Hello, welcome to another episode of Papa Bear Heights.

Those of us...

follow hiking or backpacking on social media will sometimes hear about people completing certain lists or working on lists or

taking on hiking challenges and we see, and then you'll see pictures of their patches.

So today I want to talk a little bit about that what is a hiking

challenge well they can come in two forms sometimes it could be a trail

maybe the Tahoe Rim Trail, Cranberry Lake 50 out here in New York.

Where it could be a group of peaks or fire towers and a particular geographic region that's being managed by an organization, a

chamber of commerce. Some examples of that would be the and maybe most famous is the Adirondek 46. Sorry if I

slightly people up in New England but pretty much everybody's heard of the

Adirondek 46. For those of you haven't, that involves hiking the 46 highest peaks in the

Adirondec Mountains. And when you're finished, you fill out an application, send in a small fee, and you receive a patch.

And they give you a number and you're on a list with a lot of people who have accomplished that. When I say a lot though this isn't

something that happened over the course of a couple of years this goes back I believe to the

30s or 40s so it's something that has a long history. Then there's smaller challenges. For example,

I'm giving our example of that would be when I did this summer. It was a lot of fun. I did the Lake Placid Nine.

And it was nine peaks around Lake Placid. And pretty much what that does, it encourages people to go there and support the economy and that's a really good thing.

So as hikers sometimes we're seeing this as a challenge and we get our patches and yes I am

admittingly a patch junkie I love my patches but when we go there we're

supporting the local businesses or at least we should be. We're purchasing fuel

for our cars for the ride home. Hopefully we're grabbing a bite to eat there.

My friends and I usually like to get a meal and some beer. We like to seek

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