EP 504: History Trail Trekking - Forlorn Hope Recap
Trail Runner Nation
Trail Runner Nation
4.5 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 1 January 2021
⏱️ 71 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Ultrarunners, adventurists, and amateur historians, Bob Crowley, Tim Twietmeyer, Jennifer Hemmen and Elke Reimer set out to retrace the steps of the Forlorn Hope through the California Sierra Nevada mountains. We discuss their amazing journey and how it can help us put perspective on our lives and our sport.
In the winter of 1846-47 a group of pioneers were headed to California when they were trapped in the high Sierra Nevada Mountains. The snow was over 20 feet deep, they were running out of food, and the group wasn't working together. Three unsuccessful attempts were made to escape and get help from California.
On December 16, 1846 a small group began another attempt on homemade snowshoes with enough food for six days; hoping it would take around 10 days to make the 100 mile journey.
Check out the short 3 minute video photographer Keith Sutter produced about the adventure.
You can find out more about this heroic endurance feat and about the memorial event and how to track them at ForlornHope.org. Some of their photos can be seen here.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I think that this is a time and place in history where there's a lot of negativity and a |
| 0:08.1 | lot of division going on, obviously, 2020 has been a truly unusual year. |
| 0:13.9 | And this was the type of honoring of not just American strength and the things that we're |
| 0:21.6 | proud of for being American, but the things we're proud of as humans, doing something |
| 0:26.7 | selflessly for others. |
| 0:28.4 | A great risk to yourself is something that humans do well and all times of strife we've |
| 0:34.9 | seen people be heroes and these people were heroes and their stories not well known. |
| 0:40.1 | And we felt that perhaps at this time in history, this was the type of expedition that everyone |
| 0:48.7 | could agree was the best of humanity. |
| 0:56.4 | We'd like to thank Path Projects for their long-term support of this podcast, but if it's |
| 1:01.3 | not for them, well, we just wouldn't be here. |
| 1:04.6 | And it fits great with this podcast about the four-learn hope that we're going to talk |
| 1:08.3 | about because it was a path, get that, how I connected those two. |
| 1:12.4 | I see what you did. |
| 1:13.4 | It's a path through this year in Nevada, a hundred miles through just treacherous terrain |
| 1:20.3 | and snow and just hardship, starvation. |
| 1:24.3 | We're lucky we don't have to deal with that. |
| 1:26.7 | One of the reasons we don't have to deal with this, Scott, and we talk about it on the |
| 1:29.8 | podcast is about the technology and the gear that we're wearing. |
| 1:34.4 | Back then, according to Tim Tweetmire, who's on the podcast, a wool blanket was the most |
| 1:38.6 | sophisticated gear that they had, but Path Projects, it's different today. |
| 1:43.1 | And if you haven't tried it, you need to check it out because the fabrics, the design, |
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