Episode 129 - Trail Magic, Kaaterskill Clove and More

[00:00:00] And then, alright, so here it is. This is the saddest moment of my life, of my podcasting life. 63% of the respondents voted stump stash their least favorite. Yeah, you love it too, don't you? Look

[00:00:16] at you. You got to see this guy smile. It's like he just won the lottery. So 63% of you said the stump stash segment sucks. So I'm signing off now. I'm officially quitting on air. Alright, I'll finish this up though. 77%, I thought remarkable, 77% of the respondents felt that a

[00:00:41] 90-minute to 120-minute episode was about right. Yeah, I was A, surprised by that and B, tonight we're just going to blow that away with tonight's episode. We go into some of the other things.

[00:01:09] The bushwax were some of the worst days I've ever had in the mountains, or life, really. Whereas Pants and Mountains is totally opposite to the mountain on top of a faith. I think the weather challenges on this incident were particularly difficult.

[00:01:26] It is really the development of New York State. Catskill's a little bit responsive. Now you're listening to Inside the Light, the Catskill Mountains podcast. Let's do this. Alright, 130, episode 130. You know we had a bunch of different topics for this, but I guess

[00:01:57] we're just kind of like throwing topics in a hat right now. We had good old bear coming back on for something, but unfortunately he had to reschedule. Then we were going to talk about the Catskill

[00:02:07] Clove VUM, but I realized, well you realize you told me that's actually dumb to talk about because it can be after the fact. Yeah, well I think we should listen to that presentation first, but this is what happens when you take a week off.

[00:02:25] The whole operation just kind of falls apart. I'll apologize for us to the listeners. We'll get back in sync as the night goes on and by next week's episode we'll be firing on all

[00:02:38] cylinders. You can't tell me that you ran it. You couldn't run the show by yourself? I did. I put out five episodes. I've been picked up by some syndication. It's things are going good. I'm branching off on my own. With the DEC, right?

[00:02:55] Yeah, it's called CAD versus the DEC, Battle of the Podcasts. That is awesome. Maybe we should reach out to them and see if they would do something. Also, I want to know is where do I come up with this stuff?

[00:03:13] I spent too much time alone in the woods. That's a good thing. See both of us? We were both like that's a good thing. Yeah, it took us like two minutes and we're in sync. All right, so welcome everybody to episode 130 of Inside the Lion at the Catskill

[00:03:30] Mounts podcast. We're back at it. We're back here. I'm back. We're going to kick some ass tonight. We're going to talk about a couple different things. Mostly the topic of the night is Ted, unfortunately wanted to talk more about me being in the Shenandoahs,

[00:03:44] giving out trail magic to the through hikers, which doesn't make the experience. But we're going to talk also a little bit about recent events here in the Catskill and the New York area and also about the Catterskill Clove visitor use management plan. That's

[00:04:01] a big thing. Now, unfortunately, when this airs, it's already going to be presented somewhat. They have a presentation going on on 625, which is June 26th or June 26th. Sorry. That is going to be

[00:04:18] brought out to the public. So hopefully everybody and anybody has attended that. And we're going to you know what sucks is we have a guest next week, an awesome guest, which I can't wait for going to be talking about Ghost Towns in the Catskills. Ghost Towns sounds good.

[00:04:34] Yeah. So but you know, I hope maybe we can sneak in an episode about the BUM and see what they talked about real quick. Maybe I don't know on the trail Sunday. So we'll see. So we'll get to that. But

[00:04:48] I also think that even though the DEC and the outside vendor that is running the survey for the DEC is doing all of this Wednesday night, June 25th. I think folks can double back,

[00:05:04] catch up online. Maybe it's available on YouTube or somewhere else online. But they can also check the DEC's website to get updates and put their input in and make their hiking voices heard. Correct. Yeah. And I will be participating in that. I will be on there.

[00:05:23] And Tad, I don't know if you're going to join that. Yeah, I signed up. I signed up. I'm going to be present. It's going to be big. I know a couple people from the DEC that are doing that and a

[00:05:33] bunch of them had previously reached out to me and said this is a good topic to talk about. And you know, I had a previous discussion with one of the ladies that involved with the

[00:05:45] from the Ostec, what it was, Otec. I forgot the company that's doing that. But she, we had a previous discussion about it and what sucks of course when you're involved in that kind of situation, you have to skim around the edges of the questions and unfortunately do what

[00:06:05] the company kind of tells you to and you can't give your honest opinion about it. Yeah, I'm sure the her employer and the DEC had her on a tight leash that night. Yeah. And you know what? So let's real quick break down into the Cater School Clove VUM.

[00:06:24] So a visitor to use management plan is a proactive and adaptive practice but of identifying strategies and actions to accommodate visitor use while protecting park resources that came from Otec. Actually, that's a company that's going on with

[00:06:39] with that was hired by New York State to do that. So they have done stuff in Acadia National Park and Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon and a bunch of huge national parks that has been

[00:06:53] overwhelmed in the past couple years with visitor use. And as we both know, Ted, as you've never been to Cater School Falls, that area is overwhelmed with people and I cannot blame them because Cater School Falls is a nationally at least stunning place

[00:07:11] to be. But the big question is what's going to be done because there is very limited area to do things on there, right? Yeah. Well, it looks like they're spending a lot of time studying the current conditions there, collecting data on what folks want their experience

[00:07:36] when they go there to be like and then they're presumably going to distill that all down to some action plan that some folks will be happy with and a lot of other folks will probably be

[00:07:47] not so happy with. But it seems to be a needed thing to do. Yeah. And I've been to both of the public meetings, one that was at Hunter Mountain and actually there's only one that was on Hunter Mountain. Sorry, I thought that previous one was

[00:08:09] from like back in the COVID days when they were going, everybody was going crazy. But the Hunter one, it was I'm sorry to say a bunch of older people saying that they need to shut

[00:08:20] the area down, need to do this, do that. Definitely understand it's overused and such. But we have a beautiful area and it's open to the public. Let's see what we can do to help that and people are interested in visiting the Catskill area, Tannersville Hunter. They're going to

[00:08:44] bring money into here. I'm actually very concerned of what they can do because that clove is such a tight area. We already have the North South Lake area with the Laurel House parking lot, the Scott Road parking lot, full every weekend, full Fridays. It's a very big

[00:09:08] question mark and they didn't even include on the VUM if I remember correctly, they didn't even include to do North South Lake area. So that's pretty overwhelming. It's got to be a tough task.

[00:09:22] Yeah. You would hope that they just don't look at one of these attractions in isolation and not have a plan that integrates with the other attractions and it would be a good idea for them

[00:09:36] to integrate mass transit and I don't mean mass transit on a mass scale, but providing transportation to folks so we don't have to have a lot of car traffic in that area, which just adds to the congestion, adds to the confusion. Presumably when they're transporting

[00:09:59] people in on mass transit, they can give them some level of automated education while they're sitting on board as passengers. But I'll back up to your comment about bringing more money into here. One of the things I did read in the materials online regarding the factors being

[00:10:18] considered for the VUM and that is the extent to which the falls is a generator of economics for the local community. And that's something that they take into account is promoting the use of this facility to generate revenue for the local community. And on the one hand,

[00:10:42] that's good for the local community. On the other hand, are you kind of selling out cat or still cove? I mean, they haven't done that with Pekamuse Blue Hole, right? They're limiting access to that, which then means they're limiting its ability to generate economics for the area.

[00:11:00] But what are they doing with the falls? Are they going to turn the falls into like Niagara Falls? Well, maybe that's an extreme example on the one hand. But on the other hand, what level of commercialization, what level of increased use will result from this? And then

[00:11:21] is this just a slippery slope where this time around they do a certain level of improvements and then five years from now they realize that's not enough. They need to do more because they've

[00:11:32] attracted more people to come into the area. So they have to do more improvements and then more and more and more and more. So I'm almost thinking I need to get over there sooner

[00:11:41] as opposed to later because by the time I get over there, it might be like Niagara Falls where I can stay at a hotel on site, do a little gambling on site. Maybe they'll be instead of the maid of the

[00:11:53] mist, they'll be the raft or canoe of the mist to go into the falls. But yeah, progress people. Right. And you bring up Pekamuse, I mean not to offend you or anything, but that's a whole

[00:12:09] different area. They don't have any towns there. The closest thing is Denning, which has one store that's probably closed and then we have Hunter and Tanner'sville and stuff. It's a whole different area and it's a whole different beast of course. I went there a

[00:12:29] couple of weeks ago to get into, of course, North South Lake to check out the Catskill Mountain House and Boulder Rock and stuff like that. And it took me not 10, 15 minutes to get into there

[00:12:40] and it wasn't bad. I didn't find it bad, but you couldn't. It had all Scott Road, unfortunately, which you can hike up to beautiful North Mountain and Stopple Point was closed because it was full. And then the Laurel House parking lot was closed because it was full.

[00:12:57] I didn't find that believable because people come and leave every time, so I didn't go in there. But I went into the regular North South Lake and I paid, of course, that $10 to help them out.

[00:13:09] And I got a nice parking spot right up the path. So when you say these places were full when you got there, what time of day did you get there? I mean, it was pretty bad. It was 11.

[00:13:21] Jessica took her time. My wife took her time. Yeah, don't blame it on her. You were still charging up the Tesla to get a full day's drive out of her. Ted, you and I both know that we

[00:13:32] like to get out there at like 8am is the max. So I was at the slide parking area this past Saturday and I got there fairly early at about 7.30. And I'm going to say the parking lot proper

[00:13:49] was about 80% full. Oh, wow. Yeah. I was, it was first of all, it was just a gorgeous day. And that explains a lot of it on the one hand. On the other hand, it was still pretty early.

[00:14:02] And that parking lot was surprisingly full for that time of day. It was that's a sign of things to come this summer that these areas are more popular. Well, later on we might go

[00:14:16] into the fact that they're not as well used as they were last year and the year before, but they're still very popular. So get out early. Yeah. And that's a good backpacking destination

[00:14:28] now for people is to do the Cornell-Wittenberg slide loop. Yeah. I saw quite a few people when I was out there with Danny Davis and we were coming down slide back to the parking lot.

