Episode 241 - The Northville Placid Trail with James O'Boyle

[00:00:29] The bushwhacks were some of the worst days I've ever had in the mountains, or life really. Whereas Pansy 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] Pansy Mountain to Inside The Line, the Catskill Mountains Podcast. Alright, there we go. Finally. So today was a bad day guys. You know why? Why was that? I had to wear pants. I had to wear pants when hiking. This is disgusting.

[00:01:22] I was thinking that on my drive home, that tonight would probably be the first podcast I've done in months, wearing pants. But then I thought I wasn't going to bring that up because it kind of sounds wrong, that I've been sitting here the whole time, you know? Like that fellow on CNN, I forget his name offhand. Yeah, yeah. Nice, nice. Not me, not me.

[00:01:51] Well then, I guess that's not awkward. So sorry to bring you in on this, James. So welcome to episode 241. Tonight, James O'Boyle joins us to talk about his epic hike on the Northville Placid Trail. If you've been following the podcast, you'll see that he has been tagging the podcast, we've been sharing his stuff. And he had an epic, was it nine days on the Northville Placid Trail? Nine days. Okay, okay. Nice, nice. We're ready to hear about it. We're lucky to hear about it.

[00:02:18] And James joins us tonight to have some fun and to talk about the Northville Placid Trail, his experience and stuff. So welcome to the show. Thank you so much. Yeah, yeah. Nothing, come on, a little bit more than that. Thank you! I'm honored to be here. We need to be like Bob Barker. Come on down! That's actually, I could. So, start off things off.

[00:02:41] Wanted to mention that Far and High Outdoor Co., David Perez from episode 230, which is downstate28, he did that, is offering an exclusive deal for our listeners. Use the code INSIDETHELINE, all caps. It gets us, the listeners, 25% off everything in the shop. And they can use the code as many times as I like, as they like. So, once again, David, Far and High Outdoor Co. has these awesome stickers and stuff.

[00:03:12] Canister stickers, 3500, emblems like those, what are you, just the Elevation Profile 3500 stickers, and a bunch of other stuff that you can get. And Tad, you need to send him your address. Oh, okay. Yeah, it's all really cool stuff. And as I understand it, Stosh, the listeners get 25% off, but we get nothing but seeing our listeners get some cool gear at 25% off.

[00:03:41] That's correct. Yeah. So, they benefit. And it's great that Dave is doing that for them. Appreciate it. Yes. So, his link will be in the show notes. Check it out, Far and High Outdoor Co. If you need something, ask David from, look him up on David Perez on Instagram or Facebook. Or just send a message to Downstate28, the group on Instagram and Facebook. You'll get some answers. So, cool. Thank you, David. Good.

[00:04:10] Then we started off again with a moose was tranquilized in Troy, New York, because he was on the run and into a public area. So, in the capital region up in Troy, Bull Moose went out into an area and got tranquilized by the DEC at a county waste transfer station near the South Troy gas station.

[00:04:32] Now, after spending days wandering around Rensselaer County, the moose journey ended Tuesday afternoon when the DEC officer hit him with a tranquilizer dart. Now, animal controlled workers had the animal surrounded for hours Tuesday at the waste facility as a DEC Tuesday. This was last Tuesday. So, two Tuesdays ago, I believe. The 29th. So, yeah.

[00:04:56] Around 1 p.m., about a dozen officials loaded the unconscious animal into a trailer for an unexpected trip to eastern Rensselaer County, where it likely came from. Awesome videos online. And then say they placed bags of ice under the moose as they loaded in their trailer to regulate the animal's body temperature.

[00:05:15] The director of the DEC, Sean Mehar, confirmed that the scene on Tuesday that is the same moose that was spotted in recent days in East Greenbush near Interstate 90. Now, if you've been on social media and you are familiar with like the upstate New York or you follow upstate New York stuff, this was all over the place because it looked like it was running on the highway. It was pretty crazy. It had been tracking the moose since Saturday and receiving public reports of sighting.

[00:05:42] So, the regional wildlife manager for the DEC, Michael Clark, said the 600-pound male moose is probably about a year old and a half. You can see some spikes coming up. He says this bull moose wandered from its home in search of a mate. Now, that was September 29th. The DEC moved forward to October 1st. And now the DEC has to euthanize it.

[00:06:09] So, that is a little, what is it, a landslide, a catastrophic landslide. A bull moose was tranquilized by state conversation officers after it wandered into South Troy when its condition declined after capture.

[00:06:27] Now, it's said, despite careful and extensive efforts to safely relocate the moose into the wild, DEC staff monitoring the animals through the night noted that the animals' conditions steadily deteriorated and the difficult decision was made by the DEC Bureau of Wildlife Biologists in close consultation with the New York State Wildlife Veterinarian to humanly euthanize the animal.

[00:06:51] The DEC was a 600-pound moose, was euthanized after it got a tranquilizer dart to kind of excavate it out of the area. The document does not describe the animal's condition or what caused it to deteriorate. It was unclear if it had a health problem, a reaction to the tranquilizer it was used to bring down or some other problem. They will perform a necropsy on it at the wildlife lab. And they said that it was monitored for 24 hours before making the difficult decision.

[00:07:20] Definitely a crazy turn of events that happened up in Troy with a moose that was supposed to be relocated to the southern part of the Adirondacks. So, RIP to the moose. Let's, let's, let's, are we going to name moose? It's like 201 or something like that, like they do with the wolves? Well, why don't we, uh, in honor of this episode or name them up or inside the line 241.

[00:07:50] Inside the line 241. I like that. Um, oh, RIP. Uh, just, just odd situation. Once again, you know, maybe they use too much tranquilizer. Um, maybe there was something wrong with the moose, but it just, it's, I've, I've seen in the past couple of years, a lot of moose sightings over at East Greenbush. And around the Troy area, like I, people have been reporting that they've been moving. I don't know if they're moving down south.

[00:08:16] It has to be moving down south, but it seems like every time it's been reported, they've moved up north. So that's a little odd from it going south to north. Started out in the south, really. So crazy incident. So the October or Saturday, September 29th. So when they tranquilized it and then October 1st, they had to ushtonize it. So crazy turnoff events. Tad, what do you, do you have any thoughts about that?

[00:08:43] Uh, apparently that's a known risk of, um, capturing and tranquilizing a moose is apparently the stress, the anxiety wreaks havoc on their, their nervous system and muscles. And they're, they can go into such a state from what I read briefly here that. Yeah. They have to euthanize them because they just, the moose can't carry on in the wild.

[00:09:10] So the moose gets offed just like they did to peanut the squirrel. Where do you think they kept it for three days? Uh, they gave the name of, um, the place in the article I read. It's definitely a bunch of different articles. So sorry. Yeah. It was, you know, like a, a wildlife center or something like that. They were monitoring it, you know, presumably a, because they didn't know what exactly what was wrong with it. If anything at first.

[00:09:37] And presumably they also were aware of this known risk from, uh, capturing tranquilizing and transporting a moose like that is apparently not something that they're well suited to have done. It's kind of like when I take my cat to the vet, one of my cats is kind of joyful and happy to hop into the cat box and go anywhere on an outing. And the other one is like a mountain lion and puts up a big fight.

[00:10:05] So yeah, there you go. Rest in peace. 241. The bull moose. Yeah. Yeah. The two 41. It's a, you know, and, and once again, you, you brought up peanut and stuff like that, you know, and it's, I was thinking the same thing. I was just like, man, like they are not doing good. This, this, this past couple of years, the DEC man. I'm there.

[00:10:29] If you look at, to be honest, if you look at their podcasts and the reviews, they get that whole, that whole peanut thing, I, they, that, that killed them. The, the peanut thing, I kind of find it pretty odd. What happened there with the, with the bull moose, I'll, I'll defer to the DEC and, and what they did. Presumably they had no choice, but to tranquilize it, to transport it.

[00:10:52] And if that's the, the cascading sequence of events for the, the poor moose, then that's pretty sad, but yeah. You know, wandering along I, I 90, um, hitting a deer is one thing. Hitting a moose is quite another, you know, it's a much larger has the, the capacity through the physics and all of that to roll over the hood of your car and go into your windshield and cause serious injury to the occupants.

[00:11:23] And then that's potentially death. Yeah. So presume, you know, that they have to relocate the moose and if that's how they had to do it was to tranquilize them. It's pretty sad, sad story. Yeah. But that's why we want roads in the wilderness to go back to what we talked about last week. Let's build them roads out in the wild wilderness where the moose and the, the Buffalo and the cantaloupe or whatever play. Yeah. Let's do that. Let's definitely do that. Smart, smart.

[00:11:50] That is a serious clear cut triggered right there. We have been triggered. James, what do you have to say? Uh, did you read about this? Where are you, where are you located by the way, sir? I'm in a Western Massachusetts in North Adams. Okay. Okay. So that's, I mean, that's, that's closer, a little bit closer to Troy probably than what I am. We're yeah, it's about an hour. Oh yeah. You're, you're closer than me. So yeah. Yeah. I'm like right on the Vermont border, basically. Um, Vermont, South of Bennington. Yeah, exactly. Like 20 minutes South of Bennington.

[00:12:20] Okay. Yeah, no, I didn't. This is the first time hearing of this. Um, I remember it makes me remember, uh, that a moose, a moose euthanized last year, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I remember it was on a trail and, um, it was good. Now mountain, I think, or good men good. Now, I think good mountain. Yeah.

[00:13:08] Yeah. I think it was a little bit of a mess. And unfortunately it got into that one little area where it was kind of cornered and stuff. And the, the right thing with the do, once again, a 600 pound moose in a, in a suburban area is a little crazy. It's just a little messed up. So, you know, props to DEC for doing what they did, you know, it's an unfortunate incident. This, uh, can't say that this was a planned assassination of moose 241.

[00:13:33] So yeah, it's like, so yeah, whatever, whatever. So we'll, we'll see. We'll father. We'll follow up Ted, you and I will follow up. Actually, probably you will put in a foil request for the necropsy of the, the moose. I yeah, maybe, maybe I'll do that. I'll do, um, one of those, uh, crime investigation type things to get, uh, moose 241s, uh, autopsy

[00:14:00] and pathology, the ballistics on the weapons used, if they used weapons, hopefully, hopefully they didn't start off with that. This is a bad joke. I should just not even say it, but with the woman, they tried to, uh, execute what down in Georgia recently, they gave her the sedatives. Yeah. Jesus silence. Yeah. Talk about when she wakes up, you know, here's somebody who, for the last X number of hours

[00:14:28] of her life, she's thinking that she's dying that day and she wakes up in a hospital. It's quite a series of events. So the same with the moose. Yeah. He was just out looking for a date. Yeah. Right. Good point. Yeah. It's almost, it's almost like heading into Stewart's to buy ice cream, which I understand is kind of a dangerous thing these days. It is dangerous. Ted, tell us about this. Oh yeah.

[00:14:54] So somehow I stumbled upon this news article about Stewart's ice cream. James, do you like Stewart's ice cream? Um, you know, I haven't tried, I, I hear they have non-dairy ice cream, but I haven't tried it yet. I don't eat dairy, but, um, yeah, so I haven't tried it yet. So we're going to roll with the story that Stewart's ice cream shop or Stewart shops is recalling

[00:15:19] two half gallon ice cream flavors due to potential metal contamination. Uh, so the FDA notified that the recall affects the heavenly medley and the vanilla chocolate strawberry flavors, the affected packages have best buy dates of February 10, 2027 and February 11, 2027.

