Backpacker Radio spoke with the thru hiking legend, author, blogger, and backcountry guide Andrew Skurka.
Very entertaining. Very informative. He shares strong opinion on gear.
Andrew names Cam “Swami” Honan and Justin “Trauma” Lichter as two thru hikers he admires in 2019.
Zach and Smiles host the podcast. Listen online – Backpacker Radio #33
Andrew Skurka
related – You Think Your Winter Was Rough (Trauma’s winter PCT)
Michael Wardian (born April 12, 1974) is an American marathoner and ultra-marathoner. …
In January 2017, Wardian ran seven marathons in seven days on seven continents in a record average speed of 2:45. …
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
He said the terrain is some of the most beautiful he’s seen in the world. And he felt very safe in Israel.
I listened to an entertaining interview on the Fastest Known Time podcast.
6900+ miles.
Andrew Skurka invented the Great Western Loop and was the only person to complete it before Jeff ‘Legend’ Garmire in 2018.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube. (24min)
In 2019, the Great Western Loop will officially become the Great Western Loop Trail and expanded to include the northern and southern termini of both the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) and the Continental Divide Trail (CDT). …
Heather Anderson, who goes by the trail name Anish, has thru-hiked the U.S.’s mega trails—the Appalachian, the Continental Divide, and the Pacific Crest—three times. …
Since 2013, Anderson has speed-hiked 28,000 trail miles—a greater distance than the circumference of Earth at the equator. …
Anish outdid herself last year, when she became the first woman, and fifth person, to complete the Triple Crown—7,944 miles—in a calendar year. She pulled off the feat in stunning fashion, hiking an average of more than 31 miles a day to finish in 251 days, 20 hours, and 10 minutes. (Cam “Swami” Honan holds the overall record at 231 days.) …
All this from a girl who was 70 pounds overweight and often teased while growing up …
How does anyone do this kind of thing?
You hike a lot of 18-hour days — waking up 4 a.m. and walking until 11 p.m.
AND Heather won’t accept rides in and out of town to pick-up her resupply!
She has a new book. Available in paperback and Kindle.
In her new memoir, Thirst: 2600 Miles to Home, Heather, whose trail name is “Anish,” conveys not only her athleticism and wilderness adventures, but also shares her distinct message of courage–her willingness to turn away from the predictability of a more traditional life in an effort to seek out what most fulfills her. …
In 2016 Sir Chris Bonington updated his 1989 biography.
He added accounts of his later expeditions to Greenland, India, Morocco and his re-ascent of the Old Man of Hoy in 2014, with new climbing companion Leo Houlding. The Old Man climb was filmed by BBC. Chris was not at all sure he could still do it.
Bonington was one of the few high altitude mountaineers to survive the kind of climbs he did. AND he’s an excellent writer.
He’s known a lot of tragedy including the drowning death of a young son.
Though known as one of the great expedition leaders he had many die under that leadership.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28955087-ascent
All that said, I did enjoy this book. And recommend it to everyone regardless of whether or not you have an interest in mountaineering.
The Boys of Everest: Chris Bonington and the Tragedy of Climbing’s Greatest Generation (2007) is the full title.
Of the famed high altitude climbers I’ve always related most to Bonington. He seemed to be the smart, articulate and careful one.
Not so, I learned. There were a dozen times Chris could have / should have died like so many of the others.
Though reviews have been mixed, I did enjoy this book. Especially the audio version reader James Adams.
… courage, achievement, and heartbreaking loss tells of Bonington’s Boys, a band of climbers who reinvented mountaineering during the three decades after Everest’s first ascent. …
Next I’ll be reading Bonington’s biography – Ascent (2017)
Celebrating girls and women in the outdoors on #InternationalWomansDay.
Alma Wagen was the first female guide to work in Mount Rainier National Park. The bulk of her work as a guide consisted of leading tourists on hikes to nearby glaciers, but she occasionally assisted in leading parties to the mountain’s summit, which she was said to have done “like a master”. …
