspective, you know, the, the, the techniques that you teach in your sort of beginner classes around wilderness first aid, do you feel like those would help in those major medical cases?
[00:39:24] Or is it just from your perspective, is it just a situation where those things happen and there's really not a lot that you can do to, to help people?
[00:39:33] And so I would, I honestly, I think you actually hit the nail on the head with both of those that we do teach things to try to help, but it's not so much.
[00:39:45] That I think there are techniques that can be taught to avoid that, but teaching people to understand and embrace for lack of a better word, the reality of the limitations when they're in those environments.
[00:40:00] And, you know, Mike, you and I had sort of mentioned this a little bit earlier, I think offline.
[00:40:06] I'm not, I'm not a big fan of, not that anyone's suggesting we should, but I'm not a big fan of armchair quarterbacking rescues.
[00:40:13] Um, I think debriefing afterwards and learning from them is invaluable, but I think it's really tricky when you, when you have a medical emergency in a back country environment, it's sort of like, uh, it's like taking a time warp back in time.
[00:40:32] Um, everything that we've learned about human survival, uh, from a medical standpoint is tailored towards people being in a big city with a well-developed EMS system and major hospitals.
[00:40:47] Um, and that's what society is sort of hubbed around.
[00:40:52] And, you know, even here we, in the whites, we have someone who gets injured.
[00:40:57] If it's severe enough, let's fly them to a major city where we have a major hospital.
[00:41:01] When we have people get injured in the woods, we've removed all of those advancements.
[00:41:07] You're hours away from people being able to get to you.
[00:41:11] Once people get to you, they're not going to have access to all the tools and equipment you want on an ambulance.
[00:41:16] You're now probably hours away from getting off of the side of a mountain and it just compounds all of these factors that are contending with your survival.
[00:41:28] Essentially.
[00:41:29] I think one of the unfortunate components that gets overlooked in that is the toll that plays on the rescuer who's already taken on a fairly steep challenge just to get to someone.
[00:41:44] And then afterwards have someone go, well, what should we have done differently?
[00:41:47] Cause they didn't make it.
[00:41:49] Um, and I, I don't know that there is always a good answer.
[00:41:52] You know, it's when you put yourself into more austere and remote environments, I think there needs to be a certain amount of personal accountability that.
[00:42:02] You know, depending on how bad this gets, I, it may be too bad to fix.
[00:42:07] Uh, I've taken myself off the map of, of response.
[00:42:11] It's essentially, and put myself into a very, very remote environment where I don't have access to what we grow up thinking we would have access to when we have chest pain or difficulty breathing or, uh, some other, uh, emergency waiting to happen.
[00:42:28] Yeah.
[00:42:28] Yeah.
[00:42:28] I mean, it makes sense.
[00:42:29] You're basic.
[00:42:30] I always say like, you're, it doesn't happen a lot, but I do, you know, I recently did a hike in, you know, into the Pemi wilderness where, you know, there's no cell connection.
[00:42:40] There's your, your, you're off trail.
[00:42:42] And I always say like, okay, we're working without a net here.
[00:42:45] And, you know, I feel like, you know, there's plenty of times when we're out there hiking where we're working without a net and, you know, we've got to be able to accept that, that risk.
[00:42:55] And, you know, it's, it's, I guess it comes with the territory, but no, that makes sense.
[00:43:00] It's just, I do feel like a lot of these fatalities, it's like, it's like getting hit by lightning.
[00:43:05] Yeah.
[00:43:06] It just, it happens.
[00:43:07] It's unfortunate, but it's, it's really no, there's nothing that you can do to control it.
[00:43:11] No, I'd agree.
[00:43:13] It's, I heard a statistic a few times that, uh, and it, it kind of drives me nuts, but people will say there's some evidence that CPR is more effective in a remote back country setting.
[00:43:25] And it's, it's much more, uh, correlation than causation that when we do CPR in the back country, most commonly it's because someone had a drowning event or possibly was struck by lightning.
[00:43:39] Both of which have a significantly higher rate of survivability than heart attack.
[00:43:45] So because of that, sure.
[00:43:47] In those conditions, you're, you have a better chance of surviving anyway, but I think it sets people up with this goofy misunderstanding that, oh, well, if we do CPR in the woods, it should help.
[00:43:58] Mm-hmm.
[00:43:59] And it's, there's zero evidence to back that up.
[00:44:02] If you have a, if you have someone who has a compromised heart and they have a heart attack on the side of a mountain, it's, it's not to say that search and rescue and fish and game won't do everything they can to buy them every chance.
[00:44:15] You know, they deserve, uh, there's just only so much you can do with, with those limitations.
[00:44:22] Now, um, that leads into, um, a question I had had, um, surrounding, you'd mentioned the toll it takes on, you know, rescuers, you know, not, you know, not only physically, but my question is mentally.
[00:44:35] You know, when we talked about, um, critical incidents, stress debriefings and things like that, um, how do rescuers and people in these, these fields, uh, manage the stress and the impact of what they've seen over the years?
[00:44:52] Um, historically not well.
[00:44:55] Yeah.
[00:44:56] Um, it, it's not a field that we pay much attention to.
[00:45:00] And, and especially in the world of urban EMS burnout's a huge factor, um, has a substance abuse.
[00:45:08] I think a couple of things that, that contribute to that, especially in the urban side of things, but I think it's a good, um, self check in, in any rescue work is having a clear idea of what you define as a, as a success.
[00:45:28] You know, success doesn't mean that you save every person, but I think if you can go to bed that night, knowing that you did everything possible to save that person.
[00:45:40] So that at least, you know, family and loved ones can go, I know that they got every chance they possibly could.
[00:45:46] I think that's a successful operation.
[00:45:49] Yeah, I would agree.
[00:45:52] And, and I think it's tricky because people have this, uh, expectation that someone walking back out of the woods, that's a, that's a successful one.
[00:46:03] And that's unrealistic.
[00:46:04] And then it puts you in a situation of you second guessing yourself and going, what should I have done differently?
[00:46:08] What else could we have done instead of going, I know we did everything we could.
[00:46:14] Maybe there was something else they needed, but it wasn't something we could give.
[00:46:17] Yeah.
[00:46:18] That's well said.
[00:46:20] I mean, PEMI offers, um, you know, chaplain services and, um, you know, if support just if, if people are struggling with some of the things that they've seen.
[00:46:30] And I'm sure most of the other teams do as well.
[00:46:32] Um, that's a really helpful service.
[00:46:35] Um, just to walk through and talk about certain.
[00:46:39] Yeah.
[00:46:39] I think it's amazing that you guys do that.
[00:46:40] Oh yeah.
[00:46:41] Yeah.
[00:46:41] Yeah.
[00:46:41] Even, even, I think there's a toll even for these, these lower leg injuries over the years.
[00:46:46] You know, I mean, it's, it's a traumatic, um, event and it's a high adrenaline, um, episode that you get called out on.
[00:46:56] And over the years, I'm sure it really does take a toll on people, even though it's maybe considered something minor orthopedically or something like that.
[00:47:04] Um, I had two questions, maybe not specifically related to what we've been talking about, but you piqued my curiosity in the beginning.
[00:47:11] Did you say that you were training anti-poaching personnel in Africa previously?
[00:47:21] Yeah, I worked, uh, two different times, uh, lived in, uh, Malawi in Southern Africa, training anti-poaching.
[00:47:30] I mean, uh, one trip went, traveled around to a number of different, uh, reserves and wildlife sanctuaries training their anti-poaching rangers.
[00:47:42] What types of animals were, were of concern?
[00:47:45] Um, the main ones were, without getting too off topic, the, the main one of attraction in Malawi was the elephant.
[00:47:53] Okay.
[00:47:54] Um, one of the tricky things with the world of poaching is that there's trophy hunting and then subsistence hunting.
[00:48:00] Mm-hmm.
[00:48:01] And so there were a lot of animals that were getting targeted by poachers, but not, not the way we think of with, uh, groups going out for ivory, but they may just be locals that are, are hunting on protected land for, because they have no other access to food options.
[00:48:19] Got it.
[00:48:20] Got it.
[00:48:20] Um, but the, the elephants were sort of the, the iconic of the big five that were on those, uh, the reserves that I was training at.
[00:48:30] Very interesting.
[00:48:32] And do you, based on your experience, do you, do you have high hopes that we'll be able to save these species or is it just a, a, a difficult fight?
[00:48:43] Uh, I think it's, I think it's a hugely difficult fight.
[00:48:47] And I think, um, uh, to get on some philosophical soapbox, but I think, you know, with any, any battle like that, whether it's saving the elephants or, uh, uh, uh, drug epidemic or whatever it is, I think the hardest part is that we look for, uh, a quick fix.
[00:49:10] And in, in, in repairing it.
[00:49:12] And oftentimes it was seeking a quick fix that causes the problem.
[00:49:16] And, you know, there's a much more complex underbelly to, to the issue, whether it's okay, well, we need to protect these, these elephants.
[00:49:25] So let's make the land surrounding them protected land.
[00:49:29] So people can't go on them and hunt.
[00:49:30] Well, but what do we do with the villagers that live there?
[00:49:33] Oh, we'll push them off the land.
[00:49:35] Okay.
[00:49:35] So what do they do for food?
[00:49:37] Well, they can figure that out.
