Trail Stories - Top of the World with Chris "Rad" Carter

The last time Chris "Rad" Carter was on Hiker Trash Radio, he had just completed the Triple Crown, with the CDT and AT in a single calendar year. Since then he got married, moved to Chattanooga, started running climbing and mountaineering coverage for Switchback Travel, and stood on top of Denali. This episode covers what it's like to go from horizontal miles to vertical feet on a 20,000-foot glaciated peak in Alaska, the Denali poop management system and its specific failure modes in minus-20 conditions, the Diving Board shot he carried as a mental image since childhood in Kenya and waited through three attempts and 20 seconds of clear sky to finally get, and the section called the Autobahn where he found himself looking down at the crevasse where a team of Latvians had died weeks before and feeling, properly, the weight of the mountain beneath him. It also covers something rarer: an honest reckoning, three years after the Triple Crown, with what serial thru-hiking cost him, what he thinks trails are actually for, and why he believes the depression that hits so many thru-hikers after they come off trail might be partly about not giving back. The full interview with Rad drops Wednesday in two parts on the Hiker Trash Radio feed.