There are two new Squeaky podcasts available at this British site: www.backpackinglight.co.uk
In them, he speaks at length about the Triple Crown and outlines his challenge for this year: to beat the AT speed record by 7 days by completing the entire trail in just 40 days.
Squeaky seems to be getting serious these days and is chasing sponsorship for this one and is going to make it a charity event benefiting children’s charities. There’s talk of a live webcam and it sounds like this time he means business.
The previous speed record was set by a trail runner and, interestingly, Matt reckons he can go faster hiking, presumably, by going at it longer hours.
I think it’s too early to donate to Matt’s good causes; I believe he wants to get a website together later on to explain them fully. He also wants to do 1000 miles of training on the AT before he makes the attempt, so I guess many of you US-based hikers will be bumping in to him this year on the trail.
It was nice to hear Flyin’ Brian’s new pod cast at www.trailcst.org and how magnanimous he is about Squeaky’s achievement and his clarification of the debate that has raged on some forums about their different achievements. In a nutshell, Brian was the first to Triple Crown in a calendar year but Matt did it faster and did the trails one after the other with no skipping around.
St Rick