[SPEAKER_04]: Well, here I am at the border.

[SPEAKER_04]: From Aunt Maschis, it's standing in front of this familiar sign, which says, welcome to Vermont.

[SPEAKER_04]: I'm Matt Pedolsky, and in twenty-twenty-two, I attempted a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail with my mom.

[SPEAKER_04]: But when I reached the Vermont border, my mom wasn't with me.

[SPEAKER_04]: She had been forced off trail by injury a few weeks previous.

[SPEAKER_04]: The Vermont border marks the start of the long trail.

[SPEAKER_04]: This is a special spot for my mom and I.

It's where we begin our first long hike together just after we lost my dad to cancer.

[SPEAKER_04]: So reaching this point without her, gave me some mixed emotions.

[SPEAKER_04]: The long trail maintained by the Green Mountain Club follows the Green Mountain Range for two hundred and seventy-three miles north to Canada.

[SPEAKER_04]: The AT follows the long trail for hundred and five miles.

[SPEAKER_04]: So for the next hundred and five miles, I would be following the path of both the Appalachian Trail and the Long Trail.

[SPEAKER_04]: The Long Trail actually predates the Appalachian Trail.

[SPEAKER_04]: Construction on this hiking path began in nineteen twelve, nine years before Benton McCuy wrote his famous article introducing the concept of the A.T.

[SPEAKER_04]: In fact, the Long Trail served as the inspiration for the creation of the A.T.

[SPEAKER_04]: This would be my third time hiking this one hundred mile stretch where the AT and the long trail overlap.

[SPEAKER_04]: I did it in two thousand a three on my first long hike when I was in college and I did it again with my mom and twenty thirteen.

[SPEAKER_04]: But this time was different.

[SPEAKER_04]: This time I was hiking alone.

[SPEAKER_04]: At least I thought I was alone.

[SPEAKER_04]: There.

[SPEAKER_05]: I think I would do the long trail for a little bit.

[SPEAKER_05]: Oh, I'm down to AT.

[SPEAKER_04]: From the next hundred and five miles, you know, I'm a choice.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_04]: Just after I reached the border, a fellow thru-haker approached and struck up a conversation.

[SPEAKER_04]: I actually did the long trail nine years ago, so.

[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, really?

[SPEAKER_04]: So, it's a familiar sign for me.

[SPEAKER_04]: Where are you from?

[SPEAKER_04]: I'm a boss in the area originally.

[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, yeah.

[SPEAKER_04]: I live on Idaho.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_04]: Do you want to picture?

[SPEAKER_02]: I know.

[SPEAKER_05]: Do you have two sweaty favorite pictures?

[SPEAKER_05]: All right, birdman.

[SPEAKER_04]: All right.

[SPEAKER_05]: See you up there.

[SPEAKER_05]: I'll see you in the long trail.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_04]: As I crossed the border into Vermont, I was officially entering northern New England by far the most rugged and difficult stretch of the Appalachian Trail.

[SPEAKER_04]: It's about eight miles or so of the Appalachian Trail.

[SPEAKER_04]: that is up above tree line along that ridge.

[SPEAKER_04]: And although I was no longer hiking with my mom, I was starting to realize that I wasn't truly alone.

[SPEAKER_04]: I thought I'd be able to sell like which peak is which, but there are all just mountains I gotta climb.

[SPEAKER_04]: This is Common Land, a show about the Appalachian Trail.

[SPEAKER_04]: In this episode, we explore how friendship and community in the outdoors can make wild places feel like home.

[SPEAKER_04]: basically every shelter I've come to over the last ninety ninety five miles while I've been on the long trail as I've approached it I have memories have come flooding back to me.

[SPEAKER_04]: The flood of memories from my trip on the long trail with my mom made hiking this section bittersweet.

[SPEAKER_04]: I was amazed by how much I remember from nine years ago but frustrated that my mom couldn't be there to share those memories with me.

[SPEAKER_04]: but I was hiking fast twenty plus miles a day so I wasn't on the long trail for very long long trail continues north through Vermont towards the Canadian border and the Appalachian Trail branches to the east towards Hanover, New Hampshire and the White Mountains [SPEAKER_04]: The white mountains are infamous amongst thru-hikers.

[SPEAKER_04]: The climbs are incredibly steep and the views are spectacular.

[SPEAKER_04]: Here in New Hampshire climbing up Cube Mountain and partway up and just got a fantastic view.

