Episodes

Jan Leitschuh was bitten by the AT bug in 2002. With no real backpacking experience, she threw herself into learning, training and stomping down fears and questions that swirled around her preparations. She joined the infamous Pack 31- a group of hikers that met online and named themselves after the date they started, March 1, 2003. This community, built on meetings at the ALDHA Gathering and a thousand online hours, still remain friends to this day and Liteshoe, along with many of those origina...

Jan Leitschuh was bitten by the AT bug in 2002. With no real backpacking experience, she threw herself into learning, training and stomping down fears and questions that swirled around her preparations. She joined the infamous Pack 31- a group of hikers that met online and named themselves after the date they started, March 1, 2003. This community, built on meetings at the ALDHA Gathering and a thousand online hours, still remain friends to this day and Liteshoe, along with many of those origina...

Debby became a Girl Scout leader when her daughter was young, and found herself learning all the camping and backpacking skills so that she could take her troop out. What started as a fun thing to do soon became a passion as she jumped into year after year of adventuring on the Appalachian Trail. She had no grand plans of doing the whole thing, and it wasn’t until years into her journey that she thought, “I have worked so hard, I might as well finish the thing!” The 30+ year trek took her from h...

Jan Leitschuh was bitten by the AT bug in 2002. With no real backpacking experience, she threw herself into learning, training and stomping down fears and questions that swirled around her preparations. She joined the infamous Pack 31- a group of hikers that met online and named themselves after the date they started, March 1, 2003. This community, built on meetings at the ALDHA Gathering and a thousand online hours, still remain friends to this day and Liteshoe, along with many of those origina...

Dr. Karen Lord Rutter is a retired teacher and administrator with over 30 years in education whose work with students ranged from preschool through high school. Dr. Rutter has a passion for travel, children, animals, and perpetual learning. Her first novel was inspired when her son, David, thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail with the family dog, Copper. Her love of the Appalachian Trail was born after David invited her to hike a few sections of the A.T. as he progressed on his journey. From those ...

Jan Leitschuh was bitten by the AT bug in 2002. With no real backpacking experience, she threw herself into learning, training and stomping down fears and questions that swirled around her preparations. She joined the infamous Pack 31- a group of hikers that met online and named themselves after the date they started, March 1, 2003. This community, built on meetings at the ALDHA Gathering and a thousand online hours, still remain friends to this day and Liteshoe, along with many of those origina...

Bio- Christine discovered long distance backpacking while surfing the internet at work. She decided that day to attempt to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail. Her Rugged Outdoors Woman persona started as a joke, a nod to the outdoor adventurer that she wished to be. One adventure led to another and since then she has hiked the Wonderland Trail, the Colorado Trail and thousands more miles along the way. ​Her debut memoir, Alone in Wonderland, is about backpacking, but it is really about the indepen...

Jan Leitschuh was bitten by the AT bug in 2002. With no real backpacking experience, she threw herself into learning, training and stomping down fears and questions that swirled around her preparations. She joined the infamous Pack 31- a group of hikers that met online and named themselves after the date they started, March 1, 2003. This community, built on meetings at the ALDHA Gathering and a thousand online hours, still remain friends to this day and Liteshoe, along with many of those origina...

Bio- Kara Hardman is the Chief Fun Officer of Thicket Adventure and a curvy adventurer living in Colorado. Her favorite adventures include hiking with her adorable dog and kayaking. Kara has been in a plus size body for many years and understands the thought work it takes to love yourself exactly as you are. In March 2019, Kara climbed Kilimanjaro with the Cury Kili Crew, an all women’s group of curvy hikers, for International Women’s Day. This trip convinced her of the need for size inclusive e...

Jan Leitschuh was bitten by the AT bug in 2002. With no real backpacking experience, she threw herself into learning, training and stomping down fears and questions that swirled around her preparations. She joined the infamous Pack 31- a group of hikers that met online and named themselves after the date they started, March 1, 2003. This community, built on meetings at the ALDHA Gathering and a thousand online hours, still remain friends to this day and Liteshoe, along with many of those origina...

Bio- Bonnie Nork lives in Southern Oregon with her husband, Mike, and daughter, Elaina. Her son, Ryan, is in college. Being active in the outdoors has always been a big part of Bonnie’s life. With adventurous parents, she was always out and about as a child, either hiking, backpacking, river rafting, on horseback rides, on canoe pack trips, and more! When Grand Staircase Escalante was signed into a national monument in 1996, her parents planned a backpacking trip there. The whole family was smit...

Bio- Aaron is a registered dietitian and backpacker with over twenty years of experience in the field of nutrition and in the backcountry. In 2017, she left her clinical dietitian career with dreams of thru-hiking the PCT and starting a business focused on backpacking nutrition. Seven years later, Backcountry Foodie is a thriving business serving thousands of hikers worldwide. Guest Links- BCF website - Ultralight Recipes & Meal Planning Tools for Backpackers BCF on Instagram - Instagram (@bac...

