[00:00:29] The bushwhacks were some of the worst days I've ever had in the mountains, or life really. Whereas Pantsy Mountain is totally opposite, it's a mountain on top of a crater. I think the weather challenges on this incident were particularly difficult. It is really the development of New York State. Catskills will respond to it.
[00:00:52] You're listening to Inside The Line, the Catskill Mountains Podcast. Let's begin. So, Episode 167. So, Kim Levinsky joins us tonight to talk about her Long Path Passes No Time documentary that's coming out.
[00:01:19] Kim, what's the name of it again? Can you preach it? Like go out and like do like a whole theater thing. Can you do that? Kim Levinsky I need to channel my inner theater voice. It is called The Long Path, A Journey of Becoming. Kim Levinsky This is exciting. I didn't you, you know, you have been on twice before and you never mentioned this at all.
[00:01:42] This is, I don't know if I should be hurt inside or I should be like, wow, this is great. This is very smart by your means. Kim Levinsky Did I not mention, I didn't mention it? Kim Levinsky Yes, Dosh, I'm going to fact check you on that because Kim Levinsky I'd be surprised if I didn't mention it, but it is possible.
[00:02:00] Kim Levinsky Yeah, this morning I re-listened to Kim's interview on Episode 87 and she did mention that she had a film crew of two people. I think it was from Brooklyn. I forget the name of the crew, but we're going to hear all about that tonight. So, she did subtly throw that in towards the end of her interview.
[00:02:21] Kim Levinsky I thought that was kind of like, just like, like, I'm sorry, like phones and stuff like that. Like you're documenting the puddles that you're, the crazy puddles you're going through, the amazing nettles that you hit and stuff like that. Kim Levinsky No, I remember her talking about one guy with the microphone boom and the other guy carrying the camera. We're going to hear all about it. Cause she, she, you, you forgot some of the interesting things that she mentioned, which I threw into our.
[00:02:51] Kim Levinsky Yes, I do remember some of that. Kim Levinsky A good teaser. Well, to be fair, I admittedly was probably shy about it when we first talked a while ago, but now I'm learning, I'm learning more about marketing and you really got to put it out there. Cause we want, we want the film to have a big reach. So I'm glad we're going to chat about it tonight. I'm excited.
[00:03:20] Kim Levinsky I'm excited too. Yeah, definitely. I look forward to this. I'm glad you reached out. Definitely because, you know, previously two episodes you have been on and it was a fantastic time. So we can't wait to talk about it again. Kim Levinsky Kim Levinsky
[00:04:17] Kim Levinsky Kim Levinsky Hopefully, uh, all our 80 hikers have a successful year and they kick ass. So if you are doing the 80 and you listen to the show, tag the show, I tell cats, kills podcast. And then, uh, excuse me. Sorry about that. Um, Kim Levinsky Kim Levinsky Kim Levinsky Kim Levinsky Kim Levinsky
[00:04:48] Kim Levinsky The Appalachian Trail is starting. People are starting to begin on that. So I, I've heard a, a bunch of northbound people going. Uh, I haven't heard of any southbound yet. So I'm, I'm, I'm guessing you don't frickin want to start southbound right now up in the, up in the whites and uh, while up in the main.
[00:05:06] And the whites, I think many communities are still closed. Right now. Uh, Baxter is only like two or three permits per day. So cool stuff. I love that question. trail i love hearing people's stories and i follow a bunch of people we're gonna have to get our our buddy the long island hiker on the show yeah yeah so he's on day seven day seven yes that's fantastic
[00:05:33] wow he's kicking ass jesus yeah actually today would be day eight for him if he hiked today cool yeah rip it up everybody so this next topic that i have on here now i was i was a little i was talking about this earlier because one of the guys tagged us uh his name was jblock223 tagged us in this run that he was doing or he was preparing for and i had no clue what it was about and then
[00:06:00] i researched it and kim this is all about you and your your little trail group uh your trail running group correct yeah you're referencing the big bear squash yes yeah yeah we had that this this past weekend on saturday uh it's a half marathon and 10k out of anthony wayne recreation area at harriman bears and bear state park so it's bear mountain uh but yeah it was great we had about
[00:06:27] 200 people come out and the weather held off we did a couple rain dances to keep the weather away and it was a lot of fun we had we had a nice turnout what's the stats on that what's the total distance elevation gain stuff like that do you have that yeah the the half marathon climbs it's over 2 000 feet for the half the half marathon which is it's pretty good climb and uh the 10k is a little over
[00:06:55] a thousand feet in the six miles so it it's uh it's not an easy course the the half marathon the back half of that which is the 10k course it hits cat's elbow and west mountain shelter so it's very rugged there's some scrambling which is fun we give we give everybody six hours to finish so plenty of time it's hiker friendly for people to come out and hike the 10k uh but yeah it went really well it was a
[00:07:20] it was a good time do you do you have results on that like uh who who won it and like maybe top three i would say in your spot and you can maybe find this this guy that uh j block 223 i i don't know who that what his real name is but yeah the results just got posted last night so i know that justin lewandowski for the half marathon he came in first and he missed the course record by like a minute
[00:07:48] he was really close to beating the record so yeah he was kicking himself at the end but yeah we had our top three justin lewandowski was an hour and 48 minutes and then chris uh jessaman 156 he's in brooklyn and zach jarvis was two hours and one minute and then for the female
[00:08:10] first place was two hour 14 and then 224 and 233 so viviana hanley julie sheffler and christine meehan so pretty fast times for that it's a rugged technical course and people were really pushing it out there that's cool as heck like so what about this uh so i found out his name jeffrey bach
[00:08:33] can you oh yeah jeff bach what did you finish he's he's a sasquad radio let's see what his time was uh i hope this doesn't embarrass you jeffrey sorry stasha's sorry i'm not this it's all about him embarrassing yeah he was uh three hours 44 minutes for wow the half marathon so is that a respectable time did jeffrey do pretty well yeah yeah i think any time is respectful in my opinion you know we
[00:09:03] give out awards for the top three that finish but personally i'm not really big on awards i i love the back of packers and i think they're working harder than probably anybody else out there because they're out there the longest so yeah cool like i'll have to you know maybe next year make this out or whatever you you have any plans on the future of this run i know you you do uh what is it called again sasquatch
[00:09:30] or sasquatch sasquad trail running is is the name of the trail race series yep and do you how many races do you do per year we've got 11 on the calendar so they're all spread out through northern new jersey and uh we're starting to get more north we've got three events in new york state so two of them are at harriman state park and then our newest one which is in just two weeks it's at minnewaska state park
[00:09:55] and or state preserve and that's on it's actually on the long path so that's kind of it's been a dream race of mine it's been on the dream board for several years and we were finally able to work with the park and they've been wonderful to work with at minnewaska that they've been very supportive of the event so we're excited about it it's it's it's actually resurrecting the old uh ellenville mountain festival that went on for a number of years led by ken posner and todd jennings so those two guys have
[00:10:23] been super supportive helping me make the connections with permitting and it sold out in i think only a few weeks it was a fast sellout so really excited how many people how many people yeah we were limited to 150 so they're keeping it small um which i think is great it's a it's a highly sensitive fragile ecosystem up there so yeah it's exciting we're starting at berm road park in ellenville and then
[00:10:49] basically doing a big lollipop uh up to high point and towards the sam's point visitor center and it loops back around on the carriage roads wow wow tad you're more familiar with that area yeah i mean i i know that territory very well sounds like a fun event it's beautiful absolutely beautiful up there yeah it's very scenic and uh very durable surfaces for these folks to be running on so you know it's appropriate territory for them and it's also nice to bring some activity like this over to ellenville
[00:11:18] berm road yes yeah for sure i know they're they're trying to revitalize the town so i'm hoping our event will will help with that the park is super nice they just renovated it i think in the last few years so it's it's a really nice staging area for the event nice so before or afterwards you need to swing by cohen's bakery okay is that in ellenville yeah yeah they got some really good stuff there all made on premises all right i'm gonna i'm gonna email that to our runner she said cohen's cohen's
[00:11:48] bakery all right i will tag that as well excellent nice so without the positivity i hate to bring up this negativity but it's gonna have to be brought up because i wanted to chat about this so that the tariffs are playing a big role and of course almost everything here in the united states and other places as well in the world so they're gonna have a big impact of course on our gear that we buy so a
[00:12:17] lot of the people kim you know you might know about this because the ultra light gear and stuff like that is imported out of america and stuff and some of the stuff that i buy like the heli hansen uh fall raven stuff cortex the merino wool stuff is gonna have a high tariff weight so now these things are gonna be jacked up even more than what they were so i mean i i what don't we'll talk about this brief because
[00:12:43] you know this is they're already expensive enough but they do their job very very well i gotta admit my heli hansen coat is absolutely phenomenal my merino wool has kept me freaking warm as heck in there during the cold times but you know this this is absolute crazy that's happening and i hate to get my emotions out like that but come on what what the like yeah everybody's everybody's
[00:13:12] like silent tats just drinking his i don't even know what he's drinking definitely not not my uh colombian coffee which is probably subject to a hefty tariff i don't know you you know stash you said briefly get into it i don't know if that was your way of verbally signaling me to keep my fucking mouth shut or just to make a couple small comments but we'll let kim go first she can she can you know give us her
[00:13:39] views and insight on your tariff and athletic it's a precious political i'm sorry kim sorry i'm sorry it's hey it's it's a reality where we're all living in i know in in my industry with events it's definitely a topic that's coming up there's a lot of facebook forums that i'm a part of that are race directors and event organizers so it's something that people are definitely talking about and trying to
[00:14:06] plan ahead knowing that the cost of a lot of things that we use or is gonna go up and yeah i think for the most part a lot of race directors you know they put like most of them put the runners first so you don't want to have to raise prices but ultimately i think like every other industry that's probably going to be the trickle down effect of of us um needing to increase prices but you know i'll i'll say
[00:14:31] this the you know what's happening in the world is bananas you know we could use a lot of expletives so where i've kind of landed on is with sasquad trail running with our events trying to make an impact there locally so we're really expanding a lot of the uh inclusivity initiatives that we've been working on but just really putting them out in the open we're getting a lot more kids to our events we started
[00:14:59] a scholarship program that's bringing kids from a city in jersey hack and sack and getting them out to the races so you know we're just trying we're trying to make it an impact in the way that we can and try not to get buried with all the mayhem that's happening because it's pretty it's pretty overwhelming it is and a lot of the stuff you know a lot of people like of course american made stuff but most
[00:15:24] of our stuff like the wool and the cortex stuff like that has to come from from out of this country to canada you know makes i think arterics comes from sweden and then comes over to canada and then comes into america uh heli hansen is i think switzerland i believe nor norway and then it comes over here so like a lot of this stuff that's durable you know reliable and stuff like that come out of out
[00:15:52] and it's going to cost us money to to get this even more money than what it is now and it kind of sucks because i i really enjoy my products that i have that come out of like you know sweden switzerland and stuff like that where they have norway where they have been testing this for years and years with freaking climbers and mountaineers and stuff like you know ted i'm sorry to say but you know you heli
[00:16:18] hansen is your kind of stuff for like out and i'm boating and stuff rain resistant shit well you know one thing i'll say is wait way back when before my daughters were born i was a you know intense uh cyclist did a lot of riding year round thousands and thousands of miles and most of my gear from the
