Blister Pop Adventures: The Ultimate Guide to America’s Epic Day Hikes

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Hello everyone, it's Howard Fox and welcome back for another episode of the Outdoor Adventure Series. So our guest today is Philip Clark. He is the founder of Blister Pop Adventures and he is the host of the podcast. Philip, it's great to have you on the outdoor adventure series. Welcome. Great. Thanks for having me, Alan. Really looking forward to our conversation.

SPEAKER_00 0:29

Fantastic. So first off, where are you located? So I'm actually located in Reno, Nevada, and I understand you are in Las Vegas. So where Las Vegas, yes. Neighbors, sort of. Sort of. People who are not from Nevada may not understand that there's actually a quite a big distance between Las Vegas and Reno. And I think I've driven it a few times and it's about a seven-hour drive.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

Well, that's good to know. I was working on a pitch to do some local, you know, hour drives from Las Vegas. And you can get to some really nice places within an hour drive, hour and a half at the most. But to get up to the Reno area, that is it's a hall, and you have to want to do it. It's not easy to get to.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

Absolutely. But it's beautiful up here. We're right nestled in by the Sierra Nevadas and right next to the Great Basin of Range. So it's really a nice spot to be in.

SPEAKER_01 1:25

Okay. Excellent. So tell us a little bit about blister pop adventures and also the well, first, but then also we'll talk a little bit about diving into the podcast because I don't often see adventure marketing uh experiences, but then also there's the podcast. So let's talk about blister pop. What is it? How'd you get involved? And where are you going with it?

SPEAKER_00 1:49

Absolutely. So blister pop is what I'm going to call an adventure engine. Really, the purpose to this is to try and get ordinary people out to have epic one-day hiking adventures. What I've what I see over the years is I'm just an ordinary guy. I work in an office and I'll go out on the weekend and I'll do a hike. I'll do some crazy hikes that people kind of scared of. I'll go back in the office. And I see sort of that awe and wonder in their eyes, but also this sort of fear and apprehension of getting outdoors. And so I created Blister Pot to try and help ordinary people overcome that fear of being out in the wilderness or out in these sort of the culmination of a lot of adventures I've had over the years. Hiking not only here out in the Sierra Nevadas, but also on the East Coast in Appalachia, in various places around the world, not only hiking, eventing obstacle horse racing, it's all sort of come to a head that what I really would like to do as I move forward in this journey is get people out in nature and get them to understand that there are places out there that are just spectacular and wonderful and amazing places you see right here in the United States. So a blister pot, what we've done is we've created these hiking guides. Hiking guides are about 30 to 40 pages long, and they're sort of a how-to guide to get to some of the most iconic places in the US. And so the guide itself takes you through how do I get there? Where do I fly to? How do where do I drive to? Do I need to set up a hiking shuttle? When's the best time to go? Should I go in the winter? Should I go in the summer? Should have what are the dangers if I go in these various seats? Where should I stay? Which town should I be staying in? Are there any hotel recommendations that you have? And we also include details about the route. We sort of walk you through step by step. This is the route, this is where you'll go. These are the dangers on the route. There's a GPX file, which is a navigation file you can download for the route onto your phone into an app to help you navigate about the risks on the hike, the dangerous parts of the hike for these various hikes. Are there bears? Is there exposure? Is there desert environment? We tell you how to repair and mitigate for the risks. And then we give you a little bit of a little bit of background on the local history, the geology, the fauna. What we've done is we've played all these hikes into a series of 21 hikes that we think really represent the iconic day hikes of America. If you did all these hikes, you would get a complete picture of the landscape of the US. We made them into a collectible series. For those that like to collect the whole series, we played these baseball cars. You can collect the whole series of 21 hikes.

SPEAKER_01 4:30

Okay, excellent. Lots of questions. You mentioned day hikes. You also mentioned perhaps a different word, the ordinary guy. I consider myself just the ordinary guy. If I I like a nice day hike, a couple hours, a couple miles. I was looking at the cards on the website. These hikes are not for the faint of heart.