[00:49:38] Okay.
[00:49:39] So now the new pressure is going to be that they come on and hunt.
[00:49:43] And yesterday what they were hunting was, you know, uh, bush bucks that were legal for them to hunt.
[00:49:49] But now we just said they can't.
[00:49:51] Um, and it's, it's all the atrocities and lessons we could have learned from the American West seem to vanish like smoke in the wind.
[00:50:02] Yeah.
[00:50:03] So the unintended consequences of thinking you're doing a good thing.
[00:50:07] So that's, so my next question was going to be Haiti, which is probably an even more complicated scenario, but you were there supporting veterinarian services.
[00:50:16] Can you talk a little bit about like, what, what, what is it like for a vet in, in Haiti?
[00:50:21] What are they typically doing?
[00:50:24] Are they helping like street dogs and cats or are they doing like large domestic or, um, farm animals?
[00:50:31] No.
[00:50:31] So interestingly, most of the vets in Haiti worked for the Haitian government, uh, for the ministry of agriculture and animal health.
[00:50:40] And the majority of them were trained in Cuba, which has a fantastic reputation for both of them in a very good vet school, but interestingly, also a very good human, uh, school of dentistry.
[00:50:51] Um, but they, um, it was mostly on agriculture.
[00:50:58] Okay.
[00:50:58] Anything that could generate, uh, gross domestic product revenue.
[00:51:03] Um, so a lot of the work I did was actually working on how to develop street dog, uh, sterilization programs.
[00:51:13] Then we did disaster preparedness and response for livestock and then, uh, an equine welfare program.
[00:51:20] One of the big tricks was going to Haiti.
[00:51:23] And, and for me, I think one of the, the things that I found most challenging was trying to avoid these sort of, uh, high country that I've never been to.
[00:51:33] Let me show you how much I can help you.
[00:51:35] Yeah.
[00:51:36] I had no idea what I was walking into.
[00:51:38] I didn't speak the language.
[00:51:40] I knew nothing about it.
[00:51:41] And so I'd meet with these government officials that went, so what's your plan?
[00:51:45] I was like, I have no idea.
[00:51:46] What, what do you guys need?
[00:51:49] And with working with, with dogs in the United States, a lot of people are like, oh, you know, are you bringing dogs back to the U S say?
[00:51:56] No, it's, that's not going to help.
[00:51:58] We have, there are plenty of homeless dogs in shelters now, but more than 60% of the human cases of rabies, uh, getting contracted on the Western hemisphere was in Haiti.
[00:52:11] Really?
[00:52:12] And so we could do these street dog sterilization programs and work on getting the dogs vaccinated.
[00:52:18] at the same time we might actually be able to help the people of haiti if we could use the
[00:52:23] veterinarians as sort of spokespeople in their areas to do disaster planning and mitigation
[00:52:31] when hurricanes came in maybe we could help people either do an early harvest or get out of
[00:52:38] the way of a storm so that their farm didn't get completely obliterated they didn't lose everything
[00:52:43] or they themselves would not get lost to to a hurricane and then since in rural haiti a lot
[00:52:50] of people depended on having donkeys or sometimes if they were a little luckier horses to bring their
[00:52:57] goods to market if we could show them how to take better care of their animals the animals would last
[00:53:01] longer and could provide more more service to the families wow so you've uh you've you've traveled
[00:53:07] quite a bit you but you've mostly been settled in the northeast for the last 10 years or so now yeah
[00:53:12] since about 2011 this is of hopped around a few times but new hampshire has pulled me back well
[00:53:18] we're happy to have you here and uh definitely it's it's interesting talking to me you've probably i
[00:53:23] mean you have a million stories for sure but um i'm i'm very interested i'm hoping i can take a class
[00:53:29] with uh with you as the instructor in the future so we'll see i'd love it
[00:53:36] but your wife does listen to the show right so yes yeah i'm working on it
[00:53:42] kicking and screaming i'm trying to figure out like the next milestone so yeah yeah exactly
[00:53:51] um boy but great no this is this is all very interesting and um last question i have is um
[00:53:58] you've been on rescues with stomp is he does he is he pulling his weight or is he still sitting back
[00:54:04] with the holding clipboard ordering you guys around ordering pizza no i honestly and i'm i'm not saying
[00:54:12] this i'm hoping his camera freezes again in a second but a couple things that has always stuck
[00:54:20] out to me with with stomp on rescues one is i even i think on the last one was having some
[00:54:27] some aches and pains always has a smile um and he's always looking out for not only his team but the uh
[00:54:40] the the patient and the anyone related to the patient which is always it catches me because there's
[00:54:49] my goal whether it's good bad or otherwise is generally to if i can make sure a solid 75 percent
[00:54:56] of my students still make it back out of the woods it's a win but making sure that the the patient
[00:55:02] themselves is doing decent and and bringing some levity to it if i can get someone laughing
[00:55:09] it's probably the best thing i can do for him yeah but i remember on one of the last rescues i saw
[00:55:14] stomp he was checking on how their family was doing making sure they had heard what was happening and
[00:55:20] and we're up to date with the the plan for the whole rescue and i honestly think there's precious few
[00:55:27] people that that keep as much of a sort of bird's eye view on the whole situation not just monitoring
[00:55:33] the one person but you know their inner circle and then the circle around them and and uh so it's
[00:55:42] always one of those faces it's nice to see because you go okay cool even if i lose lose track of what's
[00:55:48] happening for a minute we've got a good good overview yeah they're a little more complicated
[00:55:54] than uh you would think these scenarios you know but i appreciate that yeah and i think when we when
[00:56:01] we originally started talking about doing this podcast bb we were like we were sort of angling
[00:56:05] towards like all right we'll do more of a general hiking podcast and you know we just kept sort of
[00:56:11] talking it through and talking it through and i'm i'm very interested in the search and rescue piece
[00:56:15] of it as well so i we ultimately decided like let's just let's lead with the search and rescue and then
[00:56:20] we'll have the hiking as a as a follow-up and i think it's it's it stomps passion and i think that
[00:56:25] it it's made the show a lot more successful because that's really what energizes both of us versus just
[00:56:32] if we did like a general hiking podcast and and didn't cover this stuff i think it would be less
[00:56:37] you get less passion from both of us so it validates what i always figured stomp would be like in the
[00:56:42] field oh you guys are making me blush yeah so you're a good man stomp even even though i give
[00:56:51] you shit all the time i think you know honestly i think it's it's a cool idea having a search and
[00:56:58] rescue podcast because one of the things that i always thought of a search and rescue is yeah like
[00:57:02] the this elite specialty team and i think in many ways that's what it is but what's so neat to me
[00:57:12] about it is that what makes a team specialty or specialized is how diverse the specialties within
[00:57:19] the team are you know my thing is is medical response that's what i do you know i actually
[00:57:26] without getting into too many details met my better half doing a training for for stomps team and i
[00:57:33] remember trying to get up the nerve to uh talk to her after the training was done and having someone
[00:57:41] hop in front of me to talk to me about how they were a map maker and it was this very trying moment
[00:57:49] of going i don't think i've ever met a map maker i didn't i didn't know we still did that that's
[00:57:57] i should kind of want to hear this now but i'm watching this person pack their bags that i've been
[00:58:01] wanting to go talk to for a day and a half um and then you have some people that's it's like do i hit
[00:58:08] on on the hit on this person or do i talk to the photographer
[00:58:14] amerigo vespucci if you can hang on for one second i just i gotta ask this gal a question
[00:58:21] but then you have some people that could pick any trail in the whites and go well you know this
[00:58:27] time of year this part's going to be washed out and then you have other people that just want to
[00:58:32] hike and carry a litter and i think that's what's you know when i have students go what do you need
[00:58:38] to do to be on search and rescue and i was like well if you want the technical skills just
[00:58:43] get a cinder block tie a rope around it and go for a really long walk up and down a hill
[00:58:49] yes seriously it's so funny you say that because when when stomp first started like getting into it
[00:58:56] he would like text me he'd be like i'm going to hike and i got a hundred pound weight in my bag and i'd be
[00:59:02] like why are you doing that and he legitimately like when he was just starting off he would go and
[00:59:06] do those hikes with a hundred pound backpack just to be prepared so you know you know you laugh but
[00:59:13] like it's true like that's what he was doing and i was like ah he's crazy i don't know what's going on
[00:59:18] with him but lo and behold it's working i think i ticked off one of my team members on a carryout one
[00:59:24] time i showed up to help out and and i honestly my pack was not what it should have been for the event
[00:59:33] and as we're walking out they said you don't have a headlamp on they said no well i got 37 people
[00:59:37] behind me with 200 lumens strapped to their foreheads like i i can google earth is picking
[00:59:44] us up at this point um and they said well i always i always have at least three in my pack and i said
[00:59:51] and therein lies the reason that i didn't need to bring a single one
[00:59:58] oh man it's great which is horrible advice coming from a team coordinator but
[01:00:03] it i if you're in a pinch i feel like i've gone through those ebbs and flows of like i've got to
[01:00:08] have at least half an rei in my pack at all times and now i've gotten to the point where i'm like i think
[01:00:14] i have a sandwich in one of my pockets my shoes are tied it's good enough let's go yeah
[01:00:21] yeah it's so great exactly well well thank you so much and there you have it chris bb one of uh
[01:00:35] the listeners fan favorites uh chris is such a great guy we're always uh glad to have him on board
[01:00:41] for the laughs and the insight into search and rescue and how to be safe out there in the hills