[00:16:42] 90s was made in the states and i still have a lot of that gear because it was well made back then not saying anything bad about foreign made gear presently but some of these industries are cottage industries you know they're small manufacturers they can be highly portable over recent times it's become really really easy for them to offshore these these jobs to foreign
[00:17:08] markets and maybe some of them can be brought back but i think on a large scale you know the the prospect of making apple iphones in the states doubtful it's going to happen it's surely going to take more than three or four years to happen so the what you know we're going to go just through a lot of uh disruption and on a lot of different fronts in the in the short term who knows what the long
[00:17:32] term is going to bring for this but in the meantime the one thing that there still is no tariff on and that's going out in the woods right whether you're going out in your fancy cortex pants or in your cutoff blue jeans you can still go out and hike you can go you can be like ken posner who's been mentioned a couple times tonight you can be like ken and you can go out barefoot american made feet yeah so you know it i mean
[00:18:02] we you know we we've gotten used to over recent years to all this high-end technology but you know back in the day like when jim bootin started hiking in the catskills rumor has it he just had like a a buckskin shawl that he would throw over and uh a club to go bushwhacky he didn't even have any footwear and it was basically like the first hobbit yeah i think so i think that's where i think that's
[00:18:26] where margaret found him was in this cave up on uh plateau um you know overlooking uh older bark that's the story i heard i'm sticking to it we're not going to fact check it but yeah i mean there's you know you obviously you you get overwhelmed if you pay attention to all the stuff that's going on now and that's why at least for me i really savor that one day a week that i can just unplug
[00:18:52] from all this crap and go out into the woods where there's not a lot of uh sensor lee overload going on and you can just like unwind recharge and there's no tariffs out there yeah and i'm sorry to bring that up you know once again hopefully like people listen to this podcast and kind of like like what you said unplug unwind and stuff but it's something it's a reality sometimes you
[00:19:18] know that you have to face you know a lot of the stores you know around around us like uh like got ems closed up near me and stuff so now i gotta find my stuff at rei or you know an ems up north more towards whatever and i've already got to buy them online so like or i can go down to kenco and and stuff like that they a lot of places don't have the boots that i want or the shoes that i want and stuff and it
[00:19:45] sucks it really sucks but you know if you have the gear that you like keep it as long as you can you know weatherproof it stuff like that until the doesn't hit the fan and and you know we we don't know what's coming and let's just be positive let's we will whenever we're in the mountains we always greet each other with joy and stuff like that i always see smiles on people's faces except for
[00:20:10] when you know tad looks back at me when i'm climbing the mountain with him and he's just like are you going to freaking hurry up and i'm just like giving them the bigger that's right buddy don't you forget that it's the only time or i see kim fly by me on the long path and just go right how was that just just reason just reason by so somewhat in that vein stash meant you know checking your gear preserving your gear now's a good time to go through your winter gear before you put it away check over the
[00:20:40] moving parts on your snowshoes the straps things that can wear and break make sure they're in good condition if they're not order your replacement parts now because in the fall they could be sold out and back ordered so get that stuff now clean your winter boots and uh coat them up with either wax or some other waterproofing so they if they're leather they don't dry out over the summer and they're ready to go in the winter so preserve and maintain that gear and if you need replacement gear don't
[00:21:10] forget camp catskill in tannersville you go in there they've got all the good good stuff from you know entry level to high end because it's run by professionals so shout out to one of our sponsors camp catskill tannersville good stuff definitely definitely so excellent so sorry about that once again so let's once again if anybody you know needs anything any advice and
[00:21:39] you know products or where to get it discounts stuff like that i will do the research for you 100 i'll probably ask just ai to do it for me but yeah i'm looking i'm looking for a new summer backpack i put mine on this weekend for the first time since the fall and man is it worn out and painful so i forgot what is that your 10 liter backpack uh i think it's 18 okay thank you 18 liters
[00:22:06] and it was stuffed to the brim this weekend because i didn't know how cold it was going to be but yeah it's it's aching to be replaced um so i started looking around for something kim didn't even have a backpack basically right yeah those trail runners they have like a water bottle in one hand and a bunch of shoes and the other they're just hammering i did have a i had a 14 liter hydration pack but
[00:22:30] full transparency my friends were pretty much carrying everything for me hey that's that's it's it's it's epic that's all i gotta say it's epic and i i carry a 55 liter backpack every time yeah all the time that's stosh takes all the gear he has everything i think he even brings like a lawnmower with them in case the trail's overgrown uh it's it's more of a uh a leaf blower that's what it is
[00:22:58] solar powered battery okay yeah yeah so excellent excellent so yeah thank you to the monthly supporters chris garbian jeff jotz vicky furrow mikey s john comiskey summit seekers desert city radio betsy a denise w tom h vanessa jim c and eric that's just a lot of names and i thank you guys very much for supporting the show really appreciate it it's a fantastic moment uh just to hear those names
[00:23:28] and just to hear people sponsoring the show and believing in the show really appreciate it also the sponsors of the show amazing once again all the people that uh believe in us especially outdoor chronicles photography so capture your 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 adirondacks and white mountains she'll craft timeless
[00:23:56] images that reflect unique bond in nature's grandeur embark on an unforgettable photographic journey with outdoor chronicles photography don't hesitate to get a hold of molly on all platforms also discover the wilderness with trailbound project our expert-led hiking and backpacking education programs offer unparalleled outdoor experiences whether you're a beginner or seasoned adventurer join us to learn
[00:24:20] essential skills explore stunning trails and connect with nature start you today start your journey today with trailbound project and unlock the wonders of the great outdoors they have a lot of stuff going on like wilderness first aid wilderness survival tarp shelter building uh bear encounters uh training stuff like that so get a hold of trailbound project if you want to learn a lot of stuff about the outdoors
[00:24:44] so hard siders we got some people who uh are gave some hard siders which is pretty fantastic uh and mentions well back up stosh jesus uh mentions god i'm going a little bit too far on this so mention the podcast on one of your hikes through social media we'll chat about on the show tag at itl catskill podcast we'll chat about these shows so once again long island hiker just started the at and this was uh seven days
[00:25:13] ago so it's a week ago when i knew about this so congratulations long island hiker rip it up on the appalachian trail keep your updates and tag us once in a great while if you want to also pink pony tracy was at overlook mountain tad you were close to to this weren't you you kind of saw this where did you actually go up to overlook i did i did i went up oh no but i gotta admit you went up the other way you
[00:25:41] went up the the chosen way right uh well i did an out and back from whatever road that is out of woodstock um but i did yeah i you know i did a little exploration i did some off trail work you know i got around i made it i made it a fun hike i mean i thought you went to echo lake oh yeah i went all the way out to echo lake and cod codfish quarry oh so i that's from the pictures it did not look like you
[00:26:09] came from the the whatever road that you're right the the parking area i thought you came from the plaque hill reserve area no oh damn wow oh i can't wait to hear this oh nice uh so also tom who's did a bushwhack up to giant legend panther i thought that was a pretty nice route i've been up through there
[00:26:32] before fantastic overlook looking towards the back ledge back area of giant legend panther nice little bushwhack route have you ever been up that sort of arm it's a weird arm it's a weird arm off of panther yeah i've been up um that particular ridge he went up in brook um i have gone up he actually asked me for
[00:26:55] some intel on that and then uh so i've been up that way i've been up the brook um which has a nice bark road off to the south off the brook um and then i've also bush i went to do the brook again this winter water was too high so i just departed and made a beeline towards giant ledge proper uh all three of
[00:27:20] those hikes were exceptional does that have a proper name or is it oh it's cascade brook cascade brook and that leads right down in the esopus right the start of the or not the esopus uh is it yes it's the esopus that's what i thought yeah just downstream from winnesook lake my first time up through there was with none other than danny davis of course yeah it was just like a an endless stream of very interesting
[00:27:47] information from consolidated and unconsolidated glacial till to you know just small landslides the whole nine yards was just a very you know when the bedrock that's down there um there's certain things i don't think tom he didn't at least didn't post photos of them but there's some really interesting stuff down there um you'll have to go down and discover it i'm not going to tell you about it but
[00:28:10] yeah that whole corridor is a lot of fun that whole panther mountain area is just great exploration yeah i i can't tell you how many times i bushwhacked panther from you know different directions i got a few more on the hit list but it's it's a lot of fun hitting panther there's also i've done it bushwhacked all the way in from 28 that was probably the most one of the most boring bushwhacks i've ever done
[00:28:35] um but what do you know 28 oh so you're talking about uh like down from fox kind of adjoining with fox hollow yeah it's a little bit further west than fox hollow it's not that far after what is it route 42 or 43 the the road that goes out to giant ledge proper um but just a little bit east from there is a parking area
[00:29:02] and you know it was some rather typical logged out terrain and then it just got really really boring for a while and then once you you meet up with the the higher elevation above say 28 2900 feet it gets interesting again but it was kind of a long stretch there that i wondered why i was doing it but i had no choice to finish because the jeep was at the you know the other end of the hike i couldn't go back
[00:29:30] down to the bike and get back to the jeep so damn it's a nice thing so tom once again was was up at giant legend panther now a new person tagged us uh catskill mountains hiker is closing in on the 3500 and did big indian or fur now he was talking to me and he did when he went from big indian to fur instead of doing the traditional route of kind of like the arm that goes into the call he just dipped
[00:29:57] right from big indian into the the creek and then went straight up the fur and i was like oh ballsy that's that's ballsy and then he said it was very thick and just was crazy to uh to explore but he they had a good time yeah i've actually um i've bushwhacked big indian through that we'll call it the area yeah that drainage area it's actually nice there's a nice hemlock grove in there and some some
[00:30:25] old growth yeah but i can imagine um the whack back up fur is uh full of a lot of talus yeah it's good steep stuff i gotta admit so awesome thank you everyone who has tagged us in the show once again tag us at at itl catskills podcast so kim's got to do that a little bit more often no i don't just do you do
[00:30:51] your thing kim sorry to once again drag you in on this have you have you have you done any of those hikes are you a bushwhacker yet i i do not enjoy bushwhacking to be totally okay okay why if i will never get the 3500 i've done i think all the other ones except for the i've done a couple bushwhacks but you'll be fine i don't uh yeah i know that's what everyone says if you've gone
[00:31:16] through the craziness of the nettles during the long path this is nothing for you that's true unless unless you choose to do what tad and i do and choose the the long way and the the the most brutal way i would say so yeah i'll pass on that we'll take you we'll take you out on exploration that you'll never forget we should go out sometime that would be fun to go out with you guys she'll fly up the
[00:31:41] mountains she's like where the hell are you game on we can do it we'll have fun yeah so excellent once again thank you for everyone tag us so also you can buy us a hard tiger cider to support the show you'll support the show and you'll support the catskills because we take whatever we don't use and donate it back in the catskills so uh rachel gene bought us five hard ciders and she wrote this and then