SPEAKER_00 4:53

Absolutely not. They are not for the faint of heart. And I when I first launched a company a few months ago, somebody reached out and said, Hey, what's your easiest hike? And I let them know that they start up hard. And I do want people to take that seriously. These are not. I'm just gonna go out for a little stroll in the park. These are some of the most challenging, iconic hikes in the US.

SPEAKER_02 5:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 5:14

The guide seriously, you should prepare for them. They are difficult hikes. I'll give you one example. About three, four weeks ago, a couple of friends and I went down to Palm Springs and we did a hike called Cactus to Clouds. It's kind of one of the hardest hikes in America. It starts in the valley floor and Palm Springs and goes all the way up to 11,000 feet to San Jacinto Peak. It's in the desert. We started at one in the morning. It was 86 degrees at one in the morning. And when we got to the top, we're standing in snow. But it's a really difficult hike. And all of these hikes are really designed to get you out there, to push you to your limit of what you can do in a day. A lot of them are in remote places, they're in national parks, but they're really, I don't want anybody to go into this with a perception that these are easy day hikes. They are day hikes that will take you to the limit.

SPEAKER_01 6:02

Okay, that's that's good to know. Uh, which also begs the question again, you talked about the ordinary guy. I consider myself the ordinary guy. Who is your ideal consumer of this really fascinating product and service? Because I like the idea of it and I love the places you're going. I know I can't get through that hike. I couldn't, I mean, I've reached an age, I unfortunately I've reached the age that says, where's my safety factor? But who is your your ideal consumer of this product and service?

SPEAKER_00 6:38

So Leto consumer is likely to be either somebody that is wanting to get out and wanting to challenge themselves and is prepared to put in the time to properly train and prepare. With somebody who's already hiking and is seeking sort of that next adventure, the next step. And I guarantee you, if you talk to regular hikers, they will all want to uh do one of these hikes. It will be one of their bucket list hikes. Okay, Mount Whitney's one of the hikes, for example. I can guarantee it's almost on everybody hikers list. One day I want to do Mount Whitney. It's those people who want to want to push themselves, who really want to get out there and take on that bucket list hike, but they're always a little bit apprehensive about how do I do it, can I do it, and am I able to do it.

SPEAKER_01 7:24

Okay. As a and I'm assuming you have participated, experienced all of these hikes.

SPEAKER_00 7:33

I haven't participated in all of the hikes, but I've done quite a few of them. And I've quite too all the areas where the hikes are part of the uh part of the experience of trying to put together some of the most hard and challenging hikes in America was trying to design hikes that are iconic and recognized. So most of them are trails that people will be aware of and will have heard of and are marked. They are not off-trail hikes. I do quite a fair amount of off-trail wilderness hiking. These are not those. They all have trails, and they're all like in iconic places like Olympic National Park, Lacia National Park, the Grand Canyon, places in that the appellations that people will be aware of, the Great Smoky Mountains, for example. Okay. And so what I'm really bringing to the table is connecting people to the research to understand what it's like to go out there. So we we've done all of the research, and we've connected people to all of the resources that they need to be to accomplish these hikes and put them together in a way that we intend to maintain to make sure people can have trust and confidence that what we're providing to them is the latest and greatest information about those hikes.

SPEAKER_01 8:48

Okay. Now you had mentioned earlier this is a relatively new endeavor. To date, what has been your most popular card to or route that people would like to take?

SPEAKER_00 9:03

Undoubtedly the one I just just mentioned. Every hiker's bucket list hike, and then Whitney. Not Whitney. It is one I have done. My friends and I did it September last year and had a great time. We we got it done in one day. Started at Lone Pine at like one in the morning. I managed to get up and down and back back safely by by about three in the afternoon.

