Yo, what is going on? I'm pumped. Welcome to episode 16 of Trail Tales. My name is Kyle O'Grady, and this is the podcast where I chat with through hikers, peak baggers, ultra runners, and every other type of hiker that's right, every single type about their experiences and stories from the trail.

Now this week's guest is Aaron Iby, who hiked the Appalachian Trail in 2016 and has a bunch of other cool hikes to talk about as well.

He's a professional photographer, and he talks all about how people can step up their

photo game a little bit by giving some camera recommendations and of course sharing some

tips about taking better pictures just using a smartphone that you and I both have in

our pockets right now.

We also talk about his experience working

as a ridge runner for the Appalachian Mountain Club this past summer. And make sure you stay tuned

all the way to the end of the episode because he shares a crazy, crazy story about an encounter

he had with a mountain lion. That's right, a mountain lion while hiking through

the 100 mile wilderness in Maine.

It's a great chat all around, and Aaron, when you hear this, thank you so, so much for

hitting me up and volunteering to come on the show.

I really, really appreciate it.

We're going to get into the episode in just a second here, but first, I got to say a couple

things like usual.

First thing I want to say is, honestly, I kind of dropped the ball on the audio quality a little bit on this

episode. Now, you're going to hear that Aaron and I kind of had some trouble getting connected

throughout the episode. We drop a couple times, and that was a problem that persisted well before we

actually started recording. And after we finished recording as well, literally about three seconds

after I hit stop on the recording, the call dropped again. And because of that, I didn't really

take the time to kind of set up the quality, the way I like it normally. Aaron had a little

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