[SPEAKER_04]: I see the distant ridge lines over the whites and then just these puffy white clouds down below.

[SPEAKER_04]: covering the valleys.

[SPEAKER_04]: As I got closer to New Hampshire's white mountains, I was also getting closer to the origin point of modern mountain climbing.

[SPEAKER_08]: The granddaddy of all trails is Crawford Path, which was [SPEAKER_08]: built in eighteen nineteen.

[SPEAKER_04]: Becky Fullerton is the archivist for the Appalachian Mountain Club, or the AMC as most people call it.

[SPEAKER_04]: And the Crawford Path is kind of a legend among trails.

[SPEAKER_08]: It went from Ethan Allen Crawford's house, which was happened to be a tavern and in as well to the summit about Washington.

[SPEAKER_04]: Long before any modern hiking trails were established in southern Appalachia or anywhere else in the United States, people began climbing to the top of Mount Washington.

[SPEAKER_04]: The tallest peak in New Hampshire's White Mountains.

[SPEAKER_04]: The Crawford Path, which overlaps the Appalachian Trail for several miles, is the oldest continuously maintained hiking trail in the US.

[SPEAKER_08]: You know, that was the main tourist route to really get off the path at that time.

[SPEAKER_04]: During the mid- eighteen hundreds enthusiasts cut more trails to the tops of the area's most prominent peaks, but these early paths were isolated from one another.

[SPEAKER_04]: Only one network of interconnected hiking trails was established before the outbreak of the Civil War in New Hampshire's Waterville Valley.

[SPEAKER_03]: my great grandfather in the eighteen sixties and seventies, um, belt trails in the valley that's just across the mountains from where I am now waterville valley.

[SPEAKER_04]: That's Nat's Grimshaw, the chair of the World Trails Networks Hub for the Americas.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's called the Waterville Valley Athletic and Improvement Association.

[SPEAKER_03]: That's generally considered to be the first trail system in the country, making this distinction of not just having isolated trails here and there, but having a trail network that emerged from a valley with an end and people would come to specifically go hiking.

[SPEAKER_04]: From there, similar networks of hiking trails began to spread across the Northeast, like spider webs.

[SPEAKER_04]: This is where the Appalachian Mountain Club comes in.

[SPEAKER_04]: The club was founded in eighteen seventy-six by an MIT physics professor and at first it was just a group of friends who like to go out hiking.

[SPEAKER_04]: But as more early hiking enthusiasts joined, volunteers started going out into the mountains to cut new trails.

[SPEAKER_08]: And this trails committee that antsy forms and they go on what they call trail sprees.

[SPEAKER_04]: Again, that's Becky Fullerton, the archivist for the Appalachian Mountain Club.

[SPEAKER_08]: And they go in like the whole summer long.

[SPEAKER_08]: They all, you know, they take off their summer vacation as a doctor or a lawyer or a professor.

[SPEAKER_08]: And they go for like [SPEAKER_08]: Four to six weeks at a time.

[SPEAKER_08]: And they build these trails all in one go.

[SPEAKER_08]: They lay them all out.

[SPEAKER_08]: They, you know, lays them.

[SPEAKER_08]: They measure them.

[SPEAKER_08]: They build shelters.

[SPEAKER_08]: And they go all over the place.

[SPEAKER_08]: And it's really just where anybody can imagine they would want to go with a trail.

[SPEAKER_08]: Suddenly you see them building that trail.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think they also saw it as fun, you know, fun to build trails.

[SPEAKER_04]: That's Laura Waterman, a longtime hiker and mountaineer who co-authored Forest and Crag, which was first published in nineteen eighty nine and remains one of the most comprehensive records of mountain climbing and trail building in the Northeast.

[SPEAKER_00]: They were thrilled by how hard it was.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the train itself is so thickly forested.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it took tremendous guts and perseverance to just crawl your way through there.

[SPEAKER_00]: They had their axes.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're well-clothing.

[SPEAKER_00]: They would have had a compass.

[SPEAKER_00]: Damage it where she could have been along.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it was a burst, a burst of trout building over maybe four years or a left.

[SPEAKER_00]: Not a lot was built in the way of trails after that.

[SPEAKER_04]: Spiderwebs of hiking trails were expanding across northern New England throughout the late eighteen hundredths and early nineteen hundredths.

