The notion of completing the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, a footpath that runs mostly west and east across North Carolina, but also has a good bit of north and south travel, has been an ineradicable thought of mine for several years. At times, the thought of committing to the adventure has come with great certainty, only to later retreat into the nebulous category of Someday. But it never really goes away. Current circumstances have finally led me to revitalize this idea once again and announce…

In the worlds of academia and industry, students and professionals are asked to prove competence through rigorous exams. SAT's, ACT's, GRE's, LSATs, MCATs, and the list of acronyms goes on. One could argue that if such a thing as a mountain-ultra-trail running aptitude exam exists, then that test is the Barkley Marathons. If Barkley is the test, then the finishers, a mere 15 in the race's 32 year history, are members of…

     Finishing the recap of my 2016 journey on the Colorado Trail has taken a very long time. Much too long. This has largely come from a place of laziness or distraction, sometimes masquerading under the guise of "busyness." Still, there's also a sense of reluctant finality once the last punctuation has been committed. Fortunately, I wrote a lot of notes down immediately following the adventure, perhaps anticipating some of these inefficiencies.  …

   In part 1 of Unpacking The DuDe, I covered the more technical details about the gear and the systems that I used to travel as light as possible. In subsequent posts, I'll give insight into the decisions I made and offer a day to day run down of the trip. Surprisingly, recapping the journey has led to a larger than expected volume of details. Rather than packaging this into one cumbersome and unwieldy novel that you're unlikely to read, I'll break it down into two episodes which will…