Ep. 512: Creating Your Own Thru-Hiking Route - Erik Schlimmer
Adventure Sports Podcast
Curt Linville
4.6 • 579 Ratings
🗓️ 29 April 2019
⏱️ 57 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Erik is an experienced peak-bagger, long-distance hiker, author (of seven books), and has immense amounts of knowledge about off-trail travel and wilderness adventuring, especially in the northeast of America. He has climbed over 200 remote peaks in the Adirondacks during winter, with many of them not having a trail to the summit. He’s an expert in toponym research (why things are named what they are) and sustainable trail design.
All this knowledge and skill has led him to achieve what many outdoor enthusiasts can only dream, create his own thru-hiking route; the Trans Adirondack, a 235-mile backpacking route in the Adirondack mountains that includes off-trail navigation and bushwacking. It’s broken down like this, 182 miles of trails (76%), 50 miles of roads (21%), and 8 miles of trackless woods (3%) to get from one end of the Adirondack Park to the other.
His knowledge is vast, his demeanor unassuming, and his attitude superb. I hope you’re as inspired as I am after this conversation with a truly humble legend of trail-travel and development.
Don’t forget to buy some of his books at the links below!
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | I'm standing on the northern border of the park looking south. About 240 miles and about 10 days |
| 0:06.0 | later, I reached the southern border of the park by piecing together, good old-fashioned hiking |
| 0:10.6 | trails, some snowmobile trails, and about six miles of off-trail travel. |
| 0:19.4 | This is the Adventure Sports podcast where we talk to athletes, adventurers, and business owners from around the world of adventure sports. |
| 0:27.8 | Whether you're climbing Mount Everest, starting a bike shop, or getting up off your couch to take your kids hiking for the first time, we want you to have the motivation and inspiration you need to chase that |
| 0:38.5 | next adventure. |
| 0:40.0 | The Adventure Sports podcast is brought to you by Camp Crate, the leaders in fully planned |
| 0:45.2 | self-guided backpacking adventures, as well as backpacking gear rental. |
| 0:49.9 | You can check them out at campcrate.net. |
| 0:53.3 | Thank you. You can check them out at camp crate.net. |
| 1:05.9 | Hey, folks, happy Monday. |
| 1:07.5 | Hope you had a good weekend. |
| 1:12.1 | Today's episode could have gone either way. It could have been a life outside the box episode, but we got a lot of those coming your way soon. And Eric has done some really cool |
| 1:19.6 | outdoor experiences himself, not just building a career in the outdoors. So we decided to put it |
| 1:26.6 | on Monday's episode because he's done some cool stuff. |
| 1:28.9 | Some of the things he's done, he is hugely experienced, and his name is Eric Schlimmer, |
| 1:34.3 | by the way. |
| 1:35.2 | You probably saw that in the episode title. |
| 1:39.1 | Very experienced in off-trail travel. |
| 1:41.8 | He is a peak bagger. |
| 1:42.9 | He has climbed over 200 peaks in winter up in the northeast, 3,000 footers, I believe. |
| 1:50.9 | And we talk about it in the episode a little bit more. |
... |
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