SPEAKER_01 9:22

Okay. Wow, that's pretty good. I have a good friend, Ethan Galogley, wrote a book called The The Trail, which is the John Muir Trail, but then there's that there's the path up to Mount Whitney. It sounds great. Again, I'm an I gotta watch out for the altitude sickness, but I think if any just the experience of being up there, the view and just stopping and just breathing, taking it all in, it has to be amazing. Had you always been this avid hiker, and or is this just again something just popped into your head?

SPEAKER_00 9:56

Like, let's do this. I would say when I was younger, like in my during my childhood as a teenager, I was part of the local scout troop in England, and we did sort of lots of these types of hikes. But then as I became an adult and life got real, and I had to get a job and I had a family, I sort of fell away from it a little bit. Having lived there, yeah, I get that. Actually, uh, the revelation really came when I was in my late 30s. I had a young son and we were playing in the house, and uh he ran up the stairs and sort of ran up after him. I got to the top of like a single flight of stairs. I was exhausted, I was lying on the floor, gasping for breath, I thought I was gonna have a heart attack. And that was really my turning point, my realization that I needed to get my together and really think seriously about my my health, and that really began this journey. And that and the journey didn't begin with hiking, it sort of began with with uh running, and so I tried to run a mile, then I ran a 5k and a half mile, and then a map, and then I got into trail running, and so that really got me into the into the mountains and on the trails, and that really sparked my love for being out in the wilderness, and from there it sort of snowboarded some somewhat, and I've had these awesome, amazing adventures. I've done adventure racing, obstacle course racing, sky running here in the US, but also in some amazing places all around the world. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 11:28

Just curious, have you ever done the race that's up in Leadville, Colorado? No, I'm aware of it.

SPEAKER_00 11:33

I I have not done any ultra-marathon running bike. I did participate in something called the Landanel Islands Sky Running Race. And it's uh a race across one of the islands near Hong Kong. It's actually an island with the world's biggest Buddha, and so you start at sea level and you run up a mountain, run down the mountain, you run another mountain and back down the mountain again. The really exciting, but yeah, the Leadville is a very serious ultramarathonal race.

SPEAKER_01 12:02

All right. Is I am curious, is there a kind of a process or a series of steps based on that from your experience? If folks look, I I want to get out there, I want to I want to lose some weight, I want to get healthy, I want to start to do some walking. I'm not ready for the marathons, things like that. I would eventually like to get on a trail like the one you described going up to the top of Mount Whitney. I know everybody's different, everybody's in a different place health-wise, but is there a a how-to guide or a recommendation you would make to help people look if you want to get started, this is the way to do it. This is how you this is how you pick the right set of shoes, the right set of socks, hiking pole, backpack, what water source. Is there is there a uh a guide that maybe you already have on the website or just off the top of your head you would recommend for somebody just getting started?

SPEAKER_00 13:06

So I'm gonna be a bit cliche. Okay, every journey starts with a a single single step. So that's how you get started. And in order to do that, what you really need to do is sort of commit. And that's why I kind of like these hikes. It's setting that big goal, that thing I'm aiming for. And that's that's how my journey has progressed. I really got out there and said, what's the goal that I want to achieve? And then how do I work towards it? And so even today, I get out there and I train six days a week. I was out this morning, four o'clock in the morning. I went out, I walked around the neighborhood, I did sort of six or seven miles. That's been every day this week, six or seven miles out there. Okay. I found the time in my day, I've carved it out. I've said, This is important to who I am, this is what I want to do. I've made sure there's no distractions, that's why it's four o'clock in the morning. Okay. It doesn't have to be four o'clock in the morning. Any any time of day that works within your schedule, but it's really starting small. It can be in a gym, on a treadmill, it'd just be a walk around your neighborhood. But to anybody who's worried about can I do this? How do I get out there? It really is that simple. Commit and get up and do it. In terms of guides and experience, there's so many resources out there now. We have the internet, there's so many books out there that you can read and learn about hiking. It's something that I've started to explore and recognize that to do these more difficult hikes, you're really going to have to train a little bit more seriously. I think you mentioned altitude is an issue, but also just the elevation gain and being on your feet for eight, 10 hours is a serious endurance endeavor. So I started to use the social media to introduce people to different hiking-related exercises that they can do to strengthen their legs primarily. Okay. There really is no substitute for time on feet, unfortunately. Yeah. In terms of experience and gear, I'm gonna steer away from that question because I don't want to be a gear guy.