[00:15:47] So I imagine right now, some of our listeners are like looking at their Stewart's ice cream that they're eating and thinking, holy shit. Um, so these items were sold at Stewart shops across New York, Vermont, and New Hampshire between July 17th and October 2nd, 2026. So right up until just the other day, the stuff was on the market. The action was initiated after a customer discovered a metal object inside a carton.

[00:16:15] Apparently it wasn't like a gold nugget or something. No injuries or illnesses have been reported. Customers who purchased these flavors are advised not to eat them and should return them to any Stewart's shop for a full refund. So, um, that's that story. Hmm. So if you're having problems and you eat that kind of Stewart's ice cream, the vanilla chocolate

[00:16:43] strawberry, which is a, what do they call it? New Bolvin. Uh, and the heavenly medley definitely take it back to Stewart's and you will get a full refund while you're probably using their bathroom. The, and the green bar in the bathrobe of as well, which I find are the most reliable bathrooms. Number one reason why they have that lock mechanism that shows you that it's God damn occupied and that you don't have to come up and knock on the damn door when I'm doing my business. Yeah.

[00:17:13] And, and James, this is why we call this segment shooting shooting the shit. The shit. Yeah. Do we have any, um, are either of you bathroom door knockers? i i very lightly test the you test the knob yes without knocking that's the that's what you should do you should test the knob thank you nobody needs to be nobody needs to be knocked and then open the

[00:17:40] jab the door and you knock people knock and then they jiggle jiggle first no no i i'm look i'm even if i don't have to go whenever i'm in a place with the public restroom you just knock and i see somebody going in and locking the door i wait 45 seconds giving them sufficient time to potentially clean off the toilet pull down their trousers and sit their ass on the john and then i fucking bang on

[00:18:05] the door like hell shake it around and run away okay like uh and then you come back like an eight year old and i yell i yell as i'm running out my name is stosh my name is stosh and i run out of the store jesus oh yes so i'm as immature as my wife says i am that's it there's nothing wrong with that ted you don't know how immature i remember us hiking together and you're basically like

[00:18:32] like looking at me like really really all the time all the time so what about this next uh thing about mount shasta yeah so on episode 237 when we had uh katie henderson on the show to talk about her ongoing recovery which is uh come a hell of a long way we talked about the three novice climbers who

[00:18:57] were stranded on mount shasta in california after they apparently relied entirely on an ai chatbot to plan their trek well apparently in the past few weeks there was also this 16 year old hiker rescued by helicopter from british columbia's crown mountain after following what turned out to be a

[00:19:24] dangerous route generated by an ai chatbot the aronis directions led him to the steep and technical widow maker climbing area prompting officials to issue warnings against relying on artificial intelligence for back country navigation uh when the teenager realized he was trapped at the base of the vertical

[00:19:49] head wall of the widow maker he called for help using his cell phone just before 3 30 in the afternoon search managers were able to pinpoint his exact location through the call and by a stroke of luck a rescue team had just finished a helicopter rescue uh right next to him on the same crown morning

[00:20:12] early that morning meaning the team's aircraft and personnel were ready to get airborne and fetch this guy so the vertical face cliff made it an impossible helicopter to fly directly next to the hiker instead two rescue technicians were lowered via hoist to a position on the terrain above him climbed down to

[00:20:36] reach the team secured him and moved him to a safer extraction point he was successfully hoisted onto the helicopter lowered down on the mountain and the operation concluded about what is that three hours after the call which was about 10 hours after he started his hike that day so james what do you think

[00:20:59] of that did you rely on ai route planning for your uh trek in the adirondacks that we're going to talk about tonight i did not no that's why you made it home safely then yeah because you weren't relying on ai so just another interesting story that reminds us don't rely on ai okay so once again i agree with

[00:21:23] with both of you ai is shit so uh speaking of ai being shit i really don't use it that often i do use it once in a great while to maybe help me kind of smooth out a uh an email that i need that once again i'm not the greatest at writing emails i'm not the most professional so sometimes my outreach

[00:21:45] is a little too i would say normal is that how you say it like i'm a normal guy so today at driving home i have they have ai in the tesla it's called grok and for some reason when when somebody's not sitting in the passenger seat the air vent doesn't work on the passenger seat because they know nobody's there

[00:22:07] and they shut it off cool that blows more air on me but there was like i had like potato chips in there so i was just like oh ask grok to shut it off and see what what it does so i asked him like hey grok can you shut off the passenger seat ventilator so uh i can get more and there's this like oh unfortunately on this car they can't do that i'm sorry i'm like and i responded i go why can i like

[00:22:36] why is it shut off then when my wife isn't in the seat nobody's in the seat it's already shut off silence and then he goes and he goes oh glad that's working for you have a good day i'm like the fuck like like really it's just like i wish i could have recorded it it was so so i was like laughing but at the same time like really like thanks a lot have a good day like you just proved me wrong so that i'm

[00:23:03] not i'm not looking forward to when i have to buy a new car next because my cars are so old and dated i don't have backup cameras i don't have blind spot detection my my one car does have navigation and a bluetooth connectivity but that's about as sophisticated as it gets and i this is i want to

[00:23:26] talk about next i listened to this thing about metamuse today and it's like a whole bizarre new frontier for ai james what about you you uh like a technocrat and you are you saturated with ai and technology or are you more of a basic guy map and compass guy like me um a little bit in the middle

[00:23:49] i'm definitely not like a i don't use muse or anything i drive a 2004 toyota camry hell yeah i uh i think i might have listened to the same thing you did about muse today uh it was a guy who who basically ordered lunch with the muse did you read salad he ordered the harvest salad it was uh yeah muse can you order a salad for my co-worker and have it delivered um he basically had given his credit card

[00:24:17] information his idro all of his personal data to muse basically to make it order a salad yeah it was relatively impressive because he gives this account of how he had muse call his insurance company to work out an issue he had with the dental bill and it did and it got somebody on the phone for him so he didn't have to wait on the phone for this and he picks up the phone and he navigates through

[00:24:43] resolving this um insurance issue or insurance reimbursement whatever issue it it had with it so what james and i are talking about is meta uh has this new ai agent that they call muse and what i found significant of the many things that it does it will generate a personal podcast for you by compiling

[00:25:08] data from your calendar emails and news into a custom audio briefing that you can listen to in real time using a customizable voice that can research and assemble content in the background which then leads me to the question for our listeners are you really listening to stosh and tad tonight

[00:25:36] or is it meta talking to you you guys are real that i'm the agent you are yeah james looked weird yeah i'm not going to say he looks weird but i knew something wasn't like he was he just kept staying in the same position and his mouth was moved yeah i know that beard is fake

[00:26:01] so what do you think of that stosh are we going to be replaced by ai or are listeners going to go out and do their own custom shows do away with shooting the and us boasting about our recent hikes and just like that they're gonna have to their the ai just compliance with everything so like they wouldn't give real shits and stuff like that they wouldn't give their opinions they'd be like oh sorry we got to follow protocol with this and stuff like that it's not that fuck ai don't i mean if you need to

[00:26:31] really use ai for something desperate go ahead and do it but once again you know as we see with a lot of the stuff the data centers are being built in the backyards of people's areas you know blindly and stuff like that and you know these people did not sign up for this and who knows what could become a data center we have all these like massive amazon places or walmart places that might be become their

[00:26:57] next data center just because you know they they decided to switch over and stuff like that for more money this fucking all right i'm triggered let's not do this let's not get me going all right as a guy who likes to take down flock cameras what did i say that what yeah i've never taken out a flock camera never in my life everybody's silent all right all right all right all right all right i'm all right

[00:27:25] i'm gonna take the fifth yes take the fifth all right so once again this is real this is a real goddamn podcast you're listening to inside the line episode 241 in remembrance of the moose 241 so we want to thank our monthly supporters chris gerbian eric rosario scott nichols john comiskey

[00:27:48] mikey s desert city radio henry burmeister vicky ferrera jeff jotz david oliver john dunn betsy a vanessa and jim c thank you guys so much for supporting the show that is a long list and that's an incredible list it's just it's phenomenal once again the community is tight here and oh my heart's beating so good so and then of course we have our amazing sponsors of the show like

[00:28:13] outdoor chronicles photography so molly specializes in adventure couple photography and she'll immortalize your moments amidst the stunning landscapes of the catskills adirondacks and the white mountains she'll craft timeless images that reflect unique bond in nature's grandeur embark on an unforgettable photographic journey with outdoor chronicle photography don't hesitate to get a hold of molly on all platforms i need to get a hold of molly to have her on the

[00:28:40] show it's been a while so if you also want to discover the wilderness you need to get with trail brown 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 essential skills explore stunning trails and connect with nature start your journey today with trailbound project and unlock the wonders of the great outdoors seeing their stuff online is awesome they just did

[00:29:09] a backpacking trip through the burroughs range so that was fun that was really cool to see um there's a good amount of people on that and once again scott joe have been on this show multiple times and their their skills are just insane it's just incredible so check out trailbound project also you should check out uh i was going to say that the mountain lion thing what was it again cats

[00:29:37] check out cats so the tad you know before we break into drinking anything you said on the last episode that we received a million dollars from the ghouls for the purchase of that moon hall place our good man who tagged us in the show nicholas golden money cat thought thought you were actually serious wasn't i i mean i wish

[00:30:03] wait my my ai bot is processing processing tads processing information it's fake news yeah now that i mean even if the jude if the if the ghouls gave us a million dollars there's there's actually some bunch of places down in the plat clove area that we can buy to to make this our our home yeah we'd have our own like you know nature conservatory um cottage cabin

[00:30:29] whatever data processing center i don't know what they're called but yeah whatever we needed we'd come up with you know place for our listeners to crash yeah that's that's the thing so once again and we would have and we would have because i know stash is thinking this but he's too modest or embarrassed to say it but we would have the best bathrooms ever hikers would come from all over

[00:30:53] if you're hiking mount washington you'd do like a uh 90 mile side quest to hit our bathroom on your way up to new hampshire i'm just saying because they would be that good and there would be no door knockers or doorknob shakers at our place because you would have your own private bathroom yeah right and we will do one that's out on the outside and one on the inside so and for guys like me you could go on the other side of the stone wall that's all you need

[00:31:22] exactly and then once again if if you want to donate to the show you should do it because we are looking for 4.1 million dollars for that place at the end of the moon hall road that everybody wants to see and stuff like that if you if we get that 4.1 mil we could own that and then everybody could just park in our driveway instead of that little dinky four car parking thing and you can

[00:31:47] just park in the driveway and freaking come in you know i'll be flipping burgers or something you can use the bathroom you know just think of the possibilities everybody yeah yeah it'd be it'd be really hot we'd do it upright we would it would it would be renamed we'd have a total name but anyway who is drinking something what do we got tonight anybody got anything besides me

[00:32:13] james oh oh coconut lime seltzer oh awesome you're gonna crack it open yeah how do i do my you guys have a special settings thing that you do yes so go tad you can do it yeah so go down and click the audio icon okay i'm gonna try it let's do it you have to shake it up really really good and

[00:32:38] point towards your face you ready that was pristine yeah james is a problem yeah yeah yeah yeah now turn it back on auto beautiful all right same same here so i will go next hudson north caramel apple oh yeah