[00:14:41] I'm jealous as fuck. I'm sorry. Yeah, it was a great hike. You should have been there. You know, and I'll say that one of the things that was fun about the hike is the fact that

[00:14:50] Danny Davis has been up Wittenberg over 60 times. And that's, and of those 60 times, you know, maybe 10 of them were on the trail. So he knows his way around that whole ridge very well. And to take him to a little rock feature, not little, it's pretty big,

[00:15:10] that he was unaware of I thought was special. But he and I also on that hike we found a great viewpoint. But nonetheless, as we were coming down slide mountain to the parking area where it

[00:15:21] was late in the day, it was around three o'clock. And we ran into a number of backpackers who were going up. And our thoughts were that by the time they get to those campsites,

[00:15:33] they're going to be pretty much spoken for. People are going to stake out their turf up there. And so then you're going to have these other people late arrivers coming in. It would be an interesting thing to see how accommodating or not accommodating the earlier arrivers

[00:15:51] are the people who show up later and there's no free spots that they need to move into somebody else's camping area with them. Yeah, that's all the big question mark with now with the Catskills. Like it is anywhere else, of course, you know, in the United States because

[00:16:09] everybody's getting the word out through social media and there's beautiful places to be explored. I don't blame them. I don't blame them. And you could say that with your daughter, right? She is ripping it up out there. Yeah, she's having a good time. And we will see her

[00:16:26] this weekend for a surprise appearance. She's flying home, but otherwise she's out right now in Wyoming. Yeah, staying on a ranch and yeah, she's rock climbing in a canyon out there. So I can't wait. I can't wait to get the first hand account of her ventures so far.

[00:16:47] Of her almost near-death experiences where you're going to be like, God damn it. No, there's no near-death experiences with your daughter. Okay, we're not talking about those. So once again, the 26th to which will be a past this day, hopefully I have posted this on

[00:17:05] our Instagram, check it out. It's going to be a great load of information and they say the public's going to be able to talk, which is I'm going to basically say I'm the big guy

[00:17:15] inside the Katsuko Mountain podcast and they're going to be like, who? We only know about the DEC. So check it out. So, Ted, a bunch of stuff happening in the state around

[00:17:31] up north of course in Keen that we have to go over. So on May 20th, 225 p.m., Ray Book Dispatch requested forest ranger assistance on a hiker rainbow falls beautiful spot who had been

[00:17:45] hit in the head by a falling rock. So rangers helped stop the bleeding and brought the subject to the Adirondack Mountain Reserve, the AMR trailhead where he drove himself to seek further care. So

[00:17:59] struck in the head by a rock, do you think that was done by natural resources or by a human up above in the area? Well, it could have been a combination of the two. It might not have been

[00:18:10] somebody who was actively climbing above him at that day. It might have been somebody who was up there a day or two before and then dislodged a rock and just took it some time to come loose and fall on this guy. But that just goes to show you

[00:18:27] that there's inherent dangers in being involved or engaging in those types of activities and you never know. So basically in the way the state of Stashe's way, shit happens. I thought that was an interesting one to talk about. And I've seen a bunch of stuff on

[00:18:50] social media about recent flooding and stuff like that and people just getting overwhelmed with just the stuff that goes on. And of course, this is one of those instances where you're just admiring the beauty and a rock hits you in the head. And that just

[00:19:06] unfortunate and but hey, what a great story to tell later on in a time. If you survive. Yeah, there's that story out west. I forget where it was, but a number of years ago

[00:19:19] where a couple rock climbers, one of them died when some people unknowingly through large rocks over the cliff. Yeah. And it hit one of the guys on the head and killed him

[00:19:33] when they were miles in. It was kind of an epic thing for most people, for these people to be back there at that time and just coincidentally somebody heaved a rock over the edge and it hit

[00:19:44] some guy, Trad climbing up and killed him. Wow. Yeah, pretty awful. Horrible news. So there's a solemn note. Yeah, yeah. Let's get back on the India track. A town of Keen, Wilderness Rescue May 25th, 525 PM, DEC dispatch received a call from an injured hiker approximately

[00:20:06] one half mile from Upper Wolfjaw Mountain. New York State Police aviation responded with Forest Ranger P along with New York State Police pilot Engel. Forest Ranger O'Connell harnesses the subject that Ranger P and pilot Engel could voice the hiker in the helicopter

[00:20:24] flight at her hospital. Now, no further information has been brought to this kind of incident but, you know, Upper Wolfjaw Mountain is I believe one of the 46ers and to have this at 525 PM in the later day was still light time. So there's got to be a

[00:20:44] significant injury that happened, of course, to haul them off in aviation. Yeah, you would think so. I don't know offhand how far back that is and how long the haul out

[00:20:56] would be and what the nature of the injuries were but it's nice to see that the Rangers responded in a timely manner and we're able to rescue that fellow. Yeah, it's, you know, and

[00:21:09] kudos to them once again up in the Adirondacks are pretty crazy with their rescues. It looks like, you know, Upper Wolfjaw is kind of around the Gothic space and area so it's on the way towards

[00:21:24] the Marcy area. So I wouldn't say it's the craziest haul out as in they're near the, oh god, I got to remember where I was at the time but they're near a place but, you know, to haul them out in a helicopter is just a significant injury.

[00:21:47] Yeah, that's it seems like a big expenditure of time and resources. I'm intrigued more so by the fact that it seems that this fellow just made a cell phone call. Right? Yeah, he's that deep in

[00:22:01] the wilderness and apparently he had enough reception or signal strength to make this call. It doesn't say that he used a satellite device or something else but I thought that was

[00:22:12] interesting because as an example when I was on my way back from my hike on Saturday and Pine Hill, I didn't have cell reception, you know, on 28 for like the first 10-15 miles back. So

[00:22:25] yeah, you don't have any cell reception from like going from what said the area by a shokin all the way up to Pine Hill. Yeah. That's, you know, it's pretty crazy. And you know,

[00:22:40] with my time down in the Shenandoahs, I barely had cell reception even at the lookout points where, you know, you could see off in the distance of 40-50 miles. It was, I was blown away by that.

[00:22:53] I was just like, wow, can't believe they don't do that but. So let's get next on to the next one which is kind of the biggest one of New York state. So in the town of Burke, which is Franklin

[00:23:05] County, which is part of the Adirondacks. So there was a fugitive search on June 7 at 6 10 p.m. New York state police requested forest ranger assistance in the search of three suspects involved in a

[00:23:18] stolen vehicle case to the individuals believed to be armed with long guns of the four suspects total. One was already placed in custody by 8 10 p.m. So two hours later, police caught a

[00:23:31] second suspect recovered one firearm on June 8 at 8 50 a.m. So kind of the next day, a little bit, you know, 12 hours later, Rangers 14 hours later, Rangers Russell spotted two suspects running across a field. U.S. Customs and Border Control Aviation and Ranger Bolero established a visual contact.

[00:23:53] Multi-agent resources tighten the search perimeter had 10 50 a.m. Rangers and New York state's police special operations response team located the remaining subjects hiding a camper. The suspects were taken in custody without further incident. New York state police charged the parties

[00:24:11] who are all teens with criminal possession of stolen property and resistant arrest. The subjects were arranged in a youth part of Franklin criminal court. So all teens now that was at the end of the whole fricking thing. So what's going to happen? Juvenile, Paul, and then that's it?

[00:24:33] Oh, who knows? But I'm reading here that they had guns. These are teenagers armed with weapons and, you know, they're up to some nefarious conduct. It's kind of, you know, right out of a movie with the search area, the pursuit finding a minute at a camper someplace crazy.

[00:24:57] Hopefully they were stealing like a Lamborghini like that or something like something worth it. Yeah. Up in Franklin County, I don't know maybe what's worth stealing up there is an old Chevy truck. I have no idea. Right? Hold on. I'm looking it up real quick and seeing

[00:25:12] what they... Border patrol, aviation, you know, multi-agencies. I'm trying to buy you time here. Right, right. 16 and 17 year olds possibly armed with a long gun. Located the 10 year old or the 16 and 17 year olds and 16 year olds were located in the second.

[00:25:36] 15 year old was released and turned over to his parents. Three of our teens were sent to juvenile detention center. Nothing about what the car was. Yeah, crazy, crazy. Wow. Unbelievable. God bless America. But you know, this happens everywhere. So no instances in the Catskills. Let's just

[00:25:59] say that. So nothing huge in the Catskills that has happened, you know. Good. Good for you. Yeah, so what does that say about the Catskills? Right? We don't have teens running around with

[00:26:12] long guns and we don't have the DEC at least so far this year flying people out with injuries. It seems to be a pretty safe and unaventual season so far. And here we just had that

[00:26:27] Manatee's revenge which would seem to be an incident or a situation that could be ripe with injuries. But it didn't happen. Nothing happened. Yeah. And we're just too sensible in the Catskills, right? And hopefully, God, we have so much. I shouldn't have taken a week off.

[00:26:48] That's really screwed up our schedule of everything. Our schedule. Yeah, my schedule. Yeah. You got to take a week off. Yeah. So big instance that we've had in the United States, of course. Hopefully, some people have heard about this but Heiker found lost 10 days in

[00:27:09] California. So he missed a Heiker, was finally rescued after he was lost for 10 days in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California. A 30-fear-year-old was only supposed to go on a three-hour hike when he disappeared. Now, he said he didn't bring anything because he thought he was doing a

[00:27:24] three-hour hike to go to work. It's a little weird to say before work or something like that. So Lucas Miskish, a rescued Heiker, said he was lost in the wood for nine days and 10 nights shirtless with only a flashlight and full disclosures. That sounds like that's something

[00:27:40] that's going on here on the East Coast. But... Oh, here. So let's look at some of this. I thought this story was pretty interesting. So he's out there for 10 days, 10 nights, headed out for only a three-hour hike. So he didn't bring anything with him. So here,

[00:27:57] he's giving his story in the article I pulled up and he says, so I kind of just hiked. Each day I go up a canyon, down a canyon to the next waterfall, sit down by the waterfall, and drink water out of my boot.

[00:28:18] Why would you go back up a canyon? Well, I guess he's trying to find his way out and, I don't know why he just didn't keep going downstream because that's usually a good way to get yourself on the lost in the woods is just to keep going downstream.

[00:28:34] But I'm not familiar with the terrain he was in. But then he continues on. And I thought, Stas, this is what I thought you would zero win on. He says, I had a mountain lion that was following me, but it was cool. It kept its distance.