[01:00:45] all right now we're moving on to humorist ken bossy this is his first appearance uh when he
[01:00:52] released his first book and now he's i think he's on to his third book now and a lot of the proceeds
[01:00:57] of his books or from his books uh support search and rescue team so he's doing uh the lord's work
[01:01:04] out there so to speak so uh enjoy this one it's uh he's such a blast he's so much fun especially live
[01:01:13] so i'm really looking forward to his set at the full condition show and uh here we go
[01:01:23] awesome so ken why don't you take it away and give a little bit of uh background so don't get too much
[01:01:29] into the uh the book or the uh the hiking piece of it yet because we'll um we'll get into that but
[01:01:35] just a little bit of background about your you know yourself personally what you do for work and and
[01:01:39] and you know we'll get into more detail about the books and hiking in a minute sure yeah so personally
[01:01:44] um well i was born at a very young age and uh people ask me what sign i was born under and i say
[01:01:50] maternity uh it was quite an adventure doctor slapped me and then looked at me and slapped my
[01:01:56] mother um so kind of how things unfolded um but uh yeah a little background i'm a pastor i've been a
[01:02:05] pastor now for about 33 years 31 years at the church i'm in now i get a fortune of pastoring the greatest
[01:02:12] congregation in all the state of new hampshire and raymond new hampshire and i'm also a pcc level
[01:02:19] licensed life coach with the international coaching federation so i coach uh municipalities
[01:02:24] and businesses and teams and individuals and couples um and i'm also the chaplain for the raymond
[01:02:31] police department and um yeah i just gravitated into hiking at one point in my life cool well we'll get
[01:02:39] into that and then ian um so you're you're tagging along here um with with ken so can you give a little
[01:02:45] background as well about yourself yeah so essentially i uh i was in ken's church as a kid
[01:02:52] and then i ended up going in florida for a little while did some college and then when i moved back
[01:02:56] i got into power lifting and i was lifting really heavy and i was kind of transforming out of that
[01:03:01] i want to get some more cardio and he started posting some of the stories for his book
[01:03:05] on facebook before his book was a thing and i got into some of those i asked him if i could
[01:03:09] go on a hike and been on a ton since then with him kind of lit that fire inside of me yeah that's
[01:03:15] usually that's a weird transition to go from like power so i have a um a good friend i have a couple
[01:03:20] of friends that are like pretty competitive bodybuilders and you know the the whole hiking
[01:03:25] thing for them they do do a lot of you know fair amount of cardio but it's it's a lot of um quad
[01:03:31] rubbing i think as they're going uphill yeah essentially with power lifting you lift one thing
[01:03:38] once then you're winded so i want something a little more functional than that yeah exactly
[01:03:43] exactly so um so ken why don't you start you know so you already started at the beginning about
[01:03:49] being born and all that fun stuff but why don't you talk a little bit about um you know and i won't
[01:03:55] give too much away but you got into hiking later in life which which i well you touched on it when you
[01:04:01] were a little younger but you got back into it so can you talk a little bit about so your hiking
[01:04:05] background um and then how you got back into it yeah absolutely i mean for me i think it started
[01:04:13] with a really uh lazy pediatrician that made me hike out of my mother's womb he just uh left me to do
[01:04:20] that on my own and you know and i think that's kind of like the epitome of hiking right you're in a
[01:04:25] nice warm comfortable safe place close to somebody you love and you crawl out of the thing into a wet
[01:04:29] damp where you're crying and bleeding and all that and that's that's hiking right there so uh but i did
[01:04:36] a couple of hikes um as a teenager um with some friends that i had back then and uh you know we
[01:04:43] did like lafayette well the loop uh and we did uh washington and a couple of big hikes like that
[01:04:48] and then just kind of um uh you know didn't do much after that probably until that was probably like at 19
[01:04:56] years old and then i didn't really hike again after that until i was like in my 30s i did a couple
[01:05:00] of hikes with my sister and brother-in-law and my kids were you know uh eight and uh 11 so we brought
[01:05:08] them on a couple hikes you know we did cannon and i think we did lafayette again um just a couple of
[01:05:13] little exposures like that you know nothing really nothing much uh and then i just i really put on a lot
[01:05:19] of weight um you know just being a pastor it's like not a lot of physical activity going on there
[01:05:24] and so i just started putting on a lot of weight um i mean a lot of weight it was uh you know my
[01:05:31] blood type was ragu um it was i put uh put a pair of bbds on and the tag on the back spell boulevard
[01:05:40] it was it was horrible but uh hey these jokes are pretty good compared to my tick joke
[01:05:49] he's good he's ken can come in with some tick jokes i bet so so um so yeah so then i kind of
[01:05:59] got incapacitated to hike and and uh but then at one point in time i live right by patekaway state park
[01:06:05] and you know southern new hampshire it's right in next to raymond and so i just started getting into
[01:06:10] hiking in the park a lot and there's only three mountains there you know 800 900 and a thousand
[01:06:16] feet so nothing super big but it was big enough for me and um and uh and that's you know that's
[01:06:23] kind of like how i started into hiking was just in patekaway park i would every chance i got i'm only
[01:06:28] like five minutes away from the park so every chance i got i was out hiking in the park yeah it's a
[01:06:34] beautiful area yeah it's nice we used to camp there quite a bit actually yeah there is a camp place
[01:06:39] there oh yeah big camp yeah that's right yeah the boulder fields a lot of rock climbers go in there
[01:06:42] because there's a lot of rock out there yeah a lot of rock yeah so at some point can you you
[01:06:47] transition for so you you basically were looking to lose weight and so you were locally doing hikes
[01:06:52] at what point did what what made you click to say like oh i can head north and do the big mountains
[01:06:58] so a couple of things happened is one i i hurt myself um i developed plantar fasciitis and for a
[01:07:04] year and a half i couldn't even walk i mean i just limped everywhere and if i walked
[01:07:09] you know a hundred couple hundred feet that was it i was just in excruciating pain
[01:07:14] and um you know in our church we we pray for people and i thought gee i should go get prayer
[01:07:20] after suffering for a year and a half it you know light dawned on marblehead and i thought uh i'm gonna
[01:07:25] so so within five weeks of people praying for me the pain completely went away and i'm like oh this
[01:07:31] is great so i went back to patekaway and i was crushing it and i was feeling pretty good
[01:07:35] and i thought gee i wonder if i could do a 4 000 footer again because it was years you know i mean
[01:07:41] you're talking years and years since i've done one and um i had joined rotary international and raymond
[01:07:47] and that's where i originally met dave salois dave salois at that time was the chief of the raymond
[01:07:53] police department and i had i used to be the chaplain years ago and that kind of like fell apart
[01:07:58] he was now a new chief and so he invited me to become the chaplain of the raymond police department
[01:08:04] again and uh you know and i was i was telling people how i was hiking constantly in patekaway
[01:08:11] and he started telling me that he was hiking up here in the whites and you know he mentioned the
[01:08:16] 4 000 footers and stuff like that so that kind of like got my curiosity going a little bit and i
[01:08:20] thought gee i wonder if i could go back and do you know a fourth i mean like i'm 59 years old at that
[01:08:26] time i was like 59 years old and probably 70 pounds overweight and i'm like i wonder if i could do a
[01:08:32] 4 000 footer because i was feeling pretty good in patekaway you know um so that's how it started
[01:08:38] that's a big difference though oh yeah a little bit of a difference in elevation yeah yeah you're not
[01:08:45] kidding you're not kidding and can you did most of your is it is it a crew of is it a three of you
[01:08:52] four of you total that's it your core group of friends yeah so the way that happened is um
[01:08:58] when i when i started when i wanted to do another 4 000 footer i i did mount wombat because i heard
[01:09:04] that that was the easiest one um some liars told me that and um so i didn't want to do it alone so
[01:09:10] there's this guy i know in my church he's a little older than me he was like 10 years older than me
[01:09:13] um maybe 11 uh not as good looking and so we i contacted him and uh he was a really good shape he
[01:09:21] was a jogger all his life he'd been a jogger and he was retired and you know my my schedule being a
[01:09:26] pastor is very flexible i can take any day off i want and just make up for it later and so i asked
[01:09:31] him if he would hike you know on this 4 000 footer and and he did and he immediately recommended that
[01:09:38] we um after that first initial hike that we start doing smaller mountains for something that he called
[01:09:43] conditioning which was a word i'd never heard before conditioning it's not it's not what you put in
[01:09:50] your hair no it is not um so you know we backed off and we started doing uh the belknap range and
[01:09:58] the ossipi range and you know stuff like that and then we went back and we did jackson and hale and
[01:10:03] um you know some of these other first and then and then dave so lois heard that keith and i were
[01:10:10] hiking a lot you know now doing the 48 and so he asked if he could go on a hike with us and now there
[01:10:15] was three and then a few hikes later after that ian reached out and said hey i saw some of your
[01:10:21] facebook posts i was wondering if i could go with you um and uh and then he started offering money so
[01:10:27] i said yeah you know absolutely um so he started hiking and that's where the four of us kind of
[01:10:32] welded together and there's been a couple of guys that have kind of like come in and gone out but
[01:10:36] you know the four of us have been basically the consistency of all the hiking that that we've done
[01:10:43] got it so ian you're um you're a lot younger than the rest of this crew right so can you talk a