[00:33:05] nice tad how about you oh so it's the first uh tuesday of the month and it's a non-alcoholic night for me in support of our listeners who either don't drink are in recovery or otherwise are abstaining from consuming alcohol so in solidarity with and your podcast guests yeah that's right so

[00:33:30] i'm having with james i'm having a cup of coffee to start things off oh nice excellent coffee and fucking 712 jesus that's what that's what i that's what i need to get through the podcast oh is that that bad is that boring is that that was a boring joke jesus all right all right so how about we move on to the good stuff so if you're really outdoors so mention the podcast on one of your hikes through

[00:33:57] social media and we will chat about it in the show tag us by typing at itl catskill mtm podcast on your post on facebook you got to do a whole different thing i i think you just put at and then inside and it should come up as inside the line so to start things off uh we would like to big do a big shout out to samantha aka the broke trail hiker and mike mike did his 46 or finish so congrats

[00:34:27] mike did his 46 or finish congrats mike and number 32 samantha but they did the summit brew so they both did cracked open and did the summit brew mike finished his 46 so congrats mike samantha's up to number 33 awesome summit brew was great it's a good it was really good crack open i could hear both of them it's good stuff it's a big huge shout out and then start things off uh we also

[00:34:56] have a rookie as alex uh would say my buddy alex would say we have a rookie i don't know much about matthew aka pdcat 766 was out in the black rock forest tagging black rock and eagle quick cliff doing the downstate 28 so awesome good to hear from you matthew uh mike catskill mountain hiker was also crossing off stuff on his downstate

[00:35:20] 28 28 list and did shunamunk in eagles cliff as well going around some flooded trails too so crazy serena marie 46er woke up to an early tag on marcy for a stunning sublies with amber those were amazing videos and just had that uh what is it called under or good look not undercast is it uh you could say that what is it called when it's like the peaks are above

[00:35:47] oh my god inversion inversion yes she had an amazing inversion up on marcy and what a place tallest place in freaking new york state to have an inversion so incredible michael dr storm 217 was down in snowshoe virginia on a fire tower watching a beautiful sunrise or sunset he didn't specify so good to hear from me again michael and then that again pdcat 766 was continuing with his downstate

[00:36:17] 28 and did shunamunk i already said that but i guess i did it twice so matt you're gonna you're getting it twice you know once again this is a this unedited podcast i don't my mistakes are not edited yeah well this is just proof that we're not ai bots but if we were you definitely need a helicopter rescue if we planned your hike correct we're just that dangerous correct uh joanne beyond

[00:36:44] blazes found herself up in new hampshire doing some beautiful fall foliage stuff she was one of the peepers up there in new hampshire she didn't stay downstate in catskills shame no we still love you jaylen uh scott catskill mountain brood did the devil in a day 14 hours looks like he had a great time could never do after doing my hike today once again was nothing crazy but i could never do the devil

[00:37:10] in a day nor do i think i can do the four peaks yeah so but the fact that he finished in 14 hours is pretty legit i mean that shows that he's he's got some horsepower going on there i don't know what the fastest known time but that's a very respectable time for that high three hours and 34 minutes oh is it yeah but still 14 hours for somebody who's not setting out to do an fkt

[00:37:36] that's that's very legit so 100 good job scott uh todd t-bold outdoors was up in the adirondacks and did cascade and porter with connor and fabricated hiker uh rachel gene the gypsy queen did mount tremper and red hill on a beautiful october day good to hear from you again rachel jim c did a 10 mile run around a lake uh that benefited the lake george land conservancy

[00:38:03] amazing good job jim jeff jott was good enough from a car accident to enjoy some hikes in the new jersey highlands with aura so good to see you back out at it jeff once again jeff uh had a little car accident and was a little injured but now he's back out at it so yeah well let's put it in perspective i wouldn't say it was little he totaled his car somebody you know and it wasn't his fault but yeah the whole front end of his car was taken out it's you know it's quite a blow really shakes

[00:38:33] you up and it's good to see that he's you know out getting limber and staying active so hopefully he'll continue to feel better yeah definitely good to hear from you jeff keep at it uh hiker joe and why went into the rocks day rondax fire tower for some stunning views of the adirondacks so joe's all over the place of course lisa chaotic kazotic was up on friday and balsam cap

[00:38:59] just missing all the podcast peeps so apparently she signed into is either friday or balsam cap and it missed joanne and danny and and stuff so that wouldn't that once again wouldn't that have been crazy if they ran into each other on the freaking on a bushwhack it happens yeah so it's crazy uh steve oscana aka catskill ever after was up joined a favorite view on my favorite view

[00:39:28] on twin mountain twin mountain is uh one of those unforgettable viewpoints uh chrissy g was out in a hunter with jamie jennifer danielle and wally a beautiful time once again this weekend was everybody was out doing at least something to catch the the foliage and i do not blame them because it was crazy nicholas golden money cat was up in vermont at the stratton mountain fire tower and unfortunately

[00:39:56] didn't get a view with the fog so that sucks but uh m a josie 918 marie i know mj i know marie was out helping the 3500 club with uh trail maintaining workshop and also helped installing boot brush stations so thank you marie for tagging us good for her yeah kicking it kicking it um

[00:40:21] shana shea 315x was up on mansfield with katie and sean awesome time uh look beautiful stunning pictures mansfield is uh vermont's highest peak and it is also a open summit peak it's absolutely fantastic i can't wait to go back up uh good time with uh katie as well katie henderson hikes was up

[00:40:45] on mansfield as well with with uh shana and sean uh steve environmentality did the six so friday balsam capillon rocky table and peekamoose so awesome time looks like the colors once again at that time he probably missed uh uh lisa on that so it's crazy uh richie nature escapes was up on caterskill high

[00:41:10] peak and then mike at red hand adventure guys was up at the saint regis canoe area and did the saint regis fire tower and then one and he also tagged us in something just a few hours ago give me one second oh yeah yeah yep uh found a great spot to camp in the adirondacks and had an amazing pictures

[00:41:34] of his uh shoes roasting by the fire so yeah it was is definitely awesome and different so good job mike i hope you had a good time so total was 10 22 wow god everybody got out this weekend that's good that's pretty good yeah so fantastic glad everybody's enjoying once again get out

[00:42:01] and enjoy uh also if you enjoy the show you can buy us a hard cider to support the show and if you want to do it you can go and buy me a coffee heart or buy me a coffee i call it a hard cider because nobody wants to buy me a coffee um buy me a coffee.com and we want to give a big shout out to mj orzard who bought 10 coffees saying thanks for all you do to educate listeners about

[00:42:26] the cat skills and for promoting volunteer opportunities and community engagement amazing 10 10 coffees so that's going to go back and speaking of that you know community and volunteer opportunities and community engagement i am going to after my day at sugarloaf today i'm going to reach out to commissioner left and dec commissioner and see if the podcast can do something to donate money

[00:42:53] donate time you know to help with the cat skills because these some of the things i've just seen as i'll i'll state in my my previous hike it just needs to be fixed and with the community we have with the podcast i think we can do a lot of this stuff as we are doing our grids as we are doing our daily hikes and stuff like that that we can get stuff done to make the cat skills kind of like a better

[00:43:20] place number one and number two a safer place with you know registers that are broken trail trail junctions signs that are deteriorated and stuff so i'm looking to do that again and once again if you also uh do a proposal i'm doing the uh this petition for the viewpoints i would today i went out for viewpoints as well so we'll talk about that in a second so previous hikes we got to start off with

[00:43:48] james because unfortunately he was had to be silent during the the tagging and stuff like that because he's on the show tonight so you've been up to anything james yes um i did a section of the Taconic Crest Trail on sunday you tagged us i did not include you yeah i didn't know i was just like why why put him in the tag when he's going to talk about it so taconic 12 yeah so the yeah the

[00:44:14] taconic crest trail is at the 37 38 mile trail that runs from basically pittsfield massachusetts up to pondal vermont and a lot of people do it as a long day hike or they'll split it into two nights or something it's part of the northeast ultra eight but um my wife and i have been section hiking it and um it's pretty awesome to section hike because you get to go the the only ways to get up to the

[00:44:39] actual ridge are these weird side trails that are like at the end of random roads and there's not a lot of information about it online so you have to buy the map from the taconic crest trail organization and kind of shows you where all these weird little trail heads are so um yeah i think section hiking it you basically double the length of the the trail because the you know we we hiked to

[00:45:04] seven miles and only did two miles of the of the tct as a part of that hike the the side trails are just as long so that's been cool that's it you know i've heard i've heard a lot of things about the tonics it's almost like once again i think it was like a lot of it was burned so it's almost like it feels like you're above treeline when you're not really above like what 2 000 feet like it's a oh yeah

[00:45:29] it's not yeah i wouldn't even say it might not even be 2 000 feet in in this section i think there's a there's another part of the trail which is called the southern taconic crest trail which extends further south and that's where you get into like allender mountain brace mountain those are definitely exposed and they're more like rattlesnake territory down south yeah but yeah it's it's cool it's like there aren't many views it'd be great to hike uh in stick season because you get more views

[00:45:59] once the leaves are down but um it's beautiful like my dog loves it up there he gets to run around there's nobody up there it's it's awesome battle snakes yeah what day of the week were you up there doing that james we were we did it on sunday okay didn't see anybody yeah i a couple summers ago i did about two-thirds of it yeah and i'll i'll echo those comments with the if you're not going

[00:46:28] end to end when you're coming in from one side or the other the approaches are maybe more interesting than the crest trail itself at least they're more technical in nature than the trail itself i found the trail itself easy going uh broad some some segments short segments were overgrown but overall

[00:46:52] um you know an easy trail to go the whole time i was doing i was frankly thinking of it would be a wonderful trail to do in the winter on a pair of backcountry skis uh because you can make good time and it's you know there's not a lot of turns to navigate so i look forward to going up and finish it finishing it i would have done it this summer but which part do you have left the southern most part

[00:47:17] i got about 12 miles to do that's a great part that's a great section yeah it's a great section yeah i think a lot of people do it in one day because there's really no water so as a as an overnight backpacking trip or a multi-day trip it doesn't necessarily make sense but yeah cool yeah i've heard i've heard great things about that if you're if you're going to do it end for end the best thing is i forget what route it is maybe it's routes two that goes over the crest kind of not at

[00:47:45] the halfway point but somewhere along the midpoint yeah you could do like a water drop there yes and and pick up water there as you're through hiking it would make sense so nice cool man that sounds fantastic yeah and you don't have to rely on ai for that information you heard it right here on inside the line it's i think if you asked if you definitely if you asked ai about the taconic crest trail it would lead you astray 100 i'm sorry what did you talk about the conic parkway yes that's

[00:48:15] an 86 mile road drive actually 12. yeah i mean i put uh i looked up their maps so if anybody wants to do that and buy a map i put it up in the show notes so check it out so i'm i'm looking forward to maybe getting over there sometime it's like a a two and a half three hour drive for me but i've heard great things about the conics and just to to to see the views once again it feels it's a whole different vibe to me somebody said it's like on uh like little high point because there's a lot of bramble

[00:48:43] barrier and stuff like that like it's just a burned area so so james what was what was the leaf color like hiking through there uh it's it's almost peak here it's getting kind of golden orangey um but there's still a lot of green oh nice nice yeah okay it's crazy so differences is crazy so ted how about

[00:49:09] you sir okay um i went out on saturday and sunday and on saturday which was a gorgeous day but cold in the morning so i got off to a little bit later start which had me avoiding the popular parking areas in the gunks so i went to an off the grid place to stash my vehicle hiked in on a old but still

