Mighty Blue On The Appalachian Trail: The Ultimate Mid-Life Crisis

On a beautiful day in the Grayson Highlands, Ryan hikes and sits down with Nimblewill Nomad for a follow-up interview from the last time they spoke on the trail. Nimblewill is over 900 total miles in since leaving Flagg Mountain, Alabama, earlier this year. He is attempting to set a record by thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail at 83 years old. His hike this season has drawn the attention of many in...

While you listen to this, our guest today, Jamey Mossengren, is out on the Pacific Crest Trail with his buddies, The Minnesota Hikings. Jamey and I talk about his 2019 thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail and his remarkable mode of transport on the Colorado Trail, amongst others. Despite our laughs, I was struck how Jamey and his mates were enjoying the trail and taking their time. This is probably...

It was Trail Days in Damascus this past weekend, and Ryan took to opportunity to chat with Steve about the event itself, his books, and his upcoming plans for the JMT. With Steve on his mini-sabbatical, Ryan is choosing the topics he wants to cover on the show and decided that putting a bit of a spotlight on Steve's books would open them to a new audience. If you'd like to see more about the books...

Jim Harrison serves as the Director of Outdoor Programs at Emory and Henry College, where he created and oversees the Semester-A-Trail program. The only one of its kind in the country, this program allows students to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail while enrolled in courses tailored to their experience. Jim was shaped by his 1997 southbound AT thru-hike and now mentors students as they pursue thei...

Will Campbell "Guano Man" joins the show this week as the first "subject matter expert" to discuss electronics and technology on the trail. With his electrical engineering background, we discuss batteries, cell phone systems, and chargers, all while considering the unique needs and challenges of the trail. Guthook Articles: https://atlasguides.com/blog/tech-on-trail-archive/ Questions for Ryan or...

Lisa and Gordon Simmons are the proud owners of Hostel Around the Bend in Hiawassee, Georgia. The hostel is just half a mile from Dick's Creek Gap (AT Mile 69.2) and this is their first season fully open. We discuss the experience of running a hostel, how the year has gone for them, and even share some advice for hikers. If you'd like to stay at Hostel Around the Bend or get in touch with them, th...

For my show this month, I've returned to the Class of 2019 and a woman I met quite early on. Sarah Jane Hatfield was an outwardly confident hiker, with a YouTube channel and blog for a local newspaper, chronicling her way north. However, that wasn't at all how she felt in those early days. Her fascinating story is punctuated with a birth (her daughter's, not hers), a traumatic injury, a romance, a...

The show this week features interviews from four hikers who Ryan was able to meet with at Rock Gap in North Carolina, mile 105.8 on the Appalachian Trail. All four interviews offer different perspectives, and each has a unique story to share about their hike. This is Gandalf. By complete luck, he crossed paths with Nimblewill Nomad, and got to chat with a real legend in the long-distance hiking wo...

Originally from Virginia, Zach Hoops has gone all-in with long-distance and ultralight backpacking. After discovering his love for hiking and honing his craft on sections of the AT, he went on to complete the Pacific Crest Trail Southbound in just over one hundred days. In addition to this major accomplishment, he has traversed several other lesser-known trails spanning from Arkansas to the Sierra...

Cass Bridges hails from North Georgia and spent a few seasons working at the historic Mountain Crossings before taking on a thru-hike attempt of her own in 2020. Her journey included two months of isolation since she had a start date of February 1st (!) combined with a more brutal than usual winter. However, the second half of her hike included a hugely impactful trail family that made the experie...

Zach Nagy was introduced to hiking and car camping as a kid but a life in the rock business–working with Joan Jett–took him down another path until he met a woman from CT who reintroduced him to trails and revived those earlier memories. His hike of the PCT was transformative, with the community on that trail an unexpected highlight and delight. Now clean, he shares the dark days and the camping n...

Self-described "Complete Nature Boy," Rue McKenrick is today's guest. He takes us on a journey around the American Perimeter Trail. It was Rue's vision that spawned the idea and he is the one who is driving it forward. He is soon to return to the trail after an absence of six months. When he left it for a break–in October 2020–he had been out on the trail for over a year. Rue's hiking resume is ex...

