The distress call came in at 3:14 A.M. on Monday, September 2, Labor Day weekend.��

“Mayday, Mayday, Mayday,” a man gasped into marine Channel 16—the VHF frequency designated for emergencies. His voice was labored and halting.

“Conception. Platts Harbor. North Side Santa Cruz.”��

At Coast Guard Sector Los Angeles/Long Beach, one of the night watch standers returned the call, asking the vessel in distress its position and the number of people on board.��

“Thirty-nine��POB,” the man responded. “I can’t breathe.”

Then��the radio went silent.

Five times��the radio operator tried to hail the vessel. Finally, the watch stander issued a “pan-pan”—an alert to first responders and other mariners that, somewhere in the��night, an urgent problem was unfolding.

The Mayday call came from��Jerry Boylan, captain of the Conception, a 75-foot liveaboard dive boat owned by ��and chartered by Worldwide Diving ���ϳԹ���s. Twenty minutes later,��Boylan made radio contact again. The boat was anchored just off Santa Cruz Island, some 20 miles from California’s southern coast and 90 miles��as the crow flies��from the Coast Guard station in Los Angeles. Distance made the��radio connection patchy, so Boylan’s��call was relayed by an intermediary. As a result, only the following��record of the Coast Guard’s replies remains.

“What is the emergency?��Over.”��

“What is the emergency? Over.”

“Your vessel is on fire? Is that correct?”

“Roger. There are 36 people on board the vessel that’s on fire, and they can’t get off?”

“Roger. Can you get back on board the boat and unlock the doors so they can get off?”

“Roger. And there’s no escape hatch for any of the people on board?”��

A few key details were inaccurate in these radio calls. There were actually 34 people still on board this triple-decker boat:��a crew member, a dive leader, and 32 paying customers. They were all in the sleeping quarters, where narrow bunks were stacked three high. The doors into the boat, which opened to the galley and dining area, were not locked. There was an escape hatch, but it led into the main cabin, which was now engulfed in flame. Sleeping on the top deck, Boylan and four crew members were forced to jump off the ship. They used an emergency raft to get to a nearby fishing boat to make the second Mayday call.��

But as it would soon become clear, the correction of these few factual errors wouldn’t have any impact on the eventual outcome.��

In the minutes after that second Mayday��call, the Coast Guard sector dispatched a helicopter from Point Mugu, about 40 miles to the east, and another one from San Diego, along with the cutter Narwhal, which had been conducting routine operations at the Port of Los Angeles. Five other city and county rescue vessels from the region��began motoring out to the island as well.

At Coast Guard Station Channel Islands Harbor, in Oxnard, boatswain’s mate Logan Steinberger was in charge of the station watch. By the time he’d pieced together what was happening, he and his crew had just enough time to grab a portable pump and leap into their response boat. The station’s second craft would wait for a few county medics to arrive before heading out. They were the closest response team in the area.��

“We knew from listening to the radio chatter that it was really bad,” recalled Steinberger. “We kind of knew going in that it may be hopeless, but you don’t treat it as hopeless until you’re really sure it is.”

Two or so miles east of Santa Cruz Island, he could make out the unmistakable glow of fire. It was the only light on the horizon.

When the response boat arrived, the Conception was completely ablaze. Steinberger and his crew swept the area, looking for survivors. Seeing none, they set up their pump. It has a limited capacity, so they had to get close to the burning boat. Steinberger steered the vessel from inside the cabin. ���ϳԹ���, his engineer was shouting directions to keep him oriented away from smoke and the worst of the flames. The coxswain could feel the heat as he leaned out to hear the engineer’s instructions.

One of the next boats on the scene carried a Ventura County fire captain, who let Steinberger and his crew know that their efforts with the pump were futile—it just didn’t have the capability of a real fireboat. So the crew of the response boat went back to circling for survivors.��

Paul Amaral was at home when he got word of the distress call that night via a TowBoatUS radio-dispatch center. Captain of a TowBoatUS craft, he sped to his Ventura office, grabbed a grappling hook, and raced to the scene. The sea and sky were as dark as Amaral had ever seen them. He, too, was listening to the radio on his way to the Conception, hoping someone had made a terrible mistake when reporting the situation. And then, there it was on the horizon: the worsening fire.

Other fireboats arrived, one after another. They sprayed the Conception continuously for hours. The flames began to abate in places. But big hot spots remained. One burned through the boat’s anchor line. Amaral watched as the boat drifted into the jagged rocks encircling Platts Harbor. He knew his small vessel��was the only one that could get in close, so he pushed up against the hull of the Conception, right next to the sleeping quarters. He didn’t hear a sound. Amaral knew no one could be alive.

The fire had decimated��patches of the ��DzԳ����پ��Dz�’s hull. Amaral threw the grappling hook onto the bow and let out 50 feet of line. He pulled the burning boat off the rocks and tried to hold it in deeper water while two fireboats continued to pump water.��

As the sun began to break, the bowline of the Conception wallowed lower and lower on the waterline. The Coast Guard began setting up gear to pump water��out of the boat, hoping to��keep the Conception stable enough to tow ashore. But before it��could get the��equipment ready, the stern disappeared below the water. Moments later, all but the bow had vanished. As it sank, the boat turtled. Debris quickly gathered on the surface above—charcoal, a pool of diesel fuel, charred remnants of the boat itself. No one really wanted to think about what else could be there.

First responders from over 14 state and federal agencies had aided in the rescue and recovery efforts. They retrieved 20 of the 34 victims by the end of the day. It took nearly two weeks before the rest of the casualties were recovered and identified.��

As the international diving community mourned, crew members and victims’ families began looking for answers. Federal agencies, including the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and the USCG, started to investigate. All indications suggest those answers may never come—that we may never know what caused one of the worst��maritime tragedies in modern U.S. history, or how to prevent it from happening again.

The Conception was one of three boats belonging to��Truth Aquatics, a dive and charter company founded in 1974. Owned and operated by Glen Fritzler and his family, the Santa Barbara–based organization was widely considered one of the best in the business.��

These were family boats, where the crew and passengers ate meals shoulder to shoulder, often still in their wetsuits. Clients chartered the Fritzlers’ boats for field trips and family reunions. Customers felt safe on the dives. They felt secure living and sleeping on board.��

The Conception��was built for Truth Aquatics in 1981. Records obtained by ���ϳԹ�����show that the boat passed its annual USCG inspections from 2016 through 2019, with just a handful of violations. These included, in 2017, an expired fire extinguisher, some minor electrical issues, and a failure to document both fire and abandon-ship drills,��and, in 2018, expired items in a first aid kit.

Other than these citations, the vessel met USCG standards. It maintained mandatory fire-suppression systems, including fire extinguishers and above-deck hoses. Fritzler had installed smoke detectors on board. In addition to the narrow stairway leading from the fore end of the galley to��below deck, the sleeping berths also had an emergency escape hatch—a square of plywood above one of the uppermost aft bunks that also led into the galley.��

Truth Aquatics did have a few major safety incidents over the years. In 1992, its boat Vision ran aground in the Channel Islands while carrying divers. In nearly 40 years of service, three customers (out of an estimated 450,000) drowned while diving. For most of its��patrons, however, their experience was overwhelmingly positive—one reason Fritzler was awarded the California Scuba Service Award, a lifetime-achievement commendation, in June 2019.

Every day��hundreds of similarly compliant dive boats around the world depart for multi-day trips, only to return all passengers safely and happily to the dock. But it’s also true that catastrophic accidents aren’t entirely uncommon. In a simple Google search, I found reports of at least 11 fires on liveaboard dive boats since 2000. Most of those incidents did not receive widespread coverage, like the Sea Queen II, which caught fire in the Red Sea in 2004, killing an American teacher and two students. Or the Mandarin Siren, which��incinerated in 2012 off the Indonesian coast while its customers were diving directly below (they were all rescued).��

On October 26, 2019, less than two months after the Conception fire, the Red Sea Aggressor I, owned by , based in Augusta, Georgia,��departed Egypt’s Marsa Alam for a multi-day diving trip in the Red Sea. On November 1, just after midnight, passengers below deck awoke to the smell of smoke in their forward cabins. Smoke and heat prevented them from exiting the main staircase. They tried to use the emergency hatch but could move it only a few inches—as best as they could later surmise, a crew member had placed a thin mattress beside the hatch and fallen asleep against it. As they tried desperately to wake him, Michael Houben and his dive partner were waking up in their cabin, located in the aft of the vessel. Houben says he spent 20 or 30 seconds trying to find his glasses before abandoning the search and exiting the cabin, followed by his roommate. They made it to the emergency hatch, which had been opened once the crew member awoke. Houben estimates that, had he spent another few seconds trying to find those glasses, he probably wouldn’t have survived.��

One passenger didn’t: Patricia Kessler, 54, a former naval officer and an experienced diver serving with the Justice Department at the American embassy in Tanzania.��Her cabin was next to Houben’s, who speculates that she must have taken just a few seconds longer than he did before she exited.

I corresponded by email with Wayne Brown, CEO of Aggressor ���ϳԹ���s, in November. He said that his company has��not yet received expert confirmation regarding the origin of the fire and is cooperating with local authorities in their investigation. He also said that��while Egyptian codes do not require a standing watch, his company has implemented mandatory night watches on all of its vessels in the wake of the Aggressor fire. It’s also begun testing smoke detectors with artificial smoke to ensure their reliability, and guests are now invited, as part of their orientation, to test the devices and practice using the emergency exits.��

“We hold our boats and crews to the highest standards of safety and service,” wrote Brown. “We’ll continue to do everything in our power to ensure guests enjoy their adventure with us, safely.”

But Houben, who has been perhaps the most outspoken of the Aggressor survivors in terms of the mistakes that he alleges were made on board, says that doesn’t go nearly far enough to ensure these types of disasters don’t occur again. Houben says he’s doubly disturbed because he heard there were similarities between what happened aboard the Aggressor and the Conception.

