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by Doc, Bleav
Join Doc and his guests on Hiker Trash Radio, the outdoor adventure podcast that takes you on a myriad of trails. With interviews from thru hikers, skydivers, adventure athletes, big wall climbers, and more, each episode is packed with trail talk, gear tips, and hilarious misadventures. And if you thought the great outdoors was all sunshine and rainbows, think again! Tune in for tales of blistered feet, helicopter evacuations, and Type II Fun that will make you appreciate the comforts of home. Settle in and get ready to trade the city for the wilderness. It's time to embrace the suck!
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Maria "Beans" Romfoe — AT and PCT thru-hiker, CDT finisher-minus-New-Mexico, and the internet's foremost beanfluencer — joins Doc for her first-ever podcast appearance. Beans traces the origin of her trail name from a can of Bush's Beans on an Alaskan summit through a viral sponsorship dare to her current partnership with Eight Trak Foods, the woman-owned organic bean company whose founder sends her hand-drawn care packages on trail ("She's my bean lady"). She defends the engineering of a nine-pound base weight built around canned goods, recalls the three family-sized cans of barbecue baked beans that snapped her pack frame in the Smokies, and reveals the one piece of gear she'd never leave behind: the can opener that has saved more than one trail-magic cooler full of inaccessible food. The Hiking Poll digs into the story that reshaped her Triple Crown: drinking unfiltered "poop water" in Colorado's cattle-grazed San Juans, the giardia that followed, and the most miserable six-mile evacuation of her life — followed by a 46-mile attempt to finish the CDT by Walmart bike that ended in tears at a Superfund site water source. (The bike went back for a full refund. She calls this "renting.") The back half goes deeper: growing up in Cudahy, Wisconsin in a not-especially-outdoorsy family; a year at the University of Alaska Southeast that lit the fuse; trail crew and conservation corps seasons that made a tent feel like home before her first thru-hike; and the things she strategically doesn't tell her mom until long after. Beans also gets refreshingly honest about solo female thru-hiking — the double standards, the "are you out here alone?" conversations, why menstruating through a thru-hike should earn hikers more credit rather than more doubt, and her simple request for the trail community: a woman talking to you is not flirting; let her tell you about the snake she saw like everyone else. Segments include the Trailblazer's Toolkit (Six Moon Designs), the Hiking Poll (Triple Crown Coffee — she scores a 21), the Hiking Hack (O.T.T.R.) featuring two highly specific foot hacks, Off the Beaten Path (Hilltop Packs) with a recommendation for Marty Stouffer's gloriously chaotic 1980s docuseries Wild America, and a Pay It Forward shoutout to the Greenwater Fire Department, local wildland firefighters, and the Pacific Northwest Trail Association's volunteer trail crews. Follow Beans on Instagram at @thebeansbabe. Follow Hiker Trash Radio on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, or write to HikerTrashRadio@gmail.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Maria "Beans" Romfoe — AT and PCT thru-hiker, CDT finisher-minus-New-Mexico, and the internet's foremost beanfluencer — joins Doc for her first-ever podcast appearance. Beans traces the origin of her trail name from a can of Bush's Beans on an Alaskan summit through a viral sponsorship dare to her current partnership with Eight Trak Foods, the woman-owned organic bean company whose founder sends her hand-drawn care packages on trail ("She's my bean lady"). She defends the engineering of a nine-pound base weight built around canned goods, recalls the three family-sized cans of barbecue baked beans that snapped her pack frame in the Smokies, and reveals the one piece of gear she'd never leave behind: the can opener that has saved more than one trail-magic cooler full of inaccessible food. The Hiking Poll digs into the story that reshaped her Triple Crown: drinking unfiltered "poop water" in Colorado's cattle-grazed San Juans, the giardia that followed, and the most miserable six-mile evacuation of her life — followed by