[01:10:50] little bit of like because i'm just trying to think like when i was in my so you were only like
[01:10:53] your late 20s when this started when i was in my late 20s i didn't i can't remember if i i mean i
[01:10:59] had work relationships with with older older folks but that was about it like can you talk a little
[01:11:04] bit about um about that dynamic i'm curious what are you doing hanging out with all these old people
[01:11:12] ever since i was younger i always got along easier with older people i never enjoyed like
[01:11:18] immature stuff my age really so i've always gone along with older people and uh one of the nice
[01:11:23] things that i knew when i started out with ken was that he wasn't going too fast and i wasn't going
[01:11:27] too fast either so i knew that that was going to be a good little relationship there too
[01:11:32] perfect and did that work across the four of you ken was it uh was it any problem with like speed or
[01:11:38] like the the pace of hiking or did you guys pretty much kind of work that out yeah so like you can take
[01:11:43] a still picture of me with a moving camera when i'm hiking and um so uh but dave you know keith
[01:11:49] keith uh was great you know he he hiked all the 48 with me and um you know kudos to keith he's now
[01:11:56] looking at doing the over 70 um and so but dave came on and dave is an athlete dave ran marathons
[01:12:04] and dave you know he does he does 75 mile bike runs just to go get you know a hamburger or something
[01:12:10] he's that kind of guy um so that was a little concerning um because he's fast yeah he's in
[01:12:18] really good shape um and i was in shape you know rounds of shape um but uh that was a little
[01:12:24] concerning because he you know he could definitely if he wanted he could put the uh pedal to the metal
[01:12:30] and leave us all behind but he's a very gracious guy too you know so i mean he was he was patient
[01:12:35] to a degree you know i just i didn't like it when he got in the lead because i knew it was like oh my
[01:12:40] god here we go yeah yeah that's tricky yeah exactly now ken when did you i guess so you dipped your
[01:12:48] your toe in the water you you're doing a couple of these um 4 000 footers at what point were you sort
[01:12:54] of solidified to say yeah i can i can knock this list off and then at what point did you did you say
[01:12:59] you know i have a dumb idea why don't i write a book about this so yeah i mean some of the early
[01:13:05] ones you know when you do hail and you do tecumseh and you do you know you look at the shortest ones
[01:13:11] and the easiest ones and and you know they were killing me i mean i don't think these guys really
[01:13:16] understand how much i suffered it was anguish for me it was just like a personal can i even survive
[01:13:23] um and then after a while it's like hey i think i can do this you know now you're ramping up to
[01:13:28] doing like the tripyramids and you know cannon and the loop and some of the presidentials um and
[01:13:34] then you you know you think yeah i think i can do this you know and you save those you know you save
[01:13:39] the you save the bonds for for last no kid's head and you know i always said there's a treat for you
[01:13:46] i mean what is that like 16 miles and there's not even a view um yeah crazy that's a death march
[01:13:52] but uh so so yeah that's how it started and then and so what was happening is you know i was coming
[01:14:00] home and licking my wounds and like literally it would take me it was funny because i would come home
[01:14:06] have a hard time getting out of my car limp around for a little while then i'd feel pretty good and
[01:14:11] then like the next three days after that i could barely walk it was like a delayed reaction i think
[01:14:16] my body was in such shock it was like we're gonna sneak up on you and so um so that's when i just
[01:14:21] started writing these funny uh facebook posts you know i'd post a couple pictures of the view and of
[01:14:26] the trails and of the hike and then i would write this you know chapter this long chapter on facebook
[01:14:32] really funny you know just like this is what happened you know i fell in the water and i swallowed
[01:14:36] six black flies and you know all the typical stuff about hiking and people started following that
[01:14:42] and then people started like relating to that and then hikers started you know catching up onto some
[01:14:47] of these pages and then people were like you should you got to put these in a book yeah as a furthest
[01:14:52] thing from my mind i'm not i'm not like a writer english i'm like next to science history math and
[01:14:57] geology history was my worst subject in school you know i mean i was an honor student it was yes your honor
[01:15:03] no your honor you know that kind of thing but um so i just said you know all right i mean i really
[01:15:09] i really didn't think it would sell and so i'm like i'm not going to make money of this and i thought
[01:15:13] oh you know me a good hook to help sell these is to say i'm going to donate it all to search and rescue
[01:15:18] um and it's going to sell these books and you know it actually did people were like that's a
[01:15:23] really cool idea you know like i you know if i don't like the book at least i know i did a worthy
[01:15:27] thing um so nobody buys it in case nobody buys it yeah the only one that hurt the only one that's
[01:15:33] going to suffer from that is a search and rescue so but um so that's how it started you know i just
[01:15:39] it was like one post after another post i mean i had probably had 15 to 20 posts on facebook
[01:15:46] um and people were like you know you got to start saving these you got to put these in a book
[01:15:50] i'm like all right um i'll i'm not an author and you know i'm not a writer but i just said okay i'm
[01:15:55] just gonna give it the old-fashioned college try and put it together and a lot of help with uh
[01:16:00] different people it helped me edit it my wife uh number one editor and a couple other people that
[01:16:05] i know and it came together you know and i didn't know how it was and you know i think one of the
[01:16:11] biggest um negative reviews i got was that it's repetitive but i kind of at the beginning of the
[01:16:17] book i said listen this is 48 stories of 48 hikes it's not a lot of ways you can tell a story
[01:16:24] different um and so i said you know don't read the whole thing in one sitting read a couple at a time
[01:16:28] and break it up and then it won't be so repetitive you know that's true um but uh you know other than
[01:16:34] that it's taken off great and and the money has poured in we made a big donation to pemi yeah um
[01:16:40] i tried to make a donation to andrus gogan and i think they they canceled their meeting or they had
[01:16:46] to do it by zoom or something so i wasn't able to actually participate it was like an annual meeting
[01:16:49] yeah so i need to reconnect with them because i have some money for them and then uh everything
[01:16:54] after that is just going to go to the outdoor research council outdoor council yeah outdoor
[01:16:58] council yeah they they handle all that stuff for you guys right yeah yeah yeah the teams can apply
[01:17:04] for grants and whatever else so yeah great well um ian with ken so ken was struggling on his hikes
[01:17:12] how were you holding up so i was because i just envisioned everyone dying and nobody
[01:17:17] admitting that they were they were hurting they all just wanted to sort of be tough in front of each
[01:17:21] other so that's kind of what it was when ken was going when ken was doing his fast pace i was
[01:17:27] comfortable okay which worked out pretty good and then like he said as long as dave didn't make it
[01:17:32] make his way to the lead we were doing all right awesome and then ken at what point did you
[01:17:39] i guess what was the if you don't mind sharing like so what was the max weight and then where did
[01:17:44] you where did you end up through the this hiking journey so max weight was probably 280
[01:17:52] and um i mean like i'm six foot three i was six foot four i think that weight pulled me down a little
[01:17:57] bit i'm six foot three now and uh gravity man um so you know i kind of carried it somewhat well but
[01:18:05] you can't hide that much weight so um so in the hiking you know i was just killing myself lugging all of
[01:18:12] this stuff around as well as my pack and my hydration and all this stuff um and and then i
[01:18:18] thought like after a while i was like why am i doing this you know so ian's family actually does
[01:18:24] this competitive weight loss competition and um you know everybody pulls money together and whoever
[01:18:30] loses the most weight wins and i thought you know i'm shallow enough to lose weight for money
[01:18:34] and so uh entered that competition and won you know i just dropped about i like dropped 40 pounds and um
[01:18:42] i started hiking so much better i actually started finding out what hiking was supposed to be like
[01:18:47] sure you know i'd go do on hike come back and i'm like gee i can get out of my car
[01:18:51] yeah and you know i can walk um pretty no wonder no wonder people like this yeah a little bit of weight can
[01:18:58] make a huge difference yeah in your speed and endurance and amazing yeah and did you i guess
[01:19:05] as far as like getting on to this journey did you sort of dial in your gear a little bit differently
[01:19:12] from the the beginning until where you are now like can you talk a little bit about how your gear
[01:19:16] choice evolved evolved that's it ian oh yeah ian why don't you talk about that yeah so i started out
[01:19:25] and i had walmart pack giant pack giant heavy pack i uh started out with a big heavy walmart
[01:19:31] trekking poles because i i didn't know how serious i was going to take it and then uh i started counting
[01:19:37] ounces and then when i did the uh sunapee greenway trail that's really when it set into me to start
[01:19:41] kind of dialing my weight back and pay a little more attention to it you know what i hate about walmart
[01:19:48] though is if they don't have what you want that means you got to go home and shave comb your hair
[01:19:53] get out of your pajamas and go to target yes exactly so stop one thing that um i and again i don't know
[01:20:05] if you've read the the first book or not but ken has like an awesome hike rating scale that he uses
[01:20:11] which i think we're going to need to like start using that when we talk about our hike so his
[01:20:15] his scale is um it's it starts the easiest um reference is difficult and the next one is
[01:20:22] so difficult it's not worth the patch and then the worst rating is insanely difficult stay in bed
[01:20:33] that's fantastic yeah we can definitely if we'll use that with your permission of course
[01:20:37] oh absolutely yeah that is wicked cool it's really good so you um so eventually can you finish the
