Carry the Damn First Aid Kit - Dave, aka Slowfoot (Part I)

Dave thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail for the first time in 1996. His trail name was given to him by Earl Shaffer — the man who made the first recorded AT thru-hike in 1948 — who caught up to Dave on trail, noted that he moved at his pace, and named him SlowFoot on the spot. They became close friends and hiked together for over a month, off and on, for years afterward. This is the kind of thing you learn in Part 1 of this conversation, along with a defense of carrying 50 pounds of gear, a briefing on the baseball-bat shelter floors of the original AT and the engineering logic behind them, and the full origin story of the Mountain Blaze Arts fanny pack and why its number eight zipper is, as Dave will explain, actually a very big deal. Also: the Hiking Poll, a score of 24, and the oatmeal choking incident that remains one of the more unexpected self-Heimlich stories in podcast history.

Part 2 drops in 10 minutes.