I hadn't noticed how many of my fellow members of the Class of 2019 I'd had on the show until I spoke with Ray Kroebl, or Sparky. Ray is Swiss and, while we never met on the trail, we did hike just a few days apart. He started four days before me and ended five days before I did. And it was feeling such a kindred spirit with Ray that made me aware of how many of my fellow hikers on that trip were...

It's one of our longest ever shows today, with three guests and my book reading. First up, Juliana Chauncey, a fellow member of the Class of 2019, and a fellow podcaster (with Zach Davis on Backpacker Radio), shares her hiking journeys on both the Pacific Crest Trail and the Appalachian Trail. While originally from the Eat Coast, Chaunce knew virtually nothing about the AT before she started; she...

Brittany Briley's smile lit up the trail in 2019, and we first met at Woods Hole Hostel. A nurse by training, she felt that the time was right to take a break in her early 30s and hiked the Appalachian Trail as joyously as anybody I met out there. We didn't hike together much but, as is the way of the trail, we often saw one another. Brittany shared part of the trail with the sadly missed Pony Keg...

Joseph Barnett had quite the adventure hiking the Appalachian Trail during the latter half of 2019 and the first half of 2020. He faced a bunch of problems, took days off regularly to explore the towns around the trail with his wife, developed a hernia along the way, yet emerged at Springer Mountain battered but victorious. Along the way, Joseph documented and photographed people, plants, and anim...

We have another of my Class of 2019 brothers on the show today. I met Dan Gosmeyer pretty early on the trail and recall his quiet determination but, with a tiny hiking budget, I had doubts he'd get to the end. But the trail does something to a person. It reveals character that you may not have even known was there. Sure enough, sometime last year I received a friend request on Facebook from Dan an...

Today's guest is another whose thru-hike was the Pacific Crest Trail, yet Caroll Coyne has lessons–and solutions–that are universal to all long-distance trails. In her early 30s, she quit a well-paying job that wasn't fulfilling her and found that fulfillment out on the trail, with the community that she craved. Returning home, her trajectory altered and her project to reconnect with the hiking co...

We have a couple of interesting topics on the show this week. Our first guest, Erik Russell, wrote to me to convey a notable if somewhat jarring, incident that he witnessed while hiking the AT in the 1997. Erik took a lot from both the hike and the incident, and he tells us how those two things contributed to help shape the man he is today. Erik is one of the few guests I've had on the show who ha...

It's lovely to interview somebody you've met and spent time with before. So I was delighted when Tina Tempest agreed to come on the show and share what happened during her 2009 SOBO hike of the Appalachian Trail with her friend. She has always had a desire to travel and fills in her background with one or two of those stories as well. Tina went on to buy a property and start what became one of my...

This week, we feature a couple who met on the trail in 2019 and have been a couple ever since. Reid Marshall and Marina Santiago are, however, locationally challenged, as Reid is in Australia and Marina is in Denver. I was fortunate enough to have met Reid on my thru-hike and was impressed with his calm and thoughtful demeanor. When we met, near the VT / NH border, Reid was on his own and didn't m...

We normally focus on the Appalachian Trail, but this week, we're moving across the country to share the hike of Mike Current on the Pacific Crest Trail. Mike's YouTube channel provides a thoughtful and entertaining take on hiking. He and Steve chat about the hike and his intense preparations prior to the hike. Mike is particularly keen to make sure that the 2020 hikers' stories are told, believing...

We're back to our three-segment show this week, with Steve Yale, or Walmart 2021, as our principal guest. Steve got his name when he first hiked the AT in pretty much all-Walmart gear. He has since worked out better options, but his love of the trail shines through in both our conversation and his devotion to a life of thru-hiking the AT. In contrast to the negative responses that some people expe...

It's a shorter show today, though I think the content is as compelling as ever. This week's guest is Trevor Hendry, or Bear. Trevor's 2020 thru-hike presented him (and his fellow hikers) with unusual problems that he had to encounter and deal with. However, as I've found with some of this class of 2020, his experience–while not the same as previous hiking years–was equally rich as any other. He ev...

We've got an old friend on the show today. Matthew "Odie" Norman is one of those good people of the trail. He lives it, he breathes it, and he shares it, with his Hiker Yearbook that reconnects hikers after the trail. Odie reached out to me recently and wanted to give me a recap of how he sees the hiking season of 2020. As you'd imagine, he has plenty to say that makes sense and wears his heart on...