[00:32:06] like seriously i was just like i saw this and i just like my heart was fulfilled so she said long time listener and first time caller you have such you two have such a dynamic i laugh so hard each week and i look forward to friday stashi solidified my love in the heart in the catskills i hiked and i was doing my 3500 but you made me fall so much further in love with this region all the history all your
[00:32:30] interviewees have changed the course of how i i enjoy the state i was born in the community is deeply strong with you guys in it and i'm happy you're here thanks again so rachel gene that that just fills my heart and you know once again that kind of makes me feel like i'm doing the right thing and i'm sticking to this and we are making an impact here on the catskill so i mean if we're having kim on here
[00:32:55] for the third time we've got to have an impact right if she's asking us to to come back on right yeah that's right yeah that's that's really powerful her her feedback there that's got to feel good for you guys it does yeah even though she doesn't mention me by name that's all right i don't i don't feel slighted in the least because we have kim here tonight and kim is a real mover and shaker in the uh
[00:33:19] the running the trail running community so that makes up for it rachel gene thanks she's she's gonna hate me i'm gonna get some bad she's gonna take back her five starters yeah yeah give it back to me so thank you once again rachel gene i really appreciate it so also rate the show on any platform you can also vote for us in the chronogrammies this is like big stuff we're in the finals uh you go to
[00:33:46] the arts and ted arts and entertainment section best regional podcast vote for us each day every day up until i think it's may 15th may 18th definitely i got it right i got it right so tad and i will be posting daily stories to our instagrams and uh we'll post links that you can just go directly to it i think all you have to do is enter an email and they won't really they won't send spam or anything yeah so the you need to the first time you vote you need to register by giving them your email
[00:34:15] address and then you go to your email account you click the link and you get to vote and it will take you right to if when you sign in and you go through the whole process initially uh once you hit that link it's going to take you right back to arts entertainment best regional podcast and then you can click and vote for us as you should and then that you just copy that link i put mine on my bookmark bar
[00:34:41] and so every day every morning when um uh my cat mickey and i are having our morning cup of coffee we vote together i should sign mickey up for his own email account so he can vote and be part of the fun um you know maybe train him with some treats so he can learn how to you know click the mouse with his paw so i think that's legal isn't it doesn't say you have to be human to vote you just have to have an
[00:35:05] email account wrecked yeah so there you go and there's and there's no tariffs involved it's not taxed it's not tariff you get to vote for free so vote once a day twice a day 500 times a day stuff the ballot box our egos deserve it yeah and you know that the funny thing is it's like i pointed this out i send an email out to everybody that like it's just we're the big underdogs in this i gotta admit
[00:35:32] like all these other like podcasts are located in the the orange county and below which is a city and none of it really has to do with hiking and stuff so but you know i gotta admit we're the funnest i'd have to say we're just like rachel gene said i mean she gave us that that well she gave you that stellar into an endorsement and yeah so and it got you five hard ciders so you know just take her
[00:36:01] words of recommendation and vote vote vote the best the best part about it if we win as we should is the the really the the other top contenders in the bracket the other three of the four three of the five that made it are really like professional full-time arts and entertainment people you know
[00:36:27] highly organized and even though stosh puts in a lot of time and i just sit here every tuesday night and wing it you know we're kind of a low budget operation and be just nice to you know take those guys out we'll do it for fun whack them let's just bush whack them right and we do it for fun yeah give me the old sasquatch treatment yeah right yeah exactly so vote vote vote please that would be fantastic to
[00:36:53] to get this and the other and the other people don't believe in mountain lions and that's a reason not to vote for them okay yeah and we've already talked about them many times you know i don't know if kim got chased by them and that's why she set the fkt for for the long path we don't know well we will only find out on the documentary yeah you'll have to watch yeah especially the night episodes eyes in the background and the the growling the roar yeah those are cats back there those are mountain
[00:37:22] lions yeah definitely mountain lions all right anybody drinking anything tonight besides me you know todd that you did the what's it called uh the tuesday so i like how that was last week that was last week yeah that was last week yeah so i've got i've got another uh west kill brewery mountain life it's the last in the four pack um i'm ready to do the crack you all sat kim you got it
[00:37:47] this is this is why you can tell that we really are professional you ready i'm ready that sounded good how was that yeah taste you got anything better i guess some uh decaf green tea yeah all right all right what's the alcohol content on that uh definitely zero i don't i don't drink i run too much good for
[00:38:10] you you run too much that's that's true all right hold on hold on so all right tad i am turning this off i think so so there you go okay okay you got your you got your click or crack game going on that work tonight it worked it worked so i'm having a hudson north blueberry lemonade so supporting
[00:38:36] local they they do a lot of local stuff for trails and stuff like that i actually reached out to them to hopefully get them on the show because they're good stuff so yeah so that's tariff free if it's from hudson right right yeah jesus why do you got to bring that up jesus this is triggered yeah my my west kill is also a tariff free beverage support local yeah what about you kim is yours a tariff free or
[00:39:02] is that an import it's a great question i don't know where the green tea i'll have to look on the box yeah this time next year it could be three times more expensive that's right you're gonna have to harvest your own green tea yeah you'll be drinking shop right brand like may and stash i am drinking shop right brand like kim you're gonna be we're all gonna be doing our own stuff in our backyards our back we're not gonna have backyards we're gonna have all gardens in our backyards we're
[00:39:31] gonna be in our own shit we're going back to the 1900s now and we're gonna start doing the hardenberg patent and stuff like that we're all on our own perfect so all right so previous hikes kim i mean you talked about your race did you were you involved in that race let's tell let's hear about it yeah i'm in charge on race day so i i don't get to go out on the course unless there is an emergency
[00:39:54] but thankfully everyone was safe so busy supervising and organizing volunteers and keeping everything in line so so did you do anything before that that you want to chat about like yeah i went i went out to uh i had my first catskill hike of the season the week before i went out to peek a moose did an out and back there turned around once i started hitting some ice towards table and then um i was with a friend and
[00:40:20] we said let's go up uh bangle hill and i hadn't been there since the uh the long path of kt i i have zero memory of how tough that climb is i think i bought honestly i think i blocked it out it is so steep that climb it it's unreal how tough that climb the whole time last week i was just like i can't believe how hard this is i don't remember any of this yeah yeah there's there's i i did that
[00:40:49] i think three or four weeks ago i didn't run up it and we weren't running it yeah and there's there's not a single switchback okay yeah yeah yeah it's it's like the stair master hike you know from the road up to the bangle hill and did you see any evidence of the fire that was in there in the fall yeah i was that i was also shocked about that i mean the burns are still there you could still
[00:41:15] smell it you could smell the ash uh so that was pretty wild to see that but it's amazing how the trail was pretty much the burn line it cut off the fire the fire stopped at the trail so yeah apparently further further up the mountain the fire did jump the trail okay when i when i was up there i wasn't aware of that there was still snow on the ground i didn't see much of the charring but i have to say when i went through there it there was just this really weird eerie appearance as you looked
[00:41:44] uphill and up towards bangle hill because you it was obvious yeah there was no small growth yes there all that was gone so wow yeah yeah kim you're you're right that bangle hill i did that with my wife and my nephew who was like 12 years old and i gotta admit they they banged that out pretty good and i was just like it's not bad it's but it is it is a quite a a bit of gain in a short amount
[00:42:14] of time it's just straight up like you like tat said stair master so that's good what was your time do you remember your time on peekamoose coming back oh no was that a hike or was that a run hiking yeah we we hiked up and then kind of jogged down i mean it's pretty steep in some sections so you're not jogging the whole time but uh it was great it was so great to be back up there for the year so it was nice hopefully and i think it seems like things are melting so hopefully we've we've crossed
[00:42:44] we've crossed over into the nice weather next week you'll you'll hear about it today there's a whole different story today oh did you guys get some weather up there oh i'll tell you i'll tell you in a second so okay it'll it'll be it'll be good so uh ted how about you sir i'll tell you about my awesome exploration that i had today so uh in a little bit you tell you about your
[00:43:08] sunday you went sunday damn it yeah so i um last weekend i did not hike because i had my three-day day excursion with uh mount covid and uh so i this weekend was looking for something you know that would kind of get me back into the hiking regiment again and with all the rain on saturday i decided
[00:43:36] not to go out on saturday and i was planning on a relatively interesting bushwhack for sunday but it was it started raining say around four o'clock a.m here and was gonna be raining in the catskills as well so when i did set out on my drive over i'm like going through my mind what would i like to do and i didn't want to do this bushwhack because i figured it was just going to be all wet there and
[00:44:01] it was raining on my way over so i decided of all things to go to woodstock to drive up to the trail head for overlook and my sense was is that the hike up to overlook was going to be on really durable well wearing surfaces so it wouldn't be an issue that we got all this rain recently and one of the sections of trail that is undone for my all trails challenge is from that trailhead
[00:44:29] going to overlook all the way out to codfish quarry and also that little spur down to echo lake so literally as i'm getting into woodstock um i still had my wipers on finally turned them off as i'm driving up to that trailhead i get to the trailhead there were some people waiting in their cars you know for things to dry up and um i get out throw on my gear set out and all the way out um i just like
[00:44:58] straight out to echo lake initially didn't go up to the fire tower get to the turnoff for echo lake that's where i ran into my first group of people for the day it was uh a couple they spent the night at echo lake camping and so i went down to the lake it's uh interesting and worthwhile and even on a
[00:45:19] overcast low fog ceiling cloud ceiling day pretty scenic down there so i checked out the lake then i got back out to that the the turnpike as they call it and i went out to codfish point which i had been to before but i needed that section of trail didn't see a single soul all the way out to codfish point
[00:45:41] which now brings me to that part of my story where i asked stosh how did codfish quarry get its name do you know kim if you can do like the like the spoof stump you game show music for me in the background right stosh how did codfish quarry get its name he's looking either bored out of his mind or stumped
[00:46:07] i can't tell stumped i'm so what do you say i mean that we're looking at coppet so the devil's kitchen is right there so well someone so i mean that's a whole bunch of quarries and one that that one little relevant area of that ship down in new york city i know there's at least four or five different quarries in there so it's it's non-stop quarry action so according according to the dec unit management plan
[00:46:36] for this area of the park it reads as follows the remains of a major quarrying operation is still evident on and below the echo lake plat cove trail on the east face of platykill mountain this point where the trail intersects the quarry is known as codfish point the most common explanation of this
[00:47:02] unique name goes back to the quarrymen who devoured many crates of codfish one fall an early snowstorm stranded the workers who whose only edible provision at the time were crates of codfish as the crates were emptied the wooden crate lids were nailed to trees as evidence of the quarry men's aggravation
[00:47:29] and need for food according to the dec unit management plan quarry uh codfish quarry or codfish point got its name from some uh quarry workers who were stranded in an early snowstorm so this proves tad that you just not join here on tuesdays and do your stuff you actually do some background to this
