Scoutmaster Podcast 277

I'm Tim Jakes and I am Scoutmaster with Troop 93 in Westchester, Pennsylvania. This edition of Scoutmaster Podcast is sponsored by backers like me And now the old Scoutmaster. Hey, everybody, this is Clarke Green.

It's summertime and so our next few podcasts feature on-core presentations from our archives, and this week is an interview with somebody who kind of defies categorization. His name is Andrew Skirka and I think it's safe to say that he is the most incredible long-distance backpacker and hiker in living memory. Andrew's book, The Ultimate Hikers Gear Guide, is a really amazing resource for anybody who's going backpacking or hiking. As always, this podcast is only possible because of the generosity of the folks who become ScoutmasterCGcom backers. Go to ScoutmasterCGcom, click the support link at the top of the page. You'll find out how you can become a ScoutmasterCGcom backer.

We'll be back with our regular schedule of podcasts in a few weeks. Until then, let's get started, shall we?

Andrew Skirka has won a lot of attention for his solo long-distance backpacking trips. For instance, he hiked a 4,700-mile six-month expedition in Alaska and the Yukon, which would be like a lifetime achievement for most of us, but that was basically one of the shorter ones. He covered 6,875 miles in seven months following the Great Western Loop in the United States, but that's still not the longest one.

He walked 7,775 miles- just saying that makes my feet hurt- in an 11-month sea-to-sea route across the US, and he figures that in the last decade or so he's covered 30,000-plus miles and that's the equivalent of traveling 1.2 times around the Earth's equator. He's been named Adventurer of the Year by both Outside and the National Geographic Adventure Magazines, as well as Person of the Year by Backpacker Magazine. He's also the author of the recently published Ultimate Hiker's Gear Guide from National Geographic, And if you look at your March April edition of Scouting Magazine, there he is right there on the cover. I'm happy to welcome Andrew to the Scoutmaster Podcast. Good morning, Andrew.

How are you? Hey, good morning. Thanks very much for having me.

Well, no, I really appreciate you spending the time. How in the world did you end up doing this?

I think I sort of stumbled into it. I never set out with the intention of making this into a lifestyle, but I did my first long-distance trip One. I was still in college. It was 2002..

I did the Appalachian Trail and then, after graduating, I did that sea-to-sea trip and I think things just sort of escalated from there And I was fortunate that I had never developed any extensive habits or taken on any extensive responsibilities and that kind of allowed me to be like a dirtbag hiker, if you will, Kind of like a dirtbag climber, but I was hiking instead and slowly over time I was able to build it into something that was economically sustainable as well. We're talking with volunteer scout leaders and we're all parents.

So you are getting ready to graduate from college- You were at Duke right, Correct? And you decide that you're going to go and do a through-hike of the Appalachian Trail. Is that, if I have the timeline right there, Yeah, I get it before I graduate. It's actually between semesters- My son's name is Andrew, by the way, And he came to us in the fall semester of his junior.

He says: you know what? I think? I'd like to go and spend three or four months on the Appalachian Trail.

How did your parents react to that when you told them that you had this great idea? The Appalachian Trail was part of our larger plan, So the economy at the time was pretty bad.

It was just difficult to find anything worth doing for the summer, So I kind of pitched it as something I could do this summer, that I could sort of knock off my bucket list and that way, when the economy is a little better and my odds of finding something worth doing were better, I would be available for it. And they were thrilled about this.

They weren't thrilled but they were okay with it. The plan made sense then And they just didn't expect that when I did the Appalachian Trail, that that wasn't going to be enough.

So the trip that they really, the trip that they really got upset about, was that sea to sea trip, because that was, you know, instead of doing something with my $150,000 education, I was instead, you know, in their view, sort of pissing it away by taking on this. You know, I don't know how they were characters, useless, dangerous, Useless, dangerous, crazy, Yeah.

But I think my feeling on it was that I was at the one point in my life where I really could do something like this. I was young, I didn't have any responsibilities, I hadn't committed to a career, to a woman, to a home, I hadn't done any of that stuff.

So I was going to do anything like that. That was the time And I stuck with that decision because I had made the realization that these lifestyle decisions are mine to make And there's a lot of pressure from society, from parents, from peers, to take that very conventional track which is, you know, your college degree, job, house or wife, house, kids, Right, And there's a lot of pressure to do that. And I had made this realization that if I wanted to make a different decision I could do that, And you know.

So the message I see in that for us folks is: listen to your kids carefully, Listen to what their plans are, what they're thinking about, And hey, you know, down the road, look what can happen. The traditional way out is not the only way out, And Andrew's a real good example of that.

I'd also add, if I could, I think I'd also add that I think any experience in which your child is putting themselves out of their comfort zones and is having an opportunity to grow will probably be a good thing in one way or another. Absolutely, I absolutely agree with you And I think scouting we try, we kind of major in that, putting people outside their comfort zone in a lot of ways.

