#12: Olen Netteberg (Long Distance Hiking Dad) - The Adventure of Fatherhood on the Triple Crown Trails

I mean, the kids are the ones that picked the Continental Divide Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail, not my wife and I. We got to the end of the Appalachian Trail like the last week or two of the Appalachian Trail and the kids were like we're gonna be done hiking, like then what are we gonna do? I started reading to them like different excerpts about the CDT versus the PCT and the kids were like the Continental Divide Trail, that's the harder one. And I was like, yeah, I mean by and large, most people say that's the harder one. Let's do that one next, just in case we don't get a chance to do all three, let's do that one. And then we did the Continental Divide Trail and the kids were like, well, there's only one more, so we have to be the Pacific Crest Trail.

So my wife and I were like okay, they're the ones pushing this.

It's really just amazing what kids can do if they're supported in the right way.

Welcome to the ATHLEADAD Podcast, where we explore the intersection of physical pursuits and fatherhood. I'm your host, ben Gibson, and each episode will dive deep into topics like modeling, ambition, achieving balance and intentional integration around athletic passions and parenting. If you're seeking to accomplish your goals as an athlete while crushing it as a parent, then you've come to the right place. If you are an avid hiker, you are probably familiar with the Abolation Trail. It's a 2,000-long mile trail stretches from Georgia all the way up to Maine. 2,000 miles typically takes people like five to seven months to complete this. You know how hard that is 2,000 miles of walking, self-sustained. Now I want you to think about, as a parent, how difficult it is sometimes just to get your kids out the door, get their shoes on, get their snacks, deal with the tantrums Incredibly difficult. Now I want you to imagine trying to hike the Abolation Trail with your kids. Then imagine doing that same thing another two times. You might think that any parent and their kids for that matter would have to be superhuman to complete such a task. I mean, maybe you'd have to be superhuman to even consider doing it. And that's exactly what Olen and Diney and their kids have done. Today we are speaking with the dad, olen Netteberg, who is a father of five kids. He's a doctor by trade, but he has made a mark for himself with his family for some incredible hiking feats that they've completed recently. Now in American hiking there are three prominent trails that make up what's called the Triple Crown. They have the Abolation Trail, you have the Continental Divide and you have the Pacific Crest Trail, and this family, with children young enough to need to be carried at some points, have completed all three. This story is incredible and the story of Olen and his family is really one that sort of embodies all three core pillars of the athlete dad. We have modeling ambition, we have seeking balance, we have intentional integration, and I just can't think of a better example of a family living out these values than what they have done. In fact, they have done this with children so young that their children hold records for being the youngest to ever complete some of these long distance hikes. In this conversation we discussed things like how they decided to even attempt such an enormous undertaking and what that experience was like out on the trail. You know the good, the bad, the ugly. What sort of like lessons and perspectives were gleaned about life and parenting for partaking in such an endeavor, and also some amazing stories and hilarious stories about this adventure as a family. Now, if you've ever dreamt about leaving your job, or maybe at least taking time off of your job, to go do something incredible like this with your family, with your kids, then buckle up, because after this episode, you might find yourself shopping for a new pair of hiking boots. I will link Olen and Denay's socials in the show notes, as well as their blogs, so that you can continue to follow along. But let's get right to it. Please enjoy this inspiring conversation with the paternal representative of this superhuman Netteberg family, mr Olen Netteberg. So, olen, I have been looking forward to this conversation for a very long time, since we first started talking and actually probably before that, when I first discovered you and you and your wonderful family on Instagram and saw what you all were getting up to and my brain immediately started rattling off all these questions but, most importantly, a lot of like how questions, and so I'm eternally grateful for you to be physically in a place and not on the trail for this day so that we can have this conversation. So I just want to say thanks for taking time to join the athlete Den.

Yeah, absolutely Happy to be here.

You live an incredibly interesting life, and so I think it might be really helpful to level set on just exactly what life as dad and husband kind of looks like for you today.

Well, we've kind of had we feel like two separate lives and then a third life on the horizon Since 2010,. We moved to Chad, africa and we ran a hospital in the middle of super rural Chad Africa. My wife and I are both doctors and our kid, our youngest was five months old when we visited, so I guess he was almost two when we actually moved there and that has kind of been where we raised kids and our real day to day life there was very busy. Our kids were super duper neglected because we were always up at the hospital, so we kind of left our kids to their own devices, to home school. My mother-in-law was there for years and that was huge. I mean, she home, she pretty much potty trained all of my kids for me, you know, did dishes. She's just an amazing woman. But that was sort of the one life and then we realized that we were neglecting kids but we still wanted to be able to serve our hospital and our patients as best we could. So about 2018, I think, is when I kind of shifted to try to become a stay at home dad and I loved it in so many ways. I loved being that involved and active and present for my kids. I really threw myself into it. But at the same time I was still technically the boss in the hospital and I mean we lived on hospital property and there were only there were three doctors up at the hospital, one of which was my wife, and the whole time I felt horrible being at home because if I was at home that meant that the other doctors were working extra hard at the hospital when I could be helping them. It would mean I wasn't doing my job as the chief administrator of the hospital and every time I'd hear something going wrong at the hospital I felt so guilty for being at home with my kids. And then every time I went up to the hospital I felt horribly guilty because I wasn't at home with my kids and the kids were I mean, our kids are like semi-feral, free-range, organic children. I mean mud and sticks were their big toys. So it was very unsatisfying for me, both professionally and as a father, to be torn so hard between the two and not really feel like I could find a good balance. And I suspect that resonates with almost every dad out there. Stay at home dads. I have so much respect for you and I'm sure you wrestle with some of that and professional dads. You know I get that. You probably feel the same way, that you're not being the at-home father that you wish you were. So I just I really had trouble finding satisfaction with that and we started looking in 2019, 2020 for our replacements who could come to fill the void at our hospital. We'd been there for so long and really poured just our hearts and soul into that hospital. I mean, we tripled the size of the hospital, like quadrupled the income, tried to make it as self-sufficient as we could, but knew that if we stepped away without replacements, all of our hard work would kind of be undone. But at the same time we needed to get away, we needed a break. So in 2020, we decided to take the Appalachian Trail. So that's kind of our next life is our life as hikers, and the Appalachian Trail is a 2,200 mile trail between Georgia and Maine, really popular, very well trafficked. But 2020 was just COVID crazy. But we got to. Yeah, we I mean we got to spend intense 24, seven family time together, us and our kids, just for seven months solid, whether we wanted it or the kids wanted it or not. And then back to Chad on and off. 2021 was back in Chad and we had a fifth baby. We now have five kids. That's a little crazy. 2022 was the continental divide trail, from Mexico to Canada through New Mexico, colorado, wyoming, idaho and Montana. And then this year well, 2023, we did the Pacific Crest Trail. So California, oregon and Washington, again from Mexico to Canada. And it's totally wild to think that I am probably the world's leading expert on hiking long trails with big families, because I totally feel like a poser. You know, 8,000 miles of hiking later and I still feel like I'm a bit of a fraud. But now we indeed, we indeed did all three trails, every single last foot of them, and we indeed did them with four kids on the AT and five kids on the CDT and PCT. So that's kind of our second life, and now we're kind of retiring from hiking. My feet hurt, like right now. Actually, at this moment I can't feel my toes, but half of the day when I'm upstanding and walking around I can't even feel my feet anymore, just from the kind of chronic trauma of pounding with a really heavy pack on my back. So we're kind of transitioning to figure out who we are now, what's our next identity, and we're unemployed and homeless at the moment, but that's, you know, by our own foolish choosing and lack of preparation. So we feel like we have the team in Chad, africa. We don't feel like we need to go back there. They're solid, they're awesome, they're wonderful people running the place now. So now, what is best for our family and what's best for our kids, our kids the youngest is two. She came well later. The next is eight, and then they are 10, 12 and 14. So we're trying to figure out where we want to settle down, where we want to live, what's the best place to raise kids, and then we'll go find jobs and figure out a livelihood and a home after that man that is, we're not going to start a third life, Well yet to be determined.

