WTF is TFC?

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When you walk a trail in the woods, have you ever wondered, how did this get here? Who carved this path? Was this stone staircase always like this? Nope. Chances are a team of hardscrabble men and women worked tirelessly to make sure the paths you follow blend right into the landscape. In this story, we find out why one such trail crew, known as the 'TFC', is the stuff of legend.

“People think these staircases occur naturally,” says Nova.

During the rest of the year Nova is known as Alex Milde.  Alex is a clean-cut student at Cornell and a member of its varsity rowing team. But out here, in the wilderness of the White Mountains, he’s the leader of a trail crew and he goes by his woods name: Nova.

“We’ve had people do that. They’ve been walking down our work, talking to their kid, and we’re rolling around in the dirt, clearly putting in a staircase, and they’re like: ‘Yes, honey, these steps were put here by God.’” But they weren’t. They were put there by a crew of people -- mostly college students, working mainly with hand tools -- who labor in obscurity all summer long.

Officially, this is the Appalachian Mountain Club’s professional White Mountain trail crew. Unofficially, it's known as: the TFC.

“It came around in the '70s sometime. It stands for Trail Fucking Crew,” explains Aesop, a second-year member of the TFC, who declines to provide his real name, “We like to say, if your grandma asks what it stands for, you say Trail Fixing Crew.”

The History of AMC's Trail Crew

AMC’s White Mountain trail crew has been around for a long time. In the 1800s, hiking trails were largely cut by the owners of inns and hotels in the White Mountains. In the early 20th century some of the area’s more dedicated hikers, often faculty members of the region’s universities, started to connect these trails. The result was a trail network that was too big to be maintained by volunteer labor alone.

In 1919, the Appalachian Mountain Club formed its first professional trail crew, led by former New Hampshire Governor Sherman Adams, who was fresh out of boot camp and ran the crew accordingly. “He had a reputation,” says Bob Watts who served on the crew from 1952 to 1955 and now serves as the crew's unofficial historian.  Watts says Adams once hiked from Littleton to Hanover in something like 43 hours.

1924 Crew at the Flume Gorge

L to R: Harland P. Sisk 1923-26(TM), Leonard B. Beach 1923-25, William J. Henrich 1924-27(TM), William L. Starr 1922-25(TM), Frederick Fish 1923-25, Harold D. Miller 1920-23(TM) & 24(TM), Dana C. Backus 1923, 24 & 26.

That superhuman trek was somewhere in the neighborhood of seventy miles, and Adams did it without Gore-Tex® gear, lightweight boots, or a CamelBak®. The culture that Adams created on the trail crew--hard living, hard working, hard charging--remains today. And in the intervening years, the crew has cultivated a mystique that surrounds them still.

Why is the TFC so legendary?

 

Pure physicality

Crew members are expected to do “patrols” for two to three weeks each summer. "Patrols" involve hiking between eight to twenty-two miles a day, clearing every fallen tree from the trail, and a year’s worth of accumulated leaves and dirt out of every water bar.

Once patrolling is done, the crew then gets to work on projects. In order to reach the project site, often set deep in the woods, they must pack and carry a week's worth of equipment and food. Their backpacks, which are technically pack boards, usually weigh more than 100 pounds. The TFC boasts that particularly burly crew members will carry 200+ pound loads. There's even a story of an unfortunate crew member who became momentarily trapped under river water after being toppled by the weight of his packboard.

These brutal workdays are accompanied by some equally punishing days off. Bob Watts reminisced about an impressive, but perhaps ill-advised, hike that he and his crew mate embarked on one summer. It took them 27 miles to the next project site and over Mount Washington (one of the most inhospitable peaks in the country) in the middle of the night. Every year, crew members take part in the fabled, 49-mile “hut traverse”.