[SPEAKER_04]: By the time Ben McCuy had laid out his vision for the Appalachian Trail in nineteen twenty-one, there was already an extensive network of hiking trails in New Hampshire, and more than two hundred miles of Vermont's long trail had already been built.

[SPEAKER_04]: Establishing the Appalachian Trail in this region was a matter of choosing a route along existing trails.

[SPEAKER_04]: Protecting the microphone.

[SPEAKER_04]: The enemy of good sound is wind.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_04]: On top of Mount Musilaki, with a chop chop here.

[SPEAKER_04]: Some other folks about to join us.

[SPEAKER_04]: Mount Musilaki, four thousand, eight hundred and two feet.

[SPEAKER_04]: It's super windy up here.

[SPEAKER_04]: But amazing, amazing views.

[SPEAKER_04]: in every direction.

[SPEAKER_04]: For northbound through hikers on the Appalachian Trail Mount Musalaki or Musalok as some pronounce it, marks one's entry into the white mountains.

[SPEAKER_04]: It's also the first peak on the AT that's above the tree line.

[SPEAKER_04]: In the northeast, trees generally can't grow above four thousand feet elevation.

[SPEAKER_04]: After hiking over a thousand miles through dense forests, reaching these open expanses is a pretty big change.

[SPEAKER_04]: And this wasn't the only change that I was experiencing at this stage of my hike.

[SPEAKER_04]: Just the previous week, I had joined a tramely.

[SPEAKER_05]: That's so less windy down here.

[SPEAKER_04]: I know, right?

[SPEAKER_04]: It's like you just stepped down.

[SPEAKER_04]: ten feet and it's actually kind of pleasant.

[SPEAKER_04]: Tramely is through hiker slang for trail family.

[SPEAKER_04]: A tramely forms when a group of hikers decide to stick together for a while.

[SPEAKER_04]: So the first time above tree line.

[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_05]: Well, what about big bald?

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I mean that's true.

[SPEAKER_04]: Like there's a lot of peaks in the south where there's no trees but that's all because of grazing.

[SPEAKER_05]: Really?

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know.

[SPEAKER_04]: I think this is the first time where like, like the weather conditions make it so that trees can't grow.

[SPEAKER_04]: Got it?

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_04]: By the time I climbed to the summit of Muselaki, Chop Chop and I had formed a tram-ly with three other hikers.

[SPEAKER_04]: We'll hear from each member of my new tram-ly after a short break.

[SPEAKER_04]: We're back.

[SPEAKER_04]: I'm at Pedolsky and this is Common Land, a show about the Appalachian Trail.

[SPEAKER_05]: My child name is Chop Chop.

[SPEAKER_05]: It's got multiple meaning.

[SPEAKER_05]: I was banging my sticks together, trekking poles together.

[SPEAKER_05]: to get the leaves and debris off and chopped them together and there was a couple in front of me that asked if I was shopping at them which I wasn't but yeah then my buddy was just like hey you're a chop chop and I liked it [SPEAKER_09]: All right, so my trail name is KFC, which stands for KD from Chicago.

[SPEAKER_09]: I've always wear either a Cubs baseball cap or I have a Cubs knit cap and a buddy of mine who lives in Atlanta was coming up to do a day hike with me.

[SPEAKER_09]: And when she finally found me, she's like literally every person I asked identified you as KD from Chicago.

[SPEAKER_09]: And then so I just mumbled like KFC and a couple of the records I've heard it and really liked it.

[SPEAKER_09]: And so it stuck.

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so my trail name is Kuzi.

[SPEAKER_02]: K-O-O-Z-Y.

[SPEAKER_02]: I got it.

[SPEAKER_02]: It was day four.

[SPEAKER_02]: We were in Neil's gap at the cabins there.

[SPEAKER_02]: Blood Mountain cabins.

[SPEAKER_02]: And we all got a couple beers.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I brought out a Kuzi and they're like, [SPEAKER_02]: You have a cozy.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm like, yeah, no one else brought a cozy on trail.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I like your name's cozy.

[SPEAKER_02]: So that's how that happened.

[SPEAKER_02]: All right, all right.

[SPEAKER_06]: OK, my training is fresh snack.

[SPEAKER_06]: I try to say it so you can understand it because it's hard because I'm driven.

[SPEAKER_06]: My sister actually called me being in Hepian all the time, which loosely translates to a bare snack because she wanted to annoy my mom who was very worried about me in the rarest.