[00:47:54] yeah i told you i'm like i'm a highly paid a podcast professional now i'm closing in on the heels of joe rogan i think i only have we probably only have a few million listeners less than him right how many we have like one or two three million and we're closing in we're closing in on a dozen i think so we're i mean that we're narrowing the gap as kim says when you're out trail running absolutely we're
[00:48:20] reeling him in like a codfish that's right that's super cool man you watch out joe we're coming to get you best regional podcast this year next year best podcast of the universe yeah right yeah okay okay yeah echo lake is a is a very unique spot i really want to spend the night there because i've heard i've heard horror stories and great stories about horror stories in what way in what way that there's
[00:48:48] a lot of mice and rats oh really yeah and then the beavers come out at night and they are like chomping on stuff and it makes you like think that there's like ghosts out there and stuff i've heard some really crazy stories about there yeah well maybe you just need a few more hard ciders before you go to bed at night then stosh this is take care of all the the the hooting and hollering and beaver stomping at night with you know maybe rachel gene should get you another five pack of ciders
[00:49:17] before you go backpacking again and that'll take you but you listen you when you go camping you bring your ear pods or something i do i need i need that ambient sound of of air of nature of nature right that's why stosh goes backpacking is to listen bring his ear pods i have i have i have sleeping issues so if i hear if i don't hear anything i will hear everything and it'll bother me it's so weird
[00:49:43] when i go to bed i transform into a metamorphic rock well good for you that's fantastic so kim will hopefully you'll talk about this what about you when you did you ever sleep on the long path at least like two hours right not even yeah physically on trail there were there are a few dirt naps but they weren't very long yeah how did you do you need anything to fall asleep or at that
[00:50:10] time you were so exhausted you just kind of passed out and face in the dirt yeah it was amazing how quickly you drop into rem sleep you know that feeling where your body feels like it's dropping that it would happen instantaneously wow that's crazy so tad do you say that you did not go up to overlook like fire no i saw so on the way back i did my hike all the way out to echo lake then codfish
[00:50:37] point or codfish quarry on the way back i'm on the trail again i get to the point where the trail is gonna go around overlook mountain i decide just to go straight up overlook from that uh i guess the north side um it was relatively low intensity bushwhack up there got to a couple interesting clearings then i made my way over to where of all things they have that picnic table right on the escarpment you know
[00:51:04] i i really couldn't so much gauge the view from there because just you know the low ceiling or the fog that was lingering around but then i made my way over to the fire tower there was just a few people there uh let me throw in while it's on my mind the one thing that really impressed me is that hike from the trailhead up to overlook i gotta say i really struggled to find five things on the trail to put
[00:51:31] in my backpack i mean it was just a really really low level of trail trash but the the view from the tower was pretty cool uh but let me say this um you know i i left the house i wasn't planning to do this hike i kind of midway decided this is what made sense for the day and i dot relative to other people an early start there was just a really low ceiling at the time just a lot of fog in the air
[00:51:58] i'm trying to go uphill overlook like kim would go uphill except she's probably doing like seven or eight miles an hour i'm doing just right around two miles an hour definitely not yeah but i take that one little spur that goes out towards the edge of the escarpment where there's a lot of old abandoned buildings over there i don't know if you know those you probably do because you spent some time there then i get back on the main trail and what is it that i totally totally had forgotten about but as i'm
[00:52:27] as i'm huffing and puffing uphill in the fog all of a sudden i see what the ruins yes i completely forgot about the the overlook motel up there and next thing i know it's like you know because because i'm not expecting it there's like this mammoth building up there i'm like oh yeah that's right this is up here so that was kind of a cool surprise to be surprised by something that everybody
[00:52:53] else knows and expects to see on their way up i i had forgotten about it so that was fairly cool it's an interesting thing it's nice that it's still intact where some of these other big you know old catskill hotels um or like you know the cat or skill one in the mountain house are gone this is still there which is neat and then you try to figure out what some of the outbuildings were for which came first things of that nature and i don't know if you're like me but as i'm hiking up that
[00:53:23] trail and i see the the entrance area i try to imagine like you know a family from new york city over a hundred years ago plus you know coming up on like a stage coach or something you know with all the excitement of they're out of the city this is their week or two week vacation up here they've read about it but you know they they don't see real pictures back then because they don't even have
[00:53:47] cameras i don't know how people got by without instagram but they manage yeah so it was a cool hike i can see why people like it there's a lot of variation the up until the tower itself the condition of the trail is you know very smooth and easy and then from the mountain itself uh going down towards echo lake
[00:54:11] it becomes your typical rocky rooted rutted uh catskill quarry road trail and then there's like some nice sections which i posted those pictures from echo lake over to codfish point which reminds me stosh do you know how it got its name caught fish point i remember okay good thank you quiz at the end of the show yes so awesome all right stosh tell us about your day rumor has it there was some snow where you
[00:54:41] were i gotta chug this uh hard cider no i'm just kidding so i had the intention to i was just like you know i i don't have much time i have to get my car inspected gotta get the winter tires off and stuff so i'm like i will go close to me and stuff like that you know i was thinking bear pen maybe but then i was like oh round top like up north the north round top right near bear pen i'll go up there i
[00:55:08] know of a viewpoint that my friend talked about before and i was like i will go do that you know i'm on my way there and it's like 28 degrees i'm like cool this is like winter again we have a little bit of flurries happening and then when i get around stamford around mountain siantha there's i wouldn't say massive amount of snow around on the ground but the the the roads are covered and i'm just like this
[00:55:32] is gonna be fun it's gonna be interesting and then when i hit over to uh pratsville grand gorge there's no snow so i'm like interesting there must be like a weird like squall coming in the certain jet stream and stuff like that so i hit pratsville i go up and i park at uh the end of what they call ski run road it used to be where they would take people from bear pen or from the road up to bear pen mountain on
[00:56:01] trucks just to ski and stuff like that and it was it's pretty cool to kind of like picture that in my mind the whole way going up like man so you're not hiking up this but you're taking in in the back of a truck going all the way up to the top of bear pen mountain absolutely cool as heck looking into the left and right i found a few old foundations that i took pictures of i see all these amazing little uh
[00:56:27] creeks that are forming off the side of mountain in the middle of nowhere it's pretty neat and they have two parking spots you can park way up on the ski run road but i highly doubt anybody even with like a four-wheel drive i don't think your jeep could fit up through this the beginning of it is trash now oh i'm sure my jeep could get up through there this i don't know man this this has had some in the beginning after the beginning it has been it's nice it's like groomed like my i'm sorry to say the
[00:56:56] tesla could fit up through there there's just a little couple bumps but in the beginning it looks like floods have hit it and it's just lopsided like crazy so easy hike all the way up to the call of uh north bear pan and round top and once i get up to like 3 000 feet there's some snow and then all of a sudden when i get up to the call it's just all on winter inch inch inch inch and a half of snow
[00:57:25] snow wind snow is coming down i'm just like oh this is absolutely stunning everybody would be like i'm sick and tired of this i'm getting sick and tired of the cold and i'm just here enjoying everything because there's just wind everywhere there's gust there's just massive sounds here and there and i am all in the element of i'm alone nobody is near me and it's just fantastic so i go up
[00:57:53] i i take a right i summit round top and then i go back down and there's this viewpoint that my friend james found and uh i think it's been there for a long time i'm guessing because it looks like it was clear-cut and he calls that the million dollar viewpoint and overlooks uh bear pen it's like i would say west southwest that's going into the town of vega and stuff like that and it's absolutely stunning i i was
[00:58:21] there for like i would say 20 minutes dipping in and back and forth of the trees because it was just so windy just 20 mile per hour winds constant and then 40 50 mile hour gust just absolutely beautiful with an inch inch and a half of snow i was just flabbergasted by like one side i could see just squalls all over the place the other side i turn around and there's blue skies and i'm just like what the
[00:58:47] hell is going on i saw a little bit of platykill uh ski center when i came back down on the side of the mountain and then i was just like okay maybe i'll explore the other side of round top i'll bushwhack a little bit see if i can find a viewpoint i found viewpoints but there was no like it was covered full in squalls i just i got hit back and forth with these awesome wind driven snow squalls and i was just i was
[00:59:13] i was happy as heck and not cold at all you know took me i'm you know i'm gonna start submitting fastest known times for these places because i don't see any of these and i'm just gonna be like you know i did this in two hours 45 minutes screw you fastest known time ever and then somebody's gonna kick my ass but um other than that no spikes needed i didn't do any spikes at all but i got some
[00:59:39] views uh here and there and just one of those times of where you're standing there and seriously i know this sounds weird but like i stood there and closed my eyes and that sound of the wind gushing over like blah bear pen and north bear pen and stuff there is that little circ that it must hit where it just hits the top of the trees and comes back down because i had no wind at all where i was
[01:00:05] standing but you could hear the wind freaking roaring on the mountains and i was just in the element of god damn i could die here and it would be nice like i mean we're glad you didn't die there and you made it back yeah it sounds horrible doesn't that sound horrible though but like just uh so when you you're on round top did you did you do the dog leg to the southwest or did you just go to the the
[01:00:33] kind of the summit proper itself proper summit and then i dipped down west okay and to the the other area i i stayed on the state property yeah i mean yeah i was there maybe three summers ago and i seem to remember that clearing that you're referring to that's off off to the southwest or southern face
[01:00:57] of it worth it yeah the the other thing is you're going up ski run road is you're going around that bend where it bends towards the the southeast there used to be a ski area in there called the no name ski area did you know that that's towards more of the platy kill well not platy kill but north bear pen side right yes okay i got i i gotta explore that yeah yeah that on the inside of that
[01:01:25] bend um there was a ski area in there and i think those folks kind of had a little influence with uh percy goff joff yeah joff whatever that is the fellow that shut down uh bear pen that freaking son of a bitch well i don't know in retrospect you know it's kind of nice that bear pen never went into private or you know uh didn't stay in private ownership that the ski area
[01:01:55] didn't make a lot of traction and now it's owned by the state yeah so it gives backcountry skiers a place to go and do some backcountry skiing skiing and there's not like 5 000 condominiums townhouses and other other things in that area yeah but that's a cool hike yeah i had a fantastic it's easy anybody could do it you know i just you know have your your gps and you know your your way up because
[01:02:20] i mean it's not hard to lose it's not hard to lose where you're at at all but there's a lot of different turn sections for these the uh the snowmobiles and stuff and you know they say no motorized vehicles but i saw remnants of of atvs and stuff like that of course they use that yeah but it was fantastic i gotta admit you know i'm tad i'm thinking that would be a great place to start
[01:02:44] like a social hike for us to get to this run road yeah this is a like nice parking area there's a good parking and stuff like that and then it's just a nice casual hike up to the top and we get to that viewpoint people can complete their katskills 100 highest and stuff uh i'm not i don't think the the 100 highest is a task worth showing after i think private properties yeah yeah i think the