And it seems like the first two were already a full life's worth of experiences each. And now to go into the next great adventure. I mean, man, I can't help but think about the challenges of hiking something like the AT the continental divide, pct just by yourself. That's a very challenging endeavor. And then I think about just how difficult it is sometimes just to get the kids out the door to go do a simple hike around the neighborhood. And then I think about just the challenge of having four or five kids generally in society and the fact that you found a way to weave these all together, becoming a father of four and five living internationally, hiking some of the most prominent trails in the world and doing all this at the same time. You may feel like you're a fraud in a sense, but I know that myself, I can probably speak for many of the people that are really going to hear this and that I'm just so shocked that you have the skill set and the capacity and the patience and the desire and all this to be able to pull off something like that. So absolutely kudos to you. And I know that it probably and maybe it was, but I'm guessing it probably didn't go from like zero to Appalachian Trail. So help me understand like what was the life like outdoors with kids before you decided to go hike the AT? And when did that idea come to mind of like what if we could take them on the AT and actually take a swing at that thing?

Yes, I mean, I'd always known about the AT, was curious and, you know, thought it was cool and exotic, but my backpacking experience had been a trip in high school and then like a overnight in college, and then my wife and I went for a few nights after medical school, but it was 2018, was it 2018? Yeah, it was 2018. When we were going to go do the Appalachian Trail, because we were feeling that burnout and we had a surgeon lined up to come over for a year and our youngest would have been two, the kids would have been two, four, six and nine, which would have been just the worst possible ages in retrospect, that was, yeah, that was pretty foolish, but the surgeon had gotten there. We overlapped with him for a couple of months so we could kind of train him into the system and get him used to some tropical medicine and some of the surgeries that we did. But then he had kind of gotten malaria too many times so he was sick and tired of being sick and tired, so he left like two weeks before we were supposed to start. We're like, yeah, that's all right. So instead of taking most of the year off, we'll still take our normal two month vacation. And while we were back on vacation, we did like three or four kind of week long backpacking trips and fully expecting the kids to hate it, and they really didn't. I mean, they enjoyed themselves. The next year 2019, we did another week of backpacking and I mean, the backpacking took us. Where were we? That was in West Virginia. The year before it had been, oh, utah and North Carolina and Pennsylvania. So then 2020 came and when we started, yeah, the kids were four, six, eight and 11, which would have which was much easier than it would have been two years earlier. And what we told the kids is we said you know, we're going to, we're going to start the Appalachian Trail and we're going to do it for a month and if it sucks real bad, we'll just get off. If it sucks a little bit, we're going to finish out the month and then we'll stop. And the month came and went and we asked the kids you guys want to keep going? And they were like, yeah, let's, let's keep going. Why would we stop? I mean, the other option is real life. So, yeah, let's keep hiking. And you know, we just checked in with them all the time and they just kept wanting to go. And, like you said it's, the Appalachian Trail is challenging. I forgot what it is. I think it's like three quarters of people that start the trail don't finish, or maybe it's even more than that, but very few of us are actually finished. One of the most common reasons why people quit is because they can't get out of their own head. This is the first time that they've really had time to just go and think. I mean, you see people on the trail. I mean they're, they're listening to podcasts like this or or they're, you know, trying somewhere to occupy their thoughts, because they can't stand just hiking and letting their thoughts roam. And that's why they get off the trails, because they've kind of exhausted their brain and mentally. Their shot. It's not physical, I mean some get off for injury, but the majority are just you know what, they can't get out of their heads. We never really got that chance because with four kids, I mean we're. You're just never thinking about yourself. You're always thinking about okay, where's the next water? Where's the next food? Where's the next shelter? Oh man, is the rain coming? How do I keep the kids dry? How do I keep them happy? How do I keep them warm? What are we going to do. And then the other one is that they talk. Oh my goodness, do kids talk? And when they have their parents attention, they are like at least for my kids, my kid like their greatest reward in the world is having their parents attention. And when you're hiking with them, like right next to them 24 hours well, not 24 hours, but, you know, 10, 12 hours a day they have your attention for all of that and they are so over the moon and that excitement never, even after seven months of hiking on the AT, that excitement never wore off of it being able to talk to their parent and just jabber, jabber, jabber. And I mean again, their ages were four to 11. Now, you know, maybe when they're 15, 16, maybe that's less cool for them, they're no longer enjoying it, but at that age is. I mean, we had so many conversations about Frozen, the movie Frozen. I'm sure Kristen Bell is wonderful, but I want to punch her in the face Like I heard the Frozen soundtrack over and over and over and over again, like and the philosophical minutiae of Paw Patrol and these cartoons and these things that they love. And my sister, who's six years older than me and has raised three boys that are well older than my kids. I remember her saying to me if you want your kids to talk to you at 15, you got to listen to them when they're five. And I just kept telling myself that over and, over and over again. I want to stab myself in the eye with an ice pick right now, like this is the worst conversation. And we're having it for the 46th time today. Can we please? But that was it. Really didn't let us to get into that state of kind of psychological mind games that people do to themselves when they're hiking. That gets them off the trail. And the other advantage is there are a lot of parents that are hiking these long trails with one kid and that is so much more impressive because that means they have to be the entertainment for their kid all the time. And I could, you know, say I could let them sort of interact with each other and go back and forth with each other for a bit. I didn't really have to be the one talking the whole time. I kind of had to over here and jump in when I was expected to. But boy, that's a lot of pressure to be all of the entertainment for your one kid the whole time. Those people are whew, they go through it.