[01:20:45] four thousand footers all four of you um did the majority of the hikes together you wrote the book
[01:20:52] and um you know you you got back in shape a little bit had some good uh sort of memories that you
[01:20:58] generated and then foolishly you decided to keep going right can you talk about that a little bit
[01:21:03] yeah i mean i call it a disease um you know it's it's a disease it just gets into your blood and you
[01:21:09] you can't stop um so i had a lot of people contacting me saying oh you've got to do a book on the 52 with
[01:21:19] a view and i really didn't even i i guess i had heard about it i knew a little bit about it but i didn't
[01:21:24] really look into it a whole lot when i started looking into it i realized that you know i had
[01:21:29] probably knocked off about 20 of them just from doing these conditioning hikes with keith so i'm
[01:21:35] like oh man i can i can do that i've already you know i've already got a head start on it
[01:21:39] so um so this time i started you know i had to go back to those 15 or 20 hikes that i'd previously
[01:21:44] done and try to remember as much because i wasn't i wasn't journaling on those a whole lot um and so i
[01:21:51] had to you know look into that and uh and then when when from that point on everyone i hiked i started
[01:21:57] taking better notes and a little you know and adding different things to it and um getting a
[01:22:02] lot more scientific into things that were happening hiking you know making making better reviews like
[01:22:08] how to tell the weather and um you know so so that this book that's coming out and actually it's it's
[01:22:14] it is available i don't want to get too ahead of myself but it is available already on amazon
[01:22:18] but it does have really good information there on skills that can be developed and uh yeah it was it
[01:22:26] was um i i think i ended up actually doing like 55 because some of them that i had done were delisted
[01:22:35] but they still counted so i went back and did the 52 list but i had already done three delisted ones
[01:22:40] so i ended up doing 55 of them okay yeah wow that's a similar journey to me because i was like we were i think
[01:22:46] we were doing these lists around the same time i just finished actually about two weeks ago with a
[01:22:51] 52 with a view and the 4 000 footers um so in your opinion what um is there a difference between these
[01:22:58] two lists what how do you sort of explain the the personalities of these two groups of uh
[01:23:05] of clusters of mountains so i definitely i definitely think that there are some some easier
[01:23:10] ones you know obviously willard is a very popular hike and it's only a mile it's only a mile
[01:23:16] and a half um distance and it's you know pretty pretty easy the whole going um but i wouldn't
[01:23:24] i wouldn't say that they're easier because there's some of those 52 hikes that are brutal i mean they're
[01:23:29] they're just as rugged they're the terrain is you know just as challenging um there's technical
[01:23:35] aspects to them um you know they can kick your butt just as much as anything else
[01:23:41] you know that's what i say to people too it's like shelburne mariah getting out to you know the
[01:23:46] bald face loop all faces um sandwich dome like those are those are tough hikes and they they are
[01:23:52] tougher than a fair number of the 4 000 footers yeah yeah yeah so the first time i did sandwich i
[01:23:59] mean the ball faces we did all four of them uh dave and i did all four of them you know and um
[01:24:04] so so you have what is it eastman and then south ball face north ball face and eagle crag
[01:24:09] you know and uh and we did those four and then and then you know we saw the dome and we're like i
[01:24:14] wonder what it's like to do the dome go up south ball face that was a mistake um again you know dave
[01:24:21] the athlete we hit the uh we hit the rock now everybody says and all the references and everything
[01:24:26] you look at they say don't do it when it's wet don't do it when it's wet right i thought it was
[01:24:30] going to be dry and we hit those cliffs and dave was gone he's just like a mountain goat he's not
[01:24:35] normal he's he's not human um i i think i think he's got cloven feet i you know just and so he was
[01:24:42] gone and i was left on my own like try to figure out how to go over these ledges and i came to a couple
[01:24:47] of them that were like beveled and there's running water pouring down them and and they're slimy
[01:24:51] and i just you know my life passed before my eyes and actually was kind of boring so i i did scramble
[01:24:57] up over those those rocks and you know managed to get to the top but that was quite a hike that's
[01:25:02] really wow yeah that's there's no 4 000 footer that you know it's gonna put that one in the dust
[01:25:07] that's a pretty tough hike right there yeah it sure is generally people do it counterclockwise
[01:25:14] yeah
[01:25:16] but hey
[01:25:20] same thing with like uh welch dickey here you know what i mean it's like
[01:25:23] people typically do it counter because of welch yeah yeah yeah but hey who knew yeah yeah that one
[01:25:30] i did do counterclockwise yeah yeah that's funny it's so ingrained over here at welch dickey that if
[01:25:37] you're coming down welch going clockwise and people have done the trail before that you're passing they'll
[01:25:43] get on your case like what are you doing like i've had people like verbally attack me for coming
[01:25:48] down welch like it's okay i i got this yeah yeah yeah it's really funny but anyway
[01:25:55] and ken so you've you've hit these hundred peaks across the two lists what would you what would you
[01:26:00] say is your um handful of favorite mountains that you've hiked wow um you know lafayette lincoln uh that
[01:26:09] ridge walk is second to none actually you know my my son is uh search and rescue out in tahoe
[01:26:14] california and he bought me a book for christmas of the 100 most popular hikes in the world
[01:26:20] and lafayette lincoln is one of them oh yeah um which you know that's just a beautiful hike uh the
[01:26:25] ball faces really really gorgeous some of the littler ones that people probably aren't familiar with if
[01:26:32] they're not doing lists like roger's ledge you know the view out there is just amazing um but yeah i
[01:26:39] think those are some of the trying to think what else are like some of the more memorable ones you
[01:26:43] know obviously some of the presidentials are you know the presidentials they're the the jewel and the
[01:26:48] and the crown of the the peaks um but even though i did washington uh just a few months ago with keith
[01:26:55] uh i gotta say i'm not a fan anymore you know you get to the top there's three four hundred people
[01:27:00] up there yeah i know it takes a little bit of the uh a little bit of the prestige away
[01:27:06] the only thing i would say to defend mount washington is that there's nothing better than going in
[01:27:12] there and getting a couple of hot dogs oh you're not getting a hike which is great yeah that is the
[01:27:17] one thing i every time i complain about the crowds i'm like well there's hot dogs yeah yeah keith
[01:27:23] thought he had lost me you know which isn't uncommon um i got a gps system that is broken
[01:27:29] and but i was in there having a bowl of chili he should have known better
[01:27:35] that's too funny so so ken can you get into a little bit about the new book what's the name
[01:27:40] of the new book and um the sort of the format and and talk a little bit about the process of writing
[01:27:46] this one so um the new because everybody was you know really on my case about writing one about the
[01:27:53] 52 i just i had no desire to write another book like i said i'm really not an author um but everyone
[01:27:59] kept saying you got to do the 52 you get to so the second one is called they said they wanted more
[01:28:04] so it's kind of you know puts it back on them um and uh yeah it's about the 52 but one of the things
[01:28:13] i did differently in this book is i reached out to more contributors so um i have lieutenant neil in
[01:28:20] fish and game that gave an article i have ken mcgray who authors the um the guidebook on the 52 turned
[01:28:26] in an article another author matt landry um dan schwence i can't pronounce his last name you know
[01:28:32] who i'm talking about dan schwenski he's written oh yeah he's like a historian right yeah yeah yeah yeah
[01:28:39] yeah he wrote an article wonderful articles and then i had about
[01:28:44] seven or eight other hikers that turned in articles you know funny stories that happened to them on
[01:28:50] different hikes um so it's it's spread out a little bit more you know these are like all
[01:28:55] interspersed in there that's neat um and then i've done some research um
[01:29:02] so when i'm huffing and puffing and can barely make it and um for some reason these other three
[01:29:07] guys that i hike with they say i whine and complain and i and you know i i don't think that's true at
[01:29:13] all but um when i'm struggling i would just tell them i could say it's it's small lung syndrome
[01:29:19] um i've got small lung syndrome and so it's hard to breathe and then also altitude sickness
[01:29:25] um you know i'm a seacoast guy i was born and raised in portsmouth so you know if i get above a
[01:29:30] thousand feet um so i scientifically break that down in the book like i it's it's science follow
[01:29:37] the science right don't we hear that a lot today follow the science it's science and i get into that
[01:29:41] and they bust my chops about the weather so there's like a little side article in there on how
[01:29:46] you know how a mountain man tells the weather and um you know so it's it's it's humorous it's all
[01:29:52] factual they get mad at me they're popular like like ian you got to tell the dentist story oh yeah so
[01:30:00] i uh my dentist is over in hillsborough i lived right next door to it and i went to get my teeth
[01:30:05] cleaned and the dental hygienist went back and the dentist assistant asked her if that was the ian kenney
[01:30:11] and so the dental assistant came in and she was like are you the one in the book and i was like i
[01:30:16] have no idea what you're talking about she's like they said it would be fun i was like oh jesus yeah
[01:30:19] no that is me yeah that's i hike with him oh i was like wow funny yep it's pretty funny yeah it's
[01:30:25] funny a small world yeah it is and dave is really known you know when he was chief of police he's
[01:30:30] connected with so many people and now he's in municipal insurance he's connected with you know more town
[01:30:35] people managers and you know things like that and um people that are in hiking they'll say hey i just
[01:30:40] bought this book and i noticed that that was you on the cover uh you know you were in that book and