 

Shenanigans

The trail crew is legendary for being composed of spirited college kids with a penchant for pranks. The most notorious example went down in the '50s when some trail crew members caught wind that President Eisenhower was coming to visit New Hampshire. They decided to put a goatee on one of the state's more notable icons, the Old Man of the Mountain. To do this, they managed to tie some bushes to his rocky chin, which was located forty feet below a cliff edge; all of this just to give him a funny little beard. “So these guys really, for almost a half a century went into hiding and never would admit their participation in this shenanigan,” says Watts.

Ben English, another crew member from the '50s, remembers the time he and his crew mates constructed an over-sized birds nest with sticks and moss. They hard-boiled some eggs, drew spots on them with a magic marker, and tossed them into the faux-nest. When curious hikers passed by and asked about the nest, they responded, “Why, that’s the nest of the alpine duck.”

This tomfoolery is harmless, but I’m also fairly certain they are some of the more PG stories. If you asked me to guess, the most legendary tales, the kind that attract new crew members from college campuses all around the country, don’t get told to a reporter carrying a microphone.

The Look

To match the mystique they’ve cultivated over the years, the crew has adopted a certain style. Members of the crew don’t look like earth-loving hippies, or tech-fabric wearing ultra-athletes. They’re more like filthy, muscled punk rockers, wearing heavy work boots and stained t-shirts. Many of them sport mohawks, which they say optimizes their aerodynamics for hiking fast.

“My theory is it’s also a radiator,” Nova explains, “So shave the hair on the sides so that allows a lot of heat to radiate out and you evaporate, and then you have the vein of hair coming down the center and that condenses the sweat coming off your head and recirculates it.”

Getting grimy is expected; this is pretty much a one shower a week kind of group. John Lamanna, who was on the crew in the '70s, explains the ethos this way: “Any trail crew guy worth his shit, he would rather have mushrooms growing out of his underwear--if in fact he wore underwear--than [...] ever be caught with his axe dull or not ready to go.”

What’s it like to be on the TFC?

Joan Chevalier was the first woman to be on the trail crew back in 1978. She had worked in the huts, but was always envious of the trail crew. “I wasn’t really a people person, per se,” she says. She started in the huts, and eventually became the caretaker of Guyot shelter the summer it was being rebuilt by the the trail crew, so she worked closely with them. Afterwards, the head of the crew invited her to join the team.

“AMC was one of the places where finally...that women and men were equal,” she says. “It didn’t matter, everybody did what they could do and made a contribution.”

Anna Malvin, a current crew member whose woods name is 10-Gauge, agrees, “The only time I really notice I’m a girl is when like, hikers will pass and make [...] sexist comments. Like, ‘Oh, why don’t you get the guys up there to help you and stuff like that.”

But, “it was almost like a fraternity,” says Chevalier. “They just really had a lot of fun, working very very hard and doing amazing things to keep the trails up.”

2012 Crew

There are echoes of fraternity culture in the TFC’s traditions.

“You don’t really get hazed,” says Malvin. She points to traditions like delegating more menial chores--like having to carry a week’s worth of trash out of the woods--to first year crew members. And then there was this: “We had to take a test at the beginning, just as a joke. Like ‘what color are this person’s tighty-whitey’s?’ While getting little balls thrown at us,” she says, laughing. “But it’s all in good fun.”

“It is sort of difficult, sometimes, to see the line between what’s hazing and what’s bonding,” says Peenesh Shah, who was on the crew in 2001 and 2002. He says an example is the tradition of always keeping your axe close at hand. Ben English explains this tradition stems from a tendency of porcupines to gnaw through the “salty handles” of the axes. Shah once left his axe on a workbench while eating dinner, and some senior members of the crew took it and hid it from him. "You know I think there’s some element of hazing there, but there’s at least some purpose to that.”

“Ultimately it’s pretty harmless right,” he says, but these traditions create a sense of cohesion. “I don’t think you’d be able to get that quality of work product, or just the amount of labor the crew puts in for the amount they get paid, unless there was some other benefit and that benefit is pride.”