Worldwide Diving ���ϳԹ���s chartered the Conception for a Labor Day weekend trip—one that company head Kristy Finstad regularly led that time of year, often aboard a Truth Aquatics vessel. Fritzler’s crew handled logistics, meals, and the boat.����

Finstad, 41, and her husband, Dan Chua, 42, took the reins of the company from her father, Bill, in 2004. For Finstad, it was a return home. She’d grown up in the water, surfing in Baja, Mexico, and diving with her dad by the time she was eight. After graduating from college, she worked in community-based coastal restoration in Southern California.��

The diving industry was—and in a lot of ways remains—a male-dominated realm. Finstad fought hard against that, says Chua. “T���re were times abroad��on trips where women leaders didn’t��get the respect they deserved because of their gender,” he says. “She would battle through it��by being smart��and kind��and thinking out of the box��and knowing her shit.” In time��she became a role model and certified dozens of new female divers.��

In the years before the accident, Finstad and Chua took their business international, with trips to places like Borneo, South Africa, Indonesia, and French Polynesia. Those excursions weren’t cheap, but clients were guaranteed some of the best adventure diving out there.

The Channel Island excursions, by contrast, were structured to be affordable—unlimited tank refills and multiple daily dives, family-style meals in the galley, and spartan sleeping quarters down below. It wasn’t fancy, but it was fun.

Finstad’s 32 customers boarded the Conception the night of Friday, August 30. Some, like Sunil Singh Sandhu, 45, an electrical engineer��originally from Singapore and living in Silicon Valley, were brand-new to diving. Others, like Kendra Chan, 26, and her dad, Scott, 59, both from the Bay Area, were veterans to these Channel Island excursions.��

The boat departed Santa Barbara at 4 A.M. that Saturday.��Chua was out of cell range in Costa Rica for much of the weekend. But he says that if the trip followed the��typical schedule, most of the passengers would have slept through a good bit of the slog out to the islands. When they woke up, there’d be a continental breakfast and a safety briefing, then a morning dive and second hot breakfast. Guests could take multiple afternoon dives and, if they hadn’t been drinking at happy hour, there was usually the opportunity for a night dive. Each day��they’d repeat that pattern.

The waters off the Channel Islands are coarse, filled with rocky reefs and dense kelp beds. Water temperatures are in the sixties. But divers get the chance to swim with sea lions and harbor seals,��spearfish for halibut, and harvest lobster.

“It’s wonderful diving, but it’s not easy,” says Chua.��

Sunday night, September 1, Captain Boylan anchored the boat off Santa Cruz Island. After the night dive, everyone��stayed up late, celebrating the birthdays of three passengers:��Vaidehi Campbell, a water-conservation specialist just two days shy of her 42nd birthday; Michael Quitasol, who was celebrating his 63rd with his wife,��Fernisa Sisan, and three adult daughters—Evan Michel, Nicole, and Angela Rose; and Tia Salika-Adamic, whose parents had booked the family trip to commemorate her 17th birthday. Traveling with Salika-Adamic��was Berenice Felipe, 16, one of her best friends.��The daughter of Mexican-American immigrants, Felipe had lost her father when she was seven years old. Her mother, Yadira, raised her and her sister alone. Salika-Adamic��and Felipe were regular volunteers at the��animal shelter in Santa Cruz, California. And when Felipe expressed an interest in diving, the��family took her on trips to places as far-flung as Bonaire, in the Caribbean, where they worked on reef-restoration projects.��

What happened after the cake and ice cream is murky. (Boylan and the four surviving crew members have refused interviews due to ongoing investigations). What can be pieced together based on reports given to the NTSB is that 34 people, including Finstad and 26-year-old deckhand Allie Kurtz, descended the narrow ladderway in the galley near the bow of the boat to the bunks down below.��

The captain and remaining crew members, including Ryan Sims, a newly hired boat steward, eventually settled into their wheelhouse quarters (the other��crew members��haven’t been named). A former attorney for the Fritzler family said in September that one of the crew members checked the galley as late as 2:30 A.M. This detail, however, could not be confirmed with the family’s new attorney, who directed inquiries about the fire to court documents.

The preliminary NTSB report��said that Captain Boylan and four crew members were sleeping in the wheelhouse, on the top deck of the��vessel, when the blaze broke out. Just after 3 A.M., an unidentified crew member woke to a loud noise. He says he opened the door, looked down, and saw a fire billowing out of the aft end of the dining area on the main level. He then woke the others. Boylan ran to make the first Mayday call. The others tried to descend to the main deck��but could not because the ladder was on fire. With no other choice, they jumped 20 feet or so down to the main deck. Sims broke his leg in three places and injured his back and neck. With Sims unable to move,��the other three crew members say they tried to open both the double doors at the dining area of the salon and the fore windows but couldn’t access either. As the��smoke began to overtake��them, the entire crew��jumped overboard. Next, Boylan and two others��say they swam to the aft of the boat, reboarded via a ladder, and checked the engine room for fire��but saw none.

They then launched the Conception’s tender��and collected the other two crew members, including Sims, who were in the water.��There was only one other boat in the vicinity: the Grape Escape, a 60-foot fishing boat owned by Bob and Shirley Hansen, a couple who had anchored nearby for the night. Using the raft to reach the other boat, they woke the Hansens and deposited Sims, who the Hansens say was groaning in obvious pain, and Boylan, who then made the second Mayday call.��

By then��over 20 minutes had passed since the crew member first noticed the dining room was engulfed in fire. Later, in a press conference, Santa Barbara sheriff Bill Brown would say there was no indication that��anyone on the lower level made it up through the flames.��

“It was lit from one end to the other. There wasn’t a part of that boat that wasn’t on fire,” says Bob Hansen. “T��� flames were 30 feet high.”

A fire of that magnitude and in the sleeping quarters on the lower deck below the hull would mean an instant, deadly crisis for anyone down below, says Dr. Douglas Arenberg, a pulmonologist and critical-care professor of medicine at the University of Michigan Health System.����

“With a fire on a modern craft, there’s a lot of plastic and materials that are going to release lethal chemicals,” says Arenberg. Burning plastics release cyanide, he explains. The polyvinyl chloride used on the flooring and seat covers would have created poisonous plumes of hydrogen chloride. Even just the particulates in that smoke could have obstructed airways before anyone could escape.

Accessing the emergency hatch on the Conception would have required 34 people to hop from their respective beds and orient down a dark, smoke-filled walkway to the aftmost set of bunks. Then, one by one, they would have had to climb a ladder to the top bunk, lie��on their back, push open the hatch above their head, and then contort themselves up into it—if they woke up in time.

The fire would have rapidly depleted the quarters of oxygen, replacing it with lethal levels of carbon monoxide and toxic smoke. Indeed, medical examinations of the victims, a sheriff’s-office spokesperson told me later, indicated they died of carbon-monoxide poisoning.

“It’s a nightmare scenario,” says Arenberg.��

Three days after the fire, representatives from the NTSB held a press conference in Santa Barbara, not far from a memorial to the victims of the Conception fire.

The vessel had not yet been raised from the ocean floor, but NTSB member Jennifer Homendy reiterated a comment one of the crew members had made to the Hansens the night of the fire that had since been widely reported by newspapers.

“T���re was a lot of photography, videography, cameras, cell phones��that were charging on the vessel itself,” Homendy told reporters.��

Later that week, the USCG issued a marine-safety bulletin��urging boaters to “reduce potential fire hazards and consider limiting the unsupervised charging of lithium-ion batteries.”��

These statements and bulletins have done much to encourage the theory that the Conception fire was caused by an overheated lithium-ion battery in one of the passenger’s devices and plugged into one of the ad hoc charging stations in the dining area or one of the outlets in the sleeping quarters.��

There is precedent for this in the aviation world. A recent Federal Aviation Administration��report lists 252 recorded incidents involving lithium-ion battery fires on board commercial airlines since 2006. The batteries store an enormous amount of energy in a very confined space, explains Feng Lin, a professor of chemistry at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. And if multiple people were charging their devices simultaneously and in close proximity, Lin says you could have a “temperature escalation that would reduce safety features.”��

“It’s a complicated chemical reaction made even more complicated by everything else contained in the seawater,” Lin says.

Chua says he gets that. But with no evidence to substantiate the battery theory other than speculation, he thinks making that supposition public was a callous and irresponsible move while the boat was still on the ocean floor and one victim had yet to be recovered.��

“It was a random guess, with no evidence at the time, and was a slight to all the people who died and their families,” he says.��“It seemed like victim blaming to me.”

Fires such as these are notoriously difficult to investigate, because evidence that could be used to determine a specific cause is incinerated. Even if it weren’t, days sloshing around on the seafloor would render much of it difficult to analyze. Without any such specific evidence at hand, one certified fire investigator told me, the boat fire��may ultimately be classified as of “undetermined cause.”

Nevertheless, in a press conference a day after the fire, Homendy stated, “I am 100 percent��confident that our investigators will determine the cause of this fire, why it occurred, how it occurred, and what is needed to prevent it from happening again.”

I spoke with her by phone two months later, and she stood by that statement.��

“This is what we do. We investigate a lot of tragedies. And after accidents, sometimes there’s a lot of evidence and sometimes there’s little evidence,” she said. “T���re’s no doubt in my mind that, at the end of the day, we’ll have a probable cause and recommendations to vote on when we consider the final report.”

One reason for her confidence may be the fact that the NTSB considers not only the actual mechanism that ignited the fire��but also human behavior and environmental factors. For instance, when fire destroyed the Florida-based Island Lady in January 2018, the NTSB determined probable cause to be an ineffective preventative-maintenance program, along with insufficient guidance for the crew on how to operate the vessel in an overheated-engine situation. As for those lithium-ion batteries, she said the crew’s statements about the charging stations are factoring into their investigations, but so, too, are other matters like electrical wiring and galley equipment.