a 46-mile attempt to finish the CDT by Walmart bike that ended in tears at a Superfund site water source. (The bike went back for a full refund. She calls this "renting.") The back half goes deeper: growing up in Cudahy, Wisconsin in a not-especially-outdoorsy family; a year at the University of Alaska Southeast that lit the fuse; trail crew and conservation corps seasons that made a tent feel like home before her first thru-hike; and the things she strategically doesn't tell her mom until long after. Beans also gets refreshingly honest about solo female thru-hiking — the double standards, the "are you out here alone?" conversations, why menstruating through a thru-hike should earn hikers more credit rather than more doubt, and her simple request for the trail community: a woman talking to you is not flirting; let her tell you about the snake she saw like everyone else. Segments include the Trailblazer's Toolkit (Six Moon Designs), the Hiking Poll (Triple Crown Coffee — she scores a 21), the Hiking Hack (O.T.T.R.) featuring two highly specific foot hacks, Off the Beaten Path (Hilltop Packs) with a recommendation for Marty Stouffer's gloriously chaotic 1980s docuseries Wild America, and a Pay It Forward shoutout to the Greenwater Fire Department, local wildland firefighters, and the Pacific Northwest Trail Association's volunteer trail crews. Follow Beans on Instagram at @thebeansbabe. Follow Hiker Trash Radio on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, or write to HikerTrashRadio@gmail.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
About the Guest Maria "Beans" Romfoe is an ABNM Triple Crown hiker — Appalachian Trail, Pacific Crest Trail, and Continental Divide Trail minus New Mexico — a beanfluencer, and the sole representative of what she describes as the bean community on the internet. A Wisconsin native who found her way to Alaska and then Washington State through a trail crew and outdoor studies background, she has been hiking with cans of beans since her college days and is currently sponsored by Eight Trak Foods, a woman-owned organic bean company. She posts on Instagram as @thebeansbabeoutdoors and plans to finish the CDT in the fall. Episode Highlights The Bean Empire The Science of Carrying Cans ABNM — All But New Mexico The Walmart Bike Solo Female Hiking Links & Resources Beans on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thebeansbabeoutdoors Eight Trak Foods: https://www.eightrakfoods.com Wild America — YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Wild+America+Marty+Stouffer Pacific Northwest Trail Association (PNTA) — Currently seeking trail crew volunteers as federal budget cuts reduce maintenance capacity. Details at pnta.org. Connect with Hiker Trash Radio Email: mailto:hikertashradio@gmail.com Social: Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok — search Hiker Trash Radio. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts — it takes 60 seconds and makes a real difference. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
The plan looks clean on paper. Then you start hiking. Episode 2 of The Big Year follows the year through all three trails. The Aqueduct in the Mojave, hiked at night for four nights straight. A wildfire in Northern California that sends one hiker sprinting five miles downhill with a 30-pound pack while his partner waits at a parking lot, initially mistaking the chaos for trail magic. Two months of snowshoeing in Colorado that leave a hiker with frostbite and the growing sense that the year might never end. A Sierra bridge crossed at 1:30 in the morning, hours before it's scheduled to be demolished. And then there are the people, the unexpected ones. A relationship that starts over satellite texts at a high mountain lake. A trail family that shows up exactly when one hiker needs company most. And on Katahdin, at sunrise, on the first day the mountain opens for the season: two friends finishing their first trail, knowing they have two more to go. Guests: Billy "Wahoo" Meredith — 2023 CYTC FKT holder, 234 days Nick "Chezwick" Gagnon — 2025 CYTC FKT holder, 231 days Sammy "Buzz" Potter — 2022 CYTC completer (11th in history) Jackson "Woody" Parell — 2022 CYTC completer (12th in history) Charlie "Kansas Express" Janssen — 2022 CYTC completer Jack "Quadzilla" Jones — 2022 CYTC completer Philip "Slide" Witmer — 2025 border-to-border CYTC completer Carson "Anita" Oliver — 2023 CYTC completer Topics covered: The daily math of 40-mile days, every day, with no rest days on the calendar The Aqueduct: four nights of night-hiking through the Mojave A Northern California wildfire that separated two hiking partners Two months snowshoeing Colorado and Wyoming, and what frostbite costs A 12,600-foot Colorado pass: triumph and terror arriving in the same hour A cardiac ICU stay mid-thru-hike, and getting back on trail anyway A Katahdin sunrise that marks the exact halfway point of the year Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Casey “Vegas the Pied Piper” Huffman thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail in 2023 and the Pacific Crest Trail in 2025, and six weeks after telling Hiker Trash Radio that nothing would stop his 2027 Continental Divide Trail Triple Crown finish, an unclipped auto-belay in a Las Vegas climbing gym left him with two broken ankles and a shattered sense of self. Drawing on three appearances across 18 months, this Dark Miles episode traces the full arc: the medicated childhood and the yes/no tattoos on his palms, the “letter from Hogwarts” at Annapolis Rock, the AT hike he privately treated as a Hail Mary, the winter in Florida where depression turned catatonic and his parents invoked the Baker Act, and the comeback that began with a slow walk through the Maryland section of the AT, the very place his story started. It ends with a finished Tahoe Rim Trail, a first 5K run an hour before our final interview, the Superior Hiking Trail this October, and the CDT in 2027. If you’re struggling, you don’t have to do it alone. In the U.S., call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. Follow Vegas on Instagram and YouTube at @vegasthepiedpiper. New episodes of Hiker Trash Radio drop weekly. Find us on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, or write to HikerTrashRadio@gmail.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
️ In This Episode, We Discuss: The Coworker's Lodge Floor: Why Vegas is recording from a room that smells suspiciously good, surrounded by floral decor in Silver Gate, Montana. The Tahoe Rim Trail Victory Lap: A full trip report of Vegas's 9-to-10 day TRT run counterclockwise (the "SOBO" way) alongside AT and PCT legends Million Bucks, GT, and Swampy. The Excitement Gauge: How an "emergency trail crap" became the ultimate indicator of a beautiful mountain pass experience. The "Beefcake Vegas" Downfall: The split-second auto-belay mistake at a Las Vegas climbing gym on December 15, 2025, that resulted in plates, screws, and a very sudden halt to a 30-mile-a-day lifestyle. The Mental Valley: An incredibly candid and important conversation about identity loss, catatonic depression, and the agonizing process of having your physical salvation taken away. The Dumbledore Protection & Hogwarts Reset: Navigating his comeback hike on the Maryland section of the AT, and why returning to where you "got your Hogwarts letter" is the ultimate mental reset. UFC Weigh-Ins & Cherry Pies: The strategic, slow-and-steady pacing Vegas used to absolutely dismantle his buddy Oz in Damascus at the Trail Days pie-eating contest. Guiding Year-Round: Vegas's journey to becoming a certified summer hiking guide in Yellowstone and the Beartooth Mountains to fund his relentless trail addiction. Looking to the Horizon: Heading north to SOBO the Superior Hiking Trail in October, eyeing a massive CDT push, and a wild pact with trail buddies to conquer a calendar-year Triple Crown in their late 30s. ️ Support Our Sponsors: FarOut Guides Garage Grown Gear Hilltop Packs Jolly Gear Otter (O.T.T.R.) Six Moon Designs Triple Crown Coffee Vaer Watches Connect with Vegas: Instagram: @vegasthepiedpiper YouTube: Vegas The Pied Piper Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
