Trail Stories - "She Just Wants to Exist" with Maria "Beans" Romfoe

Maria Romfoe has been carrying cans of beans up mountains since she was a broke college kid in Alaska who posted a summit photo with the caption #bushsbeanssponsorme as a joke, and the joke has not stopped paying off since. She is now an ABNM Triple Crown hiker — All But New Mexico — after a case of giardia acquired by trusting the vibes of cattle-adjacent water in the San Juans ended her CDT, led to what she describes as the most miserable night of her life at a backcountry hot springs, and then inspired a one-day, 46-mile bikepacking attempt on a Walmart bicycle that she returned the next morning with mud still on it. This episode covers the bean empire origin story, the ZPack frame that snapped in half under three family-sized cans of smoky barbecue baked beans, and a giardia evacuation that was genuinely harrowing before it became funny. It also covers something else: what it actually feels like to be a woman walking alone through the world, and what she wishes people understood about it. The full interview with Beans drops Wednesday on the Hiker Trash Radio feed.