SPEAKER_01 15:00

Okay, that's quite all right. By the way, I I was fascinated by your jalapeno one-foot challenge, by the way. I I I did some research, I was doing my research. Is there a mistake that people make or have the propensity to make because they're not prepared to take on literally this experience that you have helped to curate, they're not ready for it.

SPEAKER_00 15:27

Yeah, I think there are a couple of mistakes that people make. One is they let their ego get the better of them. And so I cannot tell you the times that I have failed to complete a hike. There are numerous times where I've failed to complete a hike, and what will happen is somebody who's perhaps a little bit newer to it, a little less experienced in the wilderness, will feel like they 100% have to make it to the top of the mountain. And that's when people get in trouble. How that's when they really that's where you hear about people where they're having to be rescued because they push themselves too far. And it's not necessarily about encountering some issue in the wilderness, although that could that could contribute to it. It's about their general fitness. And when you're six, seven, eight miles away from the trailhead, and now you're exhausted, maybe you're you're heat exhausted, or you just ran out of energy, or you haven't prepared or planned correctly. Now you're going to find yourself in a lot a lot of danger. So that's one of the big issues that I find is just not being physically ready to do it. I think letting letting your ego get the better of you. If you're not feeling it on the trail, if you don't think you can make it, if it's feels like it's getting too scary, there's no there's no shame in turning back. I bet you still had a wonderful day and you still had a wonderful bike, and you still are out there in the world. Exactly. So never be afraid to like turn back. That's my number one piece of advice. The other thing I see a lot of beginner hikers do is they take too much stuff. I think they over overpack, over prepare, particularly with water. And so water is probably the greatest amount of weight you're gonna take with you on a hike. And some people see it sort of feel like they need that security blanket of water. And if you're going on a lot of these hikes, you're gonna be in places where there are streams or rivers, take appropriate appropriate water filtration, and you can you can refuel. There are a couple of hikes on here though that are in desert and extreme environments, and you do have to take all of your water with you, particularly one in Death Valley. That's no water absolutely anywhere, and you have to pack in like five, six liters of water, so let's say every day.

SPEAKER_01 17:28

That's a mistake. Death Valley is a mistake waiting to happen. I love Death Valley. I love it. When you're hiking, are you do you have a trusty companion? Do you have friends, family, your kids, or who's going out there with you?

SPEAKER_00 17:42

So I do have a couple of friends that I'll take with me for some of the big hikes that we do. And we're a group of friends, we're sort of a misfit group of friends. One of them lives in Florida, one lives over in California in the Sacramento area. And we actually met doing a hike. We did Everest Base Camp. We did it as part of a group that was competing in a Guinness World Record attempt. And the Guinness World Record attempt was to do the highest ascent and descent of an obstacle course race. And so we started in Luckler and then we hiked all the way up to Gorak Shep near Everest Base Camp. And uh the organizers had set up this little obstacle course race. We completed the obstacle course, and then we hiked up Calapata, which is a little bit adjacent to Ever Space Camp, a little bit higher than Everest Base Camp. I think I climbed a wall. I vaguely remember there was a sandbag involved at the top of Calapata. And then once we came back down, we we uh ran down the Everspace Camp Trail back to Lupla. And we have met in that event. And actually, one of my friends was my roommate for the for the experience, and so we've been friends ever since. And once or twice a year, we'll get out and we'll do some epic kind of pushing the edge type of adventure. But to be honest, most of the time now, I've I've built enough experience now that I I feel like I have enough wilderness experience that I I like the solitude, I like to be out there on my own. Okay, steer clear of some of the more popular trails. And I'm very fortunate to be here, Reno, with this just a mass, immense expanse of Nevada to explore. Oh, yeah. But I don't take it lightly. I mean, this is this is real wilderness. This is not I'm going for a stroll to the sh to the store. This is real dangerous stuff. So you have to be I'm prepared every time I go out, and I oh I probably over-prepare and over-plan because you can get in trouble real quick if you're out there on your own.