“We’re not ruling anything out,” Homendy told me.

The NTSB will not speculate on the cause of the fire, as the investigation is still ongoing, but one finding in the agency’s final report could be the lack of a standing night watch—a violation of UCSG rules—since the NTSB’s preliminary report found that all crew members were asleep when the blaze broke out. If the final report confirms that the ship did not have a standing night watch, the captain or vessel owner could serve up to ten��years in prison, according to U.S. code.

Regardless of the cause, the NTSB could also make recommendations concerning the size and egress of��emergency hatches, the types of onboard fire alarms, and the use of personal electronics. But Homendy reiterated that these recommendations could really include anything, and the goal of the recommendations is to ensure an event like this doesn’t happen again.

In the meantime, it’s up to both the criminal and civil courts to decide what happens next for the owners, crew, and surviving family members of the Conception.��

Three days after the fire, the Fritzlers evoked a maritime statute from the 19th century��that limits financial liability to the value of the vessel (which is currently zero) and mandates that all claims be filed within six months of the accident, making it difficult for some surviving family members to seek compensation. In January, four of the victims’ families, including Kurtz’s, ��challenging the Friztlers’��effort to invoke the obscure law.��Among the safety violations the filing alleges��is that Truth Aquatics failed to provide a safe way to store and charge lithium-ion batteries, as required by the USCG.����

Meanwhile, Sims has sued��Truth Aquatics for pain and suffering, alleging that the Conception was not properly maintained and outfitted with safety equipment. Sims also alleges that he and other crew members were not adequately trained for emergencies such as the one that led to his injuries. A similar lawsuit��has been filed by the widow of Justin Dignam, 58, who died in the fire. Her suit alleges that the vessel didn’t have adequate smoke detectors or firefighting equipment, it lacked enough emergency exits, and a required night watch was not on duty when the flames broke, according to the��lawsuit filed in federal court. (Truth Aquatics and its attorneys did not respond to multiple requests for comment regarding��the allegations made in the two��lawsuits and��claims filed by victims’ families.)��

On Capitol Hill, congresspeople are pointing fingers at the Coast Guard. The agency is responsible for creating and enforcing safety standards, inspecting vessels, and launching rescue and recovery operations. In November, after the ��that the Coast Guard rejected recommendations to improve fire safety, the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure’s subcommittee on Coast Guard and maritime transportation called Rear Admiral Richard Timme, the assistant commandant for prevention policy, to testify. Members chided him for what they saw as a “track record of inaction” when it came to requiring changes suggested by the NTSB, particularly those following maritime tragedies.

In December, California senator Dianne Feinstein, along with representatives Julia Brownley and Salud Carbajal, introduced the , which endeavors to shore up safety measures by requiring multiple egresses (which exit into different parts of the vessel), strengthening��requirements for integrated fire-alarm systems, and restricting��the use of lithium-ion batteries on board.

“T��� Conception boat fire was a tragedy that could have been prevented had stronger safety measures been in place,”��said Feinstein.��“We must ensure that small passenger vessels have the right safety measures in place to prevent disasters at sea.”

Chua says he’s all for common-sense regulations. But he��doesn’t want to see elected officials insisting on knee-jerk changes just to make people feel better. Any new regulation, he says, has to make sense and promote safety.

In the meantime, he’s trying to put his life back together. Kristy Finstad wasn’t just the love of his life, she was also the heart and soul of their business. Worldwide Diving ���ϳԹ���s has been on hiatus since the fire. Chua says he’ll run the trips already scheduled for 2020, but handling both logistics and grief has been hard. After these trips are done, he doesn’t know what’ll be next.

“It was always a team effort on trips between Kristy and myself, and it’s really hard to not have your partner next to you,” he says. “Sometimes I look to my side��and just see an enormous empty space where she would have been, and my heart just aches.”

The post A Boat Fire Killed 34 People, and We May Never Know Why appeared first on ���ϳԹ��� Online.

On October 15, two Appalachian Trail thru-hikers were escorted off a Frontier Airlines flight at Boston’s Logan airport. The duo (who asked not to be named) had just completed their northbound hike��and said they stopped to shower and change into clean clothes before arriving at the airport. Nevertheless, shortly after boarding, they were approached by crew members, who said they would not be allowed to fly because at least one of them had what was deemed to be offensive body odor. The hikers were walked off the plane, provided with travel-size��toiletry��bags, and told they could try to fly again the next day.

Back in the terminal, the hikers posted a tongue-in-cheek photo on a Facebook page for hikers. “First taste of the real world,” they wrote. “Now we’re in Boston with no way to get home.”

This elicited all kinds of responses from fellow backpackers, ranging from outrage (“Total bullshit!��They should have let you fly!”) to empathy for the other passengers (“I wouldn’t even let my husband ride home in my car after he finished his hike!”). And it included, perhaps not surprisingly, all kinds of advice, ranging from the obvious (“Did you try deodorant?”) to the downright dangerous (“Douse yourself in Febreze and rub hand sanitizer in your armpits!”).��

I contacted both hikers, along with Frontier. The two backpackers and the airline both said there had been some extenuating circumstances that hadn’t been made clear in the viral Facebook post—namely, that the hikers were flying on buddy passes (standby tickets provided to airline employees), because one of the hiker’s relatives works for the company. A Frontier spokesperson explained that passengers flying on these nonrevenue-generating tickets are held to a higher standard for personal hygiene. But, like most airlines, Frontier also has a general policy concerning such matters.

“At Frontier Airlines we love the outdoors and welcome adventurers onboard our flights every day,” Zach Kramer, manager of corporate communications, said in an email. “T��� comfort of our customers while onboard is always top of mind and our team will work with passengers to ensure everyone has an enjoyable flying experience on Frontier, including addressing any hygiene-related concerns that may affect fellow flyers.”

Eventually, the two hikers contacted a friend in Boston, who drove them to a thrift store to buy new clothes and let them take another shower at her��house. They managed to fly home the next day.��

They are far from alone. Last year, a family of three was escorted off an American Airlines flight after passengers complained about what they called offensive body odor. The airline booked the family on another flight and gave them vouchers for meals and a hotel,��though they told that the vouchers didn’t work and they weren’t allowed to retrieve their luggage. In 2016, a Nigerian woman and her children from a United Airlines flight bound for San Francisco from Houston for similar reasons.

It’s obviously not for us to say whether any of these individuals smelled offensive when they boarded their respective flights. But if you’ve spent any time around long-distance backpackers��or other endurance athletes, you know the funk is real. So how can you make sure you get home after your next big adventure? Here are a few tips to get you past more than security.

Read the Airline Policy Before You Fly

I reached out to several major airlines. Of those that responded to my inquiries,��all have policies concerning personal hygiene. An American Airlines representative pointed me to the fine print on its��tickets, which state��that all passengers must “be respectful that your odor isn’t offensive (unless it’s caused by a disability or illness).” Delta stipulates that you can be removed if your “hygiene or odor creates an unreasonable risk of offense or annoyance to other passengers.” Ditto for Southwest and all members of the Lufthansa group. The former told me it��handles each potential BO��situation on a case-by-case basis. A rep from Lufthansa told me, “We rely on our crew to use fair, reasonable judgement in making such a decision. Our guests’ safety and comfort is of the utmost priority, and they are asked to make decisions that ensure both.”

Technically, none of these airlines have to rebook you or compensate you for your ticket, but most of the representatives I spoke with��said they will make every attempt possible to get you on another flight—provided you smell better by then.

Don’t Assume You Can Skirt By on Trains or Buses

Amtrak also has a policy of refusing to carry passengers “whose personal hygiene makes them offensive.” Greyhound didn’t respond to several requests for information, but its�� says the company is a “stickler” about not allowing unruly behavior. It’s not clear whether or not that includes the way a person smells, but the reports that a person was banned from municipal buses in Washington State because he smelled like pot smoke. Residents of Hawaii are a little more tolerant: the city of Honolulu��permanently tabled a proposal to fine stinky bus riders there after residents objected to the language.

Know the Science

We have two major types of sweat glands in our bodies, says Dr. Marlyanne Pol-Rodriguez, a dermatologist and clinical assistant professor at the Stanford Medicine Outpatient Center. Eccrine glands, which are located near the surface of the skin, are pretty much everywhere on our bodies. They secrete a mixture of water, electrolytes,��and salt, which is��virtually odor-free. Apocrine glands, on the other hand, are located primarily in our armpits, chest, and genital region. These glands secrete a combination of sweat and oil, which feeds bacteria located on our bodies. When that��bacteria breaks down��thicker, richer sweat, it��results in odor, says Pol-Rodriguez.

Be Proactive

According to Pol-Rodriguez, one way to prevent excessive body odor from accumulating is to use antibacterial soap when you shower at hiker hostels or motels. And��while hikers are often loathe to carry any more weight than they have to, Pol-Ridriguez says it’s definitely worth it to stash a small pouch of baby wipes in your pack and use them often. The good news: because apocrine glands are so centrally located, you can really economize on where you wipe, and make that quarter-pound��bag of baby wipes last for days.

Skip the Chemicals

Pol-Rodriguez is pretty wary of any body-odor-removal regimen��that includes applying cleaners or high doses of hand sanitizer or cologne directly to your skin. “T���re’s just too much in them that might irritate the skin—especially if you have to sit for a long flight,” she says. If you think you need to go beyond soap and wipes, she recommends using superdiluted vinegar (as little as a tablespoon or two per��cup��of water) when you bathe.

