Our guest today is Tom Grossmith—known to me, and to many of you, by his trail name, Gent. Gent and I met while hiking the PCT last year, and wound up covering over 1,300 miles together. We hiked together, we quit the trail together, and next week we’ll be heading back to the PCT together, joined by two other friends, to hike the 700-mile desert section from Mexico to Kennedy Meadows. Off trail, Gent is a woodworker, as well as 5th generation on his family’s small hobby farm in Massachusetts. For the past four years he’s worked as a Zamboni mechanic at an ice skating rink, and his super hands-on career history has included landscaping, carpentry and construction, general handyman projects, and more. In this episode, Gent and I talk a little bit about our PCT hike last year, and then we dive into all the great listener questions we received about long-distance hiking. We talk about sleep, money, hygiene, mental health, gear, food, training, our trail family, tips for beginners, what we’re doing differently on our upcoming hike, and more. If you’re interested in the details of long-distance hiking, I bet you’ll love this episode! (more…)