“This trail crew job, this is not something that they just drop in out of the sky and work for a summer in the woods in the White Mountains,” says Ben English. “They might think that way when they plan to get here but they find out quite soon that it's different.”

But when it comes to telling the best stories of fun and fellowship in the woods, the ones that bring in new trail crew members year after year. Ben English and John Lamanna demure.

I ask, “Are these stories too good for radio?”John Lamanna responds “We have to maintain a certain mystique around us. We don’t want the whole friggin’ world knowing how good this is, because they’ll all want to do it.”

So there you have it. If you want to know what it’s really like to be on the TFC--the heavy loads, the long-days, the shenanigans in the woods and the life-long friendships -- you’ll just have to join up yourself.

 
 

Historic photos courtesy of Trail Crew Association archives.

**Correction: An earlier version of this article quoted Bob Watts saying Sherman Adams once hiked from Whitefield to Hanover in 43 hours. Watts later amended his statement to say this hike actually was between Littleton and Hanover**

Robert Moor - On Trails

Robert Moor is the author of a book called On Trails. Robert started thinking about trails while walking the Appalachian Trail in 2009, and decided to write about trails generally when he realized that no-one was interested in another story about a middle-class white guy walking the AT.

"[He] began to wonder about the paths that lie beneath our feet: How do they form? Why do some improve over time while others devolve? What makes us follow or strike off on our own? Over the course of the next seven years, Moor traveled the globe, exploring trails of all kinds, from the minuscule to the massive. He learned the tricks of master trail-builders, hunted down long-lost Cherokee trails, and traced the origins of our road networks and the Internet." (Source: robertmoor.com)

Walking the AT does have a profound effect on people, it certainly changed Robert,  as you can see from the photo below.

 
 

Outside/In was produced this week by: 

Sam Evans-Brown, Logan Shannon, and Cordelia Zars. With help from Maureen McMurray, Taylor Quimby, Molly Donahue, & Jimmy Gutierrez.

Special thanks to former TFC members Kyle Peckham and Natalie Beittel who are assembling a book of stories of people from the crew. Also Barbara Whiton of the Trail Crew Association who helped Sam track down old crew members. Thanks as well to Rob Burbank of the AMC and Cristina Bailey of the National Forest Service for setting up the day out on the trail. 

Theme music by Breakmaster Cylinder 

Photos of Sam are by Greta Rybus unless otherwise noted.

These Shoes Were Made for Mocking

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(and that's just what we'll do.)

Producer Taylor Quimby has been defending Vibram FiveFingers™ shoes to naysayers for years. When people see him wearing them while he’s on the trail or out for a run, they tend to have a pretty visceral reaction, and that reaction is typically disgust. So what is it about these glove-like shoes that makes people so upset?

 
 

The Real Reason So Many People Hate FiveFingers™

It’s a hot July afternoon, and I’m hiking up Kearsarge Mountain in New Hampshire when a woman on her way down says, “Ugh, don’t those hurt your feet?” She didn’t stop or look me in the face so I could tell she didn’t really want to hear my answer–it was just passing commentary on my choice of footwear.

After seven years of wearing Vibram FiveFingers™, I’m pretty used to fielding questions (or enduring insults) about them when I hike, but I’ve never been able to adequately explain how a general phobia of exposed toes turned into a mean-spirited backlash against Vibram enthusiasts back when the company settled a class-action lawsuit in 2014.

Until now. Here’s my four-point theory on why so many people came to abhor the FiveFingers™ toe-shoe.

We've blurred this runner's feet for Jimmy's sake.

We've blurred this runner's feet for Jimmy's sake.

Like Crocs or PT Cruisers, a good deal of the hatred for Vibrams has nothing to do with their functionality – for these anti-foot-fetishists, the real problem is the independently segmented toes. One colleague of mine referred to Vibrams as crossing “the uncanny valley of feet”. I’m guessing she means they look too much like feet and nothing like feet at the same time.