[00:28:51] I think it was just somebody watching over me. So... So they're the saviour. Yeah, mountain lions, you know, they're not all bad. And then, you know, he continues on. But there is, you should put the news article and the show notes with the link

[00:29:08] to the video feed because they interview this guy. Literally, they show him as he's being rescued and his... I don't know if you saw the video, but his hair is all disheveled. He looks like a guy who

[00:29:22] legit has been out in the woods 10 days drinking water out of a boot. Then that when the interview continues it shows him sitting in a chair in somebody's house and it's like his head is

[00:29:31] shaved almost bare because I don't know, maybe his hair was all knatted up. But interesting story. I thought it sounded like a little bit like Gilligan's Island he set out for a three hour hike. Next thing you know, he's being stalked by a mountain lion and drinking

[00:29:49] gallons of water out of his boot. Dude, that's going to be a new meme. Thank you. Yeah. Three hour hike. I was thinking the same thing about the pictures. Like this guy looks like

[00:30:04] he's been homeless for four years. I've seen people on the Appalachian Trail better conditioned than he is. And of course, if you know hiking, you know to follow the stream down and you'll eventually find some sort of humanity involved. Not even we talk about anywhere. We'll just follow

[00:30:31] the stream down and lead to a pool pond, a lake or a reservoir or something like that. But now he went up and down, up and down and stalked by mountain lion. Absolutely crazy. And he would yell out every once in a while help I'm over here eating

[00:30:49] berries, drinking water. Somebody finally heard his help cry for help on Thursday afternoon, which was of course nine days later and a canine tracked them down and they escorted him onto the remote

[00:31:04] canyon finally renewed it with the family, which looks like he's been out there for at least like you said Gilligan's Island maybe four or five years. Yeah. It was very convincing. Yeah.

[00:31:15] Look, if I ever get lost in the woods when people find me, I want to look like that guy because then it looks like you needed to be rescued. Right? Right. But some of these other stories we read like that one a couple weeks ago with the fellow

[00:31:28] had sore muscles or something. That guy probably didn't look so bad. This guy though, look at the photos completely legit deserving of he should have gotten the helicopter ride out of the woods. Helicopter of over the view of where they said, hey, this is where you

[00:31:44] should have descended all the way down instead of a send it up. So another one, you know, I'm trying to think if I believe it or not, you know, whatever. If you believe this one or not, you're doubting this story.

[00:31:58] Yeah. God damn media is really getting me these days. So all right. So thank you for tad for suiting a shit. Good stuff. Yeah, at least we didn't drink water out of a boot.

[00:32:14] Yeah, right? I mean, no filtering. But you know that water up in the Sierra Nevada or wherever he was actually pretty nice and clear until you put it in your boot that you've been walking in for days. Okay. Correct.

[00:32:31] Why wouldn't you stay next to that stream, that water source? And why would you put the water in your boot? Why couldn't you just like suck it out of the water,

[00:32:41] put your face in the water? Okay. I just, the more don't make me think about this story anymore because it's not making more sense. It's coming apart. I'm going to get a hold of him. We're

[00:32:52] going to get him on here and just be like, why? Yeah, I want to see the boot. I don't want to smell it, but I just want to see the boot. I want to see what type of booty was wearing.

[00:33:02] Maybe stop with Mike. We'll get him on there. Sounds like a searcher to rescue. No, no. So before we move on though, so now the next time you go out and buy hiking shoes or boots,

[00:33:14] are you going to be thinking about how suitable they would be or not be to drink water out of if you were ever lost when you went out for a three hour hike? Well, I'm going to get the bigger boots because they hold more water.

[00:33:28] So they have a water filter in it. That's the question I'm going to ask. Maybe we can market them like that. Yeah, we got to do it. The Swiss Army knife of boots. Yeah, 100%.

[00:33:39] All right. Onward. I know you're anxious to make traction and talk about your trail magic. Not really. So thank you to the monthly supporters, Darren, Vicki, John, Betsy, Denise, Vanessa, Joseph, Jim, Michael, David and Chris. Thank you guys very much for

[00:33:55] supporting the show. Really appreciate it. Also, thank you to our awesome sponsors, Outdoor Chronicles Photography, Captured Love Story Against Breathtaking Backdrops with Outdoor Chronicles Photography. Molly specializes in adventure couple photography and she'll immortalize your moments amidst the stunning landscapes of the Catskills, Enerondacks and White Mountains.

[00:34:16] She'll craft timeless images that will reflect your unique bond in nature's grand door and bark on an unforgettable photographic journey with outdoor chronicles photography. Don't hesitate to get ahold of Molly on all platforms. Also discover the wilderness with Trailbond Project. Our expert-led hiking and backpacking education programs offered

[00:34:37] unparalleled outdoor experiences, whether you're a beginner or seasoned adventure, join us to learn essential skills exploring stunning trails and connect with nature. Start your journey today with Trailbond Project and a lot of wonders of great outdoors.

[00:34:51] Check them out on social media platforms and they have an online website. So, coffee's mentioned Pink Pony 818 once again ripped us up, odds always. She whacked up from Wittenberg from the moonhaw. It was as I quote, it was a motherfucking grueling bid but she did

[00:35:15] it. Long lunch break at the summit and back down to the Woodland Valley, slowest seven miles ever quick side trip to the cave and it was a fabulous day. She couldn't have done it without more from

[00:35:25] hike on guides. So, Tad, do you know that way? What is it called? Oh yeah, I've been up that way a few times. What is it? The Van Bershotten? Van Ben Shoten. Van Ben Shoten, yes. Yeah. Then

[00:35:40] up then up that a few times now. That's a great hike and no freaking grueling gain, man. Nobody should do it. They should just say that for you, Moe, myself and Pink Pony 818.

[00:36:00] It is. Tracy Rakin did that and she, I got to admit that going anywhere from the moonhaw up to any one of those peaks, Balsam, Cap, Friday, Wittenberg, Cornell is an absolute grueling hike

[00:36:18] with just elevation gain to the masses. Yeah, but there's something about special about going up through that area, the Van Ben Shoten area. Yeah, I could do it every month of the year. I think

[00:36:32] they don't be like my new grid is to do that every month of the year. That and a few other Burroughs range hikes. Like the one Danny and I did is a nice way to get up to Wittenberg.

[00:36:45] Yeah, I can't wait to hear about that actually because you have a little history behind that. Pink Pony, once again, Tracy, thank you for tagging us. Once again, I got to admit that's a

[00:36:58] grueling hike. Next time if you want to go up to Cornell, I would suggest taking that awesome arm going all the way up to the summit of Cornell. Probably one of the greatest hikes

[00:37:10] you'll ever take. And one of the most memorable hikes you'll ever take if you ever go up that arm. There's nothing, I can say there's nothing like it. Oh, I imagine there's other places like that in the Catskills that are just as challenging or

[00:37:27] not. But yeah, I haven't been on that ridge or that arm yet, but it's on Sunday. Sunday? We're going next Sunday. Yeah, so yeah, depending on what the family plans are, I'll go out and do that on Sunday. All right, Ted, what are you drinking?

[00:37:43] Okay. All right. Yeah, I'm just I bailed on the beverage. I ran out of time. You saw I was running into some technical glitches that all my gear was rusty from having the week off. So

[00:37:56] I'm just having a plain old Coca-Cola. Oh, okay. That's different. That's way different. So once again, rum. Well, so I have a spiced rum, a coconut rum, and a Zevia ginger ale. So no sugar. No sugar. Oneonta seems to be the cocktail capital of New York State.

[00:38:22] Hell yeah. Hell yeah. Is that what everybody does in your community on summer nights as they hang out with these rum breweries here? Spiced rum drinks and ciders. We have breweries here. All right, we have some breweries like everybody else, not like Woodstock

[00:38:39] where it's overwhelming and everybody's overtaking the goddamn terrain and areas, but and their burgers are $18 per thing when it's something that's microwave. So there's some good food in Woodstock. Somewhat. For some people maybe, Turkey buys reference. So previous hikes, Ted, why don't you go

[00:39:04] first? All right. So I already mentioned that Danny Davis and I hooked up this past weekend. We met up at the slide parking area. Danny drove us down to Woodland Valley, whereupon we set out on the trail, then went off trail, hiked up Wittenberg. It was fantastic.

[00:39:26] We really ran into some nice woodland areas in Woodland Valley, not a lot of undergrowth. Although we did hit one small stretch at Nettles, mostly that ridge was Nettle-free. There were some nice rock formations. We topped out on Wittenberg and it was fairly crowded

[00:39:46] at the summit. I forget what time we got there, but we did take our time summiting Wittenberg and then Stosh, I don't know if you remember this or not, but after Danny and I left Wittenberg and set off on the causeway over the slide,

[00:40:04] do you know what we did? I had a pair of pruners with me. Danny had some big ass pruners with him and we did trail maintenance along the way. That turns out that's Danny's section of trail. He's the trail maintainer for it. So I was curious.

[00:40:24] Where is this again? It's from Wittenberg to slide. Wow, that's a tough section. You say it's tough, but there's so much foot traffic through there that a lot of that stuff gets moved out of the way or doesn't grow. But I will say Danny's

[00:40:40] very deliberate in deciding what to prune back or not prune back. He doesn't want to over prune it or trim it. But we had a good time doing some trail maintenance on our way over to slide,

[00:40:52] ran into some cool people, talked to him. There's a lot of people getting ready to set up camps along the way. What was somewhat surprising is the spring on slide was just a trickle.

[00:41:05] Wow. Yeah, it was incredible. I don't know when I've seen it like that last, but it's been so long. I don't remember. So we pointed out to some of the folks that were on their way up slide

[00:41:20] to camp that have enough water with you because if you were planning on filling up at the spring, it's going to take you an hour to fill a liter, it seemed.

[00:41:32] So we did that. It was a great hike. I don't know as if you could ever hike that range and not have a great hike. Right. So that was actually two weeks ago. And then this past weekend,

[00:41:43] I did the Cathedral Glen trail out of Pine Island up or Pine Hill up to Bel Air over to Lost Cove but down back to Pine Hill on the, what was it? The Giggle Howellow.

[00:42:01] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. That's over on the western side of Bel Air, right? Or eastern? Sorry. Eastern. Eastern. Yeah. And I'll say one of the more notable things on that hike was all the way up

[00:42:14] from Pine Hill to Bel Air and then heading east almost to the point where you get to Lost Cove but just before it, it appears to be new growth or reforested area, whatever the technical term is,

[00:42:32] but it's just not old growth. And then there comes a point when you're almost to that junction with the Lost Cove trail that it's boom right there, old growth, it's just beautiful and it

[00:42:46] just has such a nice feel to it. So I kind of hung out there for a while, took it in, took some snapshots and then headed down Giggle Howellow and the alleged viewpoints that showed

[00:43:00] up on the map are not worth going out of your way to see or not see what's there. I'll say that the ferns were relatively tall and the trees had overgrown these areas, but it was a good

[00:43:16] hike. Anytime you get out in the woods and you're able to do 11 and a half miles and a few thousand feet of vertical gain is a good day. So that's what I did. I'm going to piggyback on that.

[00:43:29] Those are awesome trails to go on. Number one, because once again you mentioned because of the new growth and old growth, it's pretty crazy to think about that with Bel Air being so close. And of course, that the elevation gain, there's so many over towards

[00:43:48] the, I would say, southeastern side of Bel Air. There's so many logging roads that you would think that there would be so many, it would be gone. Yeah. Well, there was a lot of logging road activity further down once I got out of the

[00:44:07] Lost Cove area. I mean, there was a ton of them and I was thinking what a great place to do some backcountry skiing when they get snow that there were so many and there wasn't much if

[00:44:18] any blowdown over them. But yeah, it was a neat area. I also point out that I never knew this, but at the summit of Bel Air they have that Frisbee Gulf were set up. Ah, Disc Golf.