Clothes and Gear Smell Worse Than You

It’s particularly hard to get odor out of clothes, says Pol-Rodriguez. She favors products like OxiClean for getting funk out of garments you really want to hang onto. If you or someone you know can ship you some clean clothes before you board a plane, that’s��half the battle. Buying new or used ones is a good plan, too—just be sure to wash them first. Oftentimes companies will spray clothes with chemicals to stabilize colors and keep them looking new, she says.��And clothes that have been sitting around a warehouse can be filled with dust mites, which��can also cause skin irritation.����

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It’s just past 8��A.M. in Caratunk, a tiny town in western Maine. Already��half a dozen have lined up on the west bank of the Kennebec River.��Three hundred feet across, on the opposing bank, two more backpackers wait quietly, their thin legs and gear draped over a fallen log.

At exactly ten minutes to nine, Greg Caruso ambles down a short gravel trail. Caruso, 49, looks exactly like Hollywood’s version of a Maine guide: fit, clean-shaven, wearing Carhartts, water shoes, and a fleece vest. He carries with him a beaten paperback and a dog bowl. Maggie, his two-year-old golden retriever, trots behind. Once they reach the two hikers, Maggie knows the drill. She gives them a quick hi and then gets busy gnawing on a stick. Caruso, meanwhile, turns upright��a battle-scarred canoe.

He unlocks the bike chain that keeps the boat tethered to a slender��maple tree, then pulls out a couple of ripe PFDs��and a clipboard filled with unsigned waivers.

The taller of the two hikers��helps him schlep the 17-foot canoe down to the water’s edge. From there��we can see that the queue on the other bank is growing—about a dozen hikers now, all standing obediently single file, as if waiting for a carnival ride or an overpriced cup of coffee.

Caruso surveys the��crowd on the opposite bank with a grin. This time of year, it’s the same scene pretty much every morning.

“Rush-hour traffic,” he says.

Thru-hikers on the 2,200-mile Appalachian Trail cross plenty of streams and rivers (Maine alone has over 20 that are 30 feet or wider). Some the hikers must��ford, while others are spanned by everything from boardwalks to elaborate suspension bridges. Only one demands you get in a canoe. For the past four years, Caruso has been the ferryman for that canoe. And that makes him the only official AT river driver��and the only one you’ll meet on any of the 11 national scenic trails.

The Kennebec has always been an imposing, capricious river. In 1775, it fouled up Benedict Arnold’s notorious march on Quebec. When tourists began visiting the area in the late 19th century, an enterprising hotel owner soon realized that the only way to get guests was to ferry them across the river himself—which he did for decades, using a flat-bottomed boat. He was still at it when the began siting the nascent trail. An existing ferryman was a lot cheaper than a bridge, so those at the conference��decided to route the trail at this particular crossing.

By World War II, the ferry had fallen out of favor with��paying hotel guests, so the innkeeper discontinued the service. The few hikers who attempted��this section of trail were left to their own devices when it came to crossing, an endeavor that became even more perilous after the 1955 installation of a massive hydroelectric dam:��at 175 feet high and 270 feet across, Harris Station Dam is the largest in the state of Maine. Each day it��releases a wall of water—sometimes as much as 8,000 cubic feet per second. That release creates some of the best whitewater paddling in the East. It also makes it some of the most dangerous.

Throughout the AT’s history, there have been��at least a few drowning near misses, as hikers made bad choices crossing the river. Then, in 1985, Alice and George��Ference, two experienced section hikers, attempted to ford the river. Alice, who did so wearing her full pack, was swept away and drowned. With an increasing��number of hikers on the trail, safety at the Kennebec had already become an issue. Ference’s death made it an imperative, says Hawk Metheny, Northeast regional director of the ��(ATC).

The only precedent the group��could find anywhere in the country was the Pacific Northwest Scenic Trail, which requires a 30-minute ride on a car ferry across Puget Sound. But that was a different scale entirely. So it��commissioned a study to consider options.

“We reviewed everything,” says Metheny. “We considered a suspension bridge. We looked at rerouting the trail, installing a zip-line cable car. We wanted to do our due diligence, so everything was on the table.”

A bridge, it was��soon determined, would not just be prohibitively expensive��but would also require clearing trees and building roads for construction vehicles. And given the massive ice jams��that flow down the river each spring, it just wasn’t viable, unless it��made the span and supporting towers ginormous. A cable car might have been fun, but it hardly fit the rugged character of the AT.

Rerouting the trail to an existing road bridge was definitely the most feasible alternative, says Metheny. It has been done before, at big AT river crossings like the Hudson in New York and the Susquehanna in Pennsylvania. But the whole point of the trail is to get off roads and away from the hustle and bustle of civilization.

And so��in 1987,��the ATC decided to return to the Kennebec’s roots and reestablish the ferry system. A local rafting company donated the canoe and some other gear. The ATC hung special warnings urging hikers not to cross on their own (however, each year��about a dozen do anyway). Knowing that hikers are a superstitious lot, the group��also painted a blaze in the bottom of the canoe—just to make it official.

“Purists want to walk every inch of the trail,” says Metheny. “So we designated the canoe as an official part of the AT.”

Today, Caruso’s boat is the only approved way to cross the river—and to complete a thru-hike. It’s an expensive proposition for the ATC, which doesn’t charge hikers for the trip across the waterway. The service is underwritten in part by the dam’s operator, Brookfield Renewable;��like many hydroelectric dams in the U.S., Harris’s Federal Energy Regulatory Commission license includes a provision for safe recreational opportunities on the river. Usually, that means planned��dam releases for the rafting industry. In this case, it also includes getting hikers across.

At the height of the annual hiking bubble, Caruso works five hours a day,��seven days a week��(compared to��just two hours a day during��the shoulder seasons). That’s presented some scheduling challenges, like when ultramarathoner Scott Jurek blew through the area in his 2015 fastest-known-time attempt. He hit the Kennebec at night, long after the ferry was locked up for the day. It took an enterprising local race organizer willing to track down a canoe on social media and drive it across the state to get Jurek across. Had he failed to come through, it could have cost Jurek over ten��hours and possibly the FKT title.

Caruso is the fourth guide to ferry hikers across the river. He grew up in Millinocket, Maine, which sits in the shadow of Mount Katahdin, the AT’s northernmost terminus. Both of his grandparents worked in the former mill there. His uncles and dad did, too. The mill closed its doors before Caruso took his turn. Wilderness guiding, he says, was pretty much the only industry left. He took his first raft-guiding job after a couple years of college.��Twenty-seven years later, he was still guiding hunting, fishing, and rafting trips on the Kennebec and other rivers in the area��when the former ferryman retired. His job, says Caruso, seemed like a pretty good alternative to pushing 2,000 pounds of rubber and people through Class IV rapids every day, so he applied.��

“I mean, where else is an old raft guide going to go?” he likes to joke.

On a busy day, he’ll shuttle 50 hikers back and forth, through the currents and rising water levels.��Other days��he’ll sit for hours waiting for a single passenger.

He’s learned to make adjustments for both. When things get hectic, he deputizes his two sons to get waivers signed and hand out life jackets. When things are slow, he’ll fly-fish or dip into a paperback, like��, a lightly fictionalized account of Benedict Arnold’s attempt up that same river. Caruso has read it cover to cover each of the four seasons he’s been working here.

“Not much has changed in this spot,” he says. “Reading that book, it’s easy to imagine what things were like here in the 1700s.”

Except, of course, for the boats themselves. His is a fiberglass Old Town canoe with more patches than original glass. It’s got a few other choice modifications as well. A couple of years ago, Caruso replaced the boat’s center thwart with a cane seat so that he could take two hikers and their gear at a time. He figured most hikers were an emaciated lot and that��the cane would more than support them. He was surprised, then,��to see a��range of body types on the trail. One particularly husky hiker snapped the seat in half. Today��it’s��jury-rigged with enforcements made out of a piece of driftwood, a broken tent pole, and a whole lot of white athletic tape.

He’s gotten used to the hiker funk, which lingers in the canoe and on the PFDs long after he’s taken his last customer of the day. And he says he’s grown to really value the two minutes or so that he shares with each passenger. Southbound hikers are just 150 miles into their journey when they meet Caruso—still wide-eyed about the trail and sorting out their gear. Most northbounders��are just ten days from finishing and getting that last, euphoric second wind. He says he’s surprised by how many international hikers there are��and how many generations are represented. He’s taken some of them fishing; others just want to hang out with Maggie for a while. Along the way, he’s memorized where every boulder is on the stretch of water, and he can get even the most uncoordinated hiker in and out of the canoe without dampening the bottom of their shoe.

The current Brookfield energy license and its allowance for the ferry expires in 2036. Metheny hopes a canoe will be moving hikers across the river until then—and well into the future.

“Part of what makes the Appalachian Trail so special is its diversity and unique situations. The ferry has become a part of the cultural experience here,” says Metheny. “We’re not just interested in the tangible and the practical.��We also want to preserve the experiential.”

Last year, Caruso ferried over 2,500 hikers across the river, along with 41 dogs and untold pounds of gear.

“If I get many more, I’m going to need a party boat. Or at least a second canoe,” says Caruso. “But I’m definitely not complaining. Every day is a good day at the office here.”

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When Will “Akuna” Robinson reached the northern terminus of the Continental Divide Trail in Glacier National Park on Sunday, September 15, he wasn’t thinking about race and gender or PTSD or ceiling-shattering accomplishments. Instead, his first thought was one of mild terror: What if he was dreaming the completion of this 3,100-mile trail? Already��there’d been high water to ford and nearly unprecedented snowpack. He’d strained his Achilles tendon, further complicating old injuries to his hips and knees. Maybe this moment, hugging the marker designating the U.S. border with Canada, was just a cruel figment of his imagination.

“I was literally thinking, God, what if this is a dream and I’m actually sleeping in a flooded tent back in Colorado?” he told me.