[00:49:37] relatively un-eroded uh old road going up to the ridge and banged out about 12 or 13 miles up there was a gorgeous day so but the canopy from the top was still very green not a lot of fall colors at least on the eastern side into the hudson valley which is where my principal view shed was but it was just a

[00:49:59] beautiful day to be up there so i enjoyed it and then on sunday with uh more overcast and it was kind of cooler in the morning around here i really didn't know what to do it's very indecided or indecisive and left the house with kind of vague plans to go hiking somewhere but i i have to admit

[00:50:28] and i don't want to sound too much like a prima donna but i'm kind of tired of hiking the gunks all that i've hiked them the last three months and i didn't want to head over east to do harriman or anything around there because it's i was figuring it would just be really crowded um so of all things i went into the catskills and i hiked the lenape trail towards ashokan high point but i didn't get

[00:50:55] all the way out to the high point because i turned around when the trail crossed the beaver ponds and the trail was flooded over and i just felt in my present physical state not not a good idea to to navigate across that short section but it was fun uh just ran into a couple people on the trail posted some pictures and wondering where i'll end up this weekend

[00:51:24] that's an improvement yeah so you were over the lenape patrol yeah uh i'm not familiar with that where is that that it goes up to ashokan high point oh the valley canopy you call it canopy i call they also have closed off the uh the the northern access part they haven't closed off

[00:51:52] not that i saw oh okay this is yeah this is this is the main route between what is it rocky and ashokan high point yeah mabaskus and stuff yeah which if you've never hiked it it's a worthwhile hike it's a bushwhack it's a lot more scenic than uh than rocky yeah but that's what i did cool it was fun how's the water flowing and stuff like that because that's a great the canopy is really good creek yeah so i um

[00:52:22] i wanted to go down and venture around and hang out down there but you know it's just too early for me to be doing stuff like that so i did do some roaming around off trail not a lot um you know kept myself on a pretty short leash so to speak nice well good that's a pretty far improvement uh from going up from the gunks all the way up to freaking the southern god skills yeah good good to hear what'd you do

[00:52:51] stosh well uh so on thursday thursday jessica and i decided to do a sunset hike up braley mountain and it was phenomenal uh it was cool nice cool weather wind stuff like that we didn't have the greatest sunset of all but the golden hour was actually really really amazing so if you don't know

[00:53:14] like 45 minutes before the actual sunset is golden hour when it like hits the clouds at a certain time and it makes it a little bit more dramatic than sunset and uh it just casts these different colors and such and it was it was a great time we got down once again like sunset now is like 6 45 so we got back home at like 8 30 like bramley's right there it's phenomenal going to sleep it was it was good

[00:53:41] it was nice to be be home at 8 30 and not like 10 30 and such but uh bramley once again so easy just had some some subs at the top got to the wind was whipping like crazy up above tree line it's phenomenal can't say much more the colors were were someone at peak i would say up there up at delhi

[00:54:03] and uh we just wanted to catch that kind of like like like like view of everything as it was having on the sunset so it was pretty nice and then sunday we decided to try to go up uh um platykill platykill mountain um we only got like halfway jessica wasn't feeling right there was something wrong

[00:54:27] so we decided to cut over one of the ski runs and then go back down the mountain and but we got beautiful back up when you drive from orneanta to platykill you have to drive on all black back roads and it was phenomenal with the trees and the leaves and all the different colors you come over this bridge and something there's a beautiful view of the colors the colors were everywhere freaking

[00:54:53] it absolute peak time and when you get to platykill you can see from platykill you can see a bunch of different viewpoints like a bunch of different high peaks hunter bel-air slide panther like it's it's and that's from just the parking lot not even at the top at the top you can see so much more you can see like graham double top balsam lake stuff like that so i i gotta admit it's it's very far

[00:55:21] out of the way platykill is very far out of the way but it's worth it for a hike because you can go up and around both ways and it could be i'm pretty sure like a round trip would be a 3.6 mile hike um nothing you know a thousand feet of gain but it's like you can sit at the top where people get married up there beautiful and such uh once again uh we we just had to to vacate early because something

[00:55:47] didn't didn't jessica didn't feel right and i didn't want to push her you know and be like oh we got to summit this mountain like like but it was cloudy too so like the overcast wasn't casting the great colors but you could still see a lot of freaking different colors so phenomenal so it was about i think we did like two miles so that's that's that's pretty good uh come when we did 3.6 earlier with

[00:56:11] bramley and today i went and did sugar loaf so i decided i was like you know i was driving this last night i was like i'll do sugar loaf that's got like five viewpoints i could check out to see if they're still intact and then on the way there i was like or i could go hike up hunter mountain from that one ridge and bushwhack all the way up to the top i have from the like the the the small ski runs off to

[00:56:38] the east and it was but you know started off with frost on the windshield so it was 32 degrees when i woke up and i on the way there it got warmer when i left i left around like 8 30. once again i gotta stop leaving this late and it kind of sucks because then i have to rush through the day

[00:57:00] i left late uh around like 8 30. i was around 42 degrees arrived at the roaring kill trailhead it was still 42 degrees it was nice and cool the wind was whipping so i'm guessing it was down in the old high to mid 30s with the wind chill but dude phenomenal day just leaves weren't crazy covering the

[00:57:26] the trails to where you would feel like you would slip every five seconds there was just colors everywhere there's still green there's some yellow the reds are falling down already i did it counterclockwise because doing it clockwise sucks whatever coming back over that one section going back down to the roaring kill because you got to go down and then back up so i was like screw

[00:57:52] that i'm not going to deal with that today so i just did it counterclockwise so i went up to the kind of like mink hollow devil's path uh junction and i got up there in an hour and six minutes so that's 2.8 miles an hour and six minutes i felt pretty good and then you go up devil's path so one mile 1200 feet

[00:58:16] of ascent that took me around 53 minutes i think yeah it was it was steep i met five people at the lower so from from the roaring kill to the trail the junction and a little bit above trail junction i met five people after that not a single human being on site absolutely phenomenal there's all

[00:58:41] all viewpoints are intact are still there and there's one that's that's missing towards the top that i i couldn't find and i bushwhacked all over the place but some of those viewpoints are a little bit off of trail for the eastern side of sugarloaf but the colors were weren't peak it's past peak and it's a little bit kind of orangey brown right now but there's still some popping up here and there

[00:59:08] uh i have a feeling once again with all this wind it's not when you get out this weekend it's not going to be there's not going to be much out there but there still might be going on the eastern side of devil's path though getting that view of twin god damn just absolutely phenomenal i hit those viewpoints there was no wind on me but down below you could hear the roar of the wind it almost sounded like

[00:59:36] those massive waterfalls like it's just it's just roaring down there and i'm like cooking on these viewpoints and i'm just like there's no wind here like it's hot like i got a delayer and i did you know i didn't have to once again up at the top it got to probably around like maybe mid to high 30s uh it's still chilly but you know the sun was out so you're warming up and stuff like that so it was overall phenomenal day

[01:00:03] i have once again i i gotta i gotta do all these stats because i'm doing a bunch of different test runs so avenza if you do it it says 7.1 miles the gain i didn't calculate i did it on my wi-fi loke that i've been using ever since i started hiking which was 7.71 miles with 1,946 feet of gain

[01:00:26] my garmin watch said 7.24 miles with 2300 feet of gain and gaia gps like the maps i did i did it calculated and it said 6.28 miles with 1920 feet of gain so fucking astronomical stuff all over the place like i i i i trust the garmin a little bit more but once again that's 400 different feet of

[01:00:53] of vertical gain so i don't i don't understand yeah so have you looked on a map to try to get some verification based upon an actual map yeah the gaia and the avenza i did from the the online maps like just adding stuff together by by calculating uh with the elevation gain i don't i don't know about that but uh it seems like the garmin comes closest but once again 400 feet of elevation gain difference is

[01:01:21] it's quite a significant amount yeah i on saturday um i ran into a woman on trail and if anyone remembers that story a few weeks ago when i ran into the trail runner in the str race up in the gunks who had missed the turn and i redirected him uh same thing happened on saturday and so i i because i saw the woman looking at her phone and you could tell she was like trying to figure out where she was

[01:01:51] and she as i approached her we started talking she asked me for directions and i actually walked her to the turn but as we were walking towards the turn and talking i asked if i could see what she was looking at and she was using avenza and let me say i had never seen avenza before on a phone and when she scrolls in to look at the detail of where she is the the resolution is so poor yeah no wonder no

[01:02:20] wonder she missed the turn um i wasn't surprised and that's where you know i use gaia exclusively out there and i've never had a problem with the resolution on gaia i also when i'm doing back bushwhacking in areas that i haven't been to before i'll i'll load cal topo uh images on my phone to use as an electronic map and i'll carry a paper backup but when you scroll in on one of the cal topo

[01:02:47] images you don't lose the resolution like this woman was and it was really not useful for her and that's why she missed the turn and she looked like an experienced hiker you know she had all the right gear walked like a hiker talked like a hiker had a hiker backpack yada yada yada but just didn't have the right navigational tools yeah i'm still once again the garmin is is great my garmin watch

[01:03:13] because i can look at the map and see where i mean i i basically know where all the forks are and stuff and it'll say like fork a half a mile ahead i'll basically know that already but it's pretty cool to see and pretty cool to see your intervals and stuff like that like so i'm total like the total day and it's funny because i was laughing once again i talked about the fastest known time on the devil's path was like three hours and 24 minutes or steven lang did it and then joshua reed and stuff

[01:03:42] like that today was uh i did total time of three hours and 38 minutes so my seven mile loop seven and a half mile loop somewhat was shorter or was longer than their whole freaking through hike of the devil's path yeah what's what's the old beaver dam like oh there's no beaver dam nope nothing anymore right isn't that crazy like i remember crossing over that it was pretty sketchy all the time and now it's

[01:04:10] yeah it's completely gone yeah amazing is that whole area drained out now yep okay yeah there's a little bit of water the only other water is further down a little bit there's that little uh pond that's further down but that's that's about it man have you ever whacked up sugar loaf from that side i've whacked up sugar loaf from the junction down at the roaring kill and just gone straight through the

[01:04:33] middle okay so i haven't whacked up where the old farm was correct okay yeah yeah it's good stuff that's good stuff but it's good sketchy as heck those cliffs are no joke you're telling me all right okay james you you've been a pretty passive listener so far i guess you you better like

[01:04:55] start doing your your vocal warm-ups because the next next section is is all you yeah let's just go on all right yeah yeah some catskill news so volunteer new york new jersey trail conference 3500 club is doing a lot of volunteer stuff so check them out uh catskill trail crew catskill mountain club visitor center jolly rovers trail crew any fire tower you can volunteer at definitely do it anywhere you can

[01:05:22] volunteer once again the 3500 club is doing a service service patch so check that out and then also check out catskill trail crew signups as well they're in the show notes let's break it into the inaccurate weather forecast here is your weekend weather forecast sponsored by nobody anyway on

[01:05:50] friday october 9th valley temperatures should start in the upper 30s to low 40s with summits likely in the upper 20s to mid 30s in the morning by afternoon valleys should reach the upper 60s with higher peaks probably being in the mid 50s wind will be light generally from the northwest so it should be a great day to be out hiking on saturday october 10th looks to be an even better day to be out expect