[00:44:31] Yeah, Disc Golf. And so apparently it starts at the bottom of the mountain, which makes sense. I wasn't down at the bottom, but I thought that would be a neat activity for folks to check out

[00:44:42] on a cooler day, although it wasn't that unbearably hot for me on Saturday. All right, Stosh, why don't you tell us how you spent your week off from work? All right. So I'll backtrack a little bit. Two years ago, Jessica and I went down,

[00:45:01] my wife and I went down to the Shenandoahs to just a hike. And when we hit our first trail that we did, which was, oh God, what was it? I think it was it wasn't Hawksville Mountain.

[00:45:16] I'm giving one sec to actually, I'm a little off track here. But when we hit our first mountain, we ran into some Appalachian trail through hikers and they looked kind of distressed and stuff. So

[00:45:33] we had a bunch of stuff packed for a day hike. This was only a quick two and a half mile hike. So I was like, yeah, take some of my M&Ms, take some of my Sour Patch Kids,

[00:45:46] stuff like that. And they absolutely loved it. So Jessica and I were like, well, why not ask a fellow or person that's done the through hikes what this is, what it's called, and expand on that? So I asked my friend Mo and he said it's called Trail Magic.

[00:46:05] And we went to, we went on a couple of hikes after that. This was Compton Peak, was the first hike we did. And after that, it was all like a dream that we did. And every time

[00:46:22] we went to a different town, we bought more stuff. We gave out Trail Magic to through hikers who absolutely adored it because if you know who through hikes the Appalachian Trail, it's 2100 miles over 2100 miles of just up and down terrain, stuff like that. They can only get so

[00:46:41] many stops going into towns or anything. So to have a Gatorade or to have a Coke or to have like a Mountain Dew or M&Ms like Sour Patch Kids, stuff like that is absolute magic,

[00:46:56] is absolute blessing. And that's what they call it Trail Magic. So two years ago we did that, we decided, you know, 2024, let's do it again. So we went down to Shenandoahs and this time we were

[00:47:09] well prepared on our first hike and absolutely insane that we pull into the parking area of Compton Peak and we see our first through hiker within two minutes. And we look at this guy and we're

[00:47:24] like, Hey, do you want some Trail Magic? And this guy's like a kind of got a heavy accent over its knees. And we're just like, you know, he says kind of yeah and a different kind of tone

[00:47:40] and we're just like, okay, then, you know, he couldn't really understand us, but he's from Wales. And he absolutely was kind of skeptical about it. And we were just like, if we have Gatorade, Mountain Dew, Cola, any sort of Skittles, Starburst, Mountain Dew, and he was absolutely

[00:48:05] overwhelmed and loved it. So let's just understand this. You and your wife, two New Yorkers, you're hiking, you're out on the trail, right? You're not in the parking area, but you're

[00:48:16] now out of the park. This was in the parking area here. Oh, right. Okay, right in the parking area. And this fellow from Wales, presumably now with the heavy accent, you guys yell out to him about

[00:48:30] if he wants any Trail Magic. Yeah. Right. This is a guy who's been out on the trail for months now. 900 miles. Wow. And you offer him some junk food. That's basically what you guys were packing in

[00:48:42] is just a lot of junk food, right? A lot of high, high fru-fru-crust corn syrup stuff. Okay. Were you like the teens up in the Adirondacks? Were you carrying any long guns or

[00:48:55] things like that? Maybe that explains why he was so startled. No, no. I think he was, this was his first doubt of Trail Magic. Really? So he's 900 miles on the trail

[00:49:07] and no one else has offered him Trail Magic up to this point. Correct. Maybe it was something about his appearance that nobody else offered it to him. Maybe this was like, oh well. But so he-

[00:49:19] He was a very like- How old was he? He was in his, his gotta be late 50s, early 60s. Okay. And how rough was he look? Was he unshaved then? Yeah. I wouldn't say that,

[00:49:32] but he looked rough. Pretty grizzly. Pretty grizzly. Not grizzly. There was only, to be honest, there was only like two or three people that we had that were grizzly. This guy was

[00:49:43] Wales Lukash kind of overseas Lukash and he was a fantastic dude. I got it. We wrote down, so we took pictures and wrote down the names of the through hiker, their through hiking names

[00:49:59] of everyone who was, who we've met on the trail. Okay. His name was Taffy. Taffy? Because he loves Taffy, of course. Gotcha. Okay. So you, you stayed, did you stay in the parking area that whole first

[00:50:12] day or did you guys venture down the trail or how's this process play out on day one? Let me tell you, so we sat there in the parking area. It was one through hiker after another. We

[00:50:23] couldn't get out to the hike. Did you set up a station where you like on each one? No, you're just hanging out. Just hanging out. And this is like, so the parking area is where the

[00:50:36] the Appalachian Trail kind of like intersects and it was just one after another and we met, so hold on. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 14 people within that just an hour, two hours of just sitting there. Not even we got out of our car

[00:50:59] and it just started to happen. So they were, they were out early. And it was, it was absolutely phenomenal in seeing some of these people, but once again, all over the place, Houston, North

[00:51:11] Carolina, Canada, we got a southbounder. The only few, the person, the only person that we know and that other people know that is going southbound from Maine to Georgia. And they were, they were

[00:51:27] overwhelmed. They were like, no way. This is, this can't be real. And like I said, most of them, I would say 96, 96, that's a little odd, 95% received their first bout of trail magic on the trail. Why don't you do 95.7? 95.7. Yeah, make it sound very scientific. So here you are.

[00:51:51] These people northbound are 900 miles in and most of them, 95.7. No trail magic so far. And here I thought it was such a big thing for people, yeah, to go out at these intersecting junction

[00:52:06] points, road crossings, et cetera. And I know this one fellow who used to post on Instagram how he would go out with coolers, pop up canopies, chairs, a flat top grill and just yeah, and literally with

[00:52:24] steaks and hot dogs and chicken and he would put on like this big buffet for people coming through. And here you are. These folks are 900 miles in and nobody's offered them anything, not even like some junk food like you guys had, right? Skittles and so.

[00:52:42] And you know, we've met some really cool people. Jessica is wanting to do, she doesn't want to do through hiking. She said definitely I could do this. She's like, you know, you could,

[00:52:54] you could do this. I know you can, but she couldn't do it because of, you know, the personal hygiene and stuff like that. So she's asking the ladies, how do you do this? Do you shave your, like weirdly weird odd questions, do you shave your armpits?

[00:53:08] How do you handle your hair? Because, you know, your hair sweats, guys don't have hair and it doesn't sweat, doesn't collect, you know. So what intel did she find out? Are the women shaving their legs, shaving their armpits? Every six, every, every,

[00:53:23] God, what do women say? Every, like 60 days is when they shave. And you know, or until it becomes irritating. Yeah. And, you know, and I was listening and I'm curious, you know, women have such a more

[00:53:42] difficult time on trail because of course, you know, guys, we can go off three feet and take a pee, nothing. Stosh, it's 150 feet, not an inch shorter than 150 feet off trail. That's what the DEC said. That's the wreck. You got to be 150 feet.

[00:53:58] That's camping. That's camping other stuff. It doesn't say that you have to dispose of place. You're violating DEC regulation 360.2 F subdivision C small letter I. You can be fined or imprisoned for that activity. This is Virginia, whole another place. So your wife, Jessica speaks to the female

[00:54:22] through hikers and does that reinforce her feeling that she's at this point in her life, she's not cut out for the long through hike? Yeah, I get that. It's like the couple, maybe like two or three days, yes.

[00:54:39] Yeah. But she can't handle, you know, a week of a not showering and stuff. So the folks you ran into that again, they're 900 miles into their several thousand mile through hike. What was their mental state where they most of them still into it gung ho,

[00:55:02] you know, looking forward to continuing on or were there some people who were, you know, this is not what I thought it was going to be. I'm not into this. What was, what mental

[00:55:14] images or impressions were these folks relating to you? 100% were still into it. Wanted to finish. And you know, to be honest, when you guys didn't have that heat wave yet, but we did. We had up in the mountains, we were around like, I would say 25 to 3000 feet

[00:55:37] still had like 90 degree temperatures. We had the heat wave down near us. Yeah. Well, it did get hot and humid here last week, but I won't say it was hotter or more humid

[00:55:48] than where you were because you were in the south. But how were these folks dealing with it? Were they adjusted to that climate? Yeah. Most of them, as you see from the pictures on social media were hiking in their underwear. Oh, their underwear? Really?

[00:56:06] You made that comment. Don't act like you were surprised. Yeah, I kind of, yeah. I guess I did say that. I guess when you want to wash your clothes, like your only pair of clothes you're hiking with, it's pretty simple if it's just a

[00:56:19] pair of underwear that you can get wet and then wring out. And let's bring this out that the peak we visited was 3,200 feet with no breeze at all. And we had, it took us, you know, Jessica, of course, it takes a little bit more time. She's

[00:56:38] not as conditioned as I am, but it took us two hours to get to the summit. And that was 1.2 miles and 600 feet again, pretty significant amount of gain. But yeah. 600 feet and 1 point how many miles? 1.2 miles. That's okay. I'm going to say that's medium. That's medium.

[00:57:02] It's not like you're on the devil's path doing that. But in 800 and 800 Jesus and 89 degree weather, no 100% humidity, no wind. It was tough. Yeah. Well, when it's hot enough and humid enough, 10 feet of vertical gain is a lot.

[00:57:21] So what about how much were any of these folks like carrying too much gear? Did you still have to see come across people that were just like overloaded with gear or had they not

[00:57:32] at all? Yeah. It was actually surprising because, you know, I, to be honest, when we, when we hiked, I had the little pack that I take to work that carries my lunch and we could carry

[00:57:47] four Gatorades, three Cokes and three Mountain Dews. I carried that and I also carried the Starburst, the M&M's and stuff. So I carried majority of stuff. Jessica carried the first aid kit carried like that's disposable waste stuff. She didn't really carry much,

[00:58:05] but my pack was probably around 40 pounds because of all this stuff. But they were like, yeah, yeah, I'm weighing about 23 to 25 pounds. I'm like, for a freaking through hike to mained and they're like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's nothing. And then they're like,

[00:58:24] I've been cutting down ever since. I'm like, are you freaking serious? And like, you know, my day pack is 23 pounds without water. And it just, I mean, is that just me? My cycle?