So you talk about the first real backpacking trip. You went on as being that. You left. You set out from Springer Mountain in Georgia on the Appalachian Trail.

How did that go? Oh, it was bad. It was bad.

So it was my first congressman's trip. It was my first backpacking trip, And now I describe myself as a camper by default, which is a backpacker that takes too much, because they're basically packing their fears. They justify a lot of your decisions on the ground of what if or just in case, And they just don't know. I also shared a lot of conventional gear, which is because I just didn't know any better And I thought that what the industry was telling me and what an REI catalog was telling me, that that was the right thing.

And then finally I had. No, I wasn't able to use any gear that required any special thought or skill to use. Like everything had to be foolproof.

So I wasn't capable of setting up the tarp, So I had to use a dev wall pen. I didn't know how to. I didn't know how to select a good campsite. I didn't know how to pack a bag. I didn't know how to pack a bag correctly.

So it was like it was necessary that I had like some big, you know bombproof suspension pack where it didn't really matter how I loaded it, It was in there and it all sort of fit at the same. I didn't know any skills.

So that was kind of like three main problems. And unfortunately, a lot of beginner and, to that matter, I think, still a lot of intermediate backpackers are like that And their experience is just so miserable that their hiking experience is so miserable that they end up just wanting to camp because they just they can't enjoy hiking.

I think that your experience that you had is played out in a slightly smaller scale, like hundreds and hundreds of times every year They give this a shot and then they, tens of thousands of times, Tens of thousands of times- Yeah, They're 20,000 kids who go through film on every summer and probably of those, probably 19,000 of them probably are not doing it right. You go into detail about that experience and kind of the evolution that you went through as far as the selection of gear and everything and your philosophy and your approach to these trips in the Ultimate Hikers Gear Guide- And I have read the book, I've looked at it. Folks, you will have seen, yesterday I posted a review of the book in advance of being able to talk to Andrew here on the podcast. It's really a game changer.

I think it's a great piece of work And I think it's going to make things really really work for people. If they'll go and look at the book and follow your advice, I think we're going to see a whole lot more successful backpackers developed out of it. I certainly hope so.

The way I've been presenting it is basically, I think I look at it as a $20 investment. I've traveled, as you said in the introduction, I've gone like 30,000 miles. I've made a lot of regrettable purchases of gear. I've made a lot of mistakes and suffered as a result because I chose the wrong stuff or I didn't have the skills to use it properly, And I've also made some really good decisions that I've learned a lot along the way. In the book I share that The focus is on backpackers who want to enjoy hiking.

I think that there's plenty of information about there. For backpackers who want to enjoy camping, They can take it like read a book by Knowles. Knowles specializes in camping. They're basically car campers that are mobile. There isn't that much information on a mass scale about if you actually want to enjoy hiking, which is different. You're moving, You have to carry all of your stuff, And that's kind of been what I've specialized in is trying to figure out how to enjoy the walking aspect of all these trips I've gone on.

That's like this connection that people don't make. That's why I think the book is a real game-changer.

That comes at it from the idea of trying to define, like, where you are And then if you want to get to the point of being able to backpack comfortably, you know here's what you do. If you want to end up being an ultimate hiker, if you want to really challenge some big experiences, you know here's what you end up doing.

And you know I read the part in your introduction that you were kind of aiming at trying to do the complete walker- Colin Fletcher's- the complete walker for this century- And I think you made it Well. I appreciate that reference. Yeah, that's definitely my objective. Colin's book is: They're awesome books. They changed the way that people backpack.

Unfortunately, we now have our disposal New gear, new supplies, new techniques that allow us to do it differently and to do it better, And that was my idea in writing the book. Yeah, well, I think you were successful in kind of helping to redefine exactly what we're doing out there and how we make it happen.

Well, One of the things that I first saw about you was the YouTube video And it really made me anxious to talk to you, And this video is when you encounter the porcupine caribou herd, Right, And where were you at the time? I was up in the Yukon, Arctic, So like basically far north, Far northwestern Canada.

So you have, like, this moment- I don't know exactly how to describe this moment- a moment of enlightenment or clarity or some kind of transcendent moment. Can you share that with us?

Can you explain what happened? Yeah, I still struggle to explain it, to be honest, But basically I've been so worn down by what I was going through And at the time I was in the middle of a 657-mile 24-day stretch without crossing the road and without seeing a human being, And I was just getting beat up on a regular basis by big floods and bears and mosquitoes, And I was just so worn down by those elements, in addition to just this larger sense of exposure and risk and self-dependence, that I, when I came up on a porcupine migration trail corridor, which is this very visible track across the tundra, I just broke down and realized, or not realized, but felt like I was tapping into their energy And I knew that this was a species that, for their survival, has this journey plus a year where they migrate back and forth from their wintering grounds to their migrating grounds, And when they're on that journey, they are just basically eating, sleeping and moving. And for me it was the same thing, And I had this sort of connection with the caribou, where I was just one of them. I stopped being some elevated species, I was just another animal, first in this landscape, that was having the same experience that they was looking over my shoulder. I was trying to send myself off from those variables that I listed before. It was a pretty amazing moment And definitely not something that had happened before and not something that would have been possible if I hadn't really almost only intentionally worn myself down and just wasn't unable to keep my guard up to have that experience.