Man, that is such an interesting perspective though, the idea that, yeah, why most people don't finish, they get into their own head. And I totally get that. I mean even just long days on the mountain, long days in training, like after a while, like, yeah, really, it gets to a point where you know music or podcasts. It's so noisy because, like, my thoughts are so loud. And that hasn't always been the case for me with endurance sports, and I certainly had to shift. I used to not be able to run. It's like if I didn't have my headphones I could not go for a run. And now I'm very much a piece of like, okay, I've got a thought, let me turn it off and just like run with my thoughts and yeah, that's it. And it's maybe kids, having kids on the trail is a secret weapon, you know, because you're basically, you know the, you're the, the, the trail attendant, feeding them snacks and water and jackets, and so you don't have any time. You know it sounds like. You know you had that cool expectation of like, hey, we'll go for a month. If it sucks kids hate it, we'll stop. But you know it took seven months. So did you, did you just take a day to day at that. At that point or was it like, hey, cool, we're going to commit for another month, or like what was the kind of like check in process with the kids? And at what point did you really realize, like I think, we're actually going to finish this thing?

So it was kind of I mean, it wasn't day to day, but it was pretty much week to week. I mean, just really, kids, okay. So we started to do this and we we did two little hikes in Pennsylvania around my stepmom's house in in February and then in March March 13, I think it was we started officially just north of the Shenandoah mountains and we started hiking and then we got to a hostel, spent the night at a hostel, maybe five days in, and then the day that we left that hostel was the day that kind of things started shutting down from COVID, and so we got to the place where we were going to stay and we saw a sign that said you know it's closed and this was maybe 8.9 miles in or something to our day, and we had, I mean, that was our biggest day. We'd never done 8.9 miles yet. You know it only been a week, but that was our biggest day. To that point I was feeling really good about it and I was like, okay, kids, we got like two hours until dark and the next spot to camp is in three miles. Can you guys make it? You're like, let's go, and I mean three miles and two hours. That was big for us. Now I'd roll my eyes at it. I mean it was big for us then. But I was like, all right, let's go, so we go. And we got there right before dark and I was like, wow, 11.9 miles in one day. And so the kids were like over the moon excited. They're running around, they're smiling, they're hooting and hollering. And so I actually turned on the camera and I said, okay, everybody, strike your Katatana pose, like when you get to the top of Mount Katatana, finishing the trail in Maine. Like, show me the pose you're going to strike. They were all excited. And that was when I realized, okay, we just did, we're like a weekend and we just did a 12 mile day. All right, maybe we can do this. I mean, nobody's beat up, nobody's cranky, nobody's even tired, it's just dark. So we stopped hiking and that was sort of the first revelation that, okay, all right, we can do that. And actually earlier that same day, juniper was our youngest she was four years old at the time and we were in what's called the roller coaster and it's like 14, what is it? I mean it's like 14 hills and 11 miles. They call it mountains, but I mean they're not like huge, if you can pack in 14 and 11 miles, they can't be too big. But she, we were up and going over a few of them and then at the bottom of one, she just sat down and started crying. I was like, oh, okay, this is it, we're done off the trail. Okay, we ran the kids too hard, it's time to stop. So finally I got her to tell me what was wrong and she was mad because my wife had taken Juniper's backpack and clipped it to the back of my wife's packs, that she was carrying my daughter's backpack for her, and my daughter really wanted to carry it herself. And I was like, no, it's, you know, you're tired, it's heavy, it's okay. And I was like, forget it. So I just took it off and I gave it to her. She put in her backpack and she's like, took off up the hill and we went over like three ridges, I think before we'd finally catch her she would come up around a corner and she'd just be sitting there on a rock or a log just eyeballing us. Then she'd just snick her at us and turn around and take off again. And so she said, okay, that's pretty beastly, this kid's the beast. And then, actually, a couple of weeks later we were in Pennsylvania, coming out of we were actually hiking south out of Duncan and I think is the name of the town in Pennsylvania we had just gotten ice cream and pizza and we just filled our belly, isn't it? It was getting to be close to sunset and as you come out of town there's like a 700 foot uphill, like just straight up, and it's big rock slabs that they put down for the steps. And we were just starting in the base of it going up, and some young local teenage kid in like basketball shorts and running shoes, like he's out training for the day in shorts and a T-shirt and he's like running up the stairs, and so we have these big giant packs on and we're huffing and puffing and he comes by us and she decides she's gonna hang with him instead of us and she just takes off on this like nipping at this guy's heels and hangs with him the whole and then passes him right at the top and finally, minutes later, we get up there afterwards Like all right, that's it. Your name is the beast. So the little four year old girl on the Appalachian Trail. Everybody gets a trail name and her trail name was the beast. So yeah, she's the beast and that's like okay, I mean they have the legs, like I'm sitting here doing the math and I'm like they have the legs, they can do this before winter sets. In as long as they're enjoying themselves, this is a real possibility.