[00:58:39] Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I back in my backpacking days, I was pretty good at just getting down to the bare minimum and not bringing any excess gear with me. And I'll say that as good as

[00:58:51] I was or thought I was at that, I still didn't hike in my underwear. So But were you hiking in those like ultra light? Like that's crazy for a through hike, you know, 20 days. Back when I used to do a lot of backpacking, nothing was

[00:59:08] ultra light by today's standards. We were still using external frame packs. Okay. So that gear was heavy, your pack and its contents were heavy. And there's kind of an art to

[00:59:25] bringing along just what you need and getting by with what you bring with you. So let's ask you, did you guys go to the same trailhead every day? Or did you move around? Move around. So the Shenandoahs are kind of cut into like one thirds, like thirds.

[00:59:46] So there's a part where there's front roll to Lorae, which is you can do that, the area. And then there's Lorae to, oh, shit, Elkton. And then it's Elkton to like, there's another area beyond

[01:00:02] that Lydia or something. So it's like, it's cutting the thirds and the skyline drive is once again, you can even get into the Shenandoahs and you can drive the whole thing and just see beautiful scenic overlooks throughout the whole thing. But it doesn't intersect with the

[01:00:18] the Adirondack or the Appalachian Trail the whole time. It'll, you'll have to find those points yourself and kind of this dissect where you're going to be meeting with the

[01:00:29] through hiker. So we did it in thirds. We did it the first day was, was part of the trail. The second day was part of the trail. The third day was part of the trail. So you were down there for

[01:00:38] three days handing out trail magic? Yes. And did you, you had mentioned to me previously that there's like a heat map or something that shows where the through hiking bubble is? Yep. That's pretty cool. I gotta post that. Yeah. And did you use that to ascertain,

[01:00:58] you know, the these spots where you wanted to be to run into the bubble of hikers or did you just randomly bump into the people without trying to predict where you would hit the peak flows?

[01:01:13] We randomly did it. It was just, it was just, you know, it was just our time that we wanted to go to Shenandoahs and we were gonna do it a couple weeks before but

[01:01:25] something came up that made us go like two weeks later. We'll talk about that later. Okay. So you're down there for your vacation three days, you're focusing on handing out some trail

[01:01:38] magic. Your first day is characterized by me. You have a lot of junk food in your pack. And junk, junk, drinks. Gotcha. Were they cold drinks or were you feeding people? 100% cold. They were ice cold. Stone cold, ice cold. Everybody loved it. Oh my God, people,

[01:01:59] people grabbed it and put it on their face and then drank it. It was disgusting. How'd you keep it cold? I had two, once again in my little lunch pack,

[01:02:09] I had two ice packs that we kept cold and then we had a cooler in the car that had at least two to three bags of ice that we would kind of resupply as we went throughout

[01:02:19] the trail. So it was worth it. Oh my God, I wish people would do this all the time. It was so worth it. Yeah, well you can. I was checking out this heat map and it looks like the through hiking bubble

[01:02:33] is gonna be coming through New York State very soon, early part of July from what they forecast on this bubble map. Yeah. And let me point out, Ted, that another summit is doing something June 30th. Well, another summit, my friend Henry de la Vega who is with

[01:02:53] another summit is doing something June 30th. So I will post that in there for the through hikers that are coming through the New York area. So sorry, go ahead. Your turn. That's fine. So after the first day, did you guys package up again with the same provisions

[01:03:12] as the day before? Did you change your mix of trail hiking magic? Nope. So every day we have a different spot that we camp at, kind of in that camp but we stay at. So Front Royal was the first

[01:03:28] place. We had a little cottage there that we stayed there, that we stayed there last year, that was absolutely phenomenal. The second day we went to Loray, we stayed at a motel which was

[01:03:42] amazing place, didn't have great Wi-Fi so of course I couldn't look up a lot of stuff that I wanted to do for a second day. But we went down to a local food line. I don't know if you've

[01:03:53] ever heard of food line when you're down south? No. It's like a Hannaford sort of area. We resupplied with Gatorade and some Coca-Cola because that was the big hit. Apparently everybody loved the cold Gatorade and cold Coca-Cola. And then we of course went back to the motel

[01:04:15] and supplied a freaking, just smashed them up with the amount of ice that they had into our cooler, kept it cold their whole night and then redid the same aspect that we did the first day on the second day. So other than the ice cold Coca-Cola being

[01:04:32] hiker favorite, what else were their favorites? The Gatorade. Oh, the Gatorade was a huge hit. Yeah. And the junk, what they like the junk food hikers were into that? They loved the Starburst because of just they've been on free dried meals

[01:04:52] and some of the people were getting sick and tired of chocolate because they have high calories and high stuff. So they just loved the Starburst, even though they were somewhat melted in my pack because of course we were hitting.

[01:05:05] We were hitting, we hit the second day, we hit Hawksville Mountain, which is the second highest peak or the first highest peak in the Shenandoahs. And at the top it was 89 degrees. Yeah. She had a breeze. Nice. Very little breeze. Oh really? Damn. Yeah. It was very,

[01:05:27] it's very, very disgusting. We hit, the cool thing is we talked to some forest rangers and they were very positive. You know, it was really crazy how they hiked up to the top of Hawksville Mountain with all their gear that they had. And the funny thing is

[01:05:42] my gear was heavier than their gear and she was like, Jesus, what is wrong with you? I'm like, it's for some people, baby. Yeah. Well, you're from New York. We do things differently up here.

[01:05:56] I told her we saved people's lives. We don't freaking let them die. Yeah. So you told us about this fellow Taffy from Wales. Any other notable through hikers you ran into? You want to share

[01:06:08] their story? Do you want me to share all of them? No, just hit some of the notable ones. Tell us about the ones that you were impressed with or had a good backstory and then the next

[01:06:20] question is going to be, did you run into any folks who are like, how did this person make it 900 miles? So start off telling us about the hits, the people that you thought, wow, this is a cool

[01:06:32] person. They're really doing this and it's a great story. And then we'll go into the guy who set out for three hours and ended up through hiking the AT. So there was a lot of awesome people in

[01:06:46] the first day. Everybody was positive. Everybody was basically interested in finishing through hike. I gave them some advice that Pennsylvania is not the best. It's absolutely insane with a bunch

[01:07:02] of rocks and stuff. But everybody was was ecstatic about doing it. We met like two or three people that were hiking on the trail and we're hiking on the road because they have some sort of injury. Some

[01:07:15] person rolled their ankle, had their ankle hurt. His name was Hobbit from North Carolina. And there was also a woman named Half Boot, or Noite. We didn't get her name, but she was,

[01:07:31] we met her on the road too as well. And we were very curious of why they were hiking on the road, because of course they didn't want to kill themselves on the trail. So other than that,

[01:07:45] a bunch of cool people from Canada all the way down to Florida, mostly Florida, Iowa. At the end of the day, we met three people who were awesome, tortoise, Wrangler and Lighthouse,

[01:07:59] a guy that his name was Wrangler. They were all from Michigan. He loved snakes and he said he dealt with at least 20 rattlesnakes in the Shenandoahs. And I'm glad he freaking said that because that,

[01:08:18] of course, gets off the anxiety of my wife. And she starts going insane saying she really is scared shitless now because there are rattlesnakes. But you said that was on the last day. Yeah. Well, no, no, no, this was the first day. I'm sorry. The first day. Damn.

[01:08:35] The first day, the end of the first day. And I'm just like, great. Thanks a lot, Wrangler. By the way, they also have, not to mention, they have in Michigan, they have a YouTube channel called Trail Gospel. Trail Gospel. So these three people.

[01:08:49] Can you think of what that's about? What? Um, is that a micro brewery? Trail Gospel brewery? Yes. I'll spread the word. Trail Gospel brewery. Brewery. Yes. Yes. Good stuff. Um, God, these three guys are three hikers from Michigan. They started out together.

[01:09:13] Actually, it was two guys and a lady. Okay. Fantastic. Tortoise, who was a woman, Wrangler and Lighthouse. Cool stuff. YouTube, Trail Gospel, maybe a micro brewery, maybe something else. Maybe something Jesus is. Yeah. Did you run across any like parent-children teams? You know, father, son,

[01:09:38] father, daughter, mother, daughter, mother, son, family hiking through? That's day three. Day three. Yeah. So tell us about the family matchups that you ran into. We'll talk about that. Day two. I'll talk about day two. All right. So let's go to day two. Tell us about day two.

[01:09:59] It's more Gatorade, Coke and Gittles. So day two was not, we did, we still did two, three hikes. We did three hikes, but a lot of people were found on the Appalachian Trail where there were more found at the wayside, stoon or wayside is.

[01:10:18] No, wayside. I'm going to write that down. Wayside. Tell me what it is. So that's kind of like a kind of offsite camping area, picnic area. Also, they also sometimes have like kind of like a shops shop at, you know,

[01:10:35] you can get some ice cream or Gatorades or Coke, but most of them are picnic areas. And we found most of the through hikers at this area because, you know, they were exhausted from

[01:10:47] the day as we went on towards our hikes the next day was even hotter. So at the second hike, which was I believe Stony Clove, was 91 degrees at the summit, at the summit.

[01:11:05] So this was 3,300 feet. And it was crazy. So we kind of, we didn't see many people on the trail and we met more people at the wayside and stuff like that. Were the people at the wayside in their underwear?

[01:11:26] No, they actually weren't. The guy passed out on the side. In his underwear or did he have his clothes on? He had shorts. He had shorts. Okay. It was pretty cool. We met, you know, there's two way sides and we met a good amount of people.

[01:11:44] It was only like 13, 14 people that we met that day, not like the first day. The first day we met like 27 was pretty crazy. But the second day was a little bit less and we didn't take

[01:11:56] much selfies with them because they were all in one area, congested in one area. And they were very nice. They were very happy to see Trail Magic to get some Gatorade and to get some,

[01:12:10] a lot of them. You know, the funny thing is the first two days they didn't like Mountain Dew, but the third day they did it. The first day was all Coca-Cola and Gatorade.

[01:12:22] Gotcha. So your pack with the ice in it or the coolers in it, pretty good size pack. You got a lot of beverages in there, a lot of Gatorades and and plus my own water too as well. So I had my bladder, my three liter bladder

[01:12:44] in there plus with a Powerade and a Nailgain bottle on the side. So did you offer these folks anything alcoholic? No, they already had their stuff. Oh yeah. Most of them were smoking weed when they got there.