[01:06:16] sunny skies with chilly morning temperatures around the low 40 in the valleys and the upper 20 to mid 30s on the summits afternoon temperatures should climb to the mid to upper 60s in the valleys with the mountains topping around 50 degrees winds look light and there is no precipitation expected on sunday october on sunday october 11th looks to start out pretty decent but it will change later in the day expect

[01:06:41] partly sunny skies with morning temperatures around the 40s in the valleys and 30s on the summit valley temperatures should reach the mid 60s again with higher elevation staying in the 50s there's a 30 chance chance of showers after 2 p.m increasing to around 70 sunday night so if you're headed out in the mountains an earlier start looks to be the better bet it's going to be a great weekend to be out we might be just getting past peak but the colors are still out there so once again when you're out be safe

[01:07:11] be prepared and don't become tomorrow's rescue story back to you fellas all right thank you for the inaccurate weather forecast please don't rely on that weather forecast all right so let's get into our last set of sponsors and then we'll hit up james for his awesome epic adventure on the north full placid trail all right discover camp catskill and tannersville your ultimate hiking store find top

[01:07:39] quality gear apparel and accessories for all your outdoor adventures our expert staff is here to help every hiker from beginners to seasoned pros we also carry a variety of unique catskill souvenirs and gifts visit us online at camp catskill.co or in the store to gear up for your next journey adventure starts at camp catskills also embark on a transformative journey with another summit another summit is dedicated

[01:08:06] to serving veterans and first responders with free outdoor activities activities like walks in nature paddling hiking and even backpacking join our supportive community to rejuvenate in nature's embrace experience commodity adventure and healing at no cost take your next step with another summit and ascend to new heights of resilience and joy apply today on another summit.org all right so let's get on

[01:08:33] to the guest of the night let's go so tonight on episode 241 James O'Boyle joins us to talk about his hike his nine-day adventure through the northville placid trail up in the anirondacks james had an epic time going through the rough land of the Northville Placid Trail i've heard ah stories about this that it's it's not the easiest it's it's not the funnest but he did it and he is here with us tonight so

[01:09:01] welcome to the show james thank you so much great to be here yeah thanks for shooting the shit with us i really appreciate it i'm glad to once again when when people join in on that because it kind of gets it kind of gets you a little bit more comfortable with the craziness that you would like that you have to deal with with tad and i so you know that you're gonna shits gonna hit the fan later on when we hit part two so let's do it let's do it let the shit hit the fan all right so how

[01:09:30] about that james you give a little background about yourself you can do however you want how you you know when you start off a kid where you live and stuff like that and then how you the integrated into hiking and such sure so um i first started hiking when i lived in brooklyn actually um about 18 years ago i made some lifestyle changes we'll say um namely i got sober i quit smoking um and

[01:09:59] suddenly i had a an interest in getting outside i don't know what it was something to do with my time suddenly i was feeling good i could walk i was breathing better whatever i was in brooklyn i didn't have a car and um so i started doing hikes that were accessible by train out of the city so a lot of stuff like breakneck ridge up in the hudson valley um harriman state park a lot of the places that

[01:10:26] that you can get to via public transit and then uh eventually got a car um i met my now wife then girlfriend and we kind of just kept going further and further out we we would make it up to the cat skills we'd go on long day trips drive up to the cat skills hike hike a mountain drive back we would take an annual uh road trip up to the adirondacks every year for our anniversary and spend about a week

[01:10:54] up there and started hiking some of the high peaks um and while we were up there that's where i first got acquainted with the uh the Northville Placid Trail not acquainted but i first heard about it or knew that it existed uh we were looking at a map just trying to find an easy hike for for like a rest day and i saw this trail that just kind of started just sort of meandered all the way off of my map

[01:11:24] and there was nothing on it and i was like what is that and little did i know that trail is 140 miles long um at that point i didn't even register that you could through hike it or what it was um but uh we continued to to just do a bunch of day hikes later got into backpacking um we do

[01:11:48] occasional overnight trips to harriman uh eventually we relocated up to uh kingston new york in the pandemic so we were right at the basically the foot of the cat skills um and started hiking some of the catskills 35 uh which we're almost done with nice finish it up with in a in a couple weeks i think

[01:12:10] and um yeah from there did a lot of hiking moved up here to uh north adams massachusetts to be closer to my wife's family and uh we just continued to hike a lot and do backpacking trips um and yeah that kind of led me to where i am now so with your you're like going up the adirondacks have you done some of the high peaks in the adirondacks as well yeah we've done wow we haven't done a lot

[01:12:38] we've done 10 i want to say i mean that's more than i've done yeah we've done we usually would go up and we do we've tackled like one or two high peaks and then we would do a bunch of other stuff as well like some of the smaller mountains and other pond hikes and stuff like that uh when we first started going up there we weren't like crazy hikers like we weren't going to do a high peak every day for a week or anything like that so we would really just do like one long hike and then kind of just mellow

[01:13:07] out for the rest of the time try to enjoy it try to have some kind of balance of insanity and actual vacation time so she's an adventurer yeah nice nice cool cool that's that's that's fantastic you know and once again you have her to go along with you you have a companion you you go along the hikes and stuff like that it's not you know just always just you so that's that's great fantastic now let's we

[01:13:33] there's some northville placid trail uh is in northville new york near lake placer of course now this is you said 140 miles long yeah i think it's 138.8 138.8 and yeah typically on on the web it says eight to 14 days you did it nine days correct nine days yeah yeah and now this is what would you say the terrain was like and stuff like that throughout the whole hike would you say

[01:14:03] can you compare it to something in the catskills let's say um is it tough it's not mountainous there's only one there's only one um real big elevation gain in the hike it's 1100 foot ridge that you go over right before you get into the town of long lake i would describe it as rolling terrain

[01:14:24] nice it has about it's between 14 and 15 000 feet of elevation gain in the 138 miles so it's not flat but um it's not exactly there are no views um it's mainly rolling terrain through the lowlands kind of going from pond to pond river to river lake to lake um

[01:14:46] and the terrain is it's pretty monotonous i mean it's kind of it's kind of a little bit muddy a little bit ferny a little bit piney definitely wet a lot of water um more groomed at the southern end let more wild at the northern end when you get closer to lake placid you sure you're not hiking in the uh the western catskills oh maybe i'm not that familiar i'm not that familiar with the western council that's what

[01:15:15] it sounds like it's like groomed here and there it sucks here and there it's muddy here and there but it's nice here there yeah yeah so now like with this as you like where you and your wife were up in the north the adirondacks you saw yourself drawn to the north the mpt let's call it um how did you be like i'm gonna fucking hike list yeah well at first it took some backpacking trips um definitely we

[01:15:43] we did some backpacking trips in harriman state park when we still lived in brooklyn but those were pretty pretty dinky and and pretty hard um just because we didn't have our gear dialed in we had heavy stuff um we weren't quite as fit for hiking define heavy stuff what was your pack weight where at the time of hiking in harriman i don't even know but um not what it is now nice okay so you went from you went from kind of heavy to lightweight yeah yeah i would say lightweight i'm definitely not an

[01:16:12] ultra light guy but definitely light lighter um and um so we did a couple we started doing longer backpacking trips and we did a couple that were on the northville placer trail there's one called the french louis loop which goes through the the west canada lakes uh region it's about a 23 mile loop we did that in in two days and then we did another one called the cold river loop which goes

[01:16:40] through the um the cold river section of the northville placer trail which is about a 30 mile loop and i sort of decided okay if i can do if we do the cold river loop and it feels okay we're out there for three days i'm gonna ask my wife if it's okay if i hike the northville placer trail because i started really wanting to do it i kept kind of running into it hearing more about it and um it was just kind of

[01:17:09] in the back of my mind for a couple years so we did the cold river loop and on our last day it was a it was a two night three day uh backpacking trip on our last day i asked for her permission basically to go hike the northville placer trail and uh she gave me her blessing so that's when i decided i was going to do it and um so then earlier this year i had never basically i had never been on a trip by myself before

[01:17:39] i'd always backpacked with her so i knew i was going to be doing the mpt alone because sam wasn't really into she's not really into the idea of like a nine day trip uh where we're pushing like 15 plus miles a day uh it was a little too much for her i think so um i did another mini kind of mini through hike this

[01:18:00] trail called the monadnock sunapee greenway which is in um southwestern new hampshire and uh it's about a 53 mile trail and i did that solo this spring to kind of test whether or not i could psychologically kind of handle being out there by myself and that went great so from there i decided all right let's do it we're gonna do the do the mpt this fall nice so did you go north to south south

[01:18:28] the north what did you do i did uh north excuse me south to north i did a nobo nobo hike starting in northville ending in lake placid okay looking at the map that looks actually pretty like cool you know and just once again near roll like like you said rolling terrain and such uh it it sounds pretty cool cool man yeah uh it's a beautiful trail all right so james i just want to backtrack a couple steps and

[01:18:58] ask you is it it intrigues me what is it that you meant or what is it that you were concerned about when you said you did the 53 mile backpacking trip because you wanted to see if psychologically you could handle it by yourself what were you concerned about and this you're being asked by somebody who is you know now day hikes i hike solo all the time and when i was growing up i did a lot of

[01:19:26] solo backpacking a lot of backpacking with groups but i've never really thought about what somebody else would go through thinking about going out by themselves so what was going through your head that you wanted to test out well i guess i wanted to test out what would go through my head once i was out there by myself um and if you would enjoy it whether i would enjoy it whether i would freak out um what it would be like to spend a night outside by myself yeah just essentially like would i even

[01:19:55] had to have a good time first of all and then could i psychologically handle it yeah and so how how convincing was that two-night backpacking trip did you come out firmly convinced partially convinced uncertain what was the the takeaway from that i was pretty convinced um that trip was i would say physically harder than the npt um i think it was more mountainous terrain

[01:20:25] and um but it was quite a bit shorter and i had more cell service so i could definitely talk to sam basically every day while i was out there because that trail passes through towns um it's much more varied terrain it goes mountains to different nature preserves through country roads it's kind of all over the place um but at the end of it i was a little a little bit tired but other than that

[01:20:54] i felt i felt i felt pretty good yeah and you had that hunger to go take on the npt yeah right exactly i was like i can do it and so knowing that the npt was longer um a little bit more remote maybe what gear if any did you buy specifically for the npt what did you replace that you had or what

[01:21:20] new gear did you go out and get just for this trip i actually didn't replace any gear other than i took different clothes because the the weather was going to be a bit different just lighter weight base layers and different sleep clothes but other than that and i didn't take a fleece i took a i took a different like puffer instead of a fleece and a puffer but um yeah other than that

[01:21:48] i kept everything the same pretty much yeah i used to use my puffer as my pillow ah put it in my i brought a pillow yeah i put it in the stuff sack for my sleeping bag and of course sleep in the sleeping bag and throw the puffer in the the stuff sack to make a more like pillow out of than one of those blow up things so what did you use because i know i have a lot of gear questions i know a lot of our

[01:22:14] listeners want to know what type of gear you used because maybe they're anticipating going out and doing something like this so um i'm going to start off with the non-obvious question but what i always like to know is what are you using to cook with uh cooking i use a snow peak uh stove and a fuel canister okay it's not big and so you you're using dehydrated food yeah yeah exactly okay i basically ate a

[01:22:42] dehydrated meal every night like a a pad thai was kind of my a chicken pad thai was my staple that sounds good and was it a one canister trip with that cook set or two canisters i brought i have a bunch of little third full canisters so i brought a full one and a third and um i think the third full canister lasted me until day seven or something it really exceeded my expectation i thought i was going

