A couple of announcements before we get started. I really enjoyed listening to all the voice memos from women age 50 plus. I can't wait to pull them together for an episode.

Also, there's still time to submit your story.

Head over to the home page of She- Hyphen Explorers.com.

To scroll down past the banner image and you'll see a link to where you can submit your voice memo. Okay, on with the show.

I'm Gail Straub and you're listening to She Explores.

This thing is not for everybody and I will say this. This is something that five years ago I probably would have never seen myself doing.

People who are listening to this are probably like, she's crazy.

One of those peaks by itself will be a challenge

for me but you just never really know where you're going to be down the road once you start

to fall in love with the trail.

This is Nicole Brown, founder of the popular online and offline hiking community,

women who hike. It's an incredible organization, a web of connected,

supportive women all over the US and Canada. Nicole has built a platform where

people feel comfortable sharing their intimate stories on

social media and then she brings them together to share and make new stories on the

trail.

Nicole and I had a bit too much that we could talk about.

Entrepreneurship, community building, hiking.

But I focused our conversation on a recent challenge she took on this fall. In the larger sense, I chose to highlight

Nicole because she is so often highlighting others. And I chose this challenge because it says so much about her most salient qualities.

A willingness to share, resilience in the face of a chronic illness, appreciation for her community,

and commitment even when failure seems inevitable.

...