518 | Backpacking Skills with Andrew Skurka

The Hunt Backcountry Podcast

by Exo Mtn Gear

Sports, Sports:wilderness, Health & Fitness, Wilderness

4.4 • 2.8K Ratings

🗓️ 16 April 2025

⏱️ 64 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Andrew Skurka is an adventure athlete, guide, and writer. He raised the bar on backpacking as a long-distance thru-hiker, completing (and at times creating) routes that traversed thousands of miles over many months. We interviewed Andrew on our podcast nearly a decade ago, and in the years since then, he has launched a business that provides educational experiences through guided backpacking trips. We were excited to reconnect with Andrew to discuss backpacking education, how his personal outlook on adventure has changed in recent years, the evolution of backpacking gear, and more... Connect with Andrew... https://andrewskurka.com/ https://www.instagram.com/andrewskurka/ Our preview podcast with Andrew: https://exomtngear.com/blogs/podcast/053 The Hunt Backcountry Podcast is brought to you by Exo Mtn Gear: https://exomtngear.com/ Email Sign-up: https://exomtngear.com/newsletter Contact Us: [email protected] Leave A Message: https://speakpipe.com/huntbackcountry Podcast Episode Archive: https://exomtngear.com/podcast

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Huntback Country podcast presented by Exo Mountain Gear.
0:18.3	This is episode number 518, and we have a return guest to the show,
0:24.1	but a guest that hasn't been on the show in almost 10 years. Andrew Skirka joins us,
0:30.5	as he did back in episode 53 of the podcast, to talk about backpacking. In that first conversation with Andrew, we talked about
0:39.8	next level backpacking. And in this one, we just realized it has been, again, almost a decade
0:46.6	since we spoke with Andrew. And we knew that he continued to explore the outdoors not only for
0:52.9	his own benefit, which he used to do more.
0:56.4	He was the adventurer of the year. He's done some amazing, amazing epic adventures.
1:04.4	But in the recent years, he's turned that to more educational focused experiences.
1:10.9	He takes clients on guided backpacking trips.
1:14.0	He does more instruction with backpackers
1:17.3	from a beginner to an advanced level.
1:20.4	And we talk more about that in today's conversation.
1:23.7	I was curious, for example,
1:25.5	what does separate a beginner from an advanced backpacker? What are the
1:30.1	differences? I know my own experience, but I don't know how Andrew qualifies that. And I don't know
1:35.9	the differences between his beginner focus trips versus his advanced trips. So we talk about that
1:41.4	and a whole lot more. We get into some gear discussion, touch on a bit of philosophy, and there's just a lot to
1:48.7	take away from this one if you, like Steve and myself and all of us at Exo, love backpack hunting.
1:56.5	So I hope that you enjoy this episode.
1:58.8	As always, if you have any questions or feedback for us, you can always get in contact
2:03.3	directly by sending an email to podcast at XoMountaingear.com.
	...

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