It took Robinson, who is 38 and a combat veteran, a few minutes to persuade himself he’d actually made it. And then, like any thru-hiker, his thoughts immediately turned to all the food he intended to eat: boiled shrimp, po’boys, sausage—real Louisiana fare.

When I caught up with him via��cell phone, he was actually sitting in the parking lot of one of his favorite New Orleans take-out places, ready to make up for months of living on energy bars and instant noodles. He’d have gotten there sooner, he said, but he needed to finish doing some filming for a new documentary about his experience and a couple of TV appearances, along with an appointment at a��Veterans Administration hospital.

And while all of this was preventing him from digging into classic Big Easy cuisine, it’s also what makes the completion of his hike so extraordinary. Robinson is the first recorded African American male to complete hiking’s triple crown—the Appalachian, Pacific Crest, and Continental Divide Scenic Trails (we say recorded because the , which maintains records of triple-crown recipients “on the honor system,” does not maintain records regarding race, gender, or other demographics). Fewer than 400 people have logged their completed triple crown on the ALDHA web page. Last year, became the first recorded African American woman to complete the same��feat.

“It’s pretty wild that it took until 2019 for this record to happen,” Robinson says. “But when you get out on the trail, you kind of understand why.”

Growing up in coastal Louisiana, Robinson saw his fair share of racism and discrimination. When he began his first long-distance hike, in 2016, he was hyperaware that he was a minority on the trail. And he was also more than a little wary of the prejudice he might experience there.

“I didn’t know if I’d be accepted on the trail,” he says. “So I tended to isolate myself—I’d camp alone, I never shared rooms with anyone. I was definitely on guard.”

Still, he knew he had to be there.

After graduating from��high school, he enlisted in the Army. In 2003, he was deployed to Iraq, where he was tasked with repairing the electronic systems on Apache helicopters. He spent his��downtime thumbing��through boxes of books sent by well-meaning civilians. In one��he found a discarded guide to the Pacific Crest Trail. He’d never heard of the PCT, but thumbing through that guidebook became his escape from the ugliness of war.

During his deployment, Robinson developed PTSD. He returned home physically wounded as well: a shattered right wrist required six surgeries to partially reconstruct, mostly out of metal. He walks with knee braces and a constant limp on account of a hip injury. And throughout all the surgeries and rehabilitation for his injuries, Robinson’s PTSD became worse. It was further complicated by intensifying anxiety and depression.

“I came back broken. I didn’t think I had a future at that point,” he says in a��short biopic documentary produced by Merrell, which sponsors Robinson.

Therapy wasn’t working, he says. Neither were medications prescribed for the mental trauma. Over the next decade, he began to isolate himself more and more, sometimes staying in his room for days on end. He says he self-medicated with alcohol and painkillers.

“Nothing made sense anymore,” says Robinson. “If I didn’t do something drastic, it wasn’t going to go much further.”

Then, one night in 2016, he was channel surfing on his TV and stumbled upon a rebroadcast of��Wild, the film based on Cheryl Strayed’s bestselling memoir. There was Reese Witherspoon, shouldering an oversize��backpack as she struggled down the trail. And as she passed a mile marker, Robinson had one thought,��I bet she’s on the PCT. He grabbed his phone and Googled the movie and the book. And sure enough: here was the trail that had kept him occupied in Iraq, now in living color in his bedroom.

“I had tried so many things by that point,” he says now. “I had gotten really good at hiding things, but I still hadn’t solved anything. And so I thought, Maybe this is what it’s going to take.”

Robinson admits he didn’t know a thing about hiking. He’d never heard of ,��a World War II vet and the first person to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail, who famously said he did so to “walk the Army out of my system.” Nor did he know about initiatives like��, a nonprofit organization that��helps other veterans��complete the big three scenic trails, along with other endurance opportunities (though he did contact the group��later for tips on gear that veterans could afford).

But he did know this was the only option left. And so he spent that entire night and much of the next morning ordering gear online and reading about��how to be a thru-hiker.

In the spring of 2016, three weeks after seeing the movie, Robinson��was at the southern terminus of the Pacific Crest Trail. His only experience with having a pack on his back were ruck marches in basic training.

“I literally had no idea what I was doing,” he says.

But as soon as he was on trail, he fell in love with the experience. A fellow hiker quickly dubbed him “Akuna,” a nod to the Swahili phrase Hakuna Matata meaning “no worries,” popularized by a song in The Lion King.

Still, the physical demands of the trail caught up with him. Recurring knee problems sabotaged that first PCT attempt, in 2016, but he returned and completed the trail��the trail the following year. Before he had even returned to Louisiana, he had committed to doing the other big two. Last year��he tackled the AT. About 40 miles in, he ran into Dawn “Undecided” Potts, another thru-hiker. They’d met for about five minutes on the PCT in 2017, and both remembered the encounter. They spent the rest of their hikes together and became romantic partners along the way (they also hiked the Continental Divide Trail together this year.)

Some 7,000 miles later, Robinson says he’s become accustomed to the stares and even eye rolls prompted by his being a hiker of color. And he thinks the lack of diversity still seen on our national trails can make being there a heavy burden for racial and ethnic minorities.

“I still encounter so many people who say they’ve never hiked with a person of color,” says Robinson. “And so I feel like I have to be an ambassador for my race. That can making hiking tough.��In addition to all the hiker logistics, I’m also always trying to make sure I’m on my very best behavior so that things are easier for the next African American on the trail. That can be super stressful.”

He says he’s heartened by some of the diversity initiatives launched by Merrell and other outdoor brands.

“If more people of color, more LGBTQ people, more veterans start seeing themselves represented outside, they’ll feel safer there. And then they’ll be more likely to get involved.”

Back in coastal Louisiana, Robinson has begun volunteering with��, a nonprofit organization dedicated to addressing the lack of outdoor opportunities for��kids in New Orleans. He’s been sharing his own trail experience in schools there, hoping he can inspire the next generation of hikers of color.

“Growing up, a lot of kids don’t get that experience. We’re told that we don’t belong outside or that’s not what we do. And so we decide that it’s altogether off limits for us.”

More than ever, Robinson wants to change that. He says there’s no doubt in his mind that hiking saved his life.

As he and Potts neared the end of the CDT last week, he decided to forego the fast-food-restaurant paper crowns that a lot of people wear when they complete their third big thru-hike. He wanted one that really reflected who he was—a legit crown, with some real bling, and a fleur-de-lis to pay tribute to his beloved New Orleans. He found the perfect one online and had it shipped to a resupply stop just outside Glacier National Park.

Donning it near then northern terminus, Robinson says he knew that crown was made for him. “I put it on, and all I could think was, I’m somebody in this moment. I’m actually, truly somebody.”

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Four hundred years ago in August, two British pirate ships arrived in��Jamestown, Virginia, carrying dozens of enslaved Africans, who��they sold to colonists, precipitating more than 200 years of government-sanctioned slavery in America. As the nation reflects on that solemn anniversary, it’s��also struggling with a history of racism and exclusion in its national parks and wilderness spaces.��

Increased attention to this history by scholars, activists, and the parks themselves seeks to ameliorate many of the practices that excluded people of color from our wilderness spaces. At��,��the effort to reconcile with its past begin several years ago, with��an interpretive exhibit��focused on the history of segregation there, one of the country’s first parks to confront this painful legacy. Continuing that work, Shenandoah and��four other national parks��in Virginia are��now involved in a unique, comprehensive historical study that will provide��a more complete picture of segregation in those places through archival research and oral histories of those who experienced it. Once it’s finished, the project can be used to develop more installations��and resources that��tell the stories of African Americans in the parks.

But it’s a difficult process, and for��Shenandoah and��the outdoor industry at large it's one that has many asking how our nation’s parks can ever truly feel welcoming to all.��

Accessibility to our national parks has been fraught from the start. Despite being designated as federal��lands, individual parks’��superintendents deferred to local or state laws and customs when crafting park policies.��When Shenandoah National Park opened in 1934, there was a general sense of confusion about who was allowed where—particularly where people of color were concerned.

“Basically, the park was segregated on an ad hoc basis,” says Erin Devlin, associate professor of history and American studies at the University of Mary Washington, who is leading the study of the five national parks in Virginia. African American visitors wrote letters of complaint both to the park and the Department of the Interior, reporting that rangers told them certain areas of the park were off-limits to them. Some white visitors also wrote letters to the National Park Service, arguing that this kind of race-based practice was un-American. But the policies continued.

In the summer of 1937, J. Ralph Lassiter, Shenandoah’s first superintendent, received a distraught letter from a staff member at the Department of the Interior. “T���re is a growing demand for picnic areas for colored people,” wrote the Interior staff member. “Two bus loads are going up tomorrow and they have to be fitted into camping places for white people. This is not a good condition.”

Park employees agreed. And so the Park Service��settled upon a controversial plan: It would create Lewis Mountain,��an area with campsites, cabins, and concession facilities, for African Americans. It��would simultaneously designate Pinnacles, a popular picnic area, as an officially integrated facility. While never officially stated, it was nonetheless understood that the rest of the park would remain the sole purview of white visitors.

“By creating duplicative facilities in the national parks, the NPS was doing more than state governments were doing at the time��but��also accommodating local laws and customs regarding segregation,” says Devlin.��

Lewis Mountain thrived as a destination after opening in 1939. Thanks largely to the vision of its longtime manager, Lloyd Tutt, the lodge there quickly became known for its outstanding food and big-band music. Meanwhile, white visitors began begging admission to the facilities, and Tutt�� in the facility’s dining room and lodge. But many African American park-goers still felt contained.

Devlin interviewed dozens of the earliest visitors to Shenandoah for her��study. “T���ir experience was that integration was a one-way street,” says Devlin. “White people wanted to enjoy what Lewis Mountain had to offer, but they also didn’t want African Americans coming into areas designated for white use.”