Jan Leitschuh was bitten by the AT bug in 2002. With no real backpacking experience, she threw herself into learning, training and stomping down fears and questions that swirled around her preparations. She joined the infamous Pack 31- a group of hikers that met online and named themselves after the date they started, March 1, 2003. This community, built on meetings at the ALDHA Gathering and a thousand online hours, still remain friends to this day and Liteshoe, along with many of those origina...

Bio- Born on a dairy and tobacco farm, one of my chores was bringing in the cows for milking. I enjoyed walking over our 100 acres to get the cows, or just to be out in Nature. I had never heard of hiking trails…I followed the cow paths. After graduating from High School in 1963, I attended three different universities to achieve my BA in teaching, MA, and a Rank One (30 hours above the Masters). I taught at a Middle School for 20 years…Physical Education and Science. Then I taught Elementary P...

Jan Leitschuh was bitten by the AT bug in 2002. With no real backpacking experience, she threw herself into learning, training and stomping down fears and questions that swirled around her preparations. She joined the infamous Pack 31- a group of hikers that met online and named themselves after the date they started, March 1, 2003. This community, built on meetings at the ALDHA Gathering and a thousand online hours, still remain friends to this day and Liteshoe, along with many of those origina...

Bio- I was born and raised in Alaska, where I still call home today. I was a two-time NCAA National Champion in women's rowing and was voted CRCA/Pocock All-American my senior year. I still consider myself an athlete and love everything from CrossFit to weight training to long walks in the woods. At Western Washington University I earned a degree in Evolutionary Nutrition and went on to study at the Institute for the Psychology of Eating to become a certified eating psychology coach. We all ha...

Jan Leitschuh was bitten by the AT bug in 2002. With no real backpacking experience, she threw herself into learning, training and stomping down fears and questions that swirled around her preparations. She joined the infamous Pack 31- a group of hikers that met online and named themselves after the date they started, March 1, 2003. This community, built on meetings at the ALDHA Gathering and a thousand online hours, still remain friends to this day and Liteshoe, along with many of those origina...

Bio- Lindsay Wenndt is a nationally certified health coach and fitness instructor, with specialty certifications in weight management and orthopedic health (a.k.a. joint pain). She’s the founder of Break Free Fitness, a curvy women’s health and fitness company that reserves 10% of its membership and coaching packages as scholarships for low-income women. Lindsay has taught more than 10,000 classes to women on topics such as reversing arthritis, exercise modifications for curvy women, and stayin...

Katie Rhodes is a mountain ultra runner, hiker, Wilderness Education Instructor and NYS Licensed Guide based out of the Adirondack Mountains of New York State. She's currently pursuing a Masters in Conservation Biology with a focus in alpine ecology and also works as an Industrial Hygienist in the semiconductor industry. You can usually find her meandering through the woods, identifying plants, pouring over a topographic map to plan her next adventure or trail running in the mountains. Guest Li...

Jan Leitschuh was bitten by the AT bug in 2002. With no real backpacking experience, she threw herself into learning, training and stomping down fears and questions that swirled around her preparations. She joined the infamous Pack 31- a group of hikers that met online and named themselves after the date they started, March 1, 2003. This community, built on meetings at the ALDHA Gathering and a thousand online hours, still remain friends to this day and Lite Shoe, along with many of those origin...

Anna, aka Mud Butt, is the host of the Trail Dames podcast, the founder of Trail Dames, Inc, and the owner of Huthmaker Fine Violins in Atlanta, GA. And she has been bitten by the advocacy bug!! Guest Links- AHS Hike the Hill - https://americanhiking.org/advocacy/#hike-the-hill State Environmental Tracking Website - https://www.ncsl.org/environment-and-natural-resources/state-bill-tracking-database Connect with Anna, aka Mud Butt, at info@traildames.com You can find the Trail Dames at: Our webs...

Jan Leitschuh was bitten by the AT bug in 2002. With no real backpacking experience, she threw herself into learning, training and stomping down fears and questions that swirled around her preparations. She joined the infamous Pack 31- a group of hikers that met online and named themselves after the date they started, March 1, 2003. This community, built on meetings at the ALDHA Gathering and a thousand online hours, still remain friends to this day and Liteshoe, along with many of those origina...

Bio- Suzanne Roberts is the author of the lyrical essay collection Animal Bodies: On Death, Desire, and Other Difficulties (Longlisted for the 2023 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay),​ the award-winning travel memoir in essays Bad Tourist: Misadventures in Love and Travel (2020), and the memoir Almost Somewhere: Twenty-Eight Days on the John Muir Trail (Winner of the 2012 National Outdoor Book Award), as well as four collections of poems. Named "The Next Great Travel Writ...

Jan Leitschuh was bitten by the AT bug in 2002. With no real backpacking experience, she threw herself into learning, training and stomping down fears and questions that swirled around her preparations. She joined the infamous Pack 31- a group of hikers that met online and named themselves after the date they started, March 1, 2003. This community, built on meetings at the ALDHA Gathering and a thousand online hours, still remain friends to this day and Liteshoe, along with many of those origina...