[01:23:11] to get rid of that thing on my first resupply but it kept going so yeah but when it wouldn't die that's it was like the bottomless canister yeah yeah they do make a transfer valve i don't know what you do with that where you could you can take two canisters that are partially full transfer the contents into one to the other consolidate it yeah and then you the the trick is you got to cool one canister and heat up the other so it's so it's so weird yeah yeah it's a good it's a good way where

[01:23:39] you have a bunch of half spent canisters to consolidate them so your pack is not like full of these yeah partially full things all right the the one question i know all the listeners are chomping at the bit to hear because we just got done last week hearing from robert who did the finger lakes trail just shy of 500 miles he did it in his what was it saccone trail runners who blew out on him like within the first hundred miles and he had them duct taped together so what were you what

[01:24:08] was your foot gear game how did it work out i had uh the same shoes i wear to work every day i had the uh it's a trail runner called topo athletic and it's a it's the ultra venture four i believe so it's a it's a mesh trail runner um and i wore those on the uh the msg earlier this year and yeah they're

[01:24:34] they're awesome they're super comfortable they're have nice treads they dry out really fast and um they stayed intact diversity we have with with the the shoes it's just absolutely in astronomical yeah are those a flat sole or do they have a rise to them it's a 0.5 millimeter rise okay so it's a relatively flat relatively flat but not definitely not a zero drop almost a zero drop yeah why is it you like

[01:25:02] that um i had some well i used to wear zero drop shoes and then i ran into some issues with plantar fasciitis okay um and then my physical therapist recommended that i go to a 0.5 millimeter and it's been it's been great um i toe box so my feet can my toes can splay they have plenty of room and

[01:25:27] uh they're super comfortable cool so we we heard last week from robert that his like i said his uh trusty saccone trail runners totally blow out that was his gear fail and he was he came across as a guy who was like thoroughly into the logistics it's kind of part of the fun for him is the research and planning for the trip right did you have in your nine day trek any gear fails

[01:25:56] no no nothing nothing failed on you you didn't have to macgyver anything backpack straps were intact tent poles didn't bend nothing like that okay nothing um i was worried about it i was really worried about gear gear failure though because i from going into it um looking at the forecast i knew there

[01:26:18] was going to be at least one day where it was going to rain a lot like maybe thunderstorm and um i had not been able to test my my gear in the rain so that's a that's a big big big uh thing to do yep and it didn't rain earlier this year it hasn't rained on any of my backpacking trips that i've done recently so other than just showers you know because usually it's like if you go on an

[01:26:44] overnight backpacking trip if it's going to be torrential rain you just don't go yeah if you're on a nine day through hike you got to just figure it out yeah so so what do you wear for rain gear um so i have you know patagonia rain jacket like a torrent shell rain jacket and um i did bring rain pants um though i did not use them yeah um and for my pack i i was testing out having rather than having

[01:27:15] um what do they call it the thing that goes over the pack rain cover yeah yeah exactly rain cover rather than having a rain cover i put a compactor bag inside my pack and then i had um i sleep in a hammock so i had my hammock my under quilt and my top quilt all in separate dry bags inside the compactor bag with the rest of my my gear so i hadn't had a chance to test that yet in heavy rain so

[01:27:42] there was one night where i knew it was gonna go crazy in rain um and i was worried about it like the whole time until it was happening you know what was your base weight with your pack when at the start of the hike uh i'm gonna guess it was about 12 pounds because i i'm pretty sure my pack was weighing 20 to 25 with food and water wow uh that's that's jesus well that's but that's very doable i mean

[01:28:11] it's not like it's not crazy yeah it's not like you were throwing away like eight nine hundred bucks on a tent yeah right no and ridiculous money on going like cutting that last four or five ounces out of your pack no i brought it i brought a pillow i had an e-reader i brought a sketchbook i brought you know i wasn't so you're you mentioned you had a hammock what i would like to know are you a side sleeper back sleeper you're obviously not a stomach sleeper in a side sleeper okay and that's comfortable for

[01:28:41] you yeah yeah yeah so i had um pretty extensive back surgery when i was younger wow so i have a have a spinal fusion from l3 to t1 it's 14 vertebraes that are fused jesus what is that like from an sleeping underground what say that again bad accident uh degenerative scoliosis okay yeah so

[01:29:04] when i was 16 ish i had uh i had this major surgery um to correct uh some major curves in my in my spine and um so sleeping getting a good night's sleep outside has always been a struggle for me backpacking and um recently i switched to a hammock and it was a total game changer impressive um so you're out there you're out there nine days you have the e-reader your hammock

[01:29:32] what didn't you have that you wanted to have is there anything that you wish you had brought along i don't think so wow nice yeah yeah so what what did you have then that was totally dead weight uh the rain pants actually oh yeah it's the only thing that i didn't use was my was the rain pants yeah because it was it was just it just wasn't cold enough yeah but that's still a safe play to

[01:29:58] have the rain right right i didn't this didn't necessarily regret bringing them but i did note that i didn't use them yeah yeah interesting okay i'm i'm handing the baton or the microphone over to ston so now james the wife pushes you out of the the car the truck uh you step your foot on the mpt now what what is your what is your thoughts are you nervous are you excited all the above like

[01:30:25] what's going on through your head i was nervous and um it was it felt totally surreal it felt really surreal she but she basically just dropped me off um there's a stewart's in the downtown uh northville right across from the the trailhead the starting trailhead and there was some kind of race that was just about to start like a 5k or 10k so there was a lot of people mulling around um so i couldn't say

[01:30:50] we couldn't get wiley out of the car because he would he would have just gone nuts uh our dog he would have gone nuts um trying to say goodbye like at the actual trailhead with all the people running around so i had to say goodbye to him in the car and then went across the street signed the trail register and sam took a couple photos and then that was it kiss goodbye and see you in nine days talk to you talk to you tonight at the uh at the check when i get to camp what's that so so at the check so james

[01:31:19] you mentioned the stewart's i gotta ask you did you start off by trying the vanilla chocolate strawberry ice cream at stewart's no but i did use the bathroom oh okay did you knock did you rattle the door knob what was your entry point at the bathroom i waited until the little sign went from red to green uh uh but you didn't wait for a human to walk out oh okay you didn't barge in so your time's up all

[01:31:43] right back to you again so now you start off on on the mbt and like what are your thoughts within the first two or three days like are you feeling confident that you're doing well what is your plan with mileage and stuff like the you know it's 138 miles like do you have a plan or are you just like i'm gonna do this i had an itinerary pretty much um written out um my first day was kind of

[01:32:13] short it was uh because we started we got there at like 9 30 so it wasn't totally a full day of hiking so my first day i believe was like 12 miles and then from there kind of ramped up a little bit but um it was an emotional roller coaster when i got out there um completely different experience from the the msg earlier in the year i don't know what it was because in the beginning there wasn't

[01:32:41] i mean i was alone but i wasn't totally alone like my first night um i was camping it was memorial day weekend when i started and i was camping at this lake called yeah called woods lake and there was like a crazy party going on on the other side of the lake so i like i wasn't alone i could hear a party there were there was music playing there was a sound system there was insanity yeah so it was hard to get

[01:33:08] to sleep actually but i i told myself you know just be thankful that you have people around now because when you get deeper into this you're not going to see anybody and i was right um from there pretty much i saw an average i would say like two to three people every day and that's just usually those people were together and um usually it would just be a you know seeing them in passing stop for a quick

[01:33:32] quick chat maybe and uh you know continue on my merry way but um i didn't see any other through hikers the entire time yeah that was my next question i would those through hikers and i guess not zero wow there was there was people that were in front of me in the trail register that i was hoping to run into and part of this trip i was actually really hoping to like get to share a camp with some other through hikers and you know kind of connect with people out there and just sort of meet some people

[01:34:00] have fun there was i think one guy ahead of me that was doing the trail in eight days he was alone so i knew i wasn't catching him and then there was a party of two people that had started i think it was like they started the day before me but they were also doing 10 or 11 days so i thought at some point i'm going to catch up to them but at some point they just dropped out of the trail registers and they i stopped seeing their name so i think they bailed in the rain wow because we had a we had

[01:34:26] one day of crazy rain so uh the the mpt is a lot not based on like lean to stuff was that your was that your objective day by day to get to a certain lean to at some certain point or did you have a different jacket yeah i had like a a campsite every night that i planned to get to and i would

[01:34:49] say about half of those campsites had lean to's my first three nights didn't and then maybe four or five of the nights had lean to's and i stayed in my hammock every night but it is nice to have a lean to just to have a place to put your stuff and you know you can get changed and sit down to eat and you know it's just nice to have it there are you where like with the lean to were you with other

[01:35:15] people the only night that i had another person other than the first night when they were across the lake at that party or whatever my second night there was another guy staying i was i was at this campsite called canary pond beautiful beautiful backcountry pond in the middle of nowhere and when i got to camp at like three o'clock there was a tent pitched in the middle of the site with a bear bag

[01:35:42] hanging directly above it directly above the tent so you're saying you're saying the bear was camped out under the bear can yes okay so there was a guy there and um he came out of his tent and i said i said hello and tried to talk to him and he he wasn't having it he was giving me one word gruff answers basically like i don't want to talk i'm out here wow he said he was he said he was out there for a

[01:36:09] few like he was basically staying at that campsite for a few nights or something but he didn't want to have anything to do with me so was that like an unsettling experience did you have like sleep with one eye open because you were concerned about this guy or he's just like like able to just crash and sleep like a rock yeah no i was fine that was actually one of the one of the best nights of sleep i had on on trail um it was just a beautiful beautiful spot and uh i think i was good and tired

[01:36:36] and i'd had kind of a an emotional day too i would say um so it was just nice to be there and i i did try to talk to him because i really did want to make friends and kind of just have some trail camaraderie yeah but um i he was just out there for like pure solitude i think so he wasn't having it he was pissed at you he was pissed that i was like what the hell are you doing out here this is the shittiest trail you shouldn't be out here yep by the way what were you using to protect your food at night a

[01:37:06] bear canister hang in a bag i did a bear hang yeah okay and that's the i and irondex did you that fall protocol isn't it like uh you have to use a bear canister you have to use a bear canister in the eastern high peaks okay okay sorry yeah the northville plaster trail doesn't if you ask ai it will tell you that you need a bear canister on the npt however only in the eastern high peaks do

[01:37:34] you need a bear canister and the npt never it does enter the high peaks but not the eastern high peaks okay yeah and stosh i was actually looking into that and i asked chat gpt what i needed and it said you need to bring a gallon of honey and leave that in your campsite and the bears will go for the honey and leave the rest of your shit alone it's fine it sounded sensible to me so that's what i'm planning to do yeah go for it yeah so along this uh this trip where were you like did you have

[01:38:04] any resupplies or was this i mean all you yeah nine days is a pretty significant amount of time to yeah i had two resupplies okay okay um go ahead tell the bus so my first was in the town of paseco that was on day three um your resupply options are fairly limited on the trail unless you have friends that you can meet um you pretty much have to resupply in paseco and in long lake

[01:38:31] um to avoid the post office in paseco because of the hours and the restrictions of like when i would have to be there i chose to resupply at the paseco inn and they were glad to uh they were happy to hold a resupply for me and i also stayed there on my third night because i figured i'm resupplying there it kind of matched my agenda so i stayed at the paseco inn on on the third night it's basically on the