And that is first off. I love the nickname and then I love just like what that shows about the resilience and capabilities of our own kids. You know, I think that I think oftentimes, when we look at ourselves and what like we physically can do, like very rarely do we put massive limitations on ourselves, like, oh, I could never have hiked the AT or oh, I could never do that. But something I find about myself is I'm often very quick to put limitations on what I think my own kids can do, which if I saw somebody else do that to my own kid I would be like no, of course they've got it, like let them go for it. But you know, I remember distinctly one time my son, you know, we were out on a hike and there was like this giant rock and it's in a climbing area and he wanted to go up and climb this rock. And I'm looking at it and I'm like I don't know if there's like a good spot for you to get up. You've got these big clunky hiking boots in it, like I don't know, but I don't think, I think it's too steep, and he's just adamant, let me do this. Like I can do this, let me just try, and so I'm like, okay, like I'll go and I'll like get you up on the rock and you'll complain about how you can't get up, and then I'll take you down and I put him up on this rock and he just starts like almost like he was a professional climber, checking his feet, finding his holes you know, digging it in, talking strategy about his route, what he's gonna go up, and like next thing, I knew he's all the way at the top, to the point where I'm like okay, you gotta stop, because like, if you get stuck I can't get you, I can't get you down. And so it's interesting, like, what do you think about this? What do you think this whole experience of hiking all of these trails and going through all these challenges, like what do you think that this taught you about being a parent? Or how do you think your thought process about being a parent changed over the course of this whole time of hiking these trails with your kids?

Like I said before, like the one real big great takeaway I took from parenting was just that, yeah, a kid's greatest joy in life at least for my kids at the ages that they're at is just being with their parents, being able to talk, being able to share with them, and I think that was just such a huge blessing for us. Like I said, I mean we were so maybe physically near our kids in Africa. I mean we were never more than a couple hundred yards away from them, we were just up at the hospital, but we were so distracted, so not in tune with them, that being able to be around them really helped them blossom. The other thing is just kids are capable of so much more than we give them credit for. I mean my four year old hiked over 30 miles one day and just this last year on the PCT we did 41 miles and she was seven. And I mean we always say, well, you know, any kid can do it Like what we do isn't really all that special. We just happen to be extraordinarily stubborn, my wife and I, and we put ourselves into very unique situations and our kids, our kids, are built a little different. I mean they grew up in one of the hardest countries in the world to grow up in, in chat Africa. I mean we had spotty electricity, spotty running water. No hot water they don't have anyways. We're like 25 miles from nearest pavement region of a million people with no public power, no public running water, no public sewage. I mean it's hard to describe, it's hard to imagine unless you've been there. So our kids are built a little different but physically maybe other kids couldn't do this right off the bat, but they could build up to it. It's hard to imagine any kid that couldn't build up to it. If that kid and their parents have the right mentality of. You know we're gonna ease into it, we're gonna make it fun, we're gonna readjust our expectations. You know I'm not gonna take my kids out and start day one on the Appalachian Trail doing eight, 10 miles a day. I'm gonna test them out and see how they do Now. I mean on the Pacific Crest Trail last year on 2023, we started with a 16 mile day because we knew what they were capable of. But and by then our kids were I mean they were just little hiking machines and they knew what the process was and they bought into it. I mean the kids are the ones that picked the Cottonwood Divide Trail in the Pacific Crest Trail, not my wife and I. We got to the end of the Appalachian Trail like the last week or two of the Appalachian Trail, and the kids are like we're gonna be done hiking, like then what are we?

gonna do.

I mean real life. And so I started reading to them like different excerpts about the CDT versus the PCT and the kids were like the Cottonwood Divide Trail that's the harder one. And I was like, yeah, I mean yeah, by and large most people say that's the harder one. Let's do that one next, just in case we don't get a chance to do all three, let's do that one. So we know that we at least tried the hardest one. Maybe we can't finish it, but we wanna try it. I was like, okay, and then we did the Cottonwood Divide Trail and the kids were like, well, there's only one more, so we have to do the Pacific Crest Trail. So my wife and I were like, okay, they're the ones pushing this. And when we did a 30 mile day, they had heard other hikers talk about a 30 mile day in the Appalachian Trail, so they wanted to see if they could do it On the Pacific Crest Trail. They were the ones wanting to see if they could do a 40 mile day. And anyways, it's really just amazing what kids can do if they're supported in the right way, you know, if they're not pushed into it, but they're kind of shepherded along the way, if the parents have the right attitude, the kid has the right attitude. I mean kids can build up phenomenal strength, and I mean even after 40, so we did 41 miles and I asked the kids like are your legs tired? Like do your legs hurt? Does anything hurt? And there's like dad sleep, no, nothing hurts, just sleep. I need to sleep. Stop talking to me, I need to sleep. And they're like all right, well, we got another model to go to the van, so just stay awake until we get there. But I mean they never got their legs, never got sore, never got tired. It was just their brains were shutting down because they didn't even sleep. I mean the amount of strength kids can build up is just so amazing and if you make it fun for them, I mean they enjoy it.

Yeah, yeah, I always think every you know. Sometimes I'm like, okay, I gotta let the kids aside and run around because it's gonna they gotta tire them out. And it's like, no, I always realize I'm just building their endurance. That's right, just get stronger and stronger, yeah.

On the trail they have. They call them zero days or Nero days, which means you're doing zero miles, or a Nero almost no miles. So that's when people they kind of go into town, they buy their groceries, they do their laundry, they take a shower, they nurse their feet or whatever you know. They just kind of lay low for a day. For us, those days were the absolute worst, because our kids are so strong, they have so much energy, and now they're pent up and told to rest. They're like what Cause they? I mean sure maybe they're, I don't know like you and I. We do something big and then the next day we're sore.

The kids aren't?

I mean, give them a full night's sleep and a meal. They're good to go. Yeah, and we just yeah, we built them up to be incredibly strong.