Further complicating the problem was the matter of how such areas should be marked. Early maps to Shenandoah labeled Lewis Mountain as a segregated facility, but that designation was soon removed from official literature—some officials didn’t want African Americans��visiting��the area, while others worried that official designations would codify the practice of segregation and make it harder to repeal.��

Some rangers at entrance stations began drawing an arrow to mark��Lewis Mountain when African American visitors asked for a map of the area. As far as Devlin can tell, they didn’t mark the integrated facilities at Pinnacles. And some may not have marked any areas at all.��“You can see how that decentralized strategy put a lot of power in the hands of the park and allowed them to dictate their vision of how they thought people should move through the park,” she says.

Shenandoah began a more formal practice of integration in 1947, which it completed at least nominally in 1950, but substantial barriers still existed for would-be visitors who were black, says Camille T. Dungy, professor of English at Colorado State University and editor of��.

While Shenandoah experimented with desegregation, segregated��gas stations, restaurants, and hotels made it difficult to get to the parks, says Dungy. The history of antagonism in wilderness spaces made it so that African American visitors had no��way to know if they would��be safe once they got there.��

For many African Americans, says Dungy, the message was clear: parks and wild spaces were off-limits. And that, she says, has been passed down in some families. “T���re are a lot of people who, for very valid reasons, can’t walk into a grove of trees without feeling terrified.”

But that��is only one experience of being black in the wilderness, Dungy says.��“T���re is also long tradition in African American writing of people who really loved the land, who hiked and hunted and camped. It’s a tradition going back to the 19th century, when��black people would self-emancipate by turning to bayous and swamps,” she says.��“And it’s largely ignored in contemporary conversations about nature.”

The trick��is how to acknowledge that both realities are equally true, she says.

Creating an atmosphere of inclusion in the national parks has remained challenging. In 1994, after National Parks magazine��ran a story about the importance of diversity within our parks, it was��besieged with letters condemning such efforts.

“Many of us look to the parks as an escape from the problems ethnic minorities create. Please don’t modify our parks to destroy our oasis,”��.��

In 2013, the National Park Service created the��. That office did not respond to my repeated requests for an interview, but its��website defines its��mission as working “to integrate the principles and practices of relevancy, diversity, and inclusion throughout the National Park Service.” , a campaign intended to help all Americans connect to��National Park Service sites, was launched in 2016 as part of the Park Service’s��centenary celebration. It includes interviews with African American park rangers��Shelton Johnson, who works at Yosemite, and Ahmad Toure, who serves at Great Falls Park in Virgina.��

Around that same time, Shenandoah created an interpretive installation that guides visitors through the park’s history of��segregation��and recounts the story��of places like Lewis Mountain and the African Americans who made it possible—one of the first such exhibits to acknowledge the history of racial segregation in our national parks.��

But a�� published by the George Wright Society found that, in the national parks surveyed, less��than 2 percent of recent visitors were African American. (A 2017�� put the number higher, stating that 7 percent of all visitors were black, still a disproportionately small number.)

The authors of the George Wright Society study pointed to a variety of factors, ranging from harassment��by��white visitors, a generational sense of exclusion, and inconsistencies in national parks feeling relevant��to the experiences of some African Americans.

Scholar Myron Floyd has made a��career of studying that experience and how it translates into park usage. He points to all of the benefits—physical, psychological, emotional—that come from time spent in these places. And he worries what a continued gap in usage might mean, especially for our youngest generations. “Not having access to all those benefits because of income, race, or ethnicity is a huge equity issue,” he says.

He’d like to see parks dedicate more resources to installations like the one at Shenandoah. “People want to see themselves. They want to hear their stories,” he says. “Even in large-scale landscapes, like wilderness parks, they want to know that they have a place there.”

That kind of inclusion is important because it also makes it harder for white people to believe that wilderness belongs exclusively to them, Floyd��says.

Claire Comer, the interpretive specialist at Shenandoah National Park, says that they’ve contracted with Devlin to create a comprehensive history of race at the park. And she’d like to see more experiential installations, like the cooperative project Devlin and her students recently helped to complete at��, also in Virginia, which shows visitors firsthand the systematic inequities in basic aspects of the park, like restrooms.

The first task of this study, she says, is to excavate as much of the history of inequality as they can and make sure it’s located in a national context of segregation and discrimination. With that, they can create materials like an interactive curriculum and interpretive panels. (But they’re not quite sure where those resources will come from yet.)

In the meantime, Floyd and Dungy say it’s important to take a holistic approach to inclusion. That means diversifying Park Service employees (at last count,�� were white, according to agency data) and creating a safe working environment (according to��, at least 39 percent of Park Service��employees reported they had experienced harassment while on the job). It also includes expanding partnerships with groups��like��, a nonprofit organization with a dedicated mission of cultivating and inspiring African American experiences in the natural world.

“I still hear too many stories that are exclusionary—of African Americans being treated like aberrations in our parks,” says Dungy. “It’s like people truly cannot understand what a black body is doing there because no representations of wilderness suggest that they should be there.”

It’s a challenging proposition, warns Floyd, but one that benefits all of us if we can pull it off. “Our parks tell the stories of our nation,” he says. “T���y are a place where we can demonstrate what makes us the United States—the place where out of many came one. And that means they should also be a place that truly invites all American people to come.”

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Looking back now, I see that the crisis was largely driven by my own hubris.

After failing spectacularly at raising a wild little husky puppy named Ari, I����about my foibles and the inner workings of a dog’s brain. I interviewed canine behaviorists and certified trainers and read every book I could find on operant conditioning. I was convinced I had become an expert.

I managed to maintain the delusion after Ari’s death��three years ago. I continued the misapprehension in the months following, when I adopted Leka, a 14-week-old shepherd mix rescued from a ditch in Mississippi. Leka, unlike Ari, attended a fantastic day school for puppies and became the ideal trail dog—an enthusiastic partner for any backpacking or running project.

She has her quirks—like screaming at the top of her lungs when we visit the vet or try to bathe her—as well as��a��general distrust of dog biscuits and physical affection and toddlers. But these idiosyncrasies aside, Leka is mostly a happy, social dog. So this��spring, my partner, Bill, and I��assumed that Leka would be thrilled to play big sister to an adopted canine sibling.

In preparation for the arrival of our new rescue puppy, Maddox, we��shifted Leka’s feeding schedule and scooped up all her favorite toys, replacing them with neutral ones about which she’d feel less possessive. We��bought Maddox his own beds and dishes, along with baby gates to separate the dogs whenever they needed alone time.

Maddox, a gangly mixed breed, arrived late on a Thursday night. He was as sweet and gentle as his foster mother had promised. Bill��and I watched with relieved gratification when, a couple hours later, Leka engaged him in a gentle game of backyard tag. We congratulated ourselves whenever she sat outside Maddox’s crate or shared a toy.

But as the first week of our blended family came to a close, Leka’s satisfaction with this new arrangement dissipated. She began to sigh whenever Maddox would steal a stuffie or help himself to her treat. She began slinking out of the room whenever he entered. By the end of that second week, Leka’s condition devolved into what can only be called a full-on panic attack. That Friday afternoon, I sat on the couch with a shaking 45-pound shepherd panting in my lap, her heart rate fast enough to detonate any electrocardiograph. Maddox, meanwhile, prowled around below our feet, alternately chewing and peeing on a once lovely area rug.

And I? I sat, surveyed the scene, and began to cry. The house was a disaster. Bill and I were both sleep-deprived. Maddox was a feral hyena who desperately missed his siblings, and Leka was in the midst of a nervous breakdown.

Clearly, I had ruined everyone’s life.

Eventually, Bill returned home from work and sequestered Leka in our bedroom. They spent the evening sharing snacks and enjoying the collective peace afforded by a closed door. Meanwhile, I stopped crying just long enough to clean the rug and take Maddox for a walk. ���ϳԹ���, in the clarifying summer twilight, I was finally willing to admit my own ignorance.

I didn’t know nearly enough about introducing a new dog into an existing one’s life. It was time to summon some more experts.��So I reached out to five leading animal trainers and behaviorists to figure out where we ran off the rails.

We’re finally��back on track, and Maddox has been a part of our family for two months now. Would I do it again? Absolutely. But not before heeding the following advice.

Start with Some Soul-Searching

A lot of people are under the misapprehension that dogs are pack animals, but that’s just not true, says��, a professor of��clinical animal behavior��at the University of California at Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. “Dogs are social animals, like humans,” she says. “That doesn’t mean they always want to be around other dogs.” Her own pet is more than content being the only dog in the house. It’s important to have a sense of whether your dog shares those introverted proclivities. If your dog hasn’t spent a lot of sustained time around other dogs, consider borrowing a friend’s pup for a weekend or arranging��well-monitored��playtime at a dog park or other off-leash area to get a better sense of how it��behaves in social settings.