[01:38:56] trail uh and then my i think it was day seven i resupplied at the long lake post office which is about a mile and a half or two miles out off trail so you do have to do a road walk off trail to get there and then find your way back to the trail that's that's pretty crazy you know once again that's why it went from 138 to would you say 150 no no it's 138.8 not including the not including the road walk

[01:39:23] i thought didn't you say it was like uh you your mileage was a little bit different um i don't think so okay maybe so now once again that's that's that's fantastic like you use these local places for your resupply and that's so day three was a a sleep in a motel there yeah slept in an inn um wasn't as like

[01:39:51] awesome as i thought it was going to be i mean i just i did get to shower which was nice um nice but honestly like my hammock was so much more comfortable than the impressive a bed in an inn um but i was i was very happy to have hot running water and a shower and a toilet that flushed um and the ability to call my wife and and check in and stuff uh so yeah and to tag the podcast yeah yeah that's it yeah yeah i tagged you i did get to post

[01:40:20] some uh some updates online yeah just following it like crazy were you carrying a like a garment in reach with you or was it total cell phone i had an in reach yeah i had an in reach um the cell service on the trail was pretty much non-existent even in the town of paseco i i should add there was no cell service at all in the town even at the inn i was staying at well there's a new setting i guess on phones that enables wi-fi calling that i had to actually go in and turn on to to be able to make

[01:40:50] a phone call so anyone who's confused about that there's a new setting or maybe it's a setting that i just never knew existed but yeah no cell service until you get to basically long lake you get cell service nice nice so now the i've heard the mpt is insanely notorious with mud how is the mud

[01:41:16] the mud was actually not bad um until the the last 30 or 40 miles was um was muddy i did lose my shoe in mud once i where my foot went into the mud and my foot my foot came out and my shoe stayed and i and i had to actually fight the mud for my shoe back um that was near the cold river section that was a little crazy um but the northern part of the trail is way more rugged than

[01:41:46] the southern part like once you get into once you get past the cold river section the last like i don't know there's a section of about six to eight miles that's just complete bushwhack and i don't know if i just caught it at a bad time like maybe the trail maintenance was kind of they hadn't hit it in a while but the southern the southern section of the trail is way more groomed and then once you get to the end it's it's a little bit insane i think people actually

[01:42:13] sometimes prefer to hike it north to south for that reason to kind of get the hard part out of the way first yeah but i think i was pretty lucky with the mud i don't think it was it wasn't that bad like compared to the other if you're used to hiking adirondack high peaks the mud is not as bad so so james you you told us you did your uh two day over two night overnighter before you did

[01:42:40] the mpt now you go out on the mpt npt you're out for nine days nine nights how was the the solitude the the mental game different than your two-day hike yeah the mental game was the biggest factor in this hike it was the it was the biggest challenge for me for sure

[01:43:05] how's that it was because there wasn't any there really wasn't any camaraderie out there um had i run into other through hikers i think it would have been a little bit different but the lack of cell service the lack of running into people the lack of other people at the campsites um really only being able to contact my wife a couple times like she was actually even

[01:43:33] surprised when i left she was like whatever you're gonna be calling me every day i really couldn't you know um it was just text that texts uh from the garment at the end of the day or like a satellite message from my iphone just kind of basic check-ins um other than when i was in paseco i got to call her and when i was approaching long lake i got to call her other than that um it was just me and the mental

[01:43:59] game was was hard it's like a really long meditation or something where your your thoughts are just coming and going like positive thoughts negative thoughts without you just gotta what's that without boundary you're just like you can just randomly yes focus on one thing for a while then like a series of things pop into your head and then yes you go back to what you were thinking about earlier it's you know you're just yeah like a

[01:44:28] unrestrained out there so with that said what what do you think the probability is that you're going to do another week or longer backpacking trip in an area that's not going to result with the a lot of projected social interaction you're down for another excursion like this or you're going to try to do something that's more more has like the at social hike vibe yeah well i don't think i would

[01:44:56] be into the the total social vibe either um i think there's probably a balance this would probably be better for me but i think i i think i would do another hike like this um having this experience i think it would help just having the having experienced it already but going through this kind of for my first time like in this long of a stretch with that much isolation it was hard it was it was for sure hard

[01:45:24] um i don't think it turned me off to backpacking or anything like that though and you know the one thing that's weird with me at nighttime i need like the the sound like i need like airflow or something to get me like to have that stimulus of that that it's nighttime i need to sleep did you have any sort of like like earbuds in for that or like did you do you have to do that or do you just go all in with the

[01:45:51] sound at home actually i sleep with a white noise machine it really helps me sleep but um yeah on the trail um i actually just relied on reading like i was really happy to have my e-reader to just read myself to sleep every night wow impressive i got great actually um i read i read like almost three books while i was out there actually nice um i read the new tana french she's like an irish kind

[01:46:20] of thriller mystery writer and uh i read this book called the stranger in the woods about um well that's a great thing to read in a remote area have you have you heard of it or read it no no it's about a guy in maine um who was living alone um for like 27 years without contact from anybody else but he was only like three miles from a from the nearest house

[01:46:46] and he lived um completely by stealing from people oh interesting wow yeah what was that the stranger in the woods okay i am putting that in the show notes so was it as good as it sounds uh it was pretty good yeah the author uh was a journalist who became sort of obsessed with this guy and would interview him and it kind of grapples with the idea of like what a hermit is and

[01:47:12] kind of the value of that um but yeah the stranger in the woods was a he was a kooky fellow for sure you ever hear the story of the leather man no yeah should look it up it's a guy uh walked a continuous loop uh new york and connecticut i don't know if he made it up to massachusetts or not but like over 40 50 years something like that and he would stay at the same places you know outdoors

[01:47:43] abandoned this or that pretty interesting story that's when you say stranger in the woods that that's what it sounds like yeah although this guy the leather man didn't steal from from people the people expected him and they would leave stuff out for him um interesting story i learned about it reading the new york times so yeah the people the people uh near this guy the stranger in the woods they would leave stuff for him but he he wouldn't take it because he didn't want to get you know

[01:48:11] entrapped or feel like he was relying on the kindness of them and he would he he was so covert that he like wouldn't break a stick when he walked like he wouldn't leave footprints he would be like yeah sounds like stosh yeah just floated through the woods taking the views with the 100 pound backpack through the child yeah live through the main winters uh with no power interesting yeah it's brutal so

[01:48:41] before i throw it back to stosh um you said that you're not totally gonna rule out in fact you want to do this again what is it from the the two-nighter to the nine-nighter to now makes you more inclined to do another one of these what did you learn about yourself out there that makes you want to go out again um probably that i could do it that i was that i was okay in the end that uh all i had to do is

[01:49:09] keep walking basically because my worst basically my worst fears of this trip did happen um i did get stormed on um it was like my day five or six i forget which one but um the rain was supposed to actually hold off until like 5 p.m so i was i woke up and my garment told gave this great forecast and

[01:49:35] even my wife the night before she texted me a forecast from like the weather channel saying like oh yeah the rain's not supposed to start until like 3 or 4 p.m so i went into that day feeling amazing and then sure enough at like 12 o'clock it started pouring and it didn't stop until two or three in the morning the following day so i had to walk four miles to camp in the rain set up in the

[01:49:59] rain um and then at night it was insane winds like my tarp blew off in the middle of the night um and i had to get out of my hammock to like reset up in the dark in the middle of the night without trying to not get wet and i was worried that all my stuff was going to get soaked um i was i was honestly kind of concerned that the whole compactor bag inside my pack wasn't going to work so i kept

[01:50:25] like checking it like is it is my stuff really dry is my stuff really dry it stayed it stayed fine and even though that day sucked and i got to camp at like three o'clock and had to set up in a downpour and basically you know have dinner sitting under my tarp like on a on my little two foot by three foot ground sheet and um kind of figure out how to like change into my sleep clothes and stay dry

[01:50:51] basically not get hypothermia was pretty hard and i was pretty scared and frustrated during that time but you know i did it and i i was fine so there's a confidence from from having kind of done it even though like it sort of went the way that i was hoping it wasn't going to go like i was hoping the storm was just going to kind of pass or like i would get to camp and be able to set up before it

[01:51:15] started raining or you know i didn't get injured i didn't like really have any physical problems other than a blister that kind of sucked for a couple days so yeah i think just having the experience of going through that whole mental game of like seeing all the bad thoughts kind of come and go along with the positive thoughts and sort of just having to walk through it all um just gives me

[01:51:42] more confidence that i could do it again oh yeah now would i want would i want to necessarily do it alone i don't know you know yeah i had a similar experience uh when doing the pemi gossip you know yeah we got we started off with okay skies and then it turned into pouring rain for two straight days and it sucked like you said doing the uh doing the like pemi gossip and the first day we had to

[01:52:11] once again set up our tent in the pouring rain and then like you said change in the pouring rain you know it gives me that fear of you know hypothermia like am i going to sleep at night am i going to be wet am i going to get my freaking blanket like my my wet and stuff like that it sucks it really does suck yeah and luckily we had some our friends as well as some good guys as well on there to teach us you know

[01:52:37] like you know you'll be fine you know we're here to help and stuff i mean you were solo so that's that kind of that kind of is is more difficult but then that gives you more confidence that you will be stronger out in the trail the next time you go out yeah totally and that was that was one that rainy night was one of the nights that i didn't have a lean to nearby so i couldn't just kind of stash my stuff there or get changed in the lean to or anything like that like i was completely was in an area

[01:53:03] called wakely dam which is basically like an rv uh camping area uh where there were actually other people like within 100 yards from me that were in their rvs like cozy so if it didn't get to an emergency situation i wasn't going to call a ranger i was going to go knock on somebody's rv nice that'll be a first that's what i told that's what i told myself like if i start to get hypothermic

[01:53:27] i'll just go knock on this person's rv i have to say that's way better than a call out than a rescue yeah that's what i'll be on the news yeah nice so now that was like i killed oh yeah that's true actually yeah yeah come on in this is our beautiful rv slash now did you ever have a point in this

[01:53:51] this trail hike that you'd ever want thought about you would bail um that the rainy night i wasn't thinking about bailing but i was definitely considering the fact of like what was gonna i was not let's just say i wasn't like i was open to the fact that like if i got wet and couldn't get dry and and sleep then i was open to the fact that i would have to do something i didn't want to like

[01:54:21] bail on the hike but i was i was open to the fact of like literally knocking on somebody's rv door and i did message my wife and just let her know like it's raining i'm wet i'm cold i'm setting up i'll let you know when i'm dry and i'm in my hammock um so once that happened i was i was pretty good but um yeah no i never i never wanted to bail um it did get pretty uncomfortable at times but i think

[01:54:46] that's part of it it's part of the experience exactly once again it makes you stronger and then did you what about wildlife did you hit any crazy wildlife and stuff like that up on this hike no not um what i did see was grouse deer a giant snapping turtle

[01:55:08] um plenty of like toads and f's and um some birds uh i saw a lot of bear poop moose poop uh i did have a i feel like i had a bear in my in my campsite uh one night because i felt the footsteps next to my next to my hammock i felt the ground actually shake um so i woke up and kind of hollered a little bit and miraculously was able to just go back to sleep i guess

[01:55:38] how the fuck like seriously come on man like i was on the the pemi gosset and i was out in my tent and i couldn't i i would love to fall asleep to the rain drops but i'm just thinking about how miserable the next day is going to be but yet you have a bear walking beside you on the tent and you're like yeah just get the fuck out of here bear i can fall asleep i'm done like what just read just read a couple pages and it puts me out like every time like i'm not like a light how can it like seriously