[01:13:00] Is it legal in the Shenandoahs? It is Virginia. It is. Oh, no, wait, no, no, no. We got told that doing that in the National Park is a federal offense. That's yeah, that makes sense because the feds haven't legalized cameras. Right? Yeah. We were just like, holy

[01:13:20] shit. And he's just like, we can't do it. We're going to get nagged. And actually, this was funny because this we got for Vermont and he had like a big American flag on the side that says

[01:13:32] W. Woke AF. I was laughing so hard. That's it, third day. That was something else. I was laughing so hard. Excellent. So here you are the second day. It's more of the same. Any other memorable hikers on that second day?

[01:13:51] So a lot of the people we didn't really talk to so much because there was so many at that wayside. But one of the guys would you do just slow down the car and throw some skittles and coax Adam and

[01:14:06] speed up and drive away or just like, here you go. Cracky. I mean out of my state. 100% were white people. We didn't see one color person on the trail, which is pretty crazy. I thought but understandable. I never see very many color people out hiking. If I do,

[01:14:28] I'm overwhelmed. So it's fantastic. But you know, the wayside we pulled into just to go to the bathroom early and they were all out by the pavilion just sitting there and they kept coming

[01:14:41] through. And this was I think probably 14 to 15 people that we saw at this pavilion and then a bunch of others along the way. And it's pretty cool. Once again, one hot day, very hot day.

[01:14:59] It never got cooler and it sucked because once again you're using water, you're sweating like crazy. And there was very like the names of the people that are on the trail are very interesting.

[01:15:18] Oh, yeah. So tell us some of these interesting names you told us a couple already. So what other ones stick out in your mind or memory? So there was Pyro. Pyro. It's very good of Fires, of course. Cool guy named Papa Chin and his son who wasn't named,

[01:15:38] who did the Shenados with him. Pretty cool. Zorro from Canada we named. We try to bring these like names to remember who they were. We called them a skinny white dude. Not after eating all those Skittles. He wasn't skinny anymore.

[01:15:59] Right. Merrill, who is the mushroom guy who loves mushroom and other stuff, who was the only southbonder we met. And he said that he is been the only southbonder that has been from Maine. So I'm guessing of course, are these psychedelic mushrooms?

[01:16:21] I'm guessing this guy was a pretty good dude. You know what I'm saying, bro? Every other word was bro. He was cool. He's cool as heck. I love them. Mike Redosing his way to the south end of the trail. Correct. All right.

[01:16:41] All right. Next, what do you got next? Okay. So you want to talk about day three or? I got to admit, day three was probably the best. Oh yes. Why is that? Why did day three

[01:16:53] turn out to be the best of the three days of trail magic? Did you finally on day three pull a rabbit out of the hat? We kind of did. The best was the breeze. It was a little bit

[01:17:08] cooler. There was a breeze so we could hike a little bit more. We hiked along the trail. The first person we met was right when we entered the Shenandoah National Park and it was sitting on the side

[01:17:21] of a guardrail and his name was Doc. He was from Front Royal. He was an actual doctor. And was he going solo northbound? No. He was actually with his father. Oh yeah. And his father was about three miles behind him doing a little bit slower because he

[01:17:41] injured himself and I was just like, wait a minute. Why didn't you help your dad when he was injured? Yeah. And that was a long pause. He said he was a little bit too far ahead of him.

[01:17:55] Were they meeting up at night or were they just distancing themselves? Doc was sitting waiting for his dad who is called Padre. Did you ever meet up with Padre? We did. We actually saw him at a, you know,

[01:18:12] so the Skyline Drive has probably over 30, 40 overlooks. So anybody and anybody could do this shit and enjoy it. So I suggest that if you are on the East Coast, you do the Shenandoah National

[01:18:28] Park. Pay 30 bucks. If you don't want to hike, it doesn't matter. Do it. You can look at these beautiful overlooks and you will meet two hikers. We met Padre at this viewpoint

[01:18:42] that he was just standing there and we're like, hey, do you want any trail magic? He's like, hey, yeah, yeah. I'm meeting my son and I'm like, is your son Doc? And he's like, oh, yeah. He's like,

[01:18:53] oh, when we go into it. And it was absolutely insane. It was the coolest thing. So how old was Padre? I'm guessing in his late 50s, kind of like you. I'm older than my late 50s pal. Come on, you don't know it.

[01:19:11] In his son, stop hitting on me. That's kind of like, you know, my wife is right in the other room, man. And Doc is how old? It was really young. I got a dad. And so Padre's son, Doc, is a legit doc like you mean a medical doctor?

[01:19:29] Yes. And the father who's in his late 50s is injured. Yes. Okay. We thought about this. Yeah. Right. And there's three miles separating the two and the son basically doesn't care about the old man's well-being.

[01:19:46] So I guess what he said that Padre said that his son sent him a message saying, don't do the trail. Just walk the skyline drive just the road. And he's like,

[01:20:00] you will be better off. And that was the whole situation. Gotcha. I was laughing at that as well. I hear that a lot of people start out doing the AT and they're not hooked up with a group or

[01:20:15] with a couple people or with anyone when they start, but along the way, they develop a trail family. Did you run into that? We ran into several, you know, so it's very crazy because they have trail families.

[01:20:32] But of course everybody has a different pace than they hike. So you have a trail family and you will meet up at a certain point in the day or in the night and such. And it's tough to really

[01:20:50] figure out because everybody, like you said, take your own hike. And Ted, I guarantee you and I when we get on a hike, we'll have a different pace. I'm a fast hiker, but when I'm like... I'm going to so kick your ass when we hike. Okay? I'm just...

[01:21:09] What about Danny? What about... Danny and I, we don't compete. We don't have egos. We become one with the mountain. And it doesn't matter. But you, like you just told me, you're going to hike faster than me and I'm not going to let it happen.

[01:21:24] Okay. I'm going to go out. I'm going to crush you. Okay. Back to trail magic. We were at day three. We were talking about trail families. I'm going to go back to my unanswered question. Were there any through hikers that when you either initially saw them

[01:21:42] or started talking to them, you thought to yourself, this person is not going to make it? I'm surprised they've come this far. Hmm. Question. I don't think so. Really? 900 miles into it, you got to be committed.

[01:22:00] Yeah. And it kind of already had weeded out those who were through hike worthy from those who were. Yeah. And so do you have any idea whether you were ahead of the bubble, behind the bubble and the fat of the bubble?

[01:22:16] I have a feeling that we were right in the fat of the bubble. Really? Yeah. It was, we hit, I get it. You know, I wish I could, I could do the math, but you know, we hit, hold on. One, two, the first day was one,

[01:22:33] two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 21 people the first day. Second day was two, four, six, eight, 10, 12, 15 people the second day. The third day was Jesus. This was absolutely insane. Two, four, six, eight, 10, 12, 14, 15, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, 27 people in this

[01:23:08] and the third day. So you got to admit that was a big bubble. Yeah, but you misspoke because you said you met Jesus on the second day, not the third day. Hey Zeus, it's Hey Zeus by the way. Okay.

[01:23:21] No, that was Pyro. Okay. I got, I'm looking at my notes. It's all just scribbly scratch. Okay. Anything strike you other than folks hiking in their underwear? What did you take note of their gear, how they dressed the boots or the foot where they were wearing anything?

[01:23:40] Strike you as unusual. To be honest, everybody was kind of all in the same area. Like it was pretty crazy to say that everybody was well under 30 pounds with their pack weight. Everybody had a plan. Everybody had a trail family, such like that.

[01:24:06] On the third day we hit an awesome, I got to admit every human being needs to visit this area. It's called Black Rock and it's just a volcanic area of it looks like and just people dumped these cut rock all over this. It's just a slide of rock

[01:24:28] and we met, I think it was like eight through hikers there and they didn't believe us that we had geomodric that we had cold coax pepsis, coax, I'm sorry, coax mountain do's Gatorades.

[01:24:43] And they were one of the ladies was looking at us. We're like, are you serious? This has got to be you're lying. And we're like, absolutely not. I opened up my pack and she's like, oh my

[01:24:54] God, and she started crying. And she was just like, this is amazing what have we done? And this is why Jessica and I do this and Jessica had a moment of like, wow, this is totally overwhelming

[01:25:09] of what we do. And halfway through their hike, especially in this heat of where once again it was hitting 90 degrees up in the mountains, we were up 3600 feet. That's crazy. So well, kudos to Jessica for hanging out and doing this with you and braving the

[01:25:32] rattlesnakes and all of that. So you're down there, you do this for three days. Tell us what you plan to do differently the next time you go out doling out trail magic. Good question. I don't think we nailed it this year. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:25:51] Everything was just nice, ice cold. Last year, we did it a little bit earlier and it was a little bit cooler. We could tolerate more hikes. We could do four hikes a day where this year was

[01:26:05] two to three hikes because of the heat. But it's unexpected all the time. And I think Jessica, once again, Jessica and I are a fantastic team that every day we unload, we reload, we get up at certain times. We nail it, we hit breakfast, we hit the trail.

[01:26:31] I'm sorry to say once again, it's bringing a lot of emotions to me. It feels it's deep, but we do this for the through hikers and we do this for them. That's cool. That's cool. It's tough to think about. It's crazy. I don't know why anybody

[01:26:48] don't cry on me, though. Be a man. Man up, bro. Try it. Try it. Yeah. But now I'm going to point out because remember, I suggested, I texted you and suggested that you have Jessica come on the show tonight.

[01:27:04] I did. She's out with my goddaughter and she's doing swimming and ice cream, so she's having a better time. All right. Sounds good. You want to move on from trail magic? Well, we have Catskills news next and then we got all this stuff that I took

[01:27:23] out of the canister. But we're running long on time and the best is yet to come and that's the survey and the drawing. Yeah, so I'll, Ted, thanks again for asking the question with the trail magic. That was great. Catskills news volunteer 3,500 club pads stewards available

[01:27:45] within Valley and Slide Mountain. Great time. Catskills trail crew of course is doing stuff recently around the Huckleberry Loop and stuff to get a hold of Matt Spence or Charlie Gettle. Catskills Mountain Club is looking for volunteers. The Catskills visitor center is looking for

[01:28:05] volunteers, Charlie Rose Trail Crews, Bradley Mountain Fire Towers. Also, if you want stickers, get a hold of me. Free stickers or go to Camp Catskills. Free stickers. 100% free. Come on. Can't go wrong with some free stickers. Especially if they're well done because

[01:28:27] lack of range and the fire towers. What else do you want? Well, I think you need to update it and put the mountain lion on this. Yeah, that's right. Next batch you run just like that dude

[01:28:37] out west drinking the water out of his boot with the mountain lion watching over him for 10 days. Stocked by freaking mountain lions, man. I understand because I feel the same moment when I'm going to go out and slide mountain. Gotcha. All right. You want to talk

[01:28:53] about the stuff I pulled out of the canister, number 57? Or you want to fast forward to the drawing and the survey? No, not at all. Thank you, Tad, for doing great research, of course, with

[01:29:08] the Catskills. So once again, the 3,500 Club does a canister every month about the Catskills, of course, and they came up with a course, a bunch of different cool things. Once again, Peek-a-moose road trail it permits. Now, if you want to climb Peek-a-moose mountain from

[01:29:27] the eastern side, sorry, southern, southern, is it south eastern, right? Well, it all depends where you're standing. But I would say it's the eastern, in terms of Peek-a-moose, it's kind of like a south eastern approach to it. Yeah. Yeah, if you want to

[01:29:46] climb from that area and just do Peek-a-moose, you will have to get a permit because of course, the beautiful Peek-a-moose blowhole that has been, of course, a havoc in the past five to seven years. So effective May 15th through the September 15th, seven days a week,

[01:30:08] the fee cuts are administration costs, which is consistent with DEC use areas. $10 permit, six people are covered under one permit, which is not that too bad. I got to admit two permit is attached to a single car and must be displayed on that car. So we will post,

[01:30:28] of course, the how to obtain it via reserve America or by calling who the hell calls any place anymore, 1-800-456-CAMP. Nobody calls anymore and everybody doesn't online. Now the fine for no permit, Ted, is $250. It's not too bad. They can afford it.