[SPEAKER_06]: And I told this story to a couple of hikers in a shelter in New York smokey, so I guess.

[SPEAKER_06]: And they said, oh, that's a good train.

[SPEAKER_06]: And when I said, yeah, that's a good kind of good way to name it.

[SPEAKER_06]: So I just kept it.

[SPEAKER_04]: I had crossed paths with all of these hikers during earlier stages of my hike.

[SPEAKER_04]: But for some reason, when we all came together near the Vermont New Hampshire border, something clicked.

[SPEAKER_09]: I have wanted to do this, and so I was probably ten years old.

[SPEAKER_09]: So it's been, it's been a thing, my mind kind of for like twenty years now.

[SPEAKER_06]: I just got interested in long distance hiking, I went and started.

[SPEAKER_06]: We searching it, I just stumbled upon the IT.

[SPEAKER_10]: My job before was working for the United States Navy, Merchand Marine Officer, [SPEAKER_06]: I'm an anesthesiologist.

[SPEAKER_05]: I work as a handyman for small business.

[SPEAKER_05]: So my background is in supply chain and logistics.

[SPEAKER_05]: But I've kind of taken the sales route.

[SPEAKER_05]: I just got tired of the rat race that I was in and you know, needed a break.

[SPEAKER_02]: Confidence is it's really increased?

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I lost fifty pounds.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I mean, your body adjusts to make your [SPEAKER_02]: Whatever you're trying to do, as long as you keep going with it, you can do anything.

[SPEAKER_05]: I think it's, you know, it's been an amazing journey from start to hear and I'm pumped to be heading into the whites.

[SPEAKER_05]: You know, candidly, like with only a couple states left, my plan is to slow it down and save her every last minute of it and enjoy it and treat it as a vacation.

[SPEAKER_05]: And, you know, but I got a lot of work in front of us, we all do.

[SPEAKER_05]: And it's just part of the journey.

[SPEAKER_05]: It's just, you know, experiencing that change in mountains to rain, season.

[SPEAKER_04]: There's a camaraderie that I think is, [SPEAKER_04]: is growing, you know, amongst the folks that are still out here.

[SPEAKER_04]: And as we get closer and closer to our end goal, it intensifies a little bit.

[SPEAKER_04]: It's like this mixture of relief and sadness for a lot of folks, a number of people have told me that they're slowing down.

[SPEAKER_04]: Um, not just because the terrain's getting more difficult, but because they want the journey to last longer.

[SPEAKER_04]: They're not ready for it to end.

[SPEAKER_04]: This was one of the things that my new Tramely bonded over.

[SPEAKER_04]: Our desire to make the most of this last stretch of the hike and to enjoy and appreciate every moment to its fullest.

[SPEAKER_04]: But while I was reveling in the beauty of Musalaki's summit, my mom was plotting her return to the trail.

[SPEAKER_04]: I'm meeting my mom.

[SPEAKER_04]: at the end of the day she's going to jump back on trail with me tomorrow which is huge so my mom's been off trail for three or four weeks she's been doing physical therapy so she's jumping in at basically the most difficult section of the entire trail so um [SPEAKER_04]: So it's gonna be a challenge, but let's see what happens.

[SPEAKER_04]: You're trying to return to the trail, how do you feel?

[SPEAKER_07]: I feel great.

[SPEAKER_04]: Really?

[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_07]: I'm tired, because I haven't, the up is hard.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_07]: I feel great.

[SPEAKER_07]: So far, the Achilles is fine.

[SPEAKER_04]: Wow.

[SPEAKER_07]: Awesome.

[SPEAKER_07]: In fact, if anything's given me trouble, it's my knee.

[SPEAKER_04]: But, you know.

[SPEAKER_04]: Figures.

[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_07]: I'm not worried about my knee either, so it doesn't matter.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, but we're already, we're already halfway up.

[SPEAKER_04]: very close to the summit of Lafayette Peak, the highest one on the Frankone Ridge line.

[SPEAKER_04]: The mom's right behind me.

[SPEAKER_04]: She's doing great on her first day back, especially considering the very difficult and strange U.S.

[SPEAKER_04]: terrain.

[SPEAKER_04]: Super windy up here.

[SPEAKER_04]: Hey, welcome.

[SPEAKER_04]: Did you have blow off?

[SPEAKER_07]: I was afraid it was going to.

[SPEAKER_07]: So, we must be more than half way, right?

