Episode 048 - The Secret Lives of Ridgerunners

Stories From The Trail

Each month in addition to their regularly scheduled duties, Ridgerunners also get treated to some well deserved R&R. This July, Jim Fetig of ATC Headquarters invited me to join him and four NoVA Ridge Runners at the PATC's rustic cabin retreat, the Blackburn AT Center, near Harper's Ferry.

From Jim's Blog:

Blackburn Trail Center, Round Hill, VA, July 18, 2019 — Once a month in June and July we bring our Appalachian Trail ridgerunners to Blackburn for a little R&R and a short business meeting. Outside guests from the Conservancy, NPS and our trail club are often invited. In August they travel to the Scott Farm training center outside Carlisle, PA where they rejoin their mid-Atlantic peers for an official seasonal debrief and a personal comparing of notes.

Our MO is pretty standard. We show up Thursday afternoon for some social time, prepare a meal and have some beer. Friday morning we do cook-your-own pancakes with a 9 o’clock hard start for our meeting which varies between 90 minutes and three hours. Lunch is leftovers if there are any.

Ridgerunners are usually fairly stoic people. They are selected for their maturity, judgment, commitment and intelligence. But what are they really like when they let their hair down and no one else is looking?

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