[01:30:51] It says up to $250. So if you're a nice person, you might get off for less than that. What I thought is noteworthy is first of all, they've taken away most of the parking along

[01:31:05] Peek-a-moose road. There used to be previously a number of pull offs. Some of those pull offs were good points of departure for bushwhacking in that area. But now they've got jersey barriers

[01:31:18] and signage and all sorts of other things that keep you from parking at those old pull offs. So be mindful of that and be cognizant of the fact that you just can't go on a whim now

[01:31:33] over to Peek-a-moose and think you're going to park there and hike it. You need to buy a permit in advance, which on a weekend is probably going to be sold out. It's not bad. I got to admit. I mean, I've done it on Tuesday. So go from Denning,

[01:31:49] which is the table, to Table Peek-a-moose. Absolute amazing hike. I got to admit beautiful viewpoints, summit table and Peek-a-moose. Peek-a-moose is not that difficult from table. So do that or get a permit and support all the local areas. So we also have

[01:32:13] 3,500 club candidates of 2024. So once again, I was involved with the club, but I really never really got extensively in it. I never understood anything. So Ted, did you do anything about this? Well, I look at this and they have the Catskill 3,500 club candidates for 2024. It says the

[01:32:40] following candidates were nominated and approved in accordance with the procedures outlined in the bylaws. So the canister gives you who your officers for 2024 and who the directors are for 2024. And these are people who are involved with the club on an executive level. And

[01:33:05] if you've got something that you want to suggest or raise as a concern, I'm sure you can reach out to any one of them. I recognize a number of those names. Oh yeah, definitely. Michael supports

[01:33:19] the show. Jack Walker is the director in the show and he helps out to show a lot. Of course, Lord's Senora, Julian McGuire, they have all been on the show. Chris, I have him on the show. Jake

[01:33:34] Haseley is of course Bill Winterbottom. They're both with SAR. Colleen Hart Castle is with the volunteer organization. Jim Voughton, we all know who Jim is. Canomand. Mary used to be a 3,500 block president. David White, I don't know, Catskill God basically. But a bunch of these people,

[01:34:02] of course, if you plan to attend the meeting, vote in person or if you can do it online. So I will post that in these show notes. Okay, or scan the QR code. Yeah, or and well, pay your Catskill

[01:34:21] Club membership dues and get this emailed to you every month. Correct. And you know, be with the club. If you pay your dues, this goes 100% around the Catskills, all around the Catskills.

[01:34:36] When I was with the club, we did donations to the Friends of the Feathered and Furry. We did donations all over the place. So it just doesn't sit there and get accumulated and goes to somebody. It goes to organizations around the Catskills 100%. And in addition to that,

[01:34:54] and I think this is really important, is the Catskill 3,500 Club is your voice in Albany. True voice with the DEC, if you're a hiker in the Catskills, they're a recognized association that has standing and is recognized by the state government. So they can communicate and do

[01:35:21] communicate and basically lobby just as the Catskill Center does for the preservation of the Catskills. So that is definitely a good thing. You want to talk about the class of 2024? No, you do it. No, all right. This is you. This is you. You're getting tired? All right. So

[01:35:41] one of the things they had in this recent edition of the canister is they compared the members who recently, the people who became Catskill 3,500 Club members in 2024 versus 2023. And so actually there was 13 fewer members in 2024 new members. So 257 members brought in

[01:36:09] in 2023. Now it's 244 for 2024. Winter members is 68 for 2023 and 6 less 62 for 2024. More interesting is they note the top five favorite first climb in order. Slide was number one. Panther, number two. Hunter was the number three favorite first climb. Then Indian Head, number four. And Windom High Peak

[01:36:45] apparently must be folks, a lot of folks pick Windom High Peak as their first climb in the Catskills on paper that looks easy. Right? Finishing climbs. Now I was, I found very interesting that this is where people finished up their 3,500 list. And the most common finishing mountain

[01:37:11] is Panther. I thought that was interesting. I thought with the views, giant ledge, all of that. I thought Panther would be closer to the top of people's 3,500 experience as opposed to saving

[01:37:24] it for last. I know for my daughter and I, it was our third mountain in the Catskills. Number two was Blackhead 3, Balsam again. That's kind of surprising. I thought Balsam would be high.

[01:37:37] That's all the winter climbs, man. Yeah. I guess you are right. And I'm seeing that now that this is like people have to get in that winter climb to finish off their list. So not surprisingly, Catterskill High Peak was in the fifth slot for... Wow. Interesting.

[01:37:57] But apparently people think, oh, it's a bushwhack. Ted, what was your first climb in the Catskills? Slide. Slide? Mine was Balsam. Yeah. Well, I can't forget Balsam. Balsam is absolutely stunning. Yeah. Well, I'll never forget my... I remember all those first round in the Catskills and I remember

[01:38:20] many if not most or maybe even all of the other over 500 have lost count these days. So let's move... What's that? Move on to this absolute stunning. What? Jim's report? Yeah. Okay. Unbelievable. So Jim, Jim, a mountain who is the canister

[01:38:45] maintainer in the Catskills, he does this tabulation for the DEC every year, counting for the number of people who sign in in the canisters, which mountains, etc. So canister sign ends for 2022 was 14,980 names signed into the log book in 2022. That's like the size of a small city.

[01:39:18] Right. Yeah. How many... Yeah. Is that how big it is? Yep. Okay. So it's like the whole community of only on the signed in, right? In 2022 in the canister books. And then in 2023, it clicked up to 15,288. Jim doesn't give us the data for 2024. Presumably that's because his

[01:39:43] accounting period corresponds to a calendar year where I think the data that we just clicked off for the class of 24. 308 people more. Yeah, it's not. So... Not bad. Yeah. Jim also points out that

[01:40:00] about 50% of the people who hike the cats will sign in to the trailhead registers and the other 50% don't. He notes that when he first started doing this canister counting in 2008, there was about 2,000 sign-ins and now as I've noted were over 15,000.

[01:40:24] Yeah. And just like 15 years. So let's see. The most popular month for canister sign-ins is May. Did that surprise you? May is the most popular month? Not really before nettles. Yeah. Well, I guess that somewhat. But why when in October? November? Yeah, right. Right. Right. So...

[01:40:51] March saw the fewest sign-ins with 956. Yeah. So, Jim does point out that May is a month of bird nesting in the Catskill. So be conscientious of that when you hike in May.

[01:41:07] Yeah. He also points out in a separate entry that he made in the canister that you need to leash your dog. Low-lying nest and fledglings are easily easy prey for predators, including an unleashed dog. He says I've watched several round nests destroyed by unleashed dogs while stewarding at

[01:41:29] a fire tower. Most dogs will naturally chase after flinging, fledglings, etc. So... I'd like to point out that my friend Darren White had an awesome, kind of like a little situation with his dog that he had a wraparound leash around his waist for

[01:41:51] his dog to get a certain amount of distance on the trail and to kind of keep it leashed. And I was blown away by how awesome that the dog went up the trail and kind of got grabbed to

[01:42:04] a certain amount of distance. And Darren, awesome, share your experience however you want to with me and we'll share that with the people because it was absolutely incredible. Well, Jim is collecting all this data about canister sign-ins. I just think that's

[01:42:25] crazy that it's over a thousand people a month. So you break that down into a weekend that's a few hundred every weekend that are bushwhacking and signing in. Who do you think the fewest saw the sign-ins? Come on, this is an easy guess.

[01:42:43] The fewest? What? The mountain that saw the fewest? Yeah. That's probably Rocky. Of course. Yeah. Nobody likes that peak. I love that peak. Yeah, Rocky. Rocky's a fun hike. I've hiked in many directions. It's a good time.

[01:43:00] Yeah. I've actually bumped into Jim a couple of times up on Rocky. Nice. Wow, what a freaking crazy instance that you do. Bumping to anybody up there. No, when you go to Rocky? Never hit anybody. Seriously? You were on the weekends though.

[01:43:19] Yeah. Although my hike this past weekend, 11 and a half miles, I only ran into three people at the ski area and then the rest of the hike. I was by my lonesome. All right, so of all the other

[01:43:33] things in this month's edition of the Catskill Canister, I did pull out this one post or presentation, Steve Aaron who's been on the show who I met at the Catskill Expo. They had some of his photos

[01:43:51] in the canister and let me tell you that they are remarkable. He takes some really good shots. You ought to check out the canister and look at the photos on the canister because they're higher resolution than you're going to see on Instagram or elsewhere. I'm going to assume

[01:44:08] that Steve has got a website because he sells his photos, so if you really want some high quality stuff, check out Steve Aaron and his Catskill photos. He has a website and I will

[01:44:21] post it on the show notes and he will be on July 16th. Oh, he's coming on? Yeah. Oh yeah, he's going to talk about his recording or his experiences getting these photos of the Catskill.

[01:44:38] Hmm. All right, I'm going to join in on that show. Definitely. I'm pretty sure you will. You will join in on every show. Well, I don't know. My contract's up for renewal, so my people have been speaking to yours while you were away handing out skittles.

[01:44:54] Hopefully you didn't spend all of my salary on junk food for through hikers. We ready for the forecast? We ready for the forecast? Hot and humid. Hot and humid. Let's

[01:45:04] move on to the next. What mountain are we going to go with? For the forecast? Yeah. Oh, I don't know. Pick any mountain you want. You didn't pull up a forecast? Oh no, I didn't. I'm trying to.