[SPEAKER_04]: Oh yeah, we're definitely more than half way.

[SPEAKER_07]: Good.

[SPEAKER_06]: I think it's like six point five and we have three point A, do something.

[SPEAKER_07]: It's not bad.

[SPEAKER_07]: Man, I feel like it's going to run me right off.

[SPEAKER_03]: And now, right?

[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_03]: I hike that trail every single week between May and actually into October.

[SPEAKER_04]: Again, that's Nat Scrimshaw.

[SPEAKER_04]: Nat has adopted this section of trail, which means he volunteers to maintain the path along the Franconia Ridge.

[SPEAKER_04]: And it's a big responsibility because this part of the AT is hugely popular.

[SPEAKER_03]: There are sunny weekends where there is a thousand people crammed in a two mile section of the Franconia Ridge Trail.

[SPEAKER_03]: And not only does that affect your experience of the trail, but also people step off the trail on the Alpine vegetation and so it's doing a number on the environment.

[SPEAKER_03]: And so one of the first things to understand about the Crankonia Ridge is that it is a very unique and regionally rare ecology.

[SPEAKER_03]: And it's also incredibly beautiful.

[SPEAKER_03]: You're above Timberline.

[SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, there are these expansive views.

[SPEAKER_03]: You have a ecology that is tundra-like.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's a little bit like the Arctic tundra.

[SPEAKER_03]: And so you have these islands, these remnants, ecologies.

[SPEAKER_03]: And some of the plants, there are some plants that actually are only found in the white mountains.

[SPEAKER_03]: And of course, being a very beautiful, unique environment and having spectacular views and being a about a three-hour drive from Montreal in Boston and not that far from New York.

[SPEAKER_03]: You essentially have an incredible access.

[SPEAKER_03]: Millions and millions of people can drive to the trailhead and do this fight in a day.

[SPEAKER_03]: But you know that if you can keep people on the trail, then you're not going to do any more damage to the Alpine zone.

[SPEAKER_03]: And so that's what we try to do.

[SPEAKER_03]: And historically, and this was the AMC introduced with the Forest Service in the nineteen seventies, building these low walls that we call scree walls on either side of the trail.

[SPEAKER_03]: And that was the first attempt to really keep people on the trail by defining it.

[SPEAKER_04]: In the woods, it's pretty easy to keep people on the trail.

[SPEAKER_04]: But on a beautiful open ridge line with no trees, there can be a strong temptation to wander off the trail and explore.

[SPEAKER_04]: The problem with this is that the high elevation alpine ecosystems up on these ridge lines are really sensitive.

[SPEAKER_04]: To protect these unique alpine environments, it's important to stop people from stepping on the plants.

[SPEAKER_04]: This is the job of the scree walls.

[SPEAKER_04]: To keep people on the trail and prevent the trampling of rare alpine plants.

[SPEAKER_04]: Our crew traversed the Franconia Ridge on a sunny Saturday in August, so that was a big crowd on the mountain.

[SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, I saw quite a few people stepping off the trail and trampling the Alpine plants.

[SPEAKER_04]: But without the screw walls to define the trail's boundary, it would have been a free for all.

[SPEAKER_04]: Despite the crowds, me, my mom and my new family had a spectacular day up on the ridge.

[SPEAKER_07]: I'm stoked.

[SPEAKER_04]: Awesome.

[SPEAKER_07]: This has been incredible hike.

[SPEAKER_04]: This has been a really good day.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_03]: Your experience, and I think I heard you correctly, was that yeah, there were a lot of people up there, but you still had a good time, and it was a good experience.

[SPEAKER_03]: And there was a study that was done by a group from UVM.

[SPEAKER_03]: We were all surprised that a lot of the people who were visiting Frank O'Neill Ridge were more tolerant of seeing more people than we were as, quote, the managers.

[SPEAKER_03]: There are more people who are hiking that think it's okay to see other people.

[SPEAKER_03]: Nevertheless, it's some point.

[SPEAKER_03]: We are going to reach a point where it's going to be, there are so many people that you're not going to be able to keep them on the trail and it may also be affecting people's experience and what do we do.

[SPEAKER_03]: That's the big question.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was part of the proposal to our new Hampshire Senator Senator G.

Jean, a request for over a million dollars, one twenty one two five million over five years to work on improving the sustainability of the Francois Loup.