SPEAKER_01 19:28

That's good insight. That's good insight. Now I am curious, and I I would love to go to the website, but before we do, Blister Pop, how'd you come up with this for uh great logo, uh, very unique name? How'd you come up with it?

SPEAKER_00 19:44

So a couple of years ago, as if we were sort of thinking about what this company was like. I did do the Death Valley hike I just mentioned. It's one of our hikes, Shorty's World to Telescope Peak. Oh, yeah. I actually think it's probably one of the toughest day hikes in America you can do. And my my friend from Everest Base Camp and I attempted to do it. We did not, we did not finish it because we had attempted it as an out and back. The option on blister pot that we've posted is a point-to-point where you you bail about 8,800 feet, but we were attempted to go up and down. We had gotten to about 8,600 feet and ran out of water and decided best to live. Yes. So on the way back, we're coming back onto the alluvial fan into Death Valley, and our feet were stunned, and the blisters were coming. And so I just remember the last six miles. I was almost hobbled trying to get back to my my car back at Shorty as well. And it was that feeling that I think every hiker experiences at least once in their journeys. When the blisters come, you know you've had a hard day, and you know you've done it, and you know what's gonna happen. You're either gonna you're either gonna burst or you're gonna be tempted to burst them. It was that sort of iconic feeling, I've had a hard day, pop, lister pop. And I wanted something quirky and imaginative that will catch people's attention. I didn't want this to be like a stodgy hiking company.

SPEAKER_01 21:08

I love it, I love it. So, how'd you get into the podcasting? What how did that dis b decision become part of the mix here? Which I think is great, by the way.

SPEAKER_00 21:18

So it wasn't the primary goal. The primary goal was blister pop, getting people out and have these epic adventures, but I I realized that there's already a lot of content out there on the web. You can go and look up a lot of these hikes, lots of bloggers have put stuff out there, but nobody's really talking about the journey itself. Nobody's walking you through what it's like to do one of these hikes. I wanted something on the website that would be a little bit different that people could just plug into and and play and sort of listen to a sort of an overview of the experience of what these hikes was. So it just started as that. It started as these little 10, 12 minute this is what it's like to do rim to rim. Just a little teether, if you feel like. But I I knew. I knew once I started doing it, it was a powerful medium to get the message across of what it's like to do these hikes. So as it's evolved, I've started to document some of the hikes that I do that are not necessarily the blister pop hikes, although as I do more and more of these hikes, some of the blister pop hikes will be there. But there are my hiking experiences. When I go out and hike, I want people to feel what it's like to be out there on the mountain. Tell them understand what the journey is like, what the dangers are like, what experiences I am having, what feelings I'm having when I'm out there on the mountain. So I think I have now five or six episodes that I've done since the beginning of the year where I've gone out and I've done some hikes and I come back and I sort of relive and walk people through the experience. I've learned a few things on the through the process. I did try to do one on the trail while I was walking it, but that kind of it got a little bit complicated. So I'm probably going to steer away for sort of it's live while I'm boarding it, period. But I think it is something that's a little bit unique. And throughout my journeys and my adventures, I have met these amazing people that I am going to start inviting on my podcast. I don't have any guests yet, but I do have some amazing people lined up who are prepared to come and share their experiences. I'll give you a couple, a couple of teethers, if you like. There's a young lady I've been trying to get on the podcast. She lives down in Southern California. She is working her way to try and complete Cactus to Clouds 50 times. One of the hardest things in America, 50 times. I think she just finished her 43rd attempt last weekend. And it's trying to get it done by November. She's promised me she's going to be on the podcast, but we keep having some scheduling issues. And then there's a friend of mine, a hiking guide called Vladdy. He's a hiking guide down in Peru. And so he takes a lot of tourists to go see Manchu Picchu. And so we were friends when I did the South Pente Trail a few years ago. I have another friend who is a hiking guide in Nepal who does lots of stuff in the Himalayas called Pember. He's a great guy. He's going to be able to share some amazing experiences. And that's what I really want to do is I want to get real guides and real hikers who have real experiences on to share what they're doing. This isn't necessarily going to be about inviting the gear company on. That's not really what this is about. I just want to have people who've been out there and have real experiences share those with the listeners of the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 24:30