[01:03:10] the um the list that margaret mcgrath put together is probably a better list a lot of these mountains the 100 highest are in my view just kind of like low intensity areas um they've been heavily logged over the years and there's really not that much to see up there true a lot of them are the same but
[01:03:34] i'll say this that hike you did um i continued that hike all the way over to hawkett when i did it i got it i was thinking about it but i didn't have the time so yeah that was for for me it was a long day but yeah that's yeah i wanted to listing ridge we'll do it we'll definitely do it sometime um i want to get on to kim so yeah let's do kim yeah so let's catskill news once again volunteer 3500 club trail crew
[01:03:59] catskill mountains club visitors center jolly rovers trail crew uh brentley mountains fire tower if you need stickers let me know or go to camp catskill so weather forecast once again this is tuesday so uh it looks like friday uh high of 34 low of 19 with uh snow showers here and there it says it says friday
[01:04:25] evening 3.5 inches of snow oh really yeah this is hunter mountain so i'm i'm going with the heart kind of like the heart of the catskills so 3.05 inches of snow and then it looks like a little bit of rain later on so it's gonna it's a it's definitely a shit show and then saturday morning a high of 39 a low of 36 so not really any wind but some rain here and there with a rain total looks like an inch of rain
[01:04:55] uh with cloudy skies all day each and every day friday through sunday a high of 36 on sunday low of 18 with wind chill at night so each and everything i i snowshoes i don't think it's going to be needed uh again you never know but i would pack the spikes because there might be a spine that has some ice on it and stuff like that with the higher peaks the higher elevations the bigger ascents you
[01:05:21] will have ice so pack your ice or pack your spikes jesus all right so let's get on to the last set of sponsors and we'll get on to kim so discover camp catskill and tannersville your ultimate hiking store find top quality gear apparel and accessories for all your outdoor adventures our expert staff that's here help every hiker from beginner to seasoned pros we also carry a variety of unique catskill souvenirs and gifts visit us online at campcatskill.co or in the store to gear up for
[01:05:51] your next journey adventure starts at camp catskill also embark on a transformative journey with another summit another summit is dedicated to serving veterans and first responders with free outdoor activities activities activities like walks in nature paddling hiking and even backpacking join our supportive community to rejuvenate nature's embrace experience camaraderie adventure and healing at no cost take your next step with another summit and descend to new heights of resilience and joy
[01:06:20] apply today at another summit.org all right so let's get on to the guest of the night let's go so tonight kim levinsky joins us to talk about our long path experience and her amazing long path documentary that is coming out and we can't wait for it i can't wait to see it uh especially with she's been on here for two episodes before so this is the third episode i think you might be catching up
[01:06:49] with matt smith with most episodes on here so you might you might be in the lead with him oh is that right yeah i think he's been on here for three episodes maybe four but i'm pretty sure you might be with him oh shoot no no that's awesome that's awesome so check out previous episodes 71 and 87 so 71 she was talking about her talk about how she's going to attempt to do the fastest known time on the long
[01:07:16] path and then on 87 where after she completed it and did the fastest known time on there so we've heard a little bit but still give us a background about yourself uh kim for the listeners sure yeah kim levinsky i am the owner and race director for sasquad trail running so as i mentioned before we put on trail events throughout northern new jersey and up into the hudson highlands of new york so we got
[01:07:41] about 11 races a month ranging or 11 races a year ranging from 5k up to 100 miles we have 100 miler in september at wayway island estate park in hewitt new jersey so that's my full-time gig i i love it it's an awesome profession i meet so many amazing people through the races and uh that keeps me pretty busy i i mean i love the trails obviously so like to get out as much as i can and i'm lucky that i get
[01:08:10] able to do it for my job as well so so you're a kind of experienced trail runner of course like you do you do this kind of for a living yeah i mean not a professional athlete by any stretch but an event organizer so with the trail races you know they're open to hikers open to trail runners uh at sasquad we attract a lot of new people so people who are either just trying trails either running or hiking for the
[01:08:37] first time or maybe they're a road runner and they're trying out the trails so uh it's cool it's it's a really neat space to be in and like i said just met some amazing people through it yeah i gotta admit the community here with the hudson valley and the catskills is tight and you know we we don't we don't like kind of i wouldn't say judge people but we kind of like help each other out yeah you know
[01:09:01] whether you're a beginner and and trail running stuff i never have the uh thought of trail running because my knees are gonna freaking break when i i jog down the trail sometimes and that's like 15 feet and i'm like oh you're going a little bit too much so like it's just like you guys help each other out of course you know kim i hate to ask this but how old are you at 36 almost 37
[01:09:29] couple weeks jesus christ all right you told me i would i would have said like 25 maybe 27 well you can zoom in i've got enough gray hairs you zoom in i can't i can't tell you can see this this whole beard is gray so so 36 years old uh two years ago you set the fastest stone time
[01:09:49] uh for the women's attempt on the fat on on the long path so you were 34 years old wow that's that's that's very impressive like these guys like jason lang and uh joshua reed are setting these at young ages and you're 34 years old ripping it up on a 358 mile trail do you want to excel like talk about
[01:10:16] the your time and you know 358 miles what was your time on this yeah it took me about nine days and 10 hours to go uh southbound so i started up at john thatcher state park and ended uh over the gwv into new york city so yeah just about nine and a half days and i'm sure we'll chat about it but the weather was a really big variable i mean i was i was the knucklehead who chose july to do it it was not the
[01:10:44] best month but that just worked it worked best with my schedule and um there's some challenging weather conditions but yeah it was it was wild nine and a half days jesus nine and a half days to do 358 miles good god if you could see my face right now and tad's just like yeah yeah i can pound that out in six days that's crazy so i i remember kim uh first
[01:11:12] of all i remember listening to your episode number 87 when it aired the uh first time and then um stash and i had chris leblanc on the show a while back and chris set uh the first recorded fastest known time for an unsupported traverse of the long path and and then i reflected on your excursion
[01:11:40] and you had a 23 foot rented rv right that's right along right and chris was like thinking about sleeping and porta potties and you know like crawling up under picnic benches and and stuff like that so to to what extent i mean can you compare have you ever done an unsupported like multi-day fastest known time
[01:12:05] no not not unsupported no uh the the other efforts i've done the hudson highlands hell no hellhole honda which we talked about yeah yeah that was supported so um i mean i personally love the the community aspect of those types of experiences i mean i do enjoy the solo time but you know something of that magnitude it was cool to be able to share it with people i mean the two are
[01:12:33] just so different you know i'm sure chris had some really transformative experiences out there by himself um they're just two different ways of doing it mm-hmm yeah i just i remember when we were talking to him i just i could not get my arms around comprehending why you would do that okay yeah
[01:12:56] whether it was whether it was nine days 19 days or however it just seemed like a true suffer fest but i remember well i had remembered at the time and then this morning when i listened to number 87 over one of the things that i took away from uh your excursion was that it was more like a community or group effort a lot of camaraderie and friendship and you know growth with other people um on your
[01:13:25] nine-day excursion do i get that right yeah for sure for sure and and it's the documentary definitely captures captures captures that um it was you know there were over 20 friends that came out over the course of the nine and a half days and that ranged from people who were actually on trail with me to you know doing supply runs picking up food uh you know shuttling pacers who because you
[01:13:52] know it's point to point so people needed to get a ride back to wherever they parked so there was this there's so many people involved in the effort which was it was really special yeah and that comes through in the documentary the group effort yeah absolutely yeah and so who was coordinating the the support team was there somebody in charge of all that for you yeah i mean the logistics leading up to the event i was kind of the quarterback of it with organizing um you know there was that huge
[01:14:21] spreadsheet that i put together and you know what i've learned with these things is the more you can organize and on top of details ahead of time the better off you're going to be because shit will hit the fan it's not matter if it's a matter of when so pretty much yeah i put together binders for people uh for the crew and it had all the information in there so once i started that all got passed off to to my friends so there there were two women who were there for i think it was
[01:14:50] basically like seven or eight of the days so they kind of took the lead with with that once i started on trail wow so nine days uh 50 minutes so even with so it's like that's just that's just unbelievable just amount of time and you know once again once again you said the community the support you had and the
[01:15:14] motivation you know once like like with you dealing with with 87 i remember talking about like just weather was not on your side was just always hampering your your time not your not your times but your spirits and stuff like that the nettles i remember that you talked about was just absolutely insane
[01:15:38] other other things that we'll talk about in a second so could you could you tell me with the 358 miles what was the worst time that you had on there and is this in the documentary the worst time um i guess what flavor of of the worst it will will you choose from i mean you know the northern section
[01:16:03] of the long path pretty much up until you got to the catskills you know a lot of it was overgrown yeah we talked about the nettles already but that was tough i mean that was that was tough to be slugging through uh a field of stinging nettles and just having you know you're already in some discomfort and then to have nettles that are up to your knees going on for 100 feet they were screaming they were swearing
[01:16:31] you know but i think probably towards you know as as the trip went on you know obviously the more sleep deprived you got so i think just the the building fatigue by the end was pretty challenging um yeah and then you had the whole variable of of the state had closed down harriman state park in the middle of the fkt because of the storm so there were probably two or three days of the fkt that you
[01:16:59] know it was we didn't know if we're going to finish like it was looking like it was going to end in monroe at the start of harriman state park uh which would have been incredibly anticlimactic i mean that'd be the understatement of the century but you know eventually we did get special permission to go through so yeah i think uh there were probably a number of low moments throughout the nine and a half
[01:17:25] days is that is that like the nettles stuff and stuff like that on the documentary uh that's a good question i saw a cut of the film it's probably about a month and a half ago now but tomorrow morning i'm going to see the next cut which is pretty much the final um so i'll find out if it's
[01:17:46] cut or not i mean so like a lot of this once again you're going lightweight you're kind of traveling like as fast as you can so shorts i don't know a top maybe uh you're in july it's a little warmer at night it gets a little bit colder so basically you're in shorts going through
[01:18:08] waist high nettles god damn that sucks yeah i'm hoping you know maybe i gain some immunity from it we'll find out no no no not at all don't tease yourself man yeah the only thing that after a while you just kind of come a little bit enough to ties to them and you don't feel the sting as much but now it's and we all you know it's been a nice long winter and we've all gotten rather comfortable
[01:18:37] and complacent and you know what we do outdoors in the catskills hiking and bushwhacking but go back to those photos of august and september and look at some of those nettle shots and it'll remind you of just how awful it can be out there but can you mention yeah you mentioned sleep deprivation were you basically going uh dawn to dusk every day yeah um yeah i i have these stats handy because
[01:19:06] the filmmaker and i have been chatting about it so i can read this to you we had figured out the the time on trail so from start to finish it was 226 hours if you do the math for nine and a half days so 161 of those 226 were spent on trail moving um and the rest were not so that came out to like