But people aren’t just disgusted by toe-shoes. Runners who leave their toes entirely exposed are subject to ridicule too. “I don’t have the psychological insight to figure out what it is about naked feet that freaks people out,” says Christopher McDougall, author of the unofficial barefoot bible Born to Run. “I’d be running down the street in bare feet and people would roll down their windows and go berserk: ‘You forgot your shoes! Put your shoes on!’"

“Dude, it’s not my penis. These are just my toes.”

 

When the FiveFingers™ first became popular, Outside Magazine contributor Jon Gugala was working at a running store. He says that fitting customers for Vibrams was a long and frustrating process, and one that rarely ended in a sale.

For these reasons Jon says, “there was a special place of hatred at least for me and a lot of my coworkers for the FiveFingers™ at the time.”  What was most infuriating though, is that the presence of Vibrams brought lots of people with little to no running experience into the store. This wouldn’t be such a bad thing, except…

Many non-runners who came into Jon’s store with an interest in Vibrams did so because they had read Born to Run. The book, an adventure story about a tribe of spectacularly gifted Native American runners, proposes a theory that the human foot evolved to run long-distances.

The modern running shoe, McDougall says, has allowed runners to develop terrible form–a factor that he think contributes to high rates of injury for the sport. It’s a position that he’s stuck to, even after the barefoot running craze ended a couple years ago.

“When things go wrong with the human foot,” he says, “it’s because we strap on the crazy inventions by mad scientists and think that they’re going to actually improve what our foot has naturally evolved to do.”


In other words, people who wear running sneakers (most everybody) are doing it wrong. McDougall’s philosophy is what many non-running, Born To Run-reading customers were spouting when they entered a shoe store to try on Vibrams for the first time. Not surprisingly, many...

Photo credit: Logan Shannon

In the words of Jon Gugala: “You work at a running store, so you think you know more than the average person about running, so when people try and call you on that based on a book that they read, your ego gets hurt. So maybe you take that out on a helpless product like FiveFingers.” Jon says he actually really loved wearing the Vibram FiveFingers for a time, and went so far as to recommend that everybody try them at least once. After a nasty bout of plantar fasciitis though, he gave them up, and when Vibram settled the class action lawsuit in 2014, he was among those who gleefully lashed out against all of those finger-wagging barefooters.

 

Despite being one of the targets of that backlash, I totally get it. In fact, it reminds me of my relationship with kale. I have nothing against kale, but when I hear people talk about kale like it’s going to cure cancer, boost IQ, and solve the control debate, I call bullshit. And that makes me want to eat less of it, even if it makes for a decent smoothie. The thing is, I really shouldn’t be annoyed with kale. I should be annoyed with the crazy kale-heads who act as though it’s the galaxy’s most powerful super-food.

I get the backlash…but I still like these shoes.

What’s Good for the Goose Foot, Is Not Always Good for the Gander’s Feet

TAYLOR IS A VERY GOOD JUMP ROPER.

TAYLOR IS A VERY GOOD JUMP ROPER.

Vibram Fivefingers™ aren’t the panacea or silver bullet that the company may have claimed them to be (an idea likely spread by Born to Run, unintentionally or otherwise) but that doesn’t mean they aren’t a good option for some runners.

Dr. Jonathan Roth, an orthopedic sports medicine surgeon, recently did a literature review of studies on barefoot versus shod (as in, with shoes) running, and found that the two styles seem to have two different injury profiles. He found that, whereas barefoot style runners may suffer fewer injuries to the lower legs and knees, they may be more prone to injuries in the foot and ankle. Depending on a runner’s individual injury profile, switching to barefoot or cushioned shoes could be the right thing to do. And if you’re relatively injury-free, don’t bother switching at all.

“People are so different, that what may work for one person may not work for another,” Dr. Roth says. “You should really take each person as an individual and look at their mechanics, look at their foot shape, look at their injury risk and where they’re prone to injuries, and adjust accordingly. Just like with diet, you really have to be more personalized with not suggesting one thing for everybody, but really take a look at the whole.”