[01:30:44] so he's like yeah so i made these guys famous and um you'd think they'd be more appreciative but man
[01:30:48] they just they they ride me like a jockey on buttercup i mean it's horrible it's i mean having
[01:30:55] close friends is important because you don't want they will keep you in check you know as soon as you
[01:31:00] start blowing up they will they will bring you back to earth for sure so true um so any um any
[01:31:06] close search and rescue calls any field attempts at um at at hikes any good stories around um getting
[01:31:15] in trouble out there because that's really what we care about the most so i um i'm a hard learner
[01:31:24] right now they're looking at each other like should i tell them this yeah there's something something
[01:31:28] ruined so so you know something so i'm 60 i'm 63 now and something happens you know when you get
[01:31:38] into those 60s things change and um ian is the youngest and you know i'm 63 and he he always
[01:31:46] wants to hike on these like 90 degree days you know so they call me pk for pastor canon like hey pk
[01:31:52] let's do hike let's do hike and i'm like you know it's too hot oh come on you know so we had done
[01:31:59] we had done smarts mountain and um in the winter and we got halfway snowshoeing which i detest and i
[01:32:09] was just dying i had given blood and i didn't realize i didn't realize that after you give blood
[01:32:14] your red blood cells are gone and so you don't have things to carry oxygen to the rest of your body
[01:32:19] never thought that that would be a thing who would have thought it is a huge don't give blood and hike
[01:32:24] i'll tell you at least not within the same proximity so um so we turned around that first
[01:32:29] time in the winter i just couldn't breathe and i might have been whining a little bit i mean
[01:32:35] um so so he calls me up let's go hiking i'm like it's hot you know it's like 90 it's not it's only 80
[01:32:42] uh so we go into smarts mountain um he told me it was going to be like a seven mile hike i only
[01:32:48] brought two liters of water and that you know that's that's my fault i carry i do carry a life straw
[01:32:54] um so so we start hiking and it's you know fairly warm and it's muggy it's humid it's muggy
[01:33:01] dear god we get out there i i you know i struggled all the way out i ran out of energy i had already
[01:33:08] drank one liter of water just getting there and that's really not a lot but by the time we were
[01:33:12] coming back i mean the sun was you know it was noon it was one o'clock two o'clock in the afternoon
[01:33:17] that hot afternoon sun and when you hit the rock the the heat was waving up off of the rock as well
[01:33:23] as down you know from the sun and i felt like i was in an oven just being baked on every direction
[01:33:28] and um i i had run out of water and i started getting um you know dehydrated and um you know
[01:33:36] it's not what is it's not it's heat heat sickness i think it's not something you know it's not like
[01:33:40] sun struggle i think it's like heat exhaustion that's it and uh yeah so i mean like i just about
[01:33:45] like passed out i got wheezy and i just sat there trying to recover you know recover your heart rate
[01:33:51] your breathing and it wasn't recovering too easy and um you know ian was gracious he stayed there
[01:33:56] with me he didn't abandon me and and i'm like you know this is really hot and um so i'm looking at him
[01:34:02] like you know got any hydration on you like hint hint wink wink nod nod like i'm dying over here so
[01:34:08] yeah he's gracious enough to give me half of what he had left over which i suppose he's got to look
[01:34:13] after himself even though i was dying i was perishing right there before his eyes
[01:34:17] but that was a close call that was um you know that just woke me up to uh sometimes you got to
[01:34:24] suck it up and carry the weight you need you know the thing is about a life straw they're absolutely
[01:34:28] useless if there's no water around and there was like no water anywhere on that hike yeah you know
[01:34:34] i would have just yeah were you saying it was winter or no this is summer i'm sorry okay yeah same
[01:34:39] thing with the winter though if everything's frozen yeah but yeah yeah that's funny so it was funny
[01:34:43] because like he's like it's only 80 we stopped at a store because i was just going to buy hydration i
[01:34:47] didn't care what they had liquid i probably would have drank break fluid if they had so um and i asked
[01:34:52] the proprietor you know how hot is it today and both him and his wife simultaneously in harmony said it's
[01:34:57] 90 and i was like there there you go there i knew it was going to be way too hot how do you defend
[01:35:03] yourself in from the best part about this hike is when we get to the store he goes and he buys a
[01:35:08] plain bottle of water and he buys a flavored bottle of water the plain bottle of water was dumped over
[01:35:13] his head so he gets it gets outside unknowingly cracks the strawberry one dumps it over his head
[01:35:19] so all you can smell is strawberries the entire ride home that's awesome so did you make it to the did
[01:35:26] you have to turn around or did you make it to the top no we made it in and out yeah we we summited and
[01:35:30] came back out smarts is the one with that that's got the fire tower on top right yeah with the cabin
[01:35:35] right up there and then it's got the beautiful outhouse that's like wide open yeah yeah
[01:35:43] good stuff i had a close call on my uh my pemi loop i did a pemi loop on a day that was supposed
[01:35:49] to be forecast to 95 so i started like people do it like 2 2 30 in the morning and got to
[01:35:56] lafayette by about 11 or so and um that's when the heat started kicking in i made it across garfield
[01:36:03] ridgefield but by the time i got to bond cliff it hit me i i had that heat exhaustion moment and i was just
[01:36:10] i wouldn't say delirious but i was fretting every step and wondering if i was gonna get my my goal was
[01:36:17] to get to that one water crossing that's below bond cliff as you're heading back to lincoln woods road
[01:36:22] yeah and thank god i made it but man scary it can really because you do get to the point where you
[01:36:29] you're soaked initially with sweat and your body's not cooling off but then you stop sweating
[01:36:33] and that's really scary yeah yeah fun stuff yeah exactly so this book is it's out you can get it on
[01:36:43] amazon we will um we'll put a link in the show notes and we'll do a little bit of uh advertising
[01:36:48] through a couple of posts on our instagram and facebook pages um so this would be a good book for
[01:36:55] anybody that's looking for a christmas present for a hiker if you haven't got the 4 000 footer book
[01:36:59] you can get them as a as a twofer and the way i would suggest that people do this is i would get
[01:37:04] both books and it's just another tool in your arsenal because not only is it there's some good
[01:37:09] stories and you know i haven't read the 52 of the view book yet but um there's some good stories in
[01:37:15] the 4 000 footer book um and i sort of look at it as another way that you can sort of get um details
[01:37:22] on the hike because he does talk about you know ken talks about the terrain and and and the the
[01:37:26] features of the mountains as well so it's just another uh informational tool that you can utilize
[01:37:35] very good so um ken one one of the area that i did want to ask you about your pastor and you you know
[01:37:44] you deal with probably a lot of um interesting topics um one of the things that i'm curious to get
[01:37:52] your perspective on is the sort of hiking culture in general and sort of the good and the bad and then
[01:38:01] maybe a little bit about your perspective about you know is there anything that we can do in the
[01:38:06] hiking community to to just be better from your perspective can you talk a little bit about you
[01:38:11] know what what you see amongst your fellow hikers yeah you know i mean i would encourage anyone to hike
[01:38:18] and i know with covet a lot of people have turned to the outdoors um we live in such a high stressful
[01:38:25] community um you know everybody's at such a breakneck speed doing everything that they do
[01:38:30] um and you know to just get out in nature is so refreshing you know as a coach um especially doing
[01:38:38] wellness coaching sometimes with people we have a we have a sympathetic nervous system that kind of
[01:38:43] it's the gas pedal it's what makes us go and accomplish but we can't live there so there's a
[01:38:49] parasympathetic system that needs to be tapped into so that there's checks and balances and something
[01:38:54] like getting out in nature is something that absolutely causes that parasympathetic nervous
[01:39:01] system to to fire you know it's relaxing um it just and i think that's you know i think that's
[01:39:08] wonderful like in my in my expression i would say god gives us nature and we turned around and
[01:39:12] turned it into cities um so i you know i would encourage anyone to to hike and and i've met
[01:39:18] wonderful people on the trails and and i find you know moms out there laughing their heads off
[01:39:25] having a blast you see young kids you see you see all kinds of people you know it's just it's just
[01:39:31] it never amazes me um and then you know and then in the summer months you got the tour buses coming
[01:39:37] it looks like the united nations out there right i mean just like all kinds of people um and i think
[01:39:42] they do come in on tour buses because you have to get out of the trail as 50 people are going by
[01:39:46] college students you get to see what the latest sneakers are as they're going up into the
[01:39:50] presidentials or flip-flops or um but one of the things that you know man this just really
[01:40:00] you know we have to be better at leave no trace oh you know when i did a sunrise i did a sunrise
[01:40:07] matter of fact ian was with us and inian's now wife was with us and dave and we did a sunrise on
[01:40:14] chikora and as the sun came up i just i was sitting on the rocks just watching the sun come up and then
[01:40:20] as it came up because it was dark i didn't really see my surroundings that well but when it came up i
[01:40:25] looked down and in the crevice right there at my feet was an empty beer can and i'm like come on
[01:40:29] seriously you hiked it in when it was 16 ounces you can't hike it out when it's 0.5 ounces yeah that's a
[01:40:35] shame so that's where i think uh the hiking community as a whole can do a lot better and
[01:40:40] sometimes i think it's probably uh the novice hikers that really you know they don't understand
[01:40:45] it they're just doing a weekend warrior type thing and they don't understand like you know leave no