[01:19:31] maybe six hours per day total included sitting down eating changing shoes sleeping for a few hours each night uh but the rest of the time was really spent on trail moving so you know i was hoping to get a little bit more sleep than i did but because of the weather and the trail conditions things were moving a lot slower than anticipated so you know we just tried to cover as many miles as humanly possible
[01:20:00] each day and do you think your time would have been any faster had you gotten more sleep and been more rested and maybe been able to push a harder pace during the day or that just wasn't going to factor into it we'll never know yeah you're not going to do it again i was going to say or you can do it again do it again yeah i know you know that's the problem with runners joke about there's something called
[01:20:24] runner's amnesia where you know you do you probably have this with hiking something that's really tough and you're like i'll never do it again and then you know time goes on you're like i wasn't really that bad i'm starting to cross over into that for the long path it's been two and a half years almost it'll be three years in july where i'm like god i don't know maybe they won't take another shot at it it wouldn't be in july i can tell you that definitely would not be in july i would think would you go earlier
[01:20:52] would you go right in the year in may i think a better month yeah it would be may or in the fall before the leaves come down um you'll have a little more daylight i think in the in the spring which is nice yeah and the nettles are shorter and the nettles are shorter yeah go you got to go out before the nettles actually grow their teeth that's because yeah because end of july august when they have their
[01:21:16] teeth and they can growl at you they do growl they're very aggressive they are yeah they i mean they really the nettles and the catskills i think they have issues mental issues they're very passive aggressive they like pretend they're just standing there complacently and then when you get close to them they attack yeah it's uh yeah and we seem to forget that in the winter so do you know of anybody who's
[01:21:41] tried to beat your record in the the past two and a half years no not not yet so i mean that's what's fun about the fkt culture community is it really is a genuine desire to see people go out there and especially you know i've the only woman who's made the attempt that i know of so i i mean i would love for more women to go out there um yeah that's what's cool about the fkt culture as well as there's
[01:22:09] a lot of support so i i had a lot of support from the guys who had set the fkt before me um you know jeff adams and ken posner and uh there are two guys named dustin and will they went out and set records and you know i had great support from them so i i would love you know i think every fkt holder is probably waiting for that full circle moment where you can help the next person so that that would be
[01:22:34] awesome you know just a matter of when you know it's in you know that we have a good time of you know with the email and and stuff like that social media of where we can go back and forth about this stuff you know like their experience what would you suggest you know this and that you know a lot of people bash social media of course it sucks you know it's it's made some places shitty places but then once again
[01:23:02] you know we have podcasts like this and we get to hear about kim's story about how she crazily struggled through the northern part of the catskills now i want to hear once again like what we hit you're hitting the northern catskills we get a lot of nettles and stuff like that and overgrowth and then what happens when you start hitting the catskills so you hit kind of like i would say
[01:23:30] windham let's start at windham all the way down how was your experience at windham going the escarpment windham and then going over to the devil's path well there was some much needed bliss when i started the escarpment trail for a number of reasons that there was a trail for one you know it wasn't overgrown we you know you we came through the trailhead it was a great crew stop where i saw a lot of
[01:23:53] friends and the rain had stopped it it had rained so hard like one of the hardest rainstorms i've ever been in at the start of that day we started in around the gilboa area and when we got to the escarpment trailhead it stopped raining and that gave my feet a really much needed relief i put on dry socks and dry shoes uh it only lasted till we got to the first summit and then the skies opened up again
[01:24:22] and and i thought it had rained the hardest ever before but it seemed to rain even harder when we were climbing but yeah i mean escarpment is is magical i think yeah you have a couple of really beautiful viewpoints and you know in in the scope of the whole catskill section it's probably considered like the most runnable at least or or the easiest to move you know i mean some compared to
[01:24:47] like the devil's path or the burrows range or bangle hill um you have a lot more kind of runnable sections in escarpment but that was that was a really cool day to get um yeah we got as far we went from gilboa till uh we went through north south lake and then ended at the road at the bottom of that hill before heading up to caterskill so that's where we had ended that day nice yeah that's
[01:25:15] i mean that section is magical but then it also can be brutal of course this is all is this in like most of this in the documentary yeah you know so the documentary it absolutely shows from start to finish the timeline of the fkt you know going through each section uh the primary message of the documentary though focuses on mental health and yeah i share a lot about my own mental health
[01:25:43] journey in the documentary and the filmmaker his name is shy bendor he i don't know how he did it i mean i feel like i watch when i watched the film i was i it helped me process the experience and and even just learning more about you know the passage of time and and what exactly happened out there it was i mean it's a kind of a wacky thing to see yourself on camera and you know to be reliving the experience but
[01:26:13] then at the same time some very personal and intimate and you know tough stuff is also being narrated on top of it so it's a it's a really interesting it's an interesting experience to watch that so kim let's let's um segue into that when you started your planning when you had this notion that you were going to do or set out to do the fastest known time for the long path were you also at the same time thinking
[01:26:42] about doing a documentary oh no no that was that was not on my radar at all so so how did that come about that um you got involved in doing a documentary of this effort yeah that that definitely wasn't on my bingo card for the fkt um the the filmmaker shy he reached out to me shortly after i had shared online
[01:27:07] that i was gonna attempt the long path fkt and he sent me a note and said like hey we've we've crossed paths before i've been following you know your story through your your running experiences and through sasquad trail running what you're doing in the community i would and i would love to make a film about it would you be open to talking about it and um so what was your initial reaction to that were
[01:27:33] you like yeah yeah yeah i want to do this or like uh i'm not so sure yeah i was i was scared shitless to be honest to be perfectly honest and shy and i we've talked about that since i remember i went out for a really long run after i got that note from him and was just trying to think through you know just i i've seen plenty of documentaries i'm aware of like what happens when you have a film crew you know
[01:27:55] they're they're following you and capturing some really intense emotions and experiences but i had my first meeting with shy we had a sit down and within 10 minutes i had complete trust in him and how he was going to handle the film you know we we talked about extensively like expectations of you
[01:28:20] what was going to be shared what wasn't going to be shared and from every step from that first meeting up until now we just talked yesterday about you know our feelings of it like how you you know he's reaching out how are you feeling about the premiere that's coming up in a few weeks you know doing check ins like that so every step along the way he's been incredible and he's become a great friend you
[01:28:45] know he we kind of my my friend group kind of forcefully adopted him and and sheamus was the uh other guy who was out with shy for the uh nine and a half days so we kind of brought him into our circle through the experience so what were there were there express understandings in terms of what the rules were the expectations were to share or not share what what raw and unfiltered moments would be
[01:29:12] captured and and when they would turn the cameras off was there any like you know agreement in advance or was it just on the fly as you go yeah we we definitely had a lot of chats about that leading up to the fkt and and shy i mean he he must have said it a hundred times you know if at any point you feel uncomfortable you just say stop and that's it you know we turn the camera off he's like i don't care if
[01:29:39] it's six days in and we need to bail like you know you feeling comfortable is what's most important so yeah we had those chats ahead of time um i think there was maybe two times where i had asked like i really don't want you to film right now um but he was the rest of the time to be honest i didn't even notice that he would have the camera out a lot of the times he was incredibly respectful of those
[01:30:07] really intense moments he still managed to capture a lot of it but you know he didn't there was no interviewing through through the experience which i i really appreciated you know it was it was all the focus was just on moving forward not on you know doing a five-minute interview every day we didn't do that and it was focused on you it was focused on your fkt attempt so that's i mean
[01:30:31] a success you know it's just it's absolutely phenomenal now like was he at i'm kind of curious about this at the end of the thing was he basically like god damn i'm glad this is over because of just see all the the craziness that happened you know we we joke a lot because his so the other guy who's with him sheamus he's become a great friend those two are are besties
[01:30:59] they're like bros and somehow shy convinced sheamus to come on this adventure i don't know how many details he gave him ahead of time but it certainly wasn't you know the reality they were living out of their prius they had a prius which is a very small vehicle of course nine and a half days um um but you know again those two they i really consider them like brothers they've become great
[01:31:26] part of the community so so this sheamus guy yeah is he is he famous on instagram i don't i don't think so he's murphy he's very irish okay okay because there's a there's a guy named that i follow that is a drummer same name sheamus and he's very good drummer yeah but we we roped him in and and sheamus told me afterwards he said that that was the most special uh project he's ever been a
[01:31:54] part of so i think you know and i know for shy as well it's it's a very personal story for shy i think you know he's obviously not in the in the film but yeah mental health is very he's very passionate about it as well so you know he's telling his story through all of it uh it's just it's pretty powerful so you talk about mental health can you like brewing into mental health that goes along with the your documentary and stuff like that what is this
[01:32:22] what is the fastest known time and mental health like coincide how does that coincide yeah you know i think there's a there's a really big crossover between mental health and the trails whether that's hiking or running um i think a lot of people i mean we talked about it earlier you know you're going out on the trails to find peace and especially now kind of some
[01:32:44] a break from reality of what's going on you know my my personal story was i was using running as quote therapy so yeah i i grew up where mental health there was just so much stigma surrounding it surrounding therapy getting help through meds that just it was something that was never talked about even though there's a lot of mental illness in my family so you know the last few years getting
[01:33:14] plugged in with this trail community and learning that you know you can talk about these things and that you know you can only run or hike so far um you know it works until it doesn't work and that was really kind of my experience up to a few years ago i was using ultra running as a way to kind of solve my problems or to numb out you know to check out but then when i got i got plugged in with therapy
[01:33:41] through the organization called bigger than the trail they're a non-profit that provides cost-free therapy for anybody who needs it you don't have to be a trail runner in order to take advantage of it so i started therapy in 2021 and it you know quite literally changed my life through that so now i'm really involved with the organization and and they're they're a big part of this film and you know getting the word out about the work that they do and and just making health care mental health care
[01:34:10] accessible to people so kim was this something that was discussed at the onset about making this a documentary that it would also incorporate your personal experiences before this the the bigger than the trail project and more than just trail running but more of this holistic uh view of your background
[01:34:36] and what trail running does for you is that something that was discussed with the documentary fellows at the beginning yeah absolutely yeah that that was going to be always the primary driver of the film you know the fkt for sure it's it's the story but using it as you know kind of the foundation of of talking about these really big and sometimes challenging topics so yeah the way the way shy and seamus have we've you know they've woven all together it's it's really it's a it's a beautiful
