Ep. 900: The American Perimeter Trail - Rue McKenrick
Adventure Sports Podcast
Curt Linville
4.6 • 579 Ratings
🗓️ 23 January 2023
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Rue McKenrick is a long-distance backpacker and the Executive Director of The American Perimeter Trail Conference. He grew up with the Appalachian Trail running through his backyard in Pennsylvania. After years of international backpacking, he was inspired to return to the US and complete the Triple Crown of backpacking, which includes the Pacific Crest, Continental Divide National Scenic Trails, and the Appalachian Trail.
After the completion of the Triple Crown, he first conceived of the American Perimeter Trail as a way to see the entire outline of the US on a single epic journey.
McKenrick moved to Bend, Oregon in 2010 and continued to hone his skills of climbing, skiing, trail running, and cycling and in 2019, he began the 12,000 mile scouting trek of the route for the American Perimeter Trail. 2 years later on October 8th, 2022, Rue had a triumphant return to Bend, Oregon where he completed the first thru-hike of the APT.
Learn more about Rue and the APT:
- Instagram: @Ruemckenrick
- Americanperimetertrail.org
- Write up in Backpacker Magazine: https://www.backpacker.com/stories/thru-hikes/trail-stories/a-heros-journey/
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey folks, welcome to the adventure sports podcast. I'm your host, Mason. If you notice today's |
| 0:18.9 | episode title, you'll notice a special number in there. It's |
| 0:21.9 | episode 900. Holy cow, we have gotten to 900 episodes. How cool is that? I was brought on around |
| 0:30.3 | episode 400 something or 400 right around there and was editing a little bit before then, |
| 0:36.1 | maybe in the late 300. So I've been with the show |
| 0:39.7 | over half the episodes. It has been 900 amazing stories of adventure, of advice, of inspiration. |
| 0:48.2 | And today's episode is no different. We wanted to celebrate this episode with an epic story, an epic adventure, and Rue McKenrich has that story for us. |
| 0:59.0 | It is the American Perimeter Trail, and it is exactly what it sounds like. |
| 1:03.6 | It is a trail, a hiking trail, through hiking trail, that goes around essentially the edge of the U.S. I'm not going to go over to the details of what it is, but imagine a trail that goes around essentially the edge of the U.S. |
| 1:10.9 | I'm not going to go over to the details of what it is, |
| 1:13.0 | but imagine a trail that goes, you know, starts in, |
| 1:16.8 | I mean, you can start it from anywhere, |
| 1:18.4 | but Rue started it in Bend, Oregon, |
| 1:20.6 | and went up to Washington across the northern portion of the U.S., |
| 1:25.9 | the lower 48, that is, all the way over to essentially |
| 1:29.2 | Pennsylvania, then south along really the Appalachian Trail or parallel to the Appalachian Trail, |
| 1:35.6 | then across the southern U.S. back west, then up essentially the Pacific Crest Trail. |
| 1:42.0 | And it is an epic, epic journey. And Rue finished this in |
| 1:46.8 | October 2022. So recently, just a couple months ago, we talked not a week or two after he was off |
| 1:52.4 | the trail. It was amazing. We're going to link that American perimeter trail.org. But this story is |
| 1:57.6 | so cool because Rue is so insightful. He's so inspiring. He got into this through |
| 2:03.1 | a bike accident and some just personal stuff that, like, caused him to change his life. And that's what |
... |
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