Play a Little Hard to Get

There are so many dogs in need, it can be tempting to jump into a new relationship based on a photo or sad story. But it’s imperative to know whether or not that dog’s temperament is a good match for your existing canine, warns , a canine trainer and an author of�� on dog interactions and aggression. Ask questions of the rescue organization or shelter;��oftentimes, words like “energetic” and “devoted” can be codes for behavioral issues. If a trial period is possible before adopting, take it. “T��� worst thing that can happen to a resident dog is for them to live in a house where it’s violent,” she says. “It’s like telling your partner you’ve rented out a room to Hannibal Lecter, but don’t worry, he won’t use our bathroom.”��

Take It Slow—Super Slow

You’d probably advise against a good friend going on a monthlong vacation with someone they just swiped on Tinder. It’s no different in the dog world, says trainer and puppy specialist��. “T���re’s a reason blind dates usually take place over dinner and a movie,” she says. “Brief, activity-driven interactions build comfort and prevent us from going too far down a bad road.” She recommends taking your resident dog and new dog on what she calls “parallel walks,” where the dogs are close enough to smell and observe each other but not interact physically. Back at home, use crates and baby gates to keep the dogs separated for all but limited, supervised interaction.��

Solve Your Resident Dog’s Bad Behaviors First

A new, younger dog is going to look to your resident dog for guidance, says Sternberg. “If your current dog barks at other dogs on the street, he will teach those behaviors to the new dog,” she explains. Ditto, she says, if your resident dog bolts every time you open the door or tears apart the house whenever you leave. If you’re working on issues with your current dog—especially aggressive behaviors—now isn’t the time to add to the family.��

Be an Advocate

A new interloper in the house is a big and often unpleasant change for even the most social dogs, says��, a clinical behavioral-medicine fellow at the North Carolina State College of Veterinary Medicine. Some resident dogs may become possessive and aggressive; others, like Leka, may grow increasingly meek and anxious. The trick, says Pankratz, is to be ready to respond. “Be open and compassionate as well as ensuring safety.” In the case of Leka, she says, I probably would have been better off returning her toys to her to give her more confidence��that her place in the house was secure. If Maddox kept taking them, I could have separated him to give��Leka time with her stuffies in peace. After talking to Pankratz, we started feeding Maddox in a separate room, and Leka became a lot less frantic about having her dinner stolen.

Avoid Playing Favorites

When my friend Kate adopted a second dog, she was so worried that her resident dog would feel sad that she didn’t spend much time bonding with the new addition. I was so worried baby Maddox missed his siblings that I neglected Leka. Both, says animal behaviorist��, are common mistakes when building blended canine families. The key to success, he says, is to make sure both dogs get individual time with you,��either on solo walks or during play sessions. During training time, use a baby gate to separate two rooms, and use��that barrier to your advantage. “A lot of times, I’ll literally straddle the gate and train both dogs on either side,” he says. “It’s a good way to help them learn not to be jealous with one another.” Or he’ll train one dog on one side while giving the other dog a��favorite toy or chew treat to enjoy. “A dog can learn really quickly that positive interaction is almost dependent on the other dog being around.”

Know the Warning Signs��

That sounds like a no-brainer, says UC Davis’s Bain, but a lot of pet owners don’t know the early signs of anxiety or aggression. One of the most common misconceptions Bain encounters is that dogs are��happy whenever they��wag��their��tail. “I always tell my students: no one’s been bitten by an animal’s rectum,”��she says. “You need to look at the face and see what’s going on there.” Averted eyes, a fixed lip, or panting are all examples of discomfort. They’re subtle, says Bain, so familiarize yourself with charts like����on fear and aggression in dogs.��“Too often, by the time a person has identified that there’s a problem between the dogs, they are five days too late,” she says.

Remember Those Childhood Car Rides

Growing up, my younger brother and I hated being in the back seat together. I’d draw an imaginary line down the middle and demand he respect the boundary. He made a point of doing anything but. When I finally hauled off and shoved him, you can guess who got in trouble. The same thing happens all the time when a new puppy enters the house, says Sternberg. “Again and again, I see people punishing the wrong dog. That’s just going to make the resident dog more anxious and stressed, while it gives the new one permission to take more advantage.” You never want to allow physical aggression to get out of hand, but it’s also OK��for the resident dog to scold or correct the puppy when things start to escalate: a dirty look, a warning bark, or a quick growl are all useful feedback for the younger dog. Just be ready to step in if that warning isn’t heeded.

Make De-escalation Fun

Even the best behaved dog can get overstimulated and lose impulse control or start ignoring cues from other dogs. When a play session starts to get heated or one dog��looks like he’s making bad choices, it’s time to reroute everyone’s energy and focus. Logan recommends “interrupting picnics,” in which you call both dogs into another room, ask them to sit, and reward them��with treats while they stay. “Don’t underestimate the value of teaching even simple skills, like attention and eye contact,” she says. “T��� more skills they have, the better they are set up for success. And you always want their attention returning to you.” If a picnic isn’t working,��tether��the dogs so that they’re in the same room but can’t physically interact with one another. This also teaches the puppy he can’t necessarily get access to every toy or human he wants.

Don’t Go It Alone

We know to take our dog to the vet when she’s sick, but too few people know to consult with a professional when a dog is in distress, says Ramirez. He recommends working with a certified trainer who specializes in positive-reinforcement training from the start of any new relationship—both with your resident dog��and your new dog. If problems start to arise, contact your veterinarian for advice or additional referrals. “Every dog is different,” says Ramirez. “T��� best thing you can do is come into the situation knowledgeable and ready to help them find a new normal that feels safe and secure.”

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Trevor Hahn, 42, had just returned from a trip to Nepal. There��he first lent a hand at a Katmandu orphanage, then joined an adaptive hiking team summiting Gokyo Ri, a 17,500-foot Himalayan peak.

Hahn, an artist who grew up hiking and rock climbing in his native Colorado, lost his sight to glaucoma five years ago. He made it up Gokyo Ri with the help of trekking poles and teammates who rang a bell and used spoken directions to orient him. He avoided altitude sickness and struggles that others on his team experienced, but he still worried he hadn’t pulled his full weight on the trek.

“I felt like I was more of a responsibility for the rest of the team,” he told me via��Skype. “I didn’t feel like I had a bigger purpose on the hike, which has always been important to me.”

One Saturday last fall, Hahn found himself lamenting this fact while watching a Colorado State football game at home with a bunch of friends; he and his wife, Mandy, had invited a group over, and among those in attendance was��Melanie Knecht.��A 29-year-old music therapist, Knecht was born with spina bifida, a neural defect that requires her to use a wheelchair. She and Hahn had met at an adaptive boxing clinic in Fort Collins a few months earlier.

Like Hahn, Knecht grew up camping and adventuring outdoors. In 2012, she traveled to Easter Island, off the coast of Chile, with a friend. She knew there was no way she’d be able to get around the��Moai statues��in her wheelchair, so she persuaded her friend to carry her in the kind of pack parents often use to schlep around small children.��It got the job done—sort of.

That friend, who Knecht describes as “an older guy,” had a hard time with the added weight. And Knech, meanwhile, was crazy uncomfortable.

“T��� pack we used was shit,”��she says. “It was clearly made for a toddler. I’m tiny, but I’m not a toddler. I have boobs, which the designers of those packs clearly didn’t plan for.”

But she kept��the pack anyway, figuring she could tough it out again��on future adventures if she found a fitter, younger guy to carry her.

While watching the football game together, as Knecht heard Hahn talk about his Nepal trip, she quickly realized he was just the guy she had been looking for.

He agreed. “I’ve always believed that I can be the legs for someone��if they can be my eyes,” he says.

Knecht, who is also a professionally trained singer, can belt it out for hours. And she is the queen of imaginative invectives. In other words, she was born to play the role of Hahn’s navigator.

He agreed that her original pack was shit��and began researching better alternatives. Eventually, he found his way to��, a portable-carrier company, which donated a larger and��much more comfortable pack.

Next, they publicly announced their first major goal: to bag at least one of Colorado’s 14,000-foot peaks this August, maybe even Mount��Elbert, which at 14,440 feet��is the state’s highest.

“To us, teaming up to do this just seemed like common sense,” says Knecht. “If two people who have a crazy idea find each other, it’s not crazy anymore. It’s just an idea.”

They’ve spent the past few months taking increasingly longer training hikes and developing their own communications system.

Knecht is quick to admit that, while she’s spent her whole life outside, she��never learned to differentiate between scree and slab. So she’s invented her own glossary for natural features and obstacles, using��terms like “baby head” and “iceberg” to describe different��sizes��of rocks that may trip up Hahn. Drop-offs are also graded,��either��as��“death” or “hospital,” depending on the consequence awaiting them if they tumble.

As for training, getting around in a wheelchair��is a��fitness project in and of itself.

“Basically, my whole life is a training regimen,” laughs Knecht.

When he’s not making art, Hahn spends much of his time snowboarding or biking. He’s a superfit guy who has always preferred being on a rock face to an indoor��gym. But he’s added an upper-body weight routine to help build his shoulder strength so he doesn’t get tired as quickly.

Hahn and Knecht have��launched a�� and an��, both under their project name: Hiking with Sight.��A major aim for both is raising awareness about the lack of accessible trails for those with disabilities,��in the U.S. and around the world.

“T���re’s still so much exclusion for people with different abilities who want to get outdoors,” says Knecht. “Do we still really believe that people in wheelchairs don’t want to be on the top of mountains?”

Both she and Hahn say they’re OK��with people��appreciating the fact that they’ve found a way to make that happen. And you can call them badasses or even think that they’re empowering—but whatever you do, don’t call them inspirational.

“I’ve always hated it when I’m out snowboarding and someone shouts down from the lift to tell me that I’m inspiring,” Hahn says. “It can feel demeaning. You’d never say that to someone shredding the mountain who can see.”

As far as he’s concerned, everyone’s life is ultimately about figuring out your��own capabilities.

“That’s the human spirit,” he says. “If you want something bad enough, and you find the right people who also want what you want, you can do anything.”

Knecht agrees. She’d like to see an end to what she calls “inspiration porn.”

“I’ve always hated being seen as the woman in the wheelchair. I want to be seen for my accomplishments alone��and not through an ableist bias.”

Last month, the duo attended an adaptive sports summit at Lake Tahoe, California, sponsored by��. While there, Hahn tried out whitewater paddling and sea kayaking, and��Knecht discovered she’s lousy at archery but has a mean karate chop.

The best moment of all, though, was when she heard a couple of other participants gossiping about her.

“T���y called me ‘that fit brunette,’” says Knecht. “That felt pretty great.”

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The Pacific Crest Trail��spans approximately 2,650 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border in Campo, California, to the Pasayten Wilderness on the border between Washington��and Canada. Thru-hikers experience a total elevation gain of nearly 500,000 feet, along with extreme conditions including landslide-blocked canyons, forests ravaged by wildfires, and snowpack that can easily pile up 50 feet or more.