[01:35:06] project that they put together so one of one of the questions i i jotted down and i think you're like on the verge of giving us this answer is why do you think somebody should watch it who isn't a trail runner or into doing fastest known times what would be your sales pitch or plug to the non-trail runner
[01:35:28] out there why they should watch this documentary of you suffering on the the long path but the stinging nettles yeah yeah i think it all it all boils down to we all have mental health it's a universal thing it's not something that some people have and some people don't so i mean i i i after watching the film i think
[01:35:54] that it's incredibly it's it's weird to say this because i understand that it's about a 360 mile run and that is ridiculous in you know 99.9 of society to think about that but the way that he put the film together is universal and you don't have to relate to running that kind of a distance in order to
[01:36:22] learn and grow from the film so um you know my my hope is from people watching it that maybe they're they are where i was a number of years ago and you know heard about therapy heard about getting help but like either just scared to do it or don't know how um my hope is that the film and what shy put together will encourage people to take that step even if it's not like getting on the
[01:36:51] phone and setting up a therapy appointment maybe it's just talking to a friend and i think that kind of it loops back in just the power of community and that's really captured in the film of how you know you can accomplish things with other people that you can't do by yourself so um i think there's a lot of messages that are relatable to people and you don't have to run 360 miles in order
[01:37:16] to get it so what understanding that this was going to be the message from the outset um and that you were doing this documentary as you were making this fastest known time attempt did there ever come a point or were there points during the course of the nine days that you were regretting that you were doing a documentary while you were trying this or was the fact that you were doing this documentary
[01:37:41] while you were doing this something that was inspiring you to to leg it out through the nettles and the epic rainfall and the you know the larger than expected water crossings that's a really great question um um there were absolutely moments especially in the first few days where i had those feelings i i describe
[01:38:06] it as kind of imposter syndrome where you know when it the weather was nuts and you know it was really tough right out the gate there were thoughts of like what the hell are we doing out here and like now there's a film crew and it's all being captured and this is going to be like really you know those those full transparency those were the thoughts going through my head um yeah as as the the nine and a
[01:38:36] half days went on they those thoughts faded i think just because i was gaining some momentum and and we were moving but yeah that's that's a great question i don't i don't think any at any point i never i knew that they were there obviously i mean shy and jamis they they really became a part of the crew you know with especially in the catskill section because shy he grew up towards the goshen area and
[01:39:02] done a lot of hiking and backpacking through the catskill so he's his knowledge was very much needed especially with like the road closures all throughout harriman and getting up into the catskill so you know to me during during the fkt shamis and shy were they were a part of the crew i didn't really even view them as as the the film i mean obviously they were they had a camera and a boom mic so i know
[01:39:29] that they were filming but it wasn't a conscious thing of so i have this image here i i am or here you are um whether it's on the escarpment trail the devil's path the burrows range um you're hustling along whether you're running at the time or just fast walking hiking along what are these guys doing are they like ahead of you behind right i'm curious as well a boom mic which is to somebody who doesn't know it's
[01:39:58] like a long stick or pole with a microphone on the end of it and then the other one has a camera what i mean is this like a big camera is it a smaller like what the hell's going on with this give us give us a little info on like what what's it like what what's the equipment and how's it going down on the trail i i am so glad you asked that because these are the things that aren't going to be seen in the
[01:40:23] documentary and and i i've said so many times those guys like there should be a documentary about what you two did out there because i mean shy was out there on the devil's path with his huge camera scrambling up and you know he would get me from behind and then he would go in front you know the he he did the burrows range up to slide um where he had his camera and then of course it started raining so he's like
[01:40:51] it's okay i'll switch to my phone and he switched to his phone and got some footage um but he had a number of they they had a number of uh different cameras they had a a really big handheld there was one that kind of looked like this scuba tank setup where it was like a harness with this like pole that goes overhead and the camera's hanging from like a string essentially so it gives i don't know all
[01:41:15] the technical terms but it gives balance it's it keeps the balance where you it will stay in frame of you yeah stosh hikes with a like his own personal documentary crew dude i used to look at my my youtube stuff i used to do that kind of stuff and then i so but so these guys are actually like sprinting to get ahead of you at times with their gear yeah i mean i wouldn't say there is ever a point where i was
[01:41:43] moving lightning speed so that wasn't too challenging yeah yeah another really impressive thing that shy did was you know there's there's a good amount of road sections through the long path so he brought his skateboard out and he would be skateboarding while filming wow with the camera yeah yeah it was it was it was nuts it was it was incredible they did a lot of drone footage which
[01:42:08] personally that's some of my favorite parts of the film because it's just it's so beautiful like the he got drone footage and the cat skills with the inversion clouds and he got uh you know verkader falls through minnewaska at sunset i mean you know and and captured like the thunder and lightning storms and stuff like that so you know from a technical standpoint they're extremely talented individuals
[01:42:33] and i i wish i had had the brain cells to take more videos of them like i wish i wish i could go i wish i pulled out my phone and just videoed shy on the devil's path because it's like no one's gonna believe this like i can describe it to you guys but it was quite a sight to see in person so did that ever feel like like a burden out there like you were kind of like like get the hell away from me
[01:43:02] i'm i'm trying to do this and then or or was it kind of like an inspiration it's like okay i can move faster and because of these guys are trying to i'm trying to show the the world what i got here and i can do better um i mean i had never had one of those thoughts i think i was it was just so hard i was not thinking about like yay they're making a film about me like that just it just wasn't in in my you know
[01:43:30] in my brain at the time um there there were i think two instances where i had asked shy to to stop filming because it was just it was really i was really low and um but it's funny you know looking back there's a part of me is like man i kind of wish that they did film some of that stuff because that's the real that's the real stuff that really happens out there but again and just so respectful and it
[01:43:57] was no no issue he's like absolutely stop filming you know there was there was never any like he's sneaking with the camera trying to capture you know when i'm crying or something like that like mtv live or something like that no that didn't happen these these guys are out there nine days with their equipment aren't they getting tired oh what is it what is it yeah it's not like it's not like they're
[01:44:24] like you that are out at least as far as i know that they're out running all the time and you know maybe they're physically fit but are they this physically fit to do this for nine days with all this gear and at times they're trying to get out ahead of you to get the shot or catch up with you i mean aren't they like by day four or five aren't they a little sleep deprived and aren't they kind of saying to themselves what the did we get ourselves into you'll have to ask them that question but yeah
[01:44:50] i mean i could definitely they were they were tired everybody was tired um i i remember there is one story from the longest day i did was about 56 miles or so where we went from basically south gully by minnewaska like where you dumped out on south gully road or gully road and ended at
[01:45:14] the monroe commuter lot so we did well actually we were probably two or three miles short of the monroe uh commuter lot but the story that i found out you know i hear all these stories now like after the fact you know because you have no idea what's going on but they they had to go they had a friend who lived in chester or something and they all all their stuff was dead like they had it that was a challenge too like they had to keep everything charged they had the variable of keeping batteries charged but then
[01:45:43] also their memory cards filled up i mean they had over 20 hours of footage so it was a constant kind of juggle of like okay we got to go charge find somewhere to charge we got to dump the memory cards on a backup drive so they had done that that day and they're like they told each other like okay we're gonna let's sleep for like two hours and they were they went to like never never land and
[01:46:10] they didn't wake up until the next day and so you know they came back they met at the commuter lot and they're like you you ran clear across you know orange county we can't believe how far you ran and shy and old he had all these plans of like you know the he was going to come out on the bike path because it was paved he'd have his skateboard and you know they were just super tired and they needed they needed a plan like i think everybody did and they especially needed a little time out at that
[01:46:40] moment yeah it sounds like they hit their limit you know right about there and they needed to to recharge they did but you know they were there every step of the way i mean they they were there until the very end up until you know new york city so it's really incredible i again i wish i wish there was like a separate film on those two guys yeah it sounds like everybody like had a major effort for this
[01:47:05] project yeah absolutely yeah for sure i mean the crew you know the the women who are in the rv i think they slept less than i did because you know at the end of the day they're helping you know reset everything and get me food and blah blah and then once i was done with those tasks i went out for a few hours and they're still you know cleaning things up getting things ready for the next day so yeah it
[01:47:33] was a herculean effort by everybody for sure so all this stuff that's going on and then we have you know you battling nettles you battling rainstorms and steep ascents and stuff like that so was there stuff not covered in the documentary that we talked about uh of course on episode 87
[01:47:56] what about these two police calls and kilboa yeah i mean it would be impossible to cover anything everything in a film uh but for sure i think you know some of these really wacky experiences are are not making the cut just because you know the overall theme there there are some fun funny moments in the documentary but it is a little bit more on the serious side with you know talking about mental
[01:48:23] health and and all that definitely i actually just made a video that i'm probably going to put out tomorrow evening of all those dumb clips video clips because i wanted to live on on the internet in some fashion and i've got some goofy music that's going to play in the background but there'll be some in there but i'm hoping shy and jamis are going to be able to pull off a blooper reel because
[01:48:47] that'll be pure gold so at the end you didn't talk about that what happened with uh the police calls oh the police calls yeah so that that the first call that was made on us was outside of gilboa that evening it was the second night i i had suggested like let's park on this quiet road it's
[01:49:11] it's next to this cemetery it was called like the freeze cemetery very small it's probably super old cemetery and so they're like okay that's in the spreadsheet we're gonna park there so you know i ended the day we're getting ready to go to sleep and then there's these you know blue and red flashing lights
[01:49:32] outside of the rv and the police officer said that somebody called because the rv looks suspicious parked next to the cemetery which you know i guess hindsight that's fair you know why is there an rv park out of a cemetery in the middle of nowhere so this is where we have to ask kim did did you ever
[01:49:55] watch the uh tv series breaking bad oh no is that an episode what yeah well don't don't you remember breaking bad stosh they were cooking meth inside the rv yeah so yeah it's like a portable meth lab so you know at least we know the neighborhood watch is uh alive and well and gilboa yeah they were on it
[01:50:20] yeah so the officer he took all of our guys and go bo and you know said that so how many people you had you had the the the two fellows doing the documentary in their prius right they were sleeping in that vehicle yeah then how many people are in the rv yeah in the in the rv there's generally myself my two friends robin and dina so three people and then there were other vehicles so my