Oh, very interesting. This past couple of years, I had gentlemen, Glenn Van Pesky, very much into ultra-light hiking, extreme hiking. Yeah. Now he does own a company, but the the the podcast was more about him and the book he had written. And I just had a podcast earlier earlier this year, I think it was from PodMatch. I cannot remember the name right off the bat. But he is an organ donor. Uh and all of his fellow self-this is voluntary organ donorship, but their goal was to hike all the all the top peaks here in the US. And so somebody, when you're ready to do some inner more interviews, there's two folks that I would recommend, and they're up on my page.

SPEAKER_00 25:17

Great. I would I would love to connect with them. I love that idea that somebody has been so selfless to donate their organs. Actually, I worked for transplant surgeons at a university for a number of years, and so just amazing that people are willing to donate their organs, often for loved ones, but also selflessly.

SPEAKER_01 25:34

Sure. And the realization that you can do it and still have a lifestyle like you're describing. Just the king's speaks. I would love to go to the website now if you're okay with that. Absolutely. Now, the always hard part is they kind of moved the cheese on me a little bit. So good old Zoom, but I think everything works. I should be looking at your screen right now. You got it. Okay. Oh, almost got it. There we got it. Excellent. So I love the logo. I love the name. Uh the bucket list hiking challenge, but take us on a little tour.

SPEAKER_00 26:13

Absolutely. So uh in the vein of doing hard things, I never built a website before. So this is my first experience on either. Yeah, everything you see is stuff that I put together. There's nothing that I've farmed out to anybody else. So you go out here on the homepage, you start scrolling through the homepage. I wanted to give people a real image of what we're what we're aiming at here. I've got these 21 hikes, these 21 cards that you can collect and build into a series over a library. I do have a business partner. I'm hoping it will be on our podcast. He's uh he sent me a little uh proposal that he's gonna try and do all 21 hikes later this year. I I'm not sure he can do it. Uh there's an adult beverage, there's a beverage of sort on the line. Absolutely. We've got a little a little spot here to explain more what blister pop is about. Just a very brief synopsis. If you keep scrolling down, this is a link to our 21 hikes. Uh we'll click through to that in a in a second. I got a little secret down here for you, too. The T5, the hardest day hike in America. And this is one I'm really excited about, and actually is getting a lot of buzz as we start to publicize it. It's uh the Tahoe Five Peaks. I created a separate website for it. And it's a 24-hour hiking challenge to see if you can climb five peaks around Lake Tahoe in 24 hours. Now it's a big one, it's 50 miles and 13,000 feet of elevation game. So it's not for the faint heart. And we're excited to kick that off July 1. We're really waiting for the snow to melt off of the Sierras because I think it would be impossible if you had to also deal with the snow on part of the website. And hopefully, you if you get a chance, you can click through to that other other site. Sure.

SPEAKER_01 27:52

Well, Zach, why don't we just take a quick click right now? And we'll have that up on our show notes.