Yeah, I think adventurers and campers- I mean you can go car camping and you can get a glimpse of this experience- And I think, if you've been out in the woods enough times, anybody who's listening has had a little glimpse of this type of thing. That's really, really hard to explain. I mean, I imagine you're going to spend the rest of your life trying to figure out exactly what happened to you there. Yeah, probably. Yeah, I'm actually not sure if there's just someone who backs out in the lower 48.

Well, I don't know, It's hard to say. I mean, I think the key feeling is just feeling like your life is on a string.

I think that's the best way to describe it. So if you wander into your backyard and it's such a security place where you feel like your life is on a string and, yeah, you kind of get a glimpse. But I would say that a lot of if you were to just drop yourself down in a helicopter, exactly where this happened to me, you probably wouldn't feel that, You probably wouldn't get that sense, because they're just like you hadn't.

I think part of maybe the only experience that was having gotten there under my own power and having had all those prerequisite experiences. Yeah, this is what I think is so important about getting outdoors and about camping and pushing yourself and challenging yourself in these situations is you find things out about yourself that you would not find out otherwise. That's certainly one of them. You confront yourself and nature and whatever your set of the religious way that you look at the world, you confront that on a very basic level And this was something that has been one of the intentions of scouting since it was founded was to get in the outdoors and to be able to learn these things And whatever these things are.

They're really really hard to define, But I think anybody who's had even a glimpse of that experience. So right now you've written the book, You're on this like crazy long speaking tour.

What's the next big adventure? Of course It tends to be a three-year cycle.

After going on a big trip the first year, I take off and just try to get some semblance of a normal life back, Because it would be the Alaska trip that was six months of doing, six months of planning And even before I left my friends were saying: hey, have you left for your trip yet? Because I haven't seen you in two months.

So it's important for you to come back and try to get a semblance of a life back and just try to re-achieve some balance. Year two: I usually go out and do some smaller trips and build up some different skills and explore some new areas.

And then year three, after having had that, hopefully like a sort of a light bulb moment and aha moment, in year two I do a big trip into three This year or this go around. It looks like it's going to be a four-year plan. I basically writing the book was an adventure of its own. It took thousands and thousands of hours of work And I'm also, as you've mentioned, I'm on this big 50 event speaking tour right now.

So it's. It took me a little longer to go on a big trip, but I'd expect to go on another one- We'll see. Yeah, And I felt like I'm not getting out. I mean, this year I'm guiding.

I'm guiding probably about 75 days worth of trips, So I'm doing a bunch of three-day trips that are all around the country and that sort of helps and ties me over to a different challenge of its own in terms of really understanding people and team dynamics. And it's also a lot of responsibility taking a group out in the wilderness and being responsible for not only their safety but, just as importantly, their happiness with their experience.

And if people are interested in looking into that andruskerkacom is that where we go? That would, yeah, And there's a link to my guided trips And it said you know any. There are some three-day trips in particular would be helpful for a lot of, a lot of scout parents and Scoutmasters. They're learning intensive experiences where we we don't hike that many miles- no more than five, And it's all three days probably do like a five and a 10 and a five And that's about it.

But the whole emphasis is on is on learning about different shelters, different clothing systems, clothing systems out there, And then, once we're out there, we'll do things. Do things like hiking, efficiency. But we had us kind of spending a lot of time in camp and learning this stuff, With the idea being that you can, you can hike on your own time.

Where are they? And ballpark the cost for me, Sure.

So there's seven different locations. There's Northern California physical national forest, White Mountain National Park in Hampshire, Olympic National Park in Washington, Quartz Pine Mountain State Park in in the UP of Michigan, I think, and right around National Park in Colorado. The cost is $600, which is comes out $200 a day, which is actually quite a bit less than a typical nose nose course which I'll run yet run at about $230 a day. And my assistant guides are equally, equally qualified. One co-founded backpackinglikecom. Another was the first to hike the triple crown in a single calendar year.

So he did the Pacific Cross, Death Placent Trail and Pacific Cross or Council of I-Challel on a year, And then the other is actually the Mills Instructure for 20 years. So it's a really qualified group, And there's also discounts available if you sign up with more than one other person or if you sign up for a three-day trip and a seven-day trip.

So well, listen, one of these days I'll get you back to talk again, But I really do appreciate you spending the time today. All right, sounds good. Thanks, Clark. Thank you,