[01:50:48] friend lynn mackie she has a minivan and then my other friend sarah she had her subaru so you know there's an entourage i guess you can call it um so it could look suspicious it could look with lights here and there and then somebody running with a boom and no not suspicious at all in a town that has 500 people max exactly no way you know i live in in
[01:51:15] in uh oneonta which is it says 14 000 people but that's probably included college kids but going like driving i drive more south i drive it's just like all right you know gilboa stanford there's not a lot going on not a lot at all so i can see why these big lights or an rv parked outside it was tracked so
[01:51:39] much it's the speculation and be like oh something's going on here we might want to check it out oh it's just a person attempting the fastest known time so unbelievable so what about the uh the beaver encounter then we we chat about it on this episode we said was that ever involved in documentary no yeah they weren't out on the time i know no one's gonna believe the story i do can you can you do you have
[01:52:08] videos i do have video i have a seven minute long video of the beaver encounter because i kept saying first of all i was wondering if i was hallucinating because this can't be real that this beaver is like forcing us back up the trail towards the lake and then i then i was like no this is real and nobody's gonna believe us so i was taking video of it but yeah we we were making that descent off of the lake to
[01:52:34] head down to that little trail head and there was this creature that was on the trail we couldn't tell what it was and then we saw you know it's flat tails oh my god is that a beaver and it just kept coming towards us like we couldn't the trail wasn't wide enough to go around and you know my friend kenton who was with me he was a little freaked out to be honest he was a little he was
[01:53:02] a little spooked by the fever and i was just like delirious i was like this is crazy i can't believe it's a beaver so it took literally 10 minutes of us backing up backing up you know we were shouting kenton was whistling and finally like it got to this split in the trail and there was a stream on one side and it just dove into the stream and we never saw it again and then we we took we took off
[01:53:28] running we we ran and ken probably ran a little further than we needed to he was a little freaked out but so chris chris leblanc you would have been beaten if it wasn't for these freaking beavers it was beavers yep it was the b god damn beavers where was that uh at where would you think would you say during your time of the fast home time yeah that was um i guess you're off of the escarpment trail
[01:53:54] at that point where where it starts to do it's probably the easiest section of the long path where you're descending um i forget what color it is but you're descending down to the road that eventually will will start you up caterskill um wow big climb so yeah so please post this on your instagram
[01:54:17] because i was i'm very curious about this so it will so you said you'd only like like washed half of it yet so i watched i watched the the the cut that he had put together that's i think it was in february so a couple months ago i drove up to new haven he lives in new haven connecticut and we sat down
[01:54:43] because that was something i i'd spoken with with him and he felt it was really important as well you know i i felt the same way that you know i watched the film before the premiere and it came out to the public so i went up there and watched that cut and i mean cried my eyes out all 28 minutes of the film um and then you know since that he's been you know polishing it rearranging a couple things so
[01:55:12] tonight i believe is the official deadline him and seamus have kind of put on themselves because may 3rd is is the premiere date we rented out a movie theater in jersey and um so the film is going to get wrapped up so i think tomorrow i'm going to be able to see what will pretty much be the final
[01:55:30] version of the film and like what is your impression so far it was it was like i said earlier it's kind of it's an interesting experience to like watch yourself on in a movie you know what i mean um it was it was an incredibly visceral experience like i it brought me back instantly like all the
[01:55:58] all the scenes you know i it felt like it was just yesterday that the whole experience happened like it's it's a very um if visceral i guess is the right word yeah i don't know i just felt it in my in my whole body watching the film um and it was it was moving it was really emotional to watch it and just to see the way that he put it together and you know we had talked about beforehand he had kind of gave a
[01:56:28] little disclaimer like it's it's impossible to get everybody in the film i hope you know that but when the film ended i said to him like i know you didn't get everybody in the film like everybody doesn't have face time but it felt like you captured the whole the whole community experience even beyond you know the people that were there helping in person the greater community because that was
[01:56:52] another really incredible part of the experience was there were hundreds of people who were following along like there was a there was this huge group chat that people my friends were keeping updated and people were sending in messages throughout the fkt and that was that was something that it really helped me a lot throughout the nine and a half days was i was reading those notes from people so yeah he
[01:57:19] just i don't know how to describe it but he just he captured that in the film and it's only 28 minutes and i said that to him too i was like i felt like that was two hours long it did not feel like 28 minutes it was is a very like timeless experience so speaking of time how how long is the final cut supposed to be
[01:57:38] i think it's going to be about 26 to 28 minutes wow okay and uh you're you're having the premiere on may 3rd where in new jersey yeah we we rented out this uh this family-owned historic hundred year old theater in hawthorne new jersey it's a really it's got great vibes um so and you know it's been in their
[01:58:04] family for a couple generations so they were really excited to have us rent the theater so we rented it for friday evening is at 7 p.m is the the world premiere and then we added on a matinee on sunday afternoon at one o'clock since we've almost filled the theater for saturday evening so we want to give people an opportunity to come out where does it go after that where can we after the third and the
[01:58:31] fourth where do we go to watch this yeah it's gonna it's gonna be streaming i'm not sure if shy has landed yet on if it's going to be youtube or through his website uh but it will be accessible to the public so those details are forthcoming yeah that sounds very fantastic all right now i don't know if if stash has anything else on the documentary do you because i've got my one recent add-in i threw on
[01:58:59] any more documentary questions or i'm going to go to the add-in you can do the add-in then i'll do the uh question after that buddy okay so kim i um checked out your web page while we were online here and i want you to tell us about i'm not i don't know if i'm pronouncing this right but it's a take on the minnewaska name i i gather and the name of your company tell us about the fundraiser that you're
[01:59:27] doing for squatchy waska yes you nailed it squatchy waska we like to put a little squatchy twist on all of the racing so um yeah so this this fundraiser it comes back to ken posner and todd jennings you know like i mentioned before they they created the original ellenville mountain festival race that ran for a number of years and since then they've gone on to create their non-profit that's called run
[01:59:56] wild incorporated and run wild basically their their main goal is to fundraise for land acquisition in order to you know a lot of take the long path for example to move road sections onto trails so slowly buying parcels of land they work very you know hand in hand with the new york new jersey trail conference so you know when i was working with them i said i'd really love to tie in what you're doing and and
[02:00:26] they are they've got a huge fundraising campaign going right now to basically um preserve and protect vercadier falls um from my understanding the falls are up for sale and i think it's being purchased by open space institute or the new i have to go back and read the exact pdf but basically the fundraiser we're
[02:00:48] doing is to um that's going towards the preservation of of the falls there yeah because as i understand it the um the top of the falls is in the park and the base of the falls is on private property so it would it would be nice for all of that to come under public ownership yeah i mean it's it's
[02:01:13] it's such an incredible spot um if you've been you know you've been there uh you know it's my backyard yeah it's like you know 10 minutes away oh my gosh it's really really beautiful yeah you want a good adventure you go there in the winter when it's all iced oh geez it's crazy so that's all i have kim it was uh fun talking to you and uh i'm going to hand it back over to stosh
[02:01:39] but good luck in everything you do and i'm looking forward to watching your documentary thank you yeah we're we're working on a uh an actual film tour so doing screenings throughout the country and we're we are working right now with the trail conference to hopefully do screening in the cat skills at some point this summer so we're looking at a couple different venues but be really cool to tie you guys in and you know we're trying for the the screenings that various vendors and stuff come out so
[02:02:05] that'd be really cool to to link up with you guys for that yeah yeah yeah definitely so what about this bigger than the trail do you want to talk about that because you know that's pretty cool stuff yeah absolutely yeah so bigger bigger than the trail is is a non-profit that they provide cost-free therapy for anybody who needs it so you don't have to be a runner in order to take advantage of
[02:02:30] those services so um like i mentioned earlier that's how i first got plugged in with therapy was because of bigger than the trail so now my company sasquad we do a lot of fundraising efforts for for bigger than the trail because you know the work they're doing is amazing but it does require funds in order to get people the help that they need so yeah check it out the website is bttt.run
[02:02:57] dot run and you know the process of getting help is really easy it's not a whole drawn out thing you fill out a little questionnaire and then uh you're basically given the credits to use on a couple different platforms for access to therapy so really really incredible organization i will definitely post their link in the show notes because i was very curious about that awesome amazing so kim thank you so
[02:03:26] much for joining us tonight so last question i have that we have that we always have post hike bruising bites what can you uh say about like when your journey along the long path with this amazing documentary they have going on what can you give a shout out to that we can chat about in the show yeah i mean the the fan favorite for the whole crew was uh definitely brio's in phoenicia i mean
[02:03:53] they they've told me since that was like one of the greatest moments of the week was when they got to sit down and eat pizza at brio's because it was like one of the stress-free moments of the of the uh entire journey so probably brio's and now i got to check out uh cohen's bakery which i wrote down so i gotta check that out yeah when i go out for some race prep this week ellenville talk about carbo loading yeah yeah absolutely yeah sounds fantastic so kim thank you for joining us tonight
[02:04:23] really appreciate it can't when i look forward to the documentary i will definitely hook up with you and we will hook up with other people to get this kind of broadcasted all over the catskills because it should be to see once again uh intertwining you know fastest known time hiking mental health is always a great thing to get going and get to preaching about and uh the catskills and the community
[02:04:48] especially because this is a tight community and as you shown tonight this you have a tight community as well so let's keep it going yeah thank you guys you got some really awesome questions i appreciate you bringing me back on for round three here this was great love chatting with you both hell yeah i had a great time yeah so thank you once again to the monthly supporters and monthly sponsors of the show really appreciate you guys supporting and uh sponsoring the show it's awesome uh thank you to
[02:05:17] everybody who has donated the show and once again thank you to everybody who is listening especially uh two hours into this still listening i don't i highly doubt anybody is but i think they are i think kim i think kim was the star of the evening so people people made it to the end i hope so i hope so because this was a great show we made a good team three of us hell yeah hell yeah yeah we're a great team kim
[02:05:44] but i'm not doing a fastest known time with you that's right never say never i'm saying never i'm saying the fastest known time up round top today so yeah screw you all right so everybody have a good night uh well let's keep in touch in the future awesome thanks guys all right have a good night see ya hey everyone i just want to thank you for listening to the show
[02:06:09] if you enjoyed the show subscribe and throw down a smooth review on spotify apple podcast or any podcast platform 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 gotta just keep on living in the cat skills man
[02:06:39] i v i am wicked wicked wicked wicked wild wild wild wild pra