And the Welcome to Backpacker Radio. I am your host Zach Badger Davis. I am not joined by Chaunce today as this is a mini yet very special

episode. We are introducing our Trail Correspond correspondence series.

What this is, is we're going to have

through hikers from both the Appalachian Trail,

Pacific Crest Trail and the Continental-Dibide Trail

sending in audio submissions from the trail.

In a nutshell, you're going to be experiencing these three long trails through their eyes and ears and vocal cords.

I'm going to get to the introductions in a second but before I do I just want to say that we were blown away by the amount of interest there was in this

You know considering we had never done anything like this before, we're new to

podcasting altogether, that we were shocked by the number of submissions that we

received for this. Narrowing down the massive field to just a handful of people on each trail was not easy and I want to say thank you to all those who did apply.

But ultimately, to make this a manageable show, we did just have to pick a few people for each trail.

Also, we're still figuring this out as we go, so like with everything else, your feedback is greatly appreciated.

You can get a hold of us at podcast at the trek.co.

So without further ado, I'm thrilled to introduce our first season of our trail

correspondence. This first episode is our Appalachian Trail correspondence and the next

episode will be those from the PCT and CTT.

So here they are. Enjoy.

Hey guys, it's Fainting Goat from Austin, Texas. I'm heading out to start the Appalachian

Trail in early April and I'm super excited. At this point, my reasons for through hiking are pretty simple.

It's addictive and I love it.

I did the PCT in 2015

...