[01:40:49] trace means leave no trace um coming down um oh what hike was it dave and i did i think it was osceola
[01:40:57] um and uh you know up comes this girl this young girl 22 with her boyfriend or husband or whatever
[01:41:04] and he's listening to like this boombox um which you know i hate that oh god but then what really got
[01:41:11] me is about like you know another tenth of the mile down the trail there's three batteries laying in
[01:41:15] the middle of the trail like his batteries died he changed them just left them in the trail and kept
[01:41:19] going and i can't say it was him because i didn't see it but you know i'm just putting two to two
[01:41:23] together maybe and it's an unfair um equation but you know like why are you leaving dead batteries in
[01:41:28] the trail you know just just so i a lot of times you know i'll pack stuff like that out myself because
[01:41:32] i just um i don't like to see trash or things like that out there yeah and masks will you pick up the
[01:41:40] mask and stick it in your pack and not i and the blue bags of dog poop oh no kidding oh
[01:41:48] it depends i i will pick that stuff up because i have like um because i just do work around the
[01:41:55] house and i think kovitz turned me into a germ phobic maniac anyway but i have like those like
[01:42:01] surgical gloves not surgical gloves but like the gloves and i have those in my pack sometimes and if
[01:42:06] i see something really gross i'll just put the gloves on and then like pick the gross thing up put
[01:42:10] it in the trash bag and then throw the the glove away occasionally so i picked up some gnarly
[01:42:16] stuff and i have picked up those dog poop bags before oh boy it is something well i i wanted to
[01:42:26] go no no i wanted to go back to ken had said that he'd been struggling for a year and a half with
[01:42:32] plantar fasciitis and then he basically nothing was working so he turned to the power of prayer to
[01:42:37] solve that can you can we dive into that a little bit here because um i think that there's a fair number
[01:42:43] of people that deal with these repetitive injuries and whether it's through prayer or other means that
[01:42:49] you know if the physical therapy is not working you know i'm curious what what do you think ken i mean
[01:42:56] obviously you're a pastor so i think it's pretty clear that you feel like the the power of prayer
[01:43:01] really solved it for you but can you talk a little bit about it has planter come back or was it just a
[01:43:06] one-time fix for you um yeah no it never came back um it never came back it was very painful and like
[01:43:14] i said i had it for a year and a half so it took me out of the woods it took me out of hiking it took
[01:43:19] me out of a lot of things um and i did go to a doctor i did get a cortisone shot i call it the
[01:43:26] stick from hell that was one of the most painful things ever i mean he went literally went right
[01:43:30] through my heel like under that back heel bone yeah you're right that's the worst that was really um that
[01:43:35] was something and you know like i said we every every well almost every sunday we offer prayer for
[01:43:41] anyone who wants prayer for any need you know maybe it's a financial need maybe it's a need in a
[01:43:45] relationship um or maybe it's something that they're struggling with with a sickness or you
[01:43:50] know a malady or something like that we we've seen things happen we've seen people be you know get
[01:43:55] healed and i don't know for some reason like you know like as the pastor i'm like maybe i should go
[01:44:01] up for prayer because you know i it was a year and a half that i was out of this thing and the guy
[01:44:06] that um prayed for me he you know he prayed over me and he said like you know one for when i went up
[01:44:12] he said like from a one to ten he goes where would you say your pain is right now and this was after
[01:44:17] preaching two services and standing for a long time i said seriously like right now it's like a
[01:44:21] nine and a half and he prayed over me and he and he goes you know what's it now and i said
[01:44:25] seriously it's like a nine and a half you know like nothing happened he goes well you know just go home
[01:44:30] and give it some time like all right i went home i went to bed monday i woke up and it was noticeable
[01:44:35] it like it dropped down to a seven and i'm like and i noticed it and that got me really excited so
[01:44:41] the next week i went back to him and i said hey i want you to pray for me again and it went down to
[01:44:46] like a five and a half and like week after week for five consistent weeks and that last week it was
[01:44:52] gone and so i was a little skittish you know and i'm like i'm not going to go do an 11 mile hike
[01:44:58] and get out there six miles and it kicks in and i'm in pain and you know so i just started like
[01:45:03] a tenth of a mile quarter of a mile half a mile a couple miles six miles ten miles and then you know
[01:45:11] after i'm doing 10 13 miles in patuckaway i'm like i think i'm ready to you know walk on water but
[01:45:17] yeah i'm gonna push the envelope and i'm gonna go for a 4 000 footer and uh yeah and i never had any
[01:45:23] problems again after that point so what is your professional assessment here what what happened
[01:45:29] do we have a miracle oh hey yeah i would think so i grew up in the church um you might be interested
[01:45:35] in this my story is i grew up in the pentecostal uh denomination and then i was exposed to the
[01:45:43] the catholic side of things on my dad's side of the family so i'm like a hybrid i i sort of experienced
[01:45:48] both faiths growing up and i totally believe in the power of prayer and miracles and everything
[01:45:52] so you went from left to right and i went from right to left i grew up catholic yeah oh yeah i'm
[01:45:57] and now i'm pentecostal oh come on really isn't that interesting yeah i love and respect both faiths and i
[01:46:03] think it's great i've seen i've seen personally a lot of interesting things over my my long 52 years mike
[01:46:10] but uh yeah i'm all in with the baby jesus yeah and you know one of the reasons i hike with the guys
[01:46:15] that you know that i with keith and dave and ian is because i i firmly believe that anyone can be
[01:46:20] rehabilitated and um i haven't seen a lot of success yet but i'm still i'm still hanging in
[01:46:26] there with these guys and you know seeing a little bit oh man you know it's sort of just one other side
[01:46:35] topic it's funny between pentecostals or protestants and catholics it's like pentecostals are more
[01:46:41] like you know give your burden to god and he'll take care of it whereas the catholics are more like
[01:46:48] wear that wool jacket and suffer because it's it's good for you know those poor souls in purgatory
[01:46:54] and stuff like that so it's a little bit of a difference in an approach but uh fun we could talk
[01:47:02] about that for hours i'm sure yeah yeah how about you mike so i guess i ran through all the questions
[01:47:11] that i had again like i said we will be um posting up in the show notes links to details on how you can
[01:47:18] purchase both books and you know i guess my final thought ken on this is as i was going through and
[01:47:24] sort of putting the script together i've recently completed the the you know some hiking list myself
[01:47:29] and i did try to take a little bit of time to reflect on sort of what are the key points that i
[01:47:34] realized around you know what were the epiphanies for me and the first one that i came up with was that
[01:47:40] you know we do this activity called peak bagging and i put a little post up on the 4 000 footer group
[01:47:47] and the first point i basically said is you know my what i learned from this is that you know you
[01:47:53] should be looking to bag more friends than peaks through the activities that you do with this hiking
[01:47:58] and it sounds like you've really embodied that with you know your core group of friends and then
[01:48:03] having the ability to sort of reach out and make relationships with the search and rescue teams and then
[01:48:08] actually getting a you know it sounds like seven or eight people to to contribute to your next project
[01:48:14] um so i think that you really it sounds like you you've got a great story to tell as far as you know
[01:48:21] doing this in a way where you've you've built a lot of different relationships so i don't know that
[01:48:26] was my kind of takeaway from from reading your book and then thinking about like how i completed my
[01:48:32] my lists and sort of watching you complete yours yeah it's kind of like i you know i think what it
[01:48:38] taught me is that if you set a goal and if you have enough stick-to-itiveness no matter what that
[01:48:43] goal is you can accomplish it and it was just a matter of you know healing from that dreaded hike
[01:48:48] and getting back out and doing another one and then another one and another one and you know
[01:48:53] congratulations on finishing a couple of lists yourself and i think that people you know just start off with
[01:49:02] enjoy it you know the other thing is enjoy the whole process you know i mean it's not about seeing that
[01:49:07] summit it's about finding the peak you want to do looking at the maps picking the trails packing your
[01:49:13] pack making sure you get the 10 essentials all of that stuff we you know the guys i hike with we
[01:49:18] constantly bust on one another you know we're picking on one another making fun of one another
[01:49:23] but uh honestly these guys are the best you know we've we've saved each other's bacon and we pull each
[01:49:28] other's bacon out of the fire a number of times and you know uh i've done a lot of solo hiking but
[01:49:33] there's nothing like you know being out there in the woods with a close friend sharing that experience
[01:49:39] meeting other people on the hikes it's all it's all part of the the wonderfulness of hiking
[01:49:44] it's really great um if i could are you guys getting ready to segue into one another we're going to
[01:49:52] move into search and rescue but i have one question for you but go ahead whatever you want to say
[01:49:57] well i'll answer your question well you were you were ready to talk about something right if i was
[01:50:03] just going to say that um uh dave and ian and keith and i we started another out branch we've started
[01:50:10] a little group called white mountain approved where we are now starting to do gear reviews
[01:50:15] we're on instagram under white mountain approved oh yeah i've seen that okay yeah yeah so we're
[01:50:20] doing gear reviews um we are going to start selling some novelty t-shirts connect yeah yeah because
[01:50:25] that's what got this set up yeah all right i got it okay yeah i have seen it anybody wants to check
[01:50:31] that out you know and um uh you know we're going to do some fun things such as you know like in the