SPEAKER_00 28:00

So, yeah, this is the T5. We created a separate logo for it. We started to work with some local groups. We're starting to publicize it. And so here are the five peaks, Mount Rose. It's on the north end of Lake Tahoe. So you start there at midnight, go about four hours to get it done. Then you drive around to the Palisades to take on Granite Chief. Once you've done that, hopefully it's uh early morning, you're still going. You drive down to the south of Lake Tahoe and take on Mount Tilak, which is really one of the iconic uh Lake Tahoe peaks. Right. In the afternoon, drive around to Krill Peak, which is the tallest peak around Lake Tahoe, and then finish on Genoa Peak and hopefully get it done by midnight. So all right.

SPEAKER_01 28:45

So at midnight everybody's done. Where are you gonna go to where are you gonna go celebrate?

SPEAKER_00 28:54

So it's a good it it's right, Genoa Peak's right there by South Lake Tahoe. So there's some great places in South Lake Tahoe. You go and celebrate. We we I'm not gonna plug anybody, let's put it that way.

SPEAKER_01 29:06

We do have a yeah, Philip, you are incredibly diplomatic, let me tell you. Let me tell you. All right, so let's uh go back here. I love I love that idea though. I think that it's and then got your e-cards.

SPEAKER_00 29:20

Yeah, we we we thought we would we thought it would be really interesting to make blister pop a little bit more accessible and take a different approach at it. And so you can give a hike to a friend. Maybe there's a hiker in your family who's always talking about wanting to do this hike, or get get them a gift. That's it. Put it on them to actually do it. And then uh we also thought it would be fun to uh challenge your friends to a hike. If you've got a group of friends, you'll be go hiking with, surprise them with uh like a group hike to one of these iconic places.

SPEAKER_01 29:51

Oh, very nice.

SPEAKER_00 29:53

So yeah, this is our US 21 series. So you can see here all the hikes we got lined up, and there I really think this is uh iconic cross section, the most I know I'm gonna get some criticism because I kind of missed the middle a little bit. And so it's very west coast to east coast focused. Yeah. But I I mean there are so many uh wonderful places to visit in the United States. I had to pick 21. Some some excellent hikes definitely didn't make the cut, but it was really about creating hikes. One, you can get done in one day, two, they are accessible, they are recognizable, but really they represent the story of the United States.

SPEAKER_01 30:36

I love it. There's definitely you never truly realize how beautiful our country is, and obviously we want it to stay that way. Absolutely. At the risk of getting political. Uh, but I mean some of these views are very familiar. So I I mean it's exciting. And if you're up, if folks are up to the task of being and are ready to do these hikes, I mean it's uh it's an experience they will not soon forget. I'm gonna uh stop sharing the screen. And I I am curious when you were on the high and thank you for taking us on that tour. And I guess I was a little premature. Is there anything else on the website that you had wanted to draw attention to?

SPEAKER_00 31:22

Well, just a couple of things. If you've done some of these hikes and you're really gung-ho to get the full series, we just sell the card. You can just buy the card, just prove that you did it. Send me a photo or something, put it on our Facebook, just prove that you did it. I don't want people just to say they did it, just so they can get the card. But you can just buy some of the cards if you want to complete the series and you just discover Blister Pop and you say, Oh, I've already done Whitney, I've already done this, but I love the card to complete my section. So you can just go on there and buy the card. The link to the podcast is there. I've also started to create a little bit of a blog. And what I wanted to do with a blog was start to give people a little bit of a different flavor for each of the hikes. So I think I'm up to US 8, which is Rocky Mountain, just doing a couple of articles to give a little bit of a flavor. Maybe how do you get a permit? What's dangerous about this hike? Or is there some iconic backstory about this particular location on this little cake? And then I think that's gonna continue to build. We're gonna continue to find these interesting niches about the different clinics. And then we I have a store. Do you want a hand or something to do my note? It's right there on the store. You gotta have merch. Gotta have merch.