And I love what you said about doing it the right way, like pushing them the right way. This in itself, I think, is one of the biggest challenges for parents generally that are athletic ambitious, you know, whether that's with the physical pursuits or even academic pursuits is how do we appropriately challenge our kids and I think it's tricky because every kid is different and it's different at every age. How do you think about that? Like you know, did you nail it right out of the gate of like we're pushing appropriately where there's some challenges in there, like how do you think about that and what was that experience like?

I think we really did nail it in terms of hiking these long trails. I mean you had mentioned academic, like how do you push your kids academically the right way, and all these other, and I think in those parts of life we've probably come up short in terms of letting them get away with too much here, pushing them too hard there, but physically on these trails, I think we really towed that line really well. There's a lot of things we didn't do well, but in terms of knowing how to push, I mean it's like, okay, do you guys want to camp here or do you want to try to go onto a campsite? And then we get to a campsite and okay, the next campsite is this far away, the sun is setting in this many minutes. Do you guys want to keep pushing on? And it was always kind of checking in toward a group decision. You know if somebody's done like they're out, they're done or they're hurt or whatever, yeah, okay, we're going to shut it down right here right now, but unless we really had to get to a certain spot, it was very much. So together we're going to figure out. Okay, what's the next stretch? Do you want to try to do this in four days? Do you want to do it slower in five days? And so I mean hour to hour, day to day. We really involved the kids in those decisions and, especially as they grew up and they got more mature and got more responsibilities, they were a lot more involved in those decisions and you know they had bad moments, they had bad hours. You know it's raining, it's cold, all your stuff is totally wet, you're shivering, you're hungry, you're just miserable. But really, by the time you're going to bed, we've gotten warm food in your belly, we've warmed you up, we've dried you out. Everybody was happy by the time we went to bed. I mean pretty much every single night. So we didn't have bad days, but we did have bad hours. And you know that's when you gotta push your kids like okay, you know, guys, it's getting cold, it's getting dark, this is the next place where we can sleep, or this is the next place where we can get water. We gotta push now. And the kids understood that. I mean they got to the point where they could understand that pretty well and I mean they're just insanely experienced hikers. So the four year old, the beast, who's now seven, she still is the only four year old to ever hike the entire Appalachian Trail, and so we kept thinking about how amazing she was and we kind of got lost in her and her achievement. And the six year old her name is Addison and she named herself Angel Wings. The biggest thing that stands out about her is if she's awake she's talking. Like the family joke is how do you know Addison is asleep and that's because she's not talking? We actually thought about renting her out to other hikers, like are you bored? Are you having trouble being?

motivated here.

Have this permanent conversation, just going along with you. But we underestimated how strong she was because as our four year old became a six year old, we're like, wow, that other six year old that we had that now is eight. We really underestimated. And and when our oldest Lyle, his trailing was blaze, when he was 13, when he was 12 I guess, he had a growth spurt between the Appalachian Trail and the Connell divide trail and he really just became I mean he became a horse and he could just go. And then by the Pacific Crest Trail he was 14 and honestly, if he hadn't had that growth spurt we wouldn't have been able to make it, because he was carrying well over 20 pounds a day I mean up to 3035 pounds on some days and he could still keep up with everybody. I mean he was outstanding and so all of these kids have such strengths. The second is is is boomerang. His name is Zane. He's also very Kind of unfairly judge because his big brother is like two and a half years older and so he's trying to hang with his big brother. Actually, on the Appalachian Trail he was usually ahead of his big brother. Big brother had a growth spurt and he didn't. But no, identifying all the different personalities, then seeing them grow and mature and earn responsibilities that they would take on themselves. They learn how to work as a team, like our family unit is a team, and sure you can hike really fast, but it doesn't matter, because we're all getting there together. You hike on ahead, but then you got to wait. Like, what good does it, do you? So you know, can you take weight from this person to help them go faster? Can you go and sing with this person and motivate them to go faster? And we get to the campground and they, you know, they know what needs to happen, like OK, we're going to try to sleep on the stars. Are we going to put up tents? Can I put up the tents? All right, let me find a tree where I can get a rope over so we can do a bear hang. I don't get up a fire. Can I start the fire? And they see the things that need to be done. Ok, we're coming up on water. Do we need water? Can I filter water? And they're processing these things there. I don't even have to ask, they just take these things on. And that was like one of the most rewarding things. Also, the trail. I mean the trail is the great equalizer. You can be a billionaire and if you go hike the trail you're not that much of an advantage as the you know poor kid who just finished high school. You might have a little bit of a world experience and you might have lighter stuff because you can afford more expensive fancy stuff. But my kids were out there talking to people of all different ages and different genders and sexual orientations and religions and socioeconomic statuses and I mean you name it. The kids were making friends and holding court with all of them, just excited, enthusiastic to see a hiker that is sharing that same experience, sharing the same suffering, the joy in the suffering, and just seeing them be able to build camaraderie and rapport with folks from backgrounds they wouldn't really be able to see. I mean different ethnicities, that it's not. The trail is by and large Caucasian but it's changing, it's becoming a bit more ethnically diverse as time goes on. But I mean nobody was a stranger. Everybody they came across was just a future friend that they could soon find common ground to bond with and they could talk about the weather and they could talk about the trail and the water sources and pooping in the woods and what you know. Whatever conversation Hikers want to hike about what I want to talk about and seeing them mature like that was just so cool, so rewarding.

