He quit a promising boxing career to become a Mormon missionary, quit the missionary thing nine months later to go live in the woods, fled a posse of 10 pursuing missionaries on a stolen midnight bicycle ride, survived on a diet of almonds until he got arsenic poisoning, lay down to die on the side of a road three separate times (foiled, on each occasion, by an advancing army of caterpillars), and somehow that's just the origin story. In this Full Traverse episode, Doc pulls from four years and three appearances to trace Wesley "Mega Man" Tils from runaway missionary to Triple Crowner to the only person we know of who has talked a charging grizzly bear out of eating him not once but twice in the same 10 minutes — followed by a complete post-Triple-Crown collapse, a master's-thesis-by-way-of-the-backcountry, a job as an archaeologist who gets paid to legally stop gold mines, and a forthcoming 8,000-mile walk across the entire width of the country. He coined his own life motto in a McDonald's parking lot. It is, unsurprisingly, "hike or die." So far he's only ever done the first one.

Show Notes

The Full Traverse is HTR's long-form narrative format, drawing from multiple years of conversations with a single guest to tell the complete story. This episode covers Wesley "Mega Man" Tils.


Guest: Wesley "Mega Man" Tils — Triple Crowner, Fourth Crown Route originator, archaeologist, and the only known survivor of a sustained predatory grizzly bear encounter on the Continental Divide Trail.


Trail name origin: Earned on the Appalachian Trail while hiking southbound with a stress fracture, combining "Mega" (the slang term for southbound AT hikers, from the Maine-to-Georgia abbreviation) with his childhood love of the Mega Man video game series.


Trails and routes featured in this episode:



  • Appalachian Trail (southbound, 2016)

  • Pacific Crest Trail (northbound, 2017)

  • Continental Divide Trail (northbound, 2018)

  • Florida Trail (2022)

  • Pacific Northwest Trail (attempted, 2019)

  • The Fourth Crown Route — Wesley's own Mexico-to-Canada route combining the Arizona Trail, the Hayduke Trail, raw route-finding through Nevada and Utah, and the Idaho Centennial Trail (2023)

  • Mojave Sonoran Trail (2026) — a roughly 600-mile, largely trail-less route through the Mojave and Sonoran Deserts; Wesley was the third person to complete it

  • Hayduke Trail (2026)

  • Walk for the Wild (upcoming) — an attempt to be the first person to walk from the easternmost point of the contiguous United States to the westernmost point, combining the Appalachian Trail, the Long Trail, the North Country Trail, and the Pacific Northwest Trail, with raw route-finding through North Dakota and Montana. Roughly 8,000 miles over an estimated 500 days.


Terms referenced:



  • Triple Crown — completion of the Appalachian Trail, Pacific Crest Trail, and Continental Divide Trail.

  • FKT — Fastest Known Time, an informal trail or route speed record open to anyone.

  • Physiographic region — a geographic classification based on landform and geology rather than political boundaries. Wesley completed a long trail in all eight major physiographic regions of the lower 48.


Wesley's current work: Archaeological fieldwork, primarily in the Great Basin region, surveying for prehistoric artifacts — work that can result in legal protections preventing development, including mining, on culturally significant land.


Walk for the Wild: Wesley's upcoming 8,000-mile coast-to-coast route, intended to raise awareness for the protection of public wilderness lands amid ongoing closures and funding threats. He plans to direct all proceeds from an accompanying documentary to conservation organizations. Tentative departure: May 2026.


Follow Wesley: Instagram: @vagrant_viking93 YouTube: Wild Wes


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