The Trek has closed out season five of its Trail Correspondents podcast with a finale built around a simple idea: before hitting the trail, each correspondent recorded questions for their future self. Now, after thousands of miles on America's three big long-distance routes — the Appalachian Trail, the Pacific Crest Trail and the Continental Divide Trail — the 2026 class has listened back.
The episode, titled 'Interview With Your Former Self,' is hosted, produced and edited by Andrew 'Shanty' Baldwin, and it covers the full arc of a season spent on trail: what the hikers expected at the start, what they were still wondering about halfway through, and what actually changed by the finish. Expect talk of personal transformation and hard-earned perspective rather than gear reviews — the finale is a reflection piece, bringing the season full circle from trailhead to finish line.
The correspondent roster for the season reads like a classic trail-name roll call. Parrish 'Quip' McWhorter, Jessica 'Hellman' Bagnell, Scott 'Steady' Anderson, Sorrel 'Big Dawg' Perka, Danny 'NoCo' Nelson and MacKenzie 'Wilt' Wieder all contribute their end-of-season thoughts, each one answering questions written by a version of themselves who hadn't yet walked a single mile of trail. That's a compelling listen for anyone curious about the mental side of a long hike — the doubts, surprises and small decisions that don't show up in elevation profiles.
The series is presented by Altra, with a discount code (TREK10) on offer at the brand's site, and it's available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The Trek also runs a newsletter and an active Instagram community around the show, so new listeners have plenty of ways to follow along or dig into past seasons.
Why does this matter if you're not planning a five-month trek? Because the Trail Correspondents format is one of the most accessible windows into what long-distance hiking actually feels like, week by week, from ordinary people doing it in real time. If you've ever wondered whether an Appalachian Trail thru-hike is for you — or just wanted a dose of trail life from a desk chair — this finale is a good entry point, and the back catalogue gives you a whole season of on-trail dispatches to work through. It's also a useful gut-check: hearing six hikers describe how their expectations collided with reality is arguably better trip-planning research than any gear list.