[01:56:07] how can people do this like i need like once again i take medication for sleep i have a sound machine for sleep and then i have a fan for sleep and then sometimes once again i read like you i read even though i've had like like catskill books but that's all that shit like when i'm on the trail like i'm like my eyes are wide open i'm like i'm not gonna sleep i do have my medication that helps me but

[01:56:33] i'm not gonna sleep so this is crazy that you can be like yeah yeah that that 400 pound bear is just walking next to thing get out of here barry i think i was just really tired too i mean my mileage was ramping up a little bit towards the end of the hike like i started out doing 15s and then it went to 17 and then the last couple days were 20s so i was getting i was more determined to finish towards the end and

[01:56:57] i was definitely tired um but yeah i actually used to have trouble sleeping outside but something about the hammock um just really does it for me nice hammock i can how old are you james uh 44 same age as me do you have and you said you had back problems how the hell can you sleep in a hammock with back problems well i don't have problems i just have a basically a fully fused spine

[01:57:27] yeah zero zero thoracic mobility that's scary as fuck i could i could like the hammock probably better conforms to the the shape of your body and gives you more equal support when you're sleeping than if you're just on a a foam pad or an air pad on the ground where you have a bunch of pressure points yep yeah well plus i can't like imagine like sleeping on the ground and then sitting up and

[01:57:55] putting your shoes on and tying your shoes in your tent without being able without bending your spine at all yeah it's pretty much impossible true true amazing now that just blows my mind once again uh do you feel that this this through hike changed your your thoughts on like wilderness outdoor recreation stuff like that that you were more secluded than any other spot that you've ever been into

[01:58:26] um yeah i mean it opens up possibilities for me like there are other trails that i'd like to hike um the seclusion honestly made me feel like like i would say if somebody were to tell me they were going to go hike the mpt solo because they wanted the solitude i would probably tell them you know be open to the possibility that you might think you want the solitude but you might not want that much

[01:58:52] solitude that you're gonna get and it makes me want it makes me wish that i had more backpacking friends because honestly i just i really don't have any have any friends that are into backpacking plenty of people that hike and you know i hike with my wife and we have friends that we go hiking with but there wasn't anybody like raising their hand to come with me on this on the mpt so i probably need to make some backpacking friends that's that's kind of one of the one of the takeaways of the

[01:59:20] of the trip for me okay awesome awesome ted how about you buddy well so physically how how hard was it uh over the course of nine days you have this history of the back fusion uh you haven't done a trip this long there's maybe a little mental fatigue on

[01:59:45] a variety of factors but but physically how were you holding up you said you you were putting on more mileage towards the end but overall what was your what do you think about in terms of physically how demanding not demanding what did you learn about yourself in that respect uh physically i felt very well prepared um other than just hiking and going on backpacking trips i you know i do basic

[02:00:13] strength training a few times a week um and also i have a physical job i'm a mailman so i do a lot of walking on a daily basis carrying weight which i think is really good training for hiking so yeah i mean i felt i was tired but i would expect to be tired i didn't have any aches and pains just just a blister um for a couple days but other than that i was fine yeah so so basically for a living

[02:00:37] you're a walker yes okay yes and you carry a mail bag yes okay um so what are we heavier than your backpack correct yeah uh sometimes yeah yeah i mean we carry packages up to 70 pounds yeah so i i hike with a fellow who's a mail delivery person now i'll i'll hook you up with

[02:01:03] them um you guys can take your take your personal time and and go do stuff zach is a little crazy in terms of how adventuresome he is but maybe you guys will have fun together cool uh so what is it like when you finish you're out there you have this epic adventure you haven't done anything like it before it was somewhat what you expected somewhat what you didn't expect

[02:01:27] but when you finally finish it how'd you feel i felt really good yeah yeah i had a strong drive to finish like my last couple days i lengthened everything so that my last day could be a bit shorter um i was definitely wanting to see my wife and our dog and get home um my last day i remember

[02:01:51] there was a as i was hiking through the past the cold river section to my last um lean tooth called moose pond um and it's right across from i believe it's called the sawtooth range in the adirondacks you can look across moose pond right at the sawtooth range and there was a helicopter flying overhead like presumably to rescue somebody and i was just like it's time to time to go home you know

[02:02:18] i made it i made it here i'm safe like i did it you know tomorrow i had my my last day i basically hiked enough miles so that my last day was only like a 10 mile day so yeah when i when i made it to the road on the last day it kind of just popped out of nowhere like suddenly i was done and i just had like a two mile road walk and i beat my wife and my wife was picking me up at the northern terminus

[02:02:43] and i beat her there so i got to just sit down at like a picnic table and just just hang out for a few minutes and just take a load off it was great i just had a strong desire and drive to like get back to to my wife and at home civilization yeah yeah exactly what do you what do you what do you do when you hook up with your wife you guys go out to eat you just get some grab and go what's the celebration

[02:03:12] like is your oh she she brought some snacks and some cookies that she made so i had some uh they were like chocolate chip tahini cookies they were really good tahini tahini yeah is in lieu of butter um there was probably butter as well okay yeah and um so we had like a three hour drive home two and a half three hours from from lake placid and we went to uh my mother-in-law's for dinner

[02:03:42] wow you got you must like your mother-in-law otherwise i was gonna say like like i would without oh no fucking chicken fingers or something oh no i was looking forward to a real home-cooked like meal like i didn't want any actually going into the hike i was like planning on like oh i'll get a pint of ice cream at stewart's i'll we'll stop for burgers at like we'll find a a five guys on

[02:04:06] the way home or whatever but actually i was just like yeah let's just get home and like make it to dinner tonight and like i just want to eat some real food impressive that's different i know that sounds weird but yeah so james having completed this what's what's the advice that you wish you had before you started that you would share with somebody else who's setting out to do this

[02:04:34] um that you can do it you just have to you just have to keep walking basically like the mental the mental game is the hard part um on this trail i feel like probably anyone who hikes the mpt solo is going to go through a similar experience yeah um the mental is the hardest part for sure and um i would just tell myself that you're going to be okay and you can do it because i i definitely i didn't expect to to doubt myself as much as i did um on the trail but i think those

[02:05:02] were just thoughts those were just passing thoughts kind of coming through and i would fixate on them sometimes but yeah i would just advise myself like you're going to be okay and you can do it and your stuff's going to stay dry and you've you've prepared enough like interesting yeah what's that i said interesting yeah so what's the what's the biggest misconception you think there is about

[02:05:28] through hiking the northville placid trail i think the solitude is definitely glamorized a little bit uh i don't think i don't think everybody who thinks they want that kind of solitude really wants that kind of solitude um i mean i definitely like hiking alone and i definitely would prefer to hike alone than with like you know 30 people at a lean-to at the end of the night or whatever but um yeah i would

[02:05:58] say that the the level of remoteness is not to be underestimated i mean there were a lot of times when you know i was 20 miles from a road or whatever 15 20 miles from the nearest road so if you're alone like there's a lot to be considered like i'm one night i definitely one night i caught myself on my uh on like a tent stake like i just sliced my finger and i was like you know what that could have been

[02:06:22] my hike right there like any random thing could go wrong and i could be done so i was i was really careful yeah well good good thing you didn't blow out your rotator cuff because yeah that happens i hear that happens hiking that's happened to me before oh really well look at that ted somebody has to talk about it wasn't it was a tear in my i think it was a labrum tear but it was it popped

[02:06:48] when i was actually i was going up uh wittenberg and i just happened to i just was pushing through a couple trees just just a totally benign thing yeah and i heard a pop and suddenly i couldn't move my arm above my shoulder and had to go through months of pt and and now you're carrying mail for the u.s

[02:07:10] government correct right damn that's impressive damn impressive impressive all right and so now that you have uh this is off your list you're done with a north pole plastic trail anything next like what's on the list there's there's a bunch of northeast long distance trails that aren't as like uh that are just as fun even more funner with like long trail of vermont we have what the co-host

[02:07:39] trail up in new hampshire the long trail and uh the long path in new york state what's what's on your list uh i definitely want to finish my catskill 35 which i have uh friday balsam cap rocky loan and fur are left oh wow interesting so in a couple weeks when i'm there i think we're gonna do the and actually my wife has a windham high peak too that's the only one we didn't do together so

[02:08:06] i'm gonna repeat that but um and then we have to do the winter peaks oh nice before we still need the four winter peaks but i want to do that i want to do that and um finish section hiking the tacana crest trail and probably get up into the adirondacks and finish the 46 but then in terms of long distance trails yeah probably the the long trail is definitely on my list um it starts in my town

[02:08:33] so it's not really it's kind of logistically an easy one to like conceptualize doing because i just have to get dropped off five minutes from my house and just start walking and it's actually on my mail route one of my mail routes nice just up this driveway um and there's a trail in massachusetts called the massachusetts mid-state trail that i might try to do which is a 90 mile trail that goes

[02:09:00] through the central part of the state so i might try that because that'll be a little less remote it's kind of more mixed terrain passes through towns um probably a little bit more logistically challenging because the there aren't as many like backcountry campsites but um probably not so like psychologically demanding as like npt so yeah those are those are things that are on my list maybe even

[02:09:25] the new england trail nice well good good well we look forward to hearing about it so last question that we have for the night is post hike bruising bites what do you got when you're out in the catskills or even let's talk about the an amputee uh what do you have for us that you're willing to

[02:09:48] suggest all right since i lived in kingston for a couple years i gotta say top taste in kingston oh that's a new one have you heard of top taste no i'm gonna check it out right now jamaican jamaican food oh god lovely the best jerk chicken ever all right they're closed on sundays though everyone

[02:10:14] should know they're closed on sundays okay i'm looking from the photo of the place you know it's got to be good it is amazing yeah dude i love jamaican i went down to jamaica for my honeymoon and we haven't stopped going since then so yeah so it's got on google 522 reviews average 4.8 nice so nice looking forward to it oh excellent excellent so everybody's breakfast lunch

[02:10:43] soda and candy oh interesting oh so good hopefully everybody's passengers through kingston will go stop there so yeah get the jerk chicken nice all right so uh wrap it up uh thank you james for joining us on the show about your talk about the north full placid trail greatly appreciate it great you greatly appreciate you taking our your time to join us and talk about that awesome experience so

[02:11:12] glad to hear about it uh once again thank you to the monthly supporters and the monthly sponsors on the show thank you to everybody who has donated the show and thank you to everyone who is still listening to the show 241 episodes and james joins us to talk about the north full placid trail nine day experience who he had a great time and he's willing to say that other people should do this as well

[02:11:38] but i'm not gonna do so no you're not down for it stosh that's that's too remote i need views i need views he said there's very little views so i need views okay okay so james thank you for joining us hope you have a good night and uh hopefully keep in touch in the future keep tagging the show buddy yeah absolutely thank you guys so much for having me thank you very much all right have a good night

[02:12:03] buddy all right you too hi everyone i just want to thank you for listening to the show if you enjoyed the show subscribe and throw down a smooth review on spotify apple podcasts or any podcast platform that you use you can also check daily updates of the podcast hikes hiking news and local news on facebook

[02:12:31] instagram twitter and the official website of the show remember this you gotta just keep on living in the cat skills man l-i-v-i-n wicked wicked wicked wicked