And that's incredible. I hear so many themes within this, as you, as you're talking about it, that I that I that I love, and whether they were, you know, things that just came to you naturally or they were really deliberate implementations, I think they're just so important. You know, this idea of group think you know I can hear you talking through this. You know you've got this great, almost like you're a teacher, you're really engaging them, you're making them part of the decision, which I'm such a fan of as a parent, as a dad, is, like you know, making them part of the thing. So it's not just like me putting this on you as like the parent, but it's like, yes, we are, we are a team, we're a unit, and you, your say has weight in this conversation. And I love even hearing how you talked about how they would start to decide where you were going to end and how far, how much farther they were going to go, and you basically just set the, the experience, here's the options, here's the pros and cons. Let's, let's decide. And part of me also just loves the visual of like this little pack kind of going All right, hang on, and they huddle up and then they come. All right, mom and dad, we have decided we are going to go X, y, z, but I love the idea of also constantly checking in, especially when we're pushing our kids they're doing something hard. You're constantly checking in with them. Hey, how are we doing? Is anything hurt? We tired? You know what I'm, and so the constant check in, I think, is a good barometer of, like you know, am I, am I telling the line appropriately with, with, with, with how much we're doing and what I'm asking of you. But then still, I love the idea that you're you're still assessing them individually. Every kid is unique. They have their strengths, they have their weaknesses, they have their good days, their bad days, their good hours, their bad hours. And how can we work together as a unit to support and cater to the individuality of it? I mean, it's just such a beautiful approach to not just being a parent doing these amazing things, but like I think is being a parent generally, like if we, if we within our own homes, could start to apply more of the way that you guys are thinking of, this idea of a family unit as a group, as equal, everybody has equal say, of checking in periodically to see how we're doing to have honest conversations but still catering to the individual man. I bet life at home for a lot of folks would be a lot, a lot better. So kudos to you, you know this.

The flip side of that point is in our family we say we are, we are a democracy, everybody gets a vote and mommy gets seven.

Smart man, smart yes yeah, but God, this, this exposure to these experiences. You know, I didn't even think about other people on the trail because I'm sure, like the thing that came to mind, you know, as a sibling myself, is Just how incredibly special it is for them to have this opportunity, not just with their parents, but with their siblings, like the, especially the, the bonding through something really difficult, right. But I'm hearing you talk about these other people on the trail and my mind immediately goes to like, oh yeah, like there's, there's an educational component of this, this exposure to the world that that gives them that experience. Like, what are your thoughts Around education? Because the thing that came to mind when you thought it, when you said they're on the trail for seven months, is Did they have to like break and learn math? Like what? Like what? What are your thoughts on education when it comes to children and maybe learning through experiences? And then like, yeah, did they have to stop and do math on the trail? Like, how did all that work?

And those are good questions. So there's a lot of theories on education there. My, my sister, is Early education specialist and she likes to do Waldorf and others. There's Waldorf and there's what a. There's all these different theories on education and I'm not smart enough to know them. What we did is we got it's called a Becca. It's a super Structured curriculum that comes as a DVD case. So you're seeing a classroom that was recorded and burned onto a DVD. I mean every class, every day for a school year and they get the textbooks. And it was really just the laziest way to do it Because I could buy a set and then I could give it to the kids and I say, okay, you guys doing this, daddy's got to go to the hospital and it was. It was a bit of a cop out. I want to be the cool dad. That is like I do sex and phonics and I choose Singapore math. I pick and choose all these different different subjects. I'm not that cool, but some people talk about, you know, homeschooling. Everybody knows what homeschooling is. There's world schooling, which is where you're out, experience the world and learning through that. There's unschooling, which is a bit more aggressively, avoiding traditional school. There's forest school where kids are literally in the woods most of the day. There's a road schooling, which is kind of homeschooling in an RV, or boat schooling, which is homeschooling on a boat, and I think these are all just such cool ways to learn and I love finding the success stories. I'm sure there are less successful stories, but I like finding the adults or the late teenagers that Engaged in some of these and you know, on the surface at least, when you meet them, it looks like they turned out to be decent human beings. We did this in Chad, not because we're really adamant about homeschooling, but because it was our only option in Africa. And we're still homeschooling this year because we love the flexibility gives us in terms of scheduling. Just to be, you know, prudently honest and lazy. Our kids happened to excel Well academically. You know you said you kind of find that balancing act of how do you know how much to push your kids and that was trial and error and more error than success, and we still don't have to figure it out, but we're closer than we were. But our kids and again they're also different from each other, but they most the Internalized that they wanted to push themselves to get ahead. So actually for all of these trails they got ahead. They were really Quite far ahead in school academically in terms of what they were completing and what testing would make you think they were at. But then we took off seven months the Appalachian trail, six months for the Connell divide trail, five months for the Pacific Crest trail. So now they're back kind of knocked down to where they should be and on the trail I think that they they learned a lot. They learned a lot of important life skills. They learned, you know, the social studies in the history and the geography and nature and sciences were going by. You know we feel like we're a little bit competent to teach some of that, but this is all verbal stuff. We tried to bring some pens and pencils and papers and get them to write in journals and that was much more failure than it was success. But I mean one of the things we do verbally down the trail and weren't singing frozen Once we do. We do, you know, verbal math or verbal spelling or just talk about those things, and my kids had been actually very, very, very weak spellers. I let them really get away with murder when it came to writing spelling. Yeah, handwriting, social studies in homeschooling up them get away with a lot in terms of that. They were excellent readers and they were really good at math. But the rest of the stuff kind of slid a little bit. So by the time we finished hiking they could do, you know, a bit of an informal spelling to you pretty well with us. And then math my four-year-old Just love to count on the Appalachian trail. I mean, have you've ever heard a four-year-old count to 800? You know that is so incredibly painful to listen to. But she got better at math and on the PCT she was six and she would love to do math. And I like what do you want to do? And she's like I want to count to 100 by twos and then by threes and by fours, and I mean literally she would count to 100 all the way up to. I'm going to count to 100 by 72 now, daddy, and 72 and 144 and and she'd go on. And this Is my six-year-old and one day. So another time we were in where were we? We're in Wyoming, in the wind rivers, and we were. The kids wanted to hike all night. They said we wanted to hike all day long. We wouldn't do a night hike. All the other hikers talk about how awesome it is to hike at night. That's what I do. So, awesome so we made it like Right, and they're done it done at ten o'clock at night. So finally about 11 we find a good campsite and everybody's in bed and asleep. But we're getting out of the woods the next day. So we're like up early, the kids are excited, we want to get out of the woods and so we're hiking up. So they're on like almost no sleep. And my six-year-old is like, daddy, there's one thousand four hundred forty minutes in a day. Now is it, excuse me? She's like yes, but how did you figure that out? She's like well, there's 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a year, I mean in a day. So 60 times 20 is one thousand two hundred, and then four times 60 is two hundred forty, and then one thousand two hundred plus two hundred forty, it's one thousand four hundred forty hours. Like you're just shut up, you're six, you're freaking me out, like just stop. But they got to this point where, anyways, she especially just really really love to do the math. So so they didn't end up too far behind.