The Calendar Year Triple Crown doesn't recruit. It gets into people — through a sign above a bar, through a podcast episode, through the quiet math a hiker does at the end of a long day when they realize they want more of this, not less. Episode 1 of The Big Year opens with Billy Meredith describing the moment he quit his office job to hike the Appalachian Trail — the hardest thing he'd ever done and the most amazing thing he'd ever done, at the same time. Three weeks into that hike, in a bar in Duncannon, Pennsylvania, he reads a sign honoring the first woman to complete the Calendar Year Triple Crown. He can't shake it. Four years later, he's standing at the Mexican border about to find out what that sign cost him. The episode follows the idea outward from there: to Sammy Potter and Jackson Parell, two Stanford students who spend a month alone on the Appalachian Trail before naming themselves Buzz and Woody in a winter shelter; to Carson Oliver, who gets asked a single unsettling question the night before Katahdin; and to Jeff Garmire, who completed the CYTC at 20 years old and became, for the better part of a decade, the number everyone else measured themselves against. Guests: Billy "Wahoo" Meredith — 2023 CYTC FKT holder, 234 days Jeff "Legend" Garmire — CYTC completer, former self-supported FKT holder, author of Free Outside Sammy "Buzz" Potter — 2022 CYTC completer (11th in history) Jackson "Woody" Parell — 2022 CYTC completer (12th in history) Carson "Anita" Oliver — 2023 CYTC completer Topics covered: What the Calendar Year Triple Crown is and why so few people have done it The bar sign at the Doyle Hotel that started everything for Billy Meredith How Buzz and Woody got their names in a winter shelter with no one else around The question Carson Oliver was asked the night before Katahdin Jeff Garmire's résumé, his trail name origin, and what made him the benchmark Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
The Full Traverse is Hiker Trash Radio's narrative documentary series, drawing from years of conversations with a single guest to tell their complete story. This episode: Derick "Fab" Lugo — author, speaker, and Triple Crowner. From zero experience in 2012 to the Appalachian Trail, the Continental Divide Trail, the Long Trail, and the Pacific Crest Trail. Derick's books: The Unlikely Thru-Hiker (2019) — his AT memoir. Made-up curse words included; safe to read to your kids. A Fabulous Thru Hike (Mountaineers Books, 2026) — his CDT memoir, out now. Available wherever books are sold; ordering through his website supports him most directly while he's on tour. Also featuring Derick's writing: Campfire Stories, Volume II — includes his first published fiction, a spooky short called "Vertigo" Stories from the Trail — includes "Trail Brothers," about hiking from New York City to Bear Mountain with his brother (also an ATC short film of the same name) Derick's podcast: Unlikely Stories, produced with the Appalachian Mountain Club — 12 episodes featuring different voices of the outdoors, including the first African to summit Everest and record-setting AT hiker Jennifer Pharr Davis. Trails featured in this episode: Appalachian Trail (2012) Long Trail, Vermont (2021 attempt; 2023 completion with Christine Reed) Continental Divide Trail (2022) Pacific Crest Trail (2025) People mentioned: Christine "Lady Unicorn" Reed — author of Alone in Wonderland; Fab's Long Trail hiking partner and subject of her own Full Traverse episode Nature, Buck Wild, and Pirate — Fab's CDT trail family J.R. Harris — explorer and author of Way Out There, Fab's hero and fellow New Yorker Cutie — remembered with love by the CDT class of 2022 Book tour: Derick is on the road through spring and summer 2026, starting in Colorado, running up and down the East Coast, and working west. Dates at his website. Follow Derick: Instagram / Facebook / TikTok: @dericklugo (that's D-E-R-I-C-K — he will notice if you spell it wrong) Website: dericklugo.com — signed copies available The Full Traverse is produced by Hiker Trash Radio, a member of the BLEAV Podcast Network. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Join Doc and his guests on Hiker Trash Radio, the outdoor adventure podcast that takes you on a myriad of trails. With interviews from thru hikers, skydivers, adventure athletes, big wall climbers, and more, each episode is packed with trail talk, gear tips, and hilarious misadventures. And if you thought the great outdoors was all sunshine and rainbows, think again! Tune in for tales of blistered feet, helicopter evacuations, and Type II Fun that will make you appreciate the comforts of home. Settle in and get ready to trade the city for the wilderness. It's time to embrace the suck!
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