The first time I hiked the West Coast Trail I fell 7 times in 7 days.
No injury.
June 2021 I fell only twice in 6 days. An improvement. But broke a camera on the first. And badly bruised my thigh on the second. 😕
About one in a hundred hikers are evacuated on the very challenging West Coast Trail.
MANY are carrying more weight than they can comfortably balance.
As a Gymnastics coach, I teach kids the safest ways to land and fall. In this video I’ve applied those same techniques for hikers. Absorb IMPACT FORCES over time and surface area.
BEST strategy is to pull in your arms (dropping poles). Take the first impact landing on your backpack.
Having things dangling can complicate. Keep your pack as compact as possible. Fragile equipment protected inside.
For 50 years, the healthcare industry has been trying (and failing) to harness the power of artificial intelligence. It may finally be ready for prime time. What will this mean for human doctors — and the rest of us? (Part four of “The Freakonomics Radio Guide to Getting Better.”) SOURCES:Bob Wachter, professor, chair of the department of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.Pierre Elias, cardiologist, assistant professor of biomedical informatics at Columbia University, medical director for artificial intelligence at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. RESOURCES:A Giant Leap: How AI Is Transforming Healthcare and What That Means for Our Future, by Bob Wachter (2026)."Epic Systems (MyChart)," by Acquired (2025)."Detecting structural heart disease from electrocardiograms using AI," by Pierre Elias and Timothy Poterucha (Nature, 2025)."What Are the Risks of Sharing Medical Records With ChatGPT?" by Maggie Astor (New York Times, 2025)."Will Generative Artificial Intelligence Deliver on Its Promise in Health Care?" by Bob Wachter and Erik Brynjolfsson (JAMA, 2023).The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype, and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine’s Computer Age, by Bob Wachter (2015). EXTRAS:"The Doctor Won’t See You Now," by Freakonomics Radio (2025)."How to Stop Worrying and Love the Robot Apocalypse (Update)," by Freakonomics Radio (2024). Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Jeff “Legend” Garmire is an adventurer who climbed the Colorado 14ers, survived The Great Western Loop, broke the Arizona Trail self-supported FKT, Long Trail Unsupported FKT, and the Colorado Trail Unsupported FKT and much more.
Free Outside is his telling of his Calendar Year Triple Crown: Appalachian Trail, Pacific Crest Trail, Continental Divide Trail.
I listened to the audio version which Jeff reads himself.
Fast paced. No dull moments.
8000 miles averaging over 30 miles a day.
I enjoyed the book.
It’s real to his experience. So real that no editor seems to have corrected spelling nor typos.
Seemed to me the CDT would be my least favourite of the three — overall. Too many cows. Too much dirty drinking water.
I embarked on my first solo backpacking trip in 2014. It’s no small admission to say that the effort changed the course of my life.
That trip was — perhaps — overkill for my first shot at backpacking solo. I completed 150 miles, combined over multiple trips on the Continental Divide Trail in Montana and Wyoming. But I dialed in my system and wilderness skills, powered through blisters, and faced my fears over the course of those miles.
In a world filled with noise, constant companionship, phones that never power down, and internet advice coming at us incessantly, here’s one more bit of advice I’d like to impart — turn it all off. Take a walk in the dirt.
When nature calls (and it will), the Kula Reusable Antimicrobial Pee Cloth keeps your hands dry on one side while sopping moisture into the absorbent, antimicrobial side that won’t show stains.
besthike.com 