It’s advice that’s unlikely to get you on Good Morning America or to the top of the New York Times’ best-sellers list, but it may just put your mind at ease when it comes to whatever you’ve chosen for your feet.

Outside/In was produced this week by: 

Taylor Quimby, Sam Evans-Brown, Maureen McMurray, Molly Donahue, Jimmy Gutierrez, & Logan Shannon

Theme music by Breakmaster Cylinder 

Photos of Sam are by Greta Rybus unless otherwise noted.

Anothah Boston Cheat

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Ari Ofsevit is a guy from Boston fueled by an intense, nerdy love for sports. The day after running this year’s Boston Marathon, his face was all over the cover of the Boston Globe and on all of the network news channels, but on the internet, people were accusing him of cheating. This is Ari’s story.

The Boston Marathon has a long, well-documented history of cheaters.

Of course, there was that most famous of marathon cheaters, Rosie Ruiz, who hitched a ride on Boston subway 10 miles into the race. But cheaters abound: there’s this armchair investigator who claims to have found at least 47 people who cheated back in 2015 by taking someone else’s bib, or by taking short-cuts in their qualifying marathon. There’s also the thriving online marketplace, where people say they’d be willing to spend as much as $5,000 dollars to get their hands on someone else’s starting number.

And this year, once again, a high profile Boston marathon finish is being called into question.

The racer in question is Ari Ofsevit. And he’s a friend of mine.

After the race, I was very surprised to see Ari was all over the internet.

I was then doubly shocked to learn that beneath every story written about Ari and in a forum of a website called Let’s Run internet  commenters were calling for him to be disqualified.

When Runner’s World noticed the online muck that was swriling around Ari’s story whenever it was posted, they stirred the pot, posting a second article about the reaction to the first article, inviting readers to “engage” on the question.

“So, there are people who say you cheated,” I said to Ari, when I interviewed him.

Ari responded with an exasperated snort.

“With cheating you have to have intent,” he said, “People were saying things like, he shouldn’t have accepted the aid from those guys. Well you know, I didn’t have the opportunity to say that because my brain was not functioning.”

Today's episode of Outside/In (which I encourage you to listen to, instead of reading… I promise, it’s better) is the story of my friend Ari, his fifteen minutes of fame, and the bigger question: what’s a race like the Boston Marathon for? 

What Happened?

If you want to hear this story straight from the horse’s mouth, with an impressive dose of profanity mixed in, you can read Ari’s account of why he thinks he collapsed just before the finish line of the race. What’s below is my abridged account.

His preparation for the marathon the day before was pretty reasonable - despite making a transcontinental flight the morning before the race. Ari hydrated, he slept in his own bed, and he woke up before his alarm.

And that day, Marathon Monday, was gorgeous weather, 65 degrees and sunny. (Though Ari, who hates running when it’s hot, calls it “sneaky warm”.)

The first 17 miles Ari felt great and was on track to beat 3 hours. He says he was drinking every water stop. But as the race wears on he started to slow down, though he said it was nothing unusual.

“Most people are going to feel lousy on those hills,” he said.

He’s slowing down: from 6 and half minute mile pace, to 7 minute mile pace… to mile 26 when he’s up to nearly an 8 minute mile.

But he turned the corner onto Boylston street, and then end was in sight.

“I remember thinking, “Alright legs, go,” Ari said. That thought was the last thing he remembers before waking up in the intensive care unit four hours later.

Did he finish?

Ari got to within 200 feet of the finishing line before collapsing with a body temperature of 108.8 degrees. At this temperature, doctors told him he had a 30-minute clock ticking toward organ failure and brain injury.

ari did pretty well... right up until the very end of the race

ari did pretty well... right up until the very end of the race

Two runners helped him across the finish line. And first responders dumped him into a tub of ice. This actually led to an over-correction, and when they sent him off to the hospital he was actually hypothermic: his body temperature had dropped to 84 degrees.