It’s a wild, challenging trail that passes through both state and national parks, as well as national forests and wilderness areas and numerous parcels of private land. These are places perennially tested by the elements, which can damage the trail and make it impassable for hikers.����

Maintaining the trail itself falls to a band of volunteers who work in conjunction with the ’s trail-operations staff. Divided into 12 regional crews, perhaps none is as venerable as , a group of more than 100 members. Founded in 1993 by Peter “Pickax��Pete” Fish, the Trail Gorillas (or TGs)��maintain��the southernmost 500 miles of the PCT. Their territory is marked by both desert and high-elevation forest, ranging from 1,190 to 9,030 feet above sea level. Much of it is bone-dry and far from any road crossing. Each year��it is plagued by mudslides and hundreds of downed trees, not to mention quarrelsome cattle with a penchant for taking out water sources and more than a few wild animals capable of taking out a human.

Because so many of the sites they maintain are remote, the TGs��tend to favor maintenance projects that require at least five days in the field—it’s just not time effective to schlep all their gear for less.

And that gear is cumbersome. The Pionjar drill–which they refer to��affectionately as the “boulder buster”—weighs in at 120 pounds. Some of their two-person crosscut saws are longer than five��feet. There are also the high-test weed whackers and gallons upon��gallons of water, along with safety equipment and camping gear.

To get it all on the trail, they often rely upon pack animals to carry their tools and other supplies. A converted horse trailer serves as the mess tent at their base camp.

On a typical day, the volunteer tapped to serve as the cook��is up and prepping breakfast around 5 A.M. Coffee is served at six, and the entire crew is on the trail about an hour later. They normally work until about 4 P.M., then take an hour to hike back to camp. Happy hour starts with��chips and salsa, followed by the chef’s choice—often a one-pot meal like chicken à��la king with canned peas and carrots,��or��if the cook is feeling fancy, it might be spaghetti with salad. Afterward, there’s sometimes a campfire with stories and occasionally a nightcap before they��hit the rack, wake up, and do it all over again.

What makes this all the more remarkable is the fact that the average age of a��TG��is on the north side of 65. Most are retired. Some are octogenarians—or older. They’re not bragging about that, says section leader Jerry Stone, and they intend to keep at it. But they wouldn’t mind if they had a few extra hands helping do this arduous work. And while they don’t mean to be picky, they’d be OK��if a few of those new members came without an AARP card.

“We’re all getting older,” says Stone. “We need fresh blood, someone else who is willing to carry the torch. If every hiker would give just one day to this kind of work, we would make a phenomenal difference out here.”��

Lyle Boelter

Age: 75
Occupation: Retired naval engineer
Joined the Trail Gorillas: 2005

“I’ve been hiking on the PCT for years. I like hiking and admiring the view, but I kept thinking, It sure would be nice if I could make the trail a little easier to walk. It feels good to be outdoors and doing something useful. And I like being associated with the group.”

Rick Dodson

Age: 63
Occupation: Retired firefighter
Joined: 2015

“I’ve kind of always been a dirt guy. I spent 12 years in the fire department, working with heavy equipment, throwing rocks out of the way so that crews could get gear down the trail. They called me Dozer.��I’ve never been one for car camping. Out on the PCT, my favorite work trips are the ones supported by pack animals. These days��I think of myself as a professional volunteer: I work eight days a week and make no money, but the benefits are the best I’ve ever had.”

Pete “Pickax��Pete” Fish

Age: 88
Occupation: Retired geologist
Joined: 1993

“I started doing trail work before there were Trail Gorillas. At first it was a few projects a year, but I became more and more involved in setting up projects, repairing equipment, and making meals. Eventually, I became the Trail Gorilla crew coordinator. It was a full-time job for me and the best I ever had. I’ve since retired as coordinator, but I still enjoy getting to work on the trail. I spend most of my birthdays working out here—it’s the best place to be.”

Jim Richter

Age: 67
Occupation: Retired mechanical engineer
Joined: 2015

“I did the entire PCT as a series of section hikes. Out around ��[California], I noticed a huge tree down on the trail. I knew it was going to be a real hassle for horseback riders, so I called the PCTA. They made me a trail scout for a couple of years, and I guess things just mushroomed from there. The Trail Gorillas always go full bore. We’re just a bunch of old guys, really, but being out here makes you feel young.”

John Shelton

Age: 76
Occupation: Retired construction manager
Joined: 2012

“I live in an area of California that had a lot of big fire damage. I saw in the paper that they were looking for volunteers to plant trees to restore the area. I signed up, but the project was cancelled. A year later, I got an e-mail from the PCTA about trail maintenance. I decided to volunteer for them instead. I’ve been doing it ever since. What we do isn’t rocket science, but it sure feels good.”

Jerry Stone

Age: 73
Occupation: Retired air-traffic controller and flight instructor
Joined: 1996

“I wouldn’t say the work out here is always fun, but it is always rewarding. Most of the time, it’s just plain hard work, and so much of this relies on people’s good heart. There’s an immediate payback when you can see the improvements you are making, and that goes a long way.”

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On a recent��Wednesday in May, 77-year-old Mary Davison slogged through 12 wet, windy miles on the , an integrated hiking path consisting of trails and roads that��spans��6,800 miles from Delaware to California. As the weather worsened that day, Davison decided to hang it up somewhere outside Marshalltown, Iowa. By then��the wind and rain had intensified. The only shelter Davison could find for the night was a rustic picnic pavilion adjoining a little-league field. So she built a barricade out of trash barrels to block the worst of the deluge and cowboy camped in her damp sleeping bag.

“It was kind of a rotten day,” Davison told me by phone last week. “But even on a rotten day, cool things happen.”

On one section of the trail, for instance, there was a young farm manager��who let her use the restroom in his machine shed. And��there were convenience-store clerks who moved a display of soda bottles so that she could sit down and dry out while she ate her lunch. And a motel manager who agreed to wash and dry her soggy clothes. All of which, she says, is making her 512-mile hike of the ADT’s Iowa section pretty great.

By the time we talked the day after her 12-mile slog in the rain, Davison had also taken a hot shower, eaten a breakfast of eggs over easy with bacon and toast at a family restaurant, and then gone back a few hours later for a massive slice of French silk pie. She’d caught up on television news and luxuriated in cotton sheets in��a hotel room. Other than that, she’d spent the day doing next to nothing—and that was maybe the best part of all.

“I am definitely not a young person. These rest days are pretty important to me,” she said.

Already, Davison is one of only about 400 people who have earned hiking’s triple crown for completing the Appalachian, Pacific Crest, and Continental Divide Scenic Trails. And��she may well be the oldest person to do so. (The maintains a registry of triple crown holders, but reporting is voluntary and the ALDHA doesn’t keep official statistics on hiker demographics.)

Section by section, she’s now looking to complete the ADT, the nation’s first coast-to-coast trail. In order to understand what a big deal that is, consider this: we don’t even have a term for hikers who have completed all four trails, nor does anyone know if it’s been done, regardless of age.

Davison, a retired Lutheran pastor and grandmother of ten, says she grew up hiking and camping, but she��didn’t get into��long-distance backpacking��until she was 60. In 2001, she and her daughter Sarah, one of her two children,��completed the 100-mile , which encircles her native Washington’s Mount��Rainier. Davison carried an external frame backpack with at least 50 pounds of gear, including a sun shower and several books. It was an uncomfortable slog, Davison says, but also a formative one.

“I got the long-distance hiking bug and didn’t want to quit.”

She began doing section hikes on both the Appalachian and Pacific Crest Trails, yo-yoing between them and completing about 400 miles a year. When she finished both of those, she set her sights on the Continental Divide Trail. Along the way, she learned to self-arrest with an ice ax��and how best to siphon drinking water from algae-covered puddles laced with cow dung.��She learned��what to do��when you meet a bear. She picked up her trail name—Medicare Pastor. Since 2007, she’s also had two knee-replacements��and a full shoulder replacement as well. Those surgeries��forced her to really reconsider how she approached the trail.

“I can’t do super heavy weight any more,”��she says.��“I can’t go fast any more. I have to be creative about how I manage my days and my gear and my food.”��

These days, she says, she keeps her daily distances to around 15 miles. She limits her pack weight to 20 pounds or less.

To compensate, Davison says she eats in towns whenever she can. On the trail, she eats primarily energy bars and looks for ways to get daily food drops or slack pack. For that reason, the ADT, which still relies heavily on bike paths and roads, is particularly convenient.

So, too, is being a self-described “old-lady hiker.”

“I tend to stand out like a sore thumb in most places. You don’t tend to see other little old ladies walking around in the rain with a backpack.”

In Iowa, farmers let one another know when she’s heading their way and invite her to tent in their fields. Hitched rides into town are easy to come by. Well-wishers��have offered to deliver food to her along the way or pay for an extra night in a motel.

“T��� charm of the ADT to me is the people that you meet. On long scenic trails, you meet hikers. On this trail, you meet very few hikers��but you meet all the locals. In this day and age, we tend to be afraid of one another. And yet��the world is full of wonderful people. If I didn’t know that before, the ADT brings that out for me every day.”

The Iowa portion of the ADT is about 500 miles. As of mid-May, Davison is about halfway through the state. She hopes to finish this section in early June. After that��she’ll still have about 2,700 miles left to finish the entire trail. She doesn’t know how long that will take, or whether she’ll even be able to finish it. But that doesn’t really matter, Davison says.

“I hike because I love it. And so long as I can get in and out of a tent and put one foot in front of the other, I know I can still do it. And I’ll keep doing it until my body falls apart,” she says. “I could drop dead tomorrow, but in the meantime, my quality of life on the trail is my greatest blessing.”

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