For those of us living in a northern climate, who want to expand our backpacking season,

but don't have the interest in investing in the equipment or to desire to sleep out in the snow or in sub-zero temperatures,

are there places we could backpack?

Today we have a long distance.

Today we have a renowned long distance hiker, Triple Crowner, Snorkel Liz Thomas.

Liz welcome back to the podcast. Welcome back to Pop Air Hikes.

Thank you so much for having me back on the show. It's been a while, but I did come across

one of your articles on a recent hike you took, the San Diego Trans County Trail.

Can you tell us a little bit about it?

Yeah, this trail is about a week long 150 mile or so long distance trail that goes from the

Sultan Sea, so the eastern most boundary of San Diego County, pretty much the desert, all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

And along the way, it crosses the Pacific Crest Trail, it goes up into some sort of, you know, traditionally

pine forests, what you would think of when you think of sort of PCT style, and then, you know, the very end you get almost an urban hike through

Northern San Diego to stick your feet in the Pacific Ocean and that's what I thought was kind of cool about this.

And it's, we don't have a lot of east-west trails, it seems like.

It seems like the majority of trails are north-south.

And this one takes you through an interesting, very interestingly diversified terrain, right?

Like you said, you're starting out at the Salt and Sea and you're finishing in San Diego walking through the city and that just to me sounded like a lot of fun.

Yeah, this trail actually was originally called the Sea to Sea Trail because it goes to this from the

Sultan Sea to the Pacific Ocean.

Of course, Andrew Skirka took that name for his Atlantic to Pacific Route.

And the Trans County Trail in many ways really captures all the cool things that San Diego has to offer.

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