Ari didn’t break the 3-hour mark, but he did get a time: a  very respectable 3  hours and 3 minutes. You can find his name, and his time on the results. He finished in 1848th place - and like all finishers, he got a medal.

Once his story started to hit the media, first on the cover of the Boston Globe, and then later on the network TV channels, certain parts of the running community started grousing.

“To me, it would have been considered, he should have been a DNF,” Jay Curry told me. DNF is runner-speak for “Did Not Finish”.

Curry is an an OR nurse, a cyclist and a triathlete. He’s never done the Boston Marathon, but he has done ironman triathlons: that’s where you have to run a marathon after swimming 2.4 miles and biking 112. I found him through a Facebook comment he left underneath one of the articles about Ari.

“It kind of takes away from the sport, if anybody can just pick him up and carry him across the line  or I could jump on a bus and say, Jeez, I’m kinda tired right now, I’ve got two miles to go I’ll just call a taxi and take a taxi to the finish line and be considered a finisher.”

Jay says he has no ill-will toward Ari, and doesn’t think he deliberately cheated. But he’s steadfast. Ari did not finish. And Jay’s not alone. For every 10 people who celebrate his finish as a story about good sportsmanship and community - there are one or two that say, nice story, but he should be disqualified.

Albert Shank a Spanish teacher and marathoner from Arizona is another.

“You’re toeing the line running the same exact course at the same time as these elite runners from Kenya, and Ethiopia, and the United States and all over the world, and I think you should be subjected to the same rules as they are,” Shank told me in a phone interview.

When it comes to this question of whether he deserves to be considered a finisher, there’s a legitimate point being made. If Ari had been in first place, he definitely would have been disqualified. This actually happened in the Olympic marathon in 1908. Dorando Pietri, an Italian, had to be helped to his feet by the course umpires when he collapsed five times in the last 400 meters. The second place finisher -- an American -- protested, and Pietri lost his gold medal.

Ari has done a lot of races... a lot of races.

Ari has done a lot of races... a lot of races.

What's a race for, anyway?

But there’s a big difference between an Olympic athlete , and Ari Ofsevit. Hell, there’s a big difference between the front of the Boston Marathon and Ari Ofsevit.

“I understand that there are folks out there in the world that, a rule is a rule is a rule, and I get it… god bless ‘em for feeling that way,” said Dave McGillivray, the race director of the Boston Marathon, one of the people who very well could have disqualified Ari.

The rules are that runners accepting aid from others “may” be disqualified, not that they “shall” be disqualified. Typically, the routine is that another competitor submits a complaint, which the race jury considers. In Ari’s case, there was no complaint… at least no official, not-in-an-internet-comment-section complaint.

“It was a gallant effort, and I feel he earned the medal. Let’s move on,” said McGillivray.

In reality, there are two races going on in Boston, with two different sets of rules. One of those races -- the elite field -- is really only about who is fastest. The other, is mostly just a community building event. One that would be totally ruined if you militantly disqualified thousands of people who did things like take water from someone other than an officially sanctioned water-stop.

Some of the complaints circle around the prestigiousness of the Boston Marathon. It’s really a tough to race qualify for, and so many people register that in 2016 more than 4,500 people who made the official qualifying time still got turned away.

Because he finished, Ari will likely qualify for next year’s marathon and he could be taking a spot from a runner who finished the race on his own two feet.

Take it up with Meb

So who gets the final word? I’m going to give it to Meb.

Meb Keflezighi -- olympic silver medalist, winner of the 2014 Boston Marathon, and general goodwill ambassador for the sport of long-distance running --  actually tweeted a photo of the guys carrying Ari across the finish. That tweet was above, but here it is again.

You’ll notice, Meb didn’t write #ObviousDQ.

 

 

 

Parenting at 24,000 Feet

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For alpinist Ben Clark, scaling the world’s toughest mountains was a source of pride and peace; for his parents it was a source of constant worry. After they learned to live with their son’s adventurous streak, Ben decided to quit the mountaineer life altogether. Why? The answer may surprise you. 