[01:50:36] month of may if you can spot dave on a trail and recognize him we'll stop and shoot a gear review
[01:50:42] right then and there with you like you can review a piece of gear that you like or you know you
[01:50:46] particularly care for so we're going to mix it up do some nutty things and just have some fun with it
[01:50:51] again just kind of like you know uh working with and bringing the whole hiking community together a
[01:50:56] little bit that's fantastic excellent yeah i will i'll add that to the show notes as well and then
[01:51:01] we can link that across our uh our social media what's the what's the the newest gear that you guys
[01:51:08] are looking at right now um i did a review on a couple of different headlamps um from a energizer
[01:51:18] from walmart to a black diamond to the newest petzel the 450 lumen one that just came out
[01:51:24] which is now my new favorite and i did a review on those um we did uh uh what do you got ian what
[01:51:32] else have we done oh we've got some on some base layer we're doing some videos just we're trying
[01:51:36] again we're trying to have fun with it we've got some just quick videos of us we're trying to do it
[01:51:40] on the trail on the peaks when we're there with nice views in the background and then we're also doing
[01:51:45] just uh pictures of the year with us using it and uh explain a little bit yeah we're just having fun
[01:51:50] with it you know we're just saying we're saying we do all our gear reviews from the peaks of mountains
[01:51:55] not from living rooms you know just kind of just being nutty and silly and crazy that's great
[01:52:02] well um so here's my question um critical incident stress debriefings i'm sure you've done
[01:52:09] some with the rainbow as a chaplain um because our first rescue here that we're a first story is
[01:52:16] actually a recovery so i i'm always uh fascinated to hear about those services and maybe just to
[01:52:24] talk about it briefly how uh you handle critical incident stress debriefings if that's what you're
[01:52:30] doing uh for the the fire department fire department uh pd pd okay uh maybe it's a little different but
[01:52:38] certainly in search and rescue we've had a share of events that um have called for a chaplain to
[01:52:44] come in and talk with us and this and that and uh maybe just to talk about that briefly yeah
[01:52:49] absolutely so you know one of the things about critical stress debriefing is um what you're trying
[01:52:55] to circumvent is people developing post-traumatic stress um syndrome ptsd uh the way i like to define it
[01:53:02] ptsd is a natural response to an unnatural event in other words it's not natural for us to have to
[01:53:11] um try to rescue dying people or recover recover a dead body you know like that's not
[01:53:18] normal you know and so when people encounter those excuse me those kinds of high stress situations
[01:53:24] it can leave a lingering effect and some people it doesn't bother at all some people maybe it
[01:53:31] bothers but they just repress it and um and that's not good either and some people it just physically
[01:53:37] and outwardly bothers them um and so if people can talk about that um talk about what it was that
[01:53:45] bothered them about about the incident why it bothered them um sometimes it's just a catharsis to talk it
[01:53:52] out you know just get it off of your shoulders um but uh you know and i would just say that if there's
[01:53:58] anyone that really struggles um even more you know with with an incident like that that you know maybe
[01:54:04] some coaching you know as a life coach i see people move forward in all kinds of um situations i know
[01:54:09] my brother was a firefighter down in sarasota florida and um his wife died early and he was
[01:54:17] leaving the fire department everybody told him don't leave don't leave you know she had 13 years in
[01:54:21] but he was also a paramedic and he told me he said listen i just couldn't do that anymore
[01:54:25] you know pulling bodies out of cars and stuff like that and he says i just couldn't deal with it
[01:54:30] anymore so it builds up sometimes there's sometimes there's post-traumatic stress from seeing something
[01:54:35] uh in the moment that's you know live and it's shocking and it stays with you and sometimes it's
[01:54:42] a slow repetitive build right you know you go on a rescue or recovery again and again and again and
[01:54:49] it's like bills it's something that that escalates yeah because that's that's the angle that i've
[01:54:55] sort of been cognizant of uh with search and rescue and i i try to watch members and i watch myself with
[01:55:01] that and i've always thought that like even though this is just a an ankle fracture this is really
[01:55:06] stressful it's like it's midwinter you know somebody's freezing up there we get a hustle it's it
[01:55:13] definitely adds up over the years you know it's yeah so um yeah that's interesting what should
[01:55:19] people look out for in their own lives like um any red flags or signs like you know if it's cause if
[01:55:27] it's causing you if it's a memory that you just won't leave your your mind you know it's just like
[01:55:32] stuck in your mind and you keep dwelling on it keep thinking on it that would be a red flag
[01:55:35] um if it starts impairing your sleep or your diet um you know that's those are other red flags you know
[01:55:43] if you find yourself maybe retreating inside of yourself a little bit more than you normally would
[01:55:47] that would you know be another red flag so those are all things to look for substance abuse i'm sure
[01:55:53] you see that substance abuse yeah self-medication right yeah interesting now what do you cover with
[01:55:59] life coaching i know that's a pretty broad question but what topics so life coaching i mean the
[01:56:04] the the simplest explanation is is it's not mentoring it's not consulting it's not counseling
[01:56:10] life coaching is a uh a conversation a relationship around a conversation that a person has with a coach
[01:56:17] where the coach is trained specifically to listen very very deeply and then ask questions to draw out
[01:56:25] knowledge that a person has but they don't know they have we believe that a person is whole and
[01:56:31] complete in and of themselves they have the goods they have the answers they
[01:56:34] just need help figuring that out and so when you ask these thought-provoking questions that create
[01:56:41] an aha you know like all of a sudden you know the synapse are firing and things are happening
[01:56:46] um then they come up with their solution they come up with the goals for those solutions they come up
[01:56:52] with who's going to hold them accountable and they actually they actually act on it because
[01:56:58] it's their ideas they've got skin in the game you know it's it was all it all came from them you know
[01:57:04] years ago i used to do counseling and i would tell people do a b and c they wouldn't do a b and c but when
[01:57:10] they come up with a b and c they have ownership of it and there's like 90 percent more likelihood
[01:57:15] that they're going to act on it that's excellent yeah awesome yeah you know how i've always thought
[01:57:20] about that is like you know when you're hiking in sometimes you're on like a in a wilderness section
[01:57:25] or something and you like you're you know how to hike you're you're prepared but you can't find the
[01:57:31] trail and you have to stop and be like did i take a wrong turn or whatever and then you have to sort of
[01:57:35] look around and then all of a sudden like the trail just appears in front of you i feel like a lot of
[01:57:39] times like in our lives like we just we're on our trail we just sort of step off for a minute and we
[01:57:45] just can't see that path and i think i've had a little bit of experience with sort of mentors and
[01:57:50] life coaches and i think the way you describe it is sort of like you're helping to just sort of like
[01:57:55] see the path when we couldn't see it uh clearly but we're you know we're close to it but we just
[01:58:00] didn't get on it right so right yeah i yeah that's that's a great analogy i mean i never miss
[01:58:07] trails returns or anything like that do i you know never they're always like hey pk when you go down
[01:58:13] that trail let's take you back out to roof 16 now like i don't know but you know but you know when
[01:58:17] you do that and then all of a sudden like you stop and you're like you're like oh yeah now it's so
[01:58:21] obvious but it wasn't a minute ago yeah yeah no i always tell them like well no i saw like i thought
[01:58:26] it was a deer down there or something and
[01:58:38] and there you have it chris bb and ken bossy thank you guys so much for coming on the pod and uh we will
[01:58:45] be back for episode 173 next week and i hope everybody has a great weekend be safe out there
[01:58:53] it looks like it's going to be fairly decent weather and uh for next week our special guest
[01:58:58] is a returning guest uh larry the log and uh he's he's going to come in and tell us about his
[01:59:04] adventures carrying that gigantic log across the nation so it's going to be pretty epic he's going to
[01:59:11] studio and uh we may actually have another surprise guest as well so take care everybody thank you for
[01:59:27] listening if you enjoyed the show you can subscribe on apple podcasts spotify podbeam youtube or wherever
[01:59:36] you listen to podcasts if you want to learn more about the topics covered in today's show please check out
[01:59:43] the show notes and safety information at slasher podcast.com that's s-l-a-s-r podcast.com you can also
[01:59:54] follow the show on facebook and instagram we hope you'll join us next week for another great show
[01:59:59] until then on behalf of mike and stomp get out there and crush some mega peace
[02:00:08] now covered in scratches blisters and bug bites chris staff wanted to complete his most challenging day
[02:00:14] hike ever fish and game officers say the hiker from florida activated an emergency beacon yesterday
[02:00:21] morning he was hiking along the appalachian trail when the weather started to get worse
[02:00:26] officials say the snow was piled up to three feet in some spots and there was a wind chill of minus one
[02:00:32] degree and there's three words to describe this race do we all know what they are lieutenant james
[02:00:41] neeland new hampshire fish and game who's in the thanks for being with us today thanks for having
[02:00:45] me what are some of the most common mistakes you see people make when they're heading out on the
[02:00:50] trails to hike here in new hampshire seems to me the most common is being unprepared i think if they
[02:00:53] just simply visited uh hike safe.com and got a list of the 10 essential items and had those in their packs
[02:00:59] they probably would have no need to ever call us at all