[01:45:15] Sorry. Let's go with Big Indian. It's got to be the weirdest mountain. The weirdest mountain in the freaking Catskills. So Friday, God, we have a beautiful day. Clear skies all throughout

[01:45:31] the day. 55 to a high of 61, a low of 50 with a wind chill of a low of 50, 20 degrees maximum, and that's at night. Saturday. Once again, this is a little out of out of date because we're doing

[01:45:49] this recording Tuesday, light to moderate rain, wind chill down to 54, but a high of 61 to 66. So beautiful day. Sunday, light rain to a risk of T-storm in the later afternoon times,

[01:46:05] a low of 63, a high of 66. So looks to be a beautiful day out on Sunday. So get out there. I'm not going to say what Slasher says. So crush some peaks. Now we don't do that.

[01:46:21] We have some fun. Enjoy some peaks. Yes, enjoy some peaks. So let's get on with the sponsors. God, I hate to say that. So sponsor the night. Discover Camp Catskill in Tannersville, your ultimate hiking store. Find top quality gear, apparel and accessories for all your outdoor

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[01:48:04] All right, so we're going to call this topic tonight. Oh yeah, but I mean it's like damn we're already two hours into this so. Yikes. It's not getting a half an hour's worth of treatment. Yeah, so the Catskill Expo Survey kind of, kind of looks like meshed.

[01:48:27] Okay, so let's just dive into the Catskill Expo Survey. The results are in. They've been tabulated by our staff of independent accountants and auditors. And if you want, we can stash and I can review some of the responses. You want me to go over some of them?

[01:48:49] Definitely, definitely. This is great. Okay, well it's also humbling. So I was kind of really disappointed by one of the responses. So all right, 93. Well we had about 25 people responded. 93% of those 25 people are hikers.

[01:49:09] 61% claimed to listen to every episode. Maybe we should have asked if they listened to the entire episode or not. Lies, lies. Yeah, right? And then, all right, so here it is. This is the saddest moment

[01:49:22] of my life, of my podcasting life. 63% of the respondents voted stump stash their least favorite. Yeah, you love it too, don't you? Look at you. You got to see this guy's smile. It's like he just won the lottery. So 63% of you said the stump stash segment sucks.

[01:49:47] So I'm signing off now. I'm officially quitting on air. All right, I'll finish this up though. 77, I thought remarkable, 77% of the respondents felt that a 90 minute to 120 minute episode was about right. So yeah, I was a, surprised by that and b, tonight we're just going to blow that

[01:50:12] away with tonight's episode. We go into some of the other things, history, the history segment got high ratings and the guest topic of the night was also tied with it with the highest rankings for most favorite. What folks would like to hear more about on the podcast, history,

[01:50:42] yeah, amazing. Local guests and they want to hear more, more about hiking. Everyone recommends the podcast to other people. Some people said they listened to other podcasts about the cat skills, 17 of our 20 some respondents said they never knew there was other podcasts about the cat skills

[01:51:06] and you shouldn't go searching for other podcasts about the cat skills just to make this one. Yeah, we're going to be your voice and we want to brainwash you. Okay. All right, let's see. I'm just going to skip down through some of them of the,

[01:51:24] we're going to say 25 people who responded to how often you hike, half of them hike once a week, 10 of them hike whenever I can, which means twice a week or once a year or anything

[01:51:42] in between. And then four of them hike once a month of the 26 people who responded to this question 15 of them are a member of the Catskill Club 11 aren't we had outs an overwhelming portion of a respondents felt that there shouldn't be an escalator

[01:52:06] installed on Route 23A to transport people to the base of Catskill Falls. So we'll be sure to relay that information to the DEC and if when you go there next and you don't see the escalator,

[01:52:20] you'll know it's because our survey said no escalator at the falls of our respondents, 26 respondents responded to the question about doing volunteer work relating to hiking of those eight said yes on a regular basis. Eight said yes but infrequently and 10 said no.

[01:52:46] Of those who do volunteer work 11 of them, 11 of them said they do one to 10 hours a year. Six of them said they do over 40 hours a year. Awesome. So here's an interesting question I asked how much

[01:53:04] money do you typically spend a year on hiking and of the 26 respondents six of them said under $100 a year on hiking or at least that they're willing to admit to. 10 of the respondents spend

[01:53:20] 100 to 250 dollars a year on hiking I guess that includes some through hikers buying underwear to hike in. One person claims to only spend 250 to 500 a year and then remarkably nine of our

[01:53:38] respondents said they spend over $500 a year on hiking gear. So I then asked about where they are most likely or least likely to spend their money on hiking gear and I'm very pleased to report that

[01:54:00] the number one local retailer that people are most likely to spend money on camping gear and hiking gear is Camp Catskill. Nice. We also had and that had very likely coming in at 30.4 percent Camp More which is in northern New Jersey 26.3 percent, Henco in just outside of Kingston 27.3

[01:54:31] percent very likely to spend money there on camping gear Rock and Snow in New Pulse. Yeah, finished wrong with 15 percent other local outfitter 21.1 percent and then we can hear some booze and jeers. Amazon 40.9 percent of our listeners are very likely to spend

[01:54:58] money on gear at Amazon but just remember when it's Friday afternoon and you've got that hike planned for Saturday morning, Amazon is not going to get you that stuff before your hike. So that's why you need to support your local outfitters. It's one of the reasons.

[01:55:17] REI not surprisingly 60 percent of our survey respondents said they were very likely to buy gear there and then other online provider 16.7 percent very likely but we have ratings or rankings from very likely to very unlikely but it's nice to see that folks are supporting

[01:55:44] our local outfitters. Of the interestingly 26 people responded to the next question saying that 13 of them have been on multi-day backpacking trips so these folks are more than just hikers. Nine of our respondents said no, they haven't been four said that they haven't

[01:56:09] done a multi-day backpacking trip but they'd like to so of the respondents it was 50-50 backpackers and non-backpackers. Question number 21. God, there's too many questions. Well all right, so here we'll just do a couple more. It's the best question.

[01:56:28] What's ever here? Number 22. Have you ever gotten lost in the woods of the 24 respondents? 12 of them said yes. Yes. Seven said maybe. Maybe they didn't know if they were lost or not lost. That would make you lost. Question number 23. I was a little concerned about putting this

[01:56:57] one in there but it's the question number 23. Do you solo bushwack? 12 of our respondents said yes. 14 of our respondents said no and nobody answered the question what I do in the woods is my business. Nice.

[01:57:15] Okay. Have you ever seen a bear while hiking in the Catskills? It was 15 yes, 11 no. Okay. That is... That's it? Yeah, that's it. So we've reached that point. We had 28 people took the survey. Not everyone. Well there was 28 responses which was somewhat disappointing frankly.

[01:57:42] Some of the people did submit more than one so we came up with maybe 23 unique people using it. So we have tabulated all of that and then Stosh has a link to... You have that Stosh? You're queuing that up? For what? The winner? The automatic number generator.

[01:58:06] All right. I already have it. Oh, you already did it? You already were supposed to be like a drum roll. And the winner is BB Jules. BB Jules. All right, BB Jules.

[01:58:21] Yeah, you... So Stosh will be emailing you and you'll get this box of goodies which includes the $25 gift card to stewards which will buy you lots of ice cold milkshakes and hot chili after your next hike.

[01:58:38] Nice. Nice. Congratulations. Thank you everybody who participated in the survey. It was a lot of fun to come up with it. And it was good to have people participate even though we screwed up at the expo. And all those who don't like Stomp Stosh were canceling your subscription.

[01:59:01] Yeah. So Stomp Stosh is gone. Garbanzo as Alex would say. Garbanzo it's gone. All right. Garbanzo to the Stomp Stosh. So post-hike bruising bites, you know, Ted it's funny that you mentioned Maeve's place, right? Go ahead. Talk about it.

[01:59:22] All right. Yeah. So I remember it having been mentioned on the show recently. So after my 11 and a half mile excursion from Pine Hill up to Bel Air and down part of

[01:59:33] Las Cove and back to Pine Hill, it might not have been like 99 degrees, but it was warm enough to pull off and get something cold on the way back. So I pulled into the Phoenicia Plaza

[01:59:45] to check out Maeve's place. I did post a couple pictures on my Instagram story about Maeve's. It's really cool inside. They got quite a selection. Air conditioning on Saturday was blasting. And so I ordered a smoothie. It was like nine bucks. And it was ice cold, delicious.

[02:00:06] I got before I got out of the parking lot, it was gone. I had a great dose of brain freeze cruising down cruising down 28 to Boysville. And I highly recommend checking out Maeve's place and

[02:00:20] Phoenicia. It's got a cool vibe. They got a lot of cool stuff for sale there. So do it. And you know, I went to the same place. Did you? When? The last two weeks ago when we had our

[02:00:36] Sard drill down at Hurley down at the Blue Mountain Forest. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Nice. Nice. I'm showing Stas, a fresh picture of my daughter rock-climbing out west. So I had a bacon, egg and cheese bagel with some hash browns. It was absolutely phenomenal.

[02:01:01] So cool. Either or afterwards before stop there. Yeah. So I note that they're open from 8am to 4pm. And I also took note of the fact that they do have a lot of vegetarian and vegan options.

[02:01:16] So if meat is not your thing, they do have other stuff to feed you. Yeah. Definitely stop there because it's absolutely phenomenal place and I enjoyed it thoroughly. You know, I bypassed McDonald's to get a fast one to get a

[02:01:35] same amount of price for a $20,000 more quality area bagel than freaking good old McDonald's. So it's definitely worth $20,000. Yeah. Support your local Cascale businesses. Exactly. All right. So thank you to the monthly supporters and monthly sponsors. Really appreciate

[02:02:01] for you guys to support the show. Thank you to everyone who's still listening to the show. Really appreciate it. Ted, soon I want to mention that I'm going to donate to the local organization,

[02:02:14] like $400 or $500 to a local organization. It depends on who I'm trying to get with the FFLA, Forest Fire Lookout Association. Get them to donate some money to the Forest Fire Towers of the Catskills. So I just want to mention that. Very cool. Yeah. So once again,

[02:02:33] thank you to everyone who is listening and donating sponsors. This all go back in the Catskills and I very appreciate it. So, Ted, thank you for joining me tonight and to a chat about good old Shenandoahs and the shit that I had there and there. Welcome back, buddy.

[02:02:52] See you on the trail. All right. So have a good night, Ted. Take it easy. Yep. Hey, everyone. I just want to thank you for listening to the show. If you enjoyed the show, subscribe and throw down a smooth review on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or any podcast platform

[02:03:14] that you use. You can also check daily updates of the podcast, hikes, hiking news, and local news on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and the official website of the show. Remember this. You got to just keep on living in the Catskills, man. L-I-V-I. Wicked, wicked, wicked, wicked.