They were behind, but then caught up again and now they're kind of back about where they should be but so interesting, this idea of being behind, because you know what it, what it sounds like, is that they're so far ahead in In in these other things that we might actually value more than this, you know, expectation of what their math skills might be by X age, like you know, when I'm, especially when I'm hearing about You're just the curiosity, so. So my son does go to Forest School, is out right on all day, yeah, and they do this thing called place-based learning, which is like, as the world around us changes, we learn about the world within that context, and so as the seasons change, as the moon is doing different things, as you know, somebody stumbles upon something curious in nature and they're always tying it back to like. They can tie into like, oh, this is actually an opportunity for us to kind of teach some basic math because of how this is unfolding, or yeah. Or this is a biology lesson, or an astronomy lesson, like all these different you, or a social lesson of like you know, how do we resolve conflict, and so Very much in agreement with that. And and for me, the thing I sucked at math, no matter what, like at every level. I was probably behind at every level and I think it was because I Conceptually never really learned to like, think about math from the macro level of like how does this actually apply? So one, I love that you know, coming back to your idea, like you're sitting there with your thoughts, like she was with her thoughts, breaking down math in this logical way that fit for her to the to, to the extent that now she probably has a better foundation for math than most kids because she understands it. So, at such a foundational level, versus just like what most education is, is regurgitation right, can you just regurgitate, you know, replicate, and just that man, that natural curiosity is awesome. But I think that, like you know, I love you know one I always I have to give you credit for your humility, but I love that you know you, you very humbly, are talking about these like very deliberate things that you're doing that are just incredible, like and I think that the thing that came to mind when you talked about this like talking school, is they and I'm gonna totally butcher this, but I think it was Socrates they used to have these like parapetetic schools where the whole school was done like walking around. So really, you've just created this like modern-day Socratic parapetetic school where you philosophize about you know All these things as you're on the trail, but you know I was going for? yeah, that's exactly what you're going for, right? No, but I think you know when I think about if I had to give have the choice of my six-year-old being caught up on what state standards mathematics is, or would I rather have them have the resilience and the, the fortitude and the self-confidence to be able to do something like this. Like ten out of ten times I'm taking the resilience, the self-confidence, the fortitude. So, yeah, the math stuff that that'll all catch up at some point, or maybe it won't, because maybe, you know, I don't use math ever. So, yeah, I know.

So I mean that's one of the things we try to tell the kids is, from now on, like, you have no excuse in life. Like you, you know that you can do hard things. You've done hard things. Like right now, we're kind of we took them to go skiing and snowboarding and learn that this winter and they're like, oh, it's hard, it's hard, I can't do it. I'm like you, height, you just walked 8,000 miles. Like you've walked more than 99.999% of children like come on, you, you can do this, just stick it out, try it for another day. And now that I mean now, they all love it. But Every time it gives me a nice comeback, every time they say, daddy, this is hard, and they go come on, you've done hard things.

That's exactly why you are gonna be able to do it, because you can do hard things. So, yeah, man, that's incredible. Probably you hiked more than 99% of all humans that have ever existed ever. Except when humans were migrating across the continents. I mean that's, that's so awesome, they're pretty.

Yeah, they can tell you like okay, looking at the elevation profile of this daddy, I think we can do like 2.3 miles an hour today for like 12 hours and Make you be taking like for 20 minute breaks, and that means that we can go this far. You can see their brains like rattling off.

It's brilliant man, that's incredible. I mean so beyond, you know the, the physical benefits, you know I hear some social benefits like, like, what do you think your kids are taking away in in life From these experiences like you talk about? We can do hard things, the fortitude, all this like. Is there anything else that comes To mind when you think about like these, these really valuable life lessons that they're gonna take with them for the rest of their lives?

Well, I think it's a lot of what you touched on and also, I mean, I do hope that it really strengthens us as a family that we have this Common shared experience. That is so rare, but yeah, it was so precious, so foundational. You know, my kids were already pretty close to each other because, you know, growing up in Chad they were they were the only American kids there at the hospital. They really only had each other that could understand their background. And I mean, even now, coming back to America, you know they have American passports, but they're not really. Americans. They've grown up, you know, wildly different, like it's hard to imagine many cultures that are more 180 degrees to American culture than where they grew up. But they're not really chatting either because they're they're very different from chatting culture, so they're kind of some mix in between and, really, people that haven't grown up in that sort of in-between cultures world my kids have trouble relating to them, frankly, but I do hope that this is Really a solidifying thing for them together as Siblings, something that they can always look back on, hopefully fondly. We, we joke every time somebody says your kids will never forget this and we say, yeah, no matter how much therapy they have, I'll never forget it. But I do hope that they can take away, you know, like we said, the social aspect learning To seek out that common ground with anybody, no matter what their background is, learning that they can accomplish really hard things, learning the value in Contributing to a team and taking on responsibility. Yeah, I hope that those are all takeaways that stay with them.

That's awesome.

As parents, we're all kind of worried about how we're screwing up our kids, and sure that we're screwing up our kids in 46 different ways. But you know, hopefully we end up a little bit ahead of the curve here and or shoot, I'll be happy if we land on the curve even. Yeah, that our kids are, are very resilient, and I mean kids everywhere are so much more capable than really. We wanted to give them credit for it, maybe not. You know, you go out once and you try something and maybe it's an utter failure, and and so you say, all my kid can't hack that. Maybe. But maybe we just set out with the wrong expectations, the wrong attitude. Maybe we come back to it again and again. Maybe we can get a little bit better outcome, Hmm, well, I definitely don't have the parenting thing, master dyes, it's a work in progress very much. I mean I got five kids, my wife, when I joke, okay, if we have a six kid, then we're gonna, we're gonna figure out how to do, how to be good parents, that's yeah, if we get the sticks one.

