Today's guest was featured in February 3rd, 2003, Outside Magazine article,

What Carl the Professor Stanfield learned by trying to hike the most miles from the city. the professor

stand field learned by trying to hike the most miles ever.

Today, we're going to talk to Carl about that.

He's going to share some of those experiences.

Carl, the professor, welcome the Papa Bear hikes. Thanks, it's good to be here. I'm excited to chat today.

Carl, let's start by telling us a little about yourself before we dive into this incredible feat that you attempted in 2022.

Tell us a little about who you are.

Sure, yeah, so I slowly got into the outdoors and backpacking as I was growing up. I grew up in East Tennessee just outside the Smoky Mountains and got involved with the outdoors by doing summer camp kind of stuff as I was growing up.

And the outdoors were part of it, but not necessarily what drew me to it growing up so much.

I just really like the social experiences. not necessarily what drew me to it growing up so much.

I really like the social experiences while I was there.

And then I wanted to do that professionally,

working camps.

And so I found a school in North Carolina just outside of Asheville called Brevard College that has a program called Wilderness Leadership and experiential education.

So I went to college to get to do camp stuff outside. That was what my focus was going to be in.

And then while I was doing that, we did a lot of backpacking and you know other kind of outdoor stuff climbing and paddling.

I'd only been backpacking for the first time. I got into it in high school. I started collecting the gear over a couple years and right after I graduated, my dad and I went to go. It was our first time backpacking both of us. We went out and we did 30 miles in the Smokies over three days and the first time I went out I was really disappointing, so I thought I was never going to want to do it again. I was 18 and we thought like, oh, you have all day 10 miles should be no problem and we you know we

packed a ton of stuff and didn't really know we were doing and struggled

through it but it wasn't too disening. I stuck with it and went to

college and got to learn from professionals kind of, you know, the right ways to do it.

And so got into it there and then ended up moving up to Washington State after college to go work at a

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