Ben Clark directed the documentary, The Alaskan Way.

"The Alaskan Way" is a documentary film chronicling a season spent in a community of heli-skiers in Haines, Ak. that asks: "Is living the dream worth risking it all? Together the heli skiers explore the commitments, sacrifices and rewards of living a life with deep passion for deep powder. During the filming of The Alaskan Way a great tragedy occurred. Heli ski guide and avalanche forecaster Rob Liberman and client Nick DoDov perished in an avalanche on 3/13/12. I will never forget that day as it set my own life on a course to produce this film with suddenly incomprehensible obligations. How the story could be told and how could the story not be told were constant daily questions as perspectives mounted, some with vehemently opposing views. As a director I had only a simple solution-tell the truth with the footage I have and put it out there. This nearly 60 minute documentary film about Heli Skiing may not entertain you and I apologize personally to anyone who is bored reviewing the material, it is not ski porn. This film informs viewers about the circumstances discovered by a team of professional heli ski guides operating in a consequential environment. Despite thier best efforts to ensure safety in the mountains they met a situation where all efforts still resulted in the loss of two lives and one lesson learned: The best can still have a bad day. Please consider supporting the availability of this film with a donation of $5 or more to the tip jar. 10% of profits will be donated to Avalanche Education initiatives chosen by The Alaskan Way TV LLC. Any donation helps and I hope you will remember Rob Liberman, Nick Dodov and the valliant efforts of thier colleagues and friends. Please introduce your friends, families and fellow powder skiers to the lifestyle that for a brief moment in time was captured here and asks us all to weigh the decisions we make when committing to the pursuit of deep passion for deep powder. Ben Clark Director, The Alaskan Way

Follow Ben Clark on Instagram @bclarkmtn

You can also find out more about his film projects at his website: bclarkmtn.com

The Young Man of the Mountain

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An Everest Ethics Question

Tyler Armstrong is 12 years old. He likes to play laser tag.  He’s learning to play guitar. And this spring he's heading to China, where he will attempt to summit the world's highest mountain. In this episode, an ethical debate: how young is too young to climb Mount Everest?

Tyler Armstrong talks to a local news station last year about his Everest climb.

Explore Everest from the comfort of your living room, with this interactive guide.

Champagne on the Rocks

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We reported this story back in 2015. There have been a couple of changes which we mention in the version you see below: Episode 39: Champagne on the Rocks. Both versions of this episode are included in this post for the sake of keeping our archival ducks in a row. Enjoy!

In the summer of 2015, Scott Jurek set a new record for running the 2,181 miles of the Appalachian Trail. But on his triumphant day atop the last mountain in Northern Maine, his 21st century campaign for the trail's record ran afoul of a park founded on ideas about wilderness from a decidedly earlier time.

Scott Jurek Celebrating at the Top: 

A photo posted by Scott Jurek (@scottjurek) on

A photo posted by Scott Jurek (@scottjurek) on

A photo posted by Scott Jurek (@scottjurek) on

A photo posted by Scott Jurek (@scottjurek) on

Pier Pressure

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...or I'll Give You My Dock When You Pry it From My Cold, Dead Hands

In 1998, Forest Quimby spent thousands of dollars building one of the most beautiful, most elaborate docks on Franklin Pierce Lake in New Hampshire. There was just one problem – it was illegal.

In this story, we hear about Quimby’s seventeen-year battle with the NH Department of Environmental Services, and find out why small-scale environmental regulations are so hard to enforce.

Listen to the episode:

Before and after shots of the dock.

The Moose Whisperer

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...or, why moose hunting is like watching a soap opera.

In 2015 about 2,700 of the 50,000 people who applied will receive a moose permit in Maine and if you’re one of the lucky ones who has waited 20 years for this moment, you’re going to want an expert on your team. You’re going to want a moose whisperer.  

Listen to the episode:

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