No, I mean it's. It's interesting to even just the. You sound like you have the benefit of a beginner's mindset, but also I keep hearing this idea of experimentation, of trial and error. That's how you're learning, where, even with education, you're not really an expert and all these things, and yet you sought out talking to all these people to okay what seems to have the best outcomes and let's try some things and let's do things as we're going and we're constantly iterating. And I think it comes back to that like constantly checking in. And I think that I've said this before to another dad on the podcast of you know that I think the probably the worst parents are the parents that are like I got it all figured out, I am doing everything perfect, I am killing it at this parent thing, like I think that's the one that's probably needs the most work, right, whereas the parents that are man, like you know, they're constantly trying to improve, they're trying to be better, they're trying to find different ways and like, yeah, we tell we all screw things up. I've screwed things up this morning, screwed things up yesterday, for sure, but it's just. You know, I think the great parents are the ones that are constantly trying to be better. And I think about my own dad. I just had my dad visited. We talked for hours about stuff about his own life that I had no idea, and I said you know, I have the utmost empathy for previous generations, especially when they're a significant improvement on the prior generation. Right, and I'm hearing. You know my, when I was a kid, my knock on my dad was always that my dad was too strict, my parents were too strict. You know it's so unfair. And then I hear about how strict my grandparents were. And I'm like wow, my dad was not strict at all Like that I had. I was laissez-faire as far as, as far as like the year, the generation over generation comparison. So no, I just, yeah, really applaud the beginner's mindset, the constant iteration, the testing. Yeah, I think your kids are very fortunate to have the dad that they have and the mom that they have. So, yeah, it was funny.

I opened it up to my kids the other day. We went to just a playground at Halfmont on the street and walking back I was very, very, very, very nervous about what my kids would say and I asked them two things. Well, two things. I said what do you think about mommy and daddy's marriage? Do you think that we're happy? And I really was not sure. I mean my kid, my wife and kids were around me like 24, seven for five months here hiking on the trail in a stressful environment, and I certainly didn't comport myself perfectly. So nothing, you know no stresses between me and my wife were hidden from the kids. You just can't hide them out there. And my kids all of them came back and said, no, you seem really happy, like your marriage seems great. And I was like, oh, okay. And then I said what do you think about mommy and daddy's parents? Like why have you learned from our parenting or from our marriage that you would do differently? Or that you think that we do well and what? My now 10 year old daughter, she was like, well, I think you did everything right. And my kids were very, very gracious and they're like no, I like we wanted and and they're like we're going to go live in Africa with our kids and we're going to hike these long trails with our kids. Like really, are you sure you guys are okay, we brainwashed you somehow. But yeah, yeah it's. I think that what I would want to do. You know you, always I don't want to do overs. I love where my life is, I love where my kids are, I love where my family's at, I love where my marriage is at. If I were to do something over, I would just try to be more present, especially in the day just social media, I mean, it's so easy to be home and to be staring at a screen or whatever. But to be more emotionally present and to be a whole lot more patient. You know, I don't beat my kids, like none of that but to just be less snappy, to be less critical, to be more encouraging to. You know, I don't, I certainly don't coddle my kids at all but to be more encouraging verbally, physically, and, yeah, to just be a. I'm not great when it comes to patience. And I mean, you know we're not abusing our kids or anything. Well, people think we're abusing our kids but we're not beating our children. Yeah, we make them walk a lot. But you know, I just I think about the times that, like you talked about our dads. My dad, I she also just left today. He was here watching our kids when we traveled off to Washington last week. You know the and my dad was maybe a little bit short tempered, short fuse, but again he wasn't like hitting me. I know I have a wonderful dad, a wonderful childhood. But then I think, man, he seemed snippy to me and I, looking at myself, I feel like I'm so much snippy You're like. So I told my kids you said, oh you're, you're doing a great job as parents. I was like you know what, if I have one advice, be more patient with your kids than I was with you. And I keep trying to tell myself that I keep falling back into why can't you just do this? Yeah, I don't know. Being a parent is hard and we have to strike that balance between cutting ourselves some slack as dads and always still, always trying to do better. It's a tough line. I mean, I don't get me wrong, being a mom is a tough job too. Being a dad is one of the hardest but most important things that we can do in our lives.

Absolutely, I think you said it perfectly. Yeah, I am also working on the patience, not being so snippy and just trying to remember man, the noise and the chaos, and one day they're going to be out of the house and I'm going to be like man, it's quiet. I could use a little chaos, I could use a little a little somebody, you know, running away from me when I'm trying to put their pants on and all these fun things. And, yeah, trying to just zoom out a bit and so that I can be more present. And I think it's. It's always so helpful to hear other dads are struggling with that and trying to really make sure that they do that. And, you know, I think it's conversations like this that really help us stay accountable and go back to our kids after this call and give them a hug and really recommit to that. So, you know, I think you said it perfectly and I think that's a perfect place to land the plane and, you know, the I'll bring it back to something I said in the beginning about why I was so excited to talk with you is around. You know, athlete dad, we have these three core pillars of modeling ambition, striving for balance and intentional integration, and I think intentional integration is often the most difficult of the three. It's much more easier to go out and be ambitious and show our kids like this is how we should do this and try to strike a balance. It's really hard to bring our kids along with that, and so I just want to applaud you again for absolutely modeling ambition, striking balance, but masterfully crushing intentional integration, bringing your family into the mix. So I've learned a ton. I have a whole page full of notes, of stuff that I've taken away from this conversation, and I know our dad's listening at home probably have equal amount of takeaway. So thank you so much again. I'm excited to follow along on the journey and see what you all get up to next and where you get up to next, and just want to say thanks again for taking the time to impart some wisdom.

Thanks, it's been a lot of fun.

Hey, everyone, just want to take a minute here to share some resources with you. So we have taken all of the greatest insights from our first season of the athlete dad and distilled them down into a guide, a free guide for you 10 life lessons from athlete dads where we're going to hear all about the best stuff that they talked about around modeling, ambition, seeking balance and intentional integration. You can get this guide for free at theathletadcom slash guide. That's theathletadcom slash guide. To pick up your free copy of this amazingly distilled resource that I know you're going to get a ton of value of.