[SPEAKER_04]: That's Alexander DeLoucia, the director of trails for the Appalachian Mountain Club.

[SPEAKER_04]: The centerpiece of the Franconia loop trail is the Franconia ridge.

[SPEAKER_01]: Just under nine miles, and we'd like one of the most popular hikes, as you say, in the world.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's extremely challenging, and the environment that it brings you into is wild.

[SPEAKER_01]: That congressional appropriation was approved, so AMC [SPEAKER_01]: is administering one-point-one-two-five million dollars.

[SPEAKER_01]: We just completed year two of the five-year project.

[SPEAKER_01]: Finally, we have adequate funding over multiple years to not just spot fixed problem areas, but to start to finish redesign this trail.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is the largest scale project that's ever happened on the White Mountain National Forest.

[SPEAKER_04]: But how will this project change the trail itself?

[SPEAKER_04]: This will vary depending on which section of trail we're talking about.

[SPEAKER_04]: Below the ridge, the trail is being widened, rock steps are being added, and some sections of the trail are being rerouted.

[SPEAKER_01]: Quite dramatically different, honestly, than the jumbled gully of rocks and roots and things.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's kind of a typical, you know, way about experience.

[SPEAKER_04]: But the franco-near ridge line poses a very different problem.

[SPEAKER_01]: Along the ridge, what we need to ensure is that we don't have that spill over of like people trampling Elpine Vege.

[SPEAKER_01]: And all that.

[SPEAKER_01]: So keeping people on the designated trail across the ridge, that's the key challenge.

[SPEAKER_04]: But restoration may not be the best way to address this particular challenge.

[SPEAKER_04]: Although the Ridgeline is the most famous section of the Franchoni loop trail, all of the restoration work is taking place below tree line.

[SPEAKER_04]: Instead of working to restore the Ridgeline trail, the AMC has stepped up their efforts to maintain the trail along the Franchoni bridge.

[SPEAKER_04]: Working alongside Nat Scrimsha and his team of volunteers, AMC crews work to rebuild screw walls and educate hikers about the importance of staying on the trail.

[SPEAKER_04]: So while work on the Frankoneal Loop Restoration will wrap in twenty twenty six, the work of maintaining the ridge line trail is never ending.

[SPEAKER_04]: I feel good.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_07]: So are everywhere.

[SPEAKER_07]: I want to be in the shoulder right now and I feel fabulous.

[SPEAKER_04]: All right.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_04]: Nice.

[SPEAKER_04]: All right.

[SPEAKER_04]: Well, our last climb starts now.

[SPEAKER_04]: It's a point nine to the top of our field.

[SPEAKER_04]: So yeah, it's going to be steep.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_07]: Oh boy.

[SPEAKER_04]: I'm pretty sure.

[SPEAKER_04]: We're changed.

[SPEAKER_04]: Uh-huh.

[SPEAKER_04]: After the Franco-Nier Ridge is Mount Garfield, my mom and I reached the bear summit where the rest of our group was waiting.

[SPEAKER_04]: Together, we made our way down the mountain to a campsite for the night.

[SPEAKER_04]: My mom's first day back on trail was marked by incredibly steep climbs and some of the most spectacular views of the entire trip.

[SPEAKER_04]: We were right in the heart of the white mountains.

[SPEAKER_04]: And while she crushed her first day back, the hikes were about to get harder.

[SPEAKER_04]: finding your own route through this field of giant irregular sharp boulders.

[SPEAKER_04]: My mom's knee was bothering her a little bit.

[SPEAKER_09]: I heard her mention something she said it wasn't her Achilles but that implied something was her name.

[SPEAKER_04]: In our next episode, my mom and I reached the highest peak in the Northeast, and I get enmeshed in some of the controversies surrounding the hot system run by the abolition model club.

[SPEAKER_03]: They've used the hot system that they've developed also to help bring an income to pay for their organization.

[SPEAKER_03]: That's their strength and also their weakness.

[SPEAKER_04]: Common Land is a production of the Wildlands Collective.

[SPEAKER_04]: This season was produced in partnership with New Hampshire Public Radio.

[SPEAKER_04]: This episode was produced by me, your host, Matt Petalsky.

[SPEAKER_04]: Music is by Blue Dot Sessions.

[SPEAKER_04]: To listen to the next episode in the series, just search for Common Land, in Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

[SPEAKER_04]: To learn more about the show, and to see a full list of credits, go to commonlandpodcast.com.