EPISODE · Jul 17, 2026 · 20 MIN
The Big Year: Episode 1 - The Call
from Hiker Trash Radio · host Bleav + Doc
The Calendar Year Triple Crown doesn't recruit. It gets into people — through a sign above a bar, through a podcast episode, through the quiet math a hiker does at the end of a long day when they realize they want more of this, not less. Episode 1 of The Big Year opens with Billy Meredith describing the moment he quit his office job to hike the Appalachian Trail — the hardest thing he'd ever done and the most amazing thing he'd ever done, at the same time. Three weeks into that hike, in a bar in Duncannon, Pennsylvania, he reads a sign honoring the first woman to complete the Calendar Year Triple Crown. He can't shake it. Four years later, he's standing at the Mexican border about to find out what that sign cost him. The episode follows the idea outward from there: to Sammy Potter and Jackson Parell, two Stanford students who spend a month alone on the Appalachian Trail before naming themselves Buzz and Woody in a winter shelter; to Carson Oliver, who gets asked a single unsettling question the night before Katahdin; and to Jeff Garmire, who completed the CYTC at 20 years old and became, for the better part of a decade, the number everyone else measured themselves against. Guests: Billy "Wahoo" Meredith — 2023 CYTC FKT holder, 234 days Jeff "Legend" Garmire — CYTC completer, former self-supported FKT holder, author of Free Outside Sammy "Buzz" Potter — 2022 CYTC completer (11th in history) Jackson "Woody" Parell — 2022 CYTC completer (12th in history) Carson "Anita" Oliver — 2023 CYTC completer Topics covered: What the Calendar Year Triple Crown is and why so few people have done it The bar sign at the Doyle Hotel that started everything for Billy Meredith How Buzz and Woody got their names in a winter shelter with no one else around The question Carson Oliver was asked the night before Katahdin Jeff Garmire's résumé, his trail name origin, and what made him the benchmark Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
What this episode covers
What makes a person decide to hike three of the longest trails in America back to back, in a single year? Episode 1 traces the idea from a bar sign in a Pennsylvania trail town to a January shelter where two friends named themselves after cartoon characters because there was no one else around to do it for them. Billy Meredith calls it the hardest and most amazing thing he'd ever done, simultaneously, and then spends four years unable to stop thinking about doing something even bigger. Carson Oliver gets asked, the night before summiting Katahdin, whether he'll regret his year if he doesn't finish it. And Jeff Garmire, the benchmark everyone else in this series will eventually chase, explains how a hitchhike for pizza at mile 390 gave him a trail name that stuck for life.
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The Big Year: Episode 1 - The Call
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