It's Not the Bears. It's the Rivers.

30 Percent Road Walks and Why That's Fine

Seth Holden and Homemade Bear Armor

The Political Opposition — And Why He Called Them First

There's No Suck to Be Embraced

Why the Alaska Long Trail

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In Dinosaur National Monument, Kevin Koski once scaled a thirty-foot sandstone cliff because his own map told him there was a way up. There wasn't — not a safe one. He survived it, and then he did the thing that separates a person who walks routes from a person who makes them: he took it off his map, so nobody else would follow him into it.

Because a route doesn't end when the maker finishes walking it. That's when the real work starts — the years of correcting, erasing, second-guessing, and handing off. A trail is not a monument you carve once and leave standing. It's a living thing that keeps changing after its maker is gone.

Rue McKenrick redraws the American Perimeter Trail every quarter and structured its nonprofit so the board can fire him — "we all own this," he says, "I just get to be the one that talks about it until I croak." Kevin "The Animal" Koski watched two strangers find a better line on his Four Corners Loop and changed his own map to match theirs. Donovan "Iceman" Rice released the Great Colorado Route to the public before he'd even proven it, calling route-making "just stitching together things that other people have done." And as this episode airs, Rice is more than 50 days into that route, deep in the high country, finding out whether the gift he gave holds up.

This is the episode about letting go: the community that holds the pen, the fear of sending someone into real country on your word, and the truth every maker in this series has had to accept — that the line was never really theirs to keep.

Featured routes:

Featured makers:

Next time — the series finale of The Route Makers: a maker we met in the very first episode returns to teach the last thing a route can teach, when everything changes at once.

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Fitch's Origin — Leap Before You Look

Fab's Origin — A Park in Hamburg

How Their Two Relationships With the Road Fit Together

The Brittany Training Hike — GR 380

Would You Do It Again — Honest Answer

What's Next — The Farmhouse

Hiking Hacks — Two for One

Off the Beaten Path — Dust on My Shoes

Pay It Forward — The Sugi Project

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Trailblazer's Toolkit — Two for One

The Hiking Poll — Fab: 53, Fitch: 47

How the HexaTrek Happened

Day 62 — The Near-Quit

The Hexadog — What They Didn't Expect

Hiking With Billie — Joy and Cost

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The Appalachian Trail is more than a footpath - it’s a living piece of American history. Stretching over 2,000 miles from Georgia to Maine, the A.T. winds through some of Virginia’s most beautiful and rugged landscapes. But have you ever wondered how this legendary trail came to be, and who the dreamers, builders, and hikers were that shaped it?

We’re hiking through history with someone who knows the Appalachian Trail like few others do. My friend, Mills Kelly, is a historian, archivist, podcast host, lifelong hiker, and author of the new book, A Hiker’s History of the Appalachian Trail. His book captures the A.T.’s history, not just as a collection of facts and dates, but as a human story about purpose, adventure, and our search for meaning in the mountains.

Mills shares fascinating stories from the trail’s early days and how it has changed over the past century. And when you think about how far we’ve come - from hikers in wool suits carrying canvas packs filled with fresh produce, to today’s ultralight gear and freeze-dried meals - it’s amazing to see how the trail has evolved right alongside us.

Mills reminds us that the A.T. wasn’t built for heroic end-to-end treks, but for ordinary people to breathe easier and feel a little wilder for a few hours or a few days. That simple idea still shapes lives, towns, and trail culture across Virginia and beyond.

The story of the Appalachian Trail is as much about the people and their experiences as it is about the path beneath their feet. So join us as we hike back through time on the world’s most iconic long-distance trail. Let’s Go!

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Day 62 — The Factory Pontoon

The Hexadog — Designing a Thru-Hike Around a Dog

Billie — Joy and Cost

Fab's Origin Story — Walking After Loss

The Couple on the HexaTrek

What's Next — A 200-Year-Old Farmhouse in Brittany

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The first two episodes of this series took us into deserts you cross with a map and a compass, and Alaska tundra a week from the nearest road. This episode is about a different kind of empty space on the map — the one most of us walk past every day without seeing the line at all.

Because the impulse to look at a place and imagine a route through it doesn't need a trailhead. It doesn't even need a wilderness. Sometimes all it needs is a city.

Liz "Snorkel" Thomas — a Triple Crowner and, per Outside magazine, a living legend —took the entire framework of a thru-hike downtown, inventing "urban thru-hikes" like a250-mile route across Seattle and a 100-mile "brew-through" connecting Denver's breweries. Alexandra "Sunshine" Kenin, founder of Urban Hiker SF and author of three Urban Trails guidebooks, has hiked more than a thousand public staircases in a single city— and inherited the project from Adah Bakalinsky, the woman who mapped San Francisco's stairs by hand before Google Maps existed.

Along the way: why walking on pavement can be harder on your body than a mountain trail, why a route through a city might deliver more genuine adventure than a wilderness, why San Francisco is full of staircases in the first place, and how the urban route-maker's deepest cause turns out to be the same one a desert route-maker arrived at from the opposite end of the country — that a person on foot deserves to be safe.

This is the series' warmest chapter: proof that the wilderness maker and the city maker are doing the same thing, and that the best routes are the ones the most people can reach.

Featured routes:

Featured makers:

Next time on The Route Makers — Episode 4: "The Eraser and the Gift," on what happensto a route after the map is drawn: the years of correcting, erasing, and handing it off towhoever comes next.

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Post-Trail Depression and the Why

What He Got Wrong

The Kenya Trail Project

Best Switchback Trip — The Haute Route in Switzerland

The Kyrgyzstan/Tajikistan Disaster — A Gear Review in Absentia

The Roped Expedition Mindset vs. Solo Thru-Hiking

Hiking Hack — Hypoxico Altitude Generator

What's Next

Off the Beaten Path — Two Reads

Pay It Forward — PCTA

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Trailblazer's Toolkit — Household Bleach

The Hiking Poll — Score: 22

The Origin — Kenya, NGOs, and America

Denali vs. the Trail — What's Different

The Denali Poop System

The Diving Board

The Talkeetna Cemetery

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From Kenya to the Triple Crown

Denali — The Mountain in Context

The Poop System

The Diving Board

The Autobahn

Post-Trail Depression and What the Trails Are For

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