The Route Makers finale: Renee "She-Ra" Patrick, longtime coordinator of the Oregon Desert Trail, on a career spent designing some of America's hardest routes and the reinvention that changed what she wants to build.

We met Renee in the first episode, at the height of her powers: a professional route maker paid to do what everyone else in this series did on their own time. When we spoke again, everything had changed. This is the story of the last thing a route maker can teach: how to let go of the line you drew, and pick up the pen to draw the next one. Settle in for the final episode of our documentary series.

Show Notes

For four episodes, this series followed people who look at a map and see a line that isn't there: across deserts, mountains, and cities. We saved this maker for last, because her story holds the final lesson.


We first met Renee Patrick, trail name She-Ra, in Episode One, at the height of her craft: the longtime coordinator of the Oregon Desert Trail, a professional route maker who thought about the difference between a trail and a route more deeply than almost anyone. She was planning the hardest routes of her life. The next time we spoke, everything had changed.


This finale tells her full arc: the architect at her peak, a life-altering diagnosis that brought her forward motion to a screeching stop, and the reinvention that followed. Because Renee is a thru-hiker, and a thru-hiker knows how to cover an impossible distance: incremental progress, one step at a time. The route maker who built some of the most remote, difficult trails in the country now wants to build the opposite: accessible routes, Camino-style trails, lines that the most people can walk.


It's the perfect ending to a series about lines that never stop changing. Two episodes ago, in the city, we met the makers who bring the wilderness home. Renee, from the far end of the maker's world, arrives at the same truth: the best thing a route can do is include people. She's living proof that a maker's greatest line might be the one that lets the most people walk it.


This episode is shared with Renee's blessing, and includes candid discussion of serious illness. It is, at its heart, a tribute to a route maker, and to the oldest thru-hiker wisdom there is: one step at a time, one day at a time.


You can follow Renee's own writing at shera-hikes.com. If the themes in this episode resonate personally, please know that support is available.


Featured route: Oregon Desert Trail (with the American Perimeter Trail and Great Western Loop referenced) Featured maker: Renee "She-Ra" Patrick (with Rue McKenrick and Andrew Skurka)


This is the final episode of The Route Makers. A bonus episode — on the newest big trail in America — follows.


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