SPEAKER_01 32:28

Excellent. So I'm curious uh going back to your experience in Mount Whitney, because you have been on a lot of hikes, but using Mount Whitney as the example, when you reached the summit, whatever time of day, whatever the weather was, and you just kind of did a 360-degree turn, not near the edge of the summit. What was going through your mind when you were up there?

SPEAKER_00 32:56

So I went with a group of a group of friends, the two friends I mentioned, another a local, a local friend who's also a hiker. And we had left at one in the morning and been hiking all day. And just the difficult part about Whitney is not necessarily the hike itself in terms of how steep it is, it's the altitude. Once you get over 12,000, 13,000 feet, it's those last two miles that punch you in the gut. That's the challenge part of Whitney is once you're up there. And it feels like it takes forever to get to the summit. It's only two miles to go, but you're moving slow, you're breathing heavily, and you come up sort of over this stone ridge, and you can see the little the iconic hut. And you get to the hut, and then suddenly you're there, and the whole world opens up, and it's just such a spectacular feeling. It's just you are literally on top of the world, and the whole world opens up. You can see sort of California, Nevada, Death Valley sort of opening up to you one way, and you turn the other way, and you've got Sequoia and the Kings Canyon the other way. It's just such an amazing feeling. And there are people who've been up there who've been hiking since 10 the following evening, or they've camped out a trail camp, and there's just such a feeling of euphoria and happiness of all the people that are up there and have made this hike. And if you do this sensitively, you should be getting up there a little bit before noon. You don't want to get caught in a thunderstorm. So most people are aiming to get there in that sort of 10 to 12 time frame. So you will find a lot of people up there, and there's just this real sense of sort of camaraderie and joy, and we've done this amazing thing. I love it. I love it.

SPEAKER_01 34:32

And there's, I mean, I just can imagine this the euphoria and just being able to kind of celebrate with your friends and others, and it and seen as you were sharing those some of the most beautiful views you will ever see. I love that. Philip, before we head out today, uh is there any uh insight that you would like to share with our listeners? Could be your journey, could be this the challenges of starting a business, putting yourself out there because now you are a you're you're you're you're in some ways a journalist, a podcaster, you are a writer, you've created these books. So life has changed a little bit, but so what have you kind of learned? What insights do you have that perhaps our listeners would be interested in in knowing?

SPEAKER_00 35:22

Yeah, I mean, that's a really interesting question because I started this company on December the 21st, 2025, four months ago. I had 12 Facebook friends. I mean my my enjoyment was being on the trail on my own in solitude. And so this has been such a different journey for me. And those first sort of apprehensive posts I put on social media, the first podcasts I put together were really one of the first times I put myself out there outside of my my business life. And it's kind of dawning, it's kind of it's almost kind of like being on a new trail for the first time. You don't quite know what to expect. And it has been a completely new experience for me. And I I listened to other people say when you put yourself out there, it's it's a bit different, it's a bit scary. And I've done some difficult hikes and videos first three times were scary. And when you are starting your own business, it's all it's all on you. I mean, there's nobody there to help you. I'm sure you appreciate that with your podcast. It's up to you to do the research, to do the business, to do everything. And so it's been such an interesting experience learning how to start a business, how to build a website. I sort of reached that point where a lot of the content creation is done from the company perspective. So now it's how do I get out there and build publicity? How do I use social media? I have no idea. I had 12 friends. Now I've I think I have eight or nine hundred Instagram followers. So I think we've made some some progress, but it's it's progress. I still just don't know if the like I'm putting stuff out there and it's not it's it's right. I'm like, I didn't grow up with social media. I'm a little bit older, and so social media wasn't really a thing when I grew up, so it's kind of new to me. And I feel like I'm very late to it as well. So I'm really learning how to do that. And so it's uh it's a fun adventure, and it's getting me out hiking even more than I already do because I sort of feel compelled. But since I own a hiking company, I better go hiking.

SPEAKER_01 37:24

It's it's funny, yeah. As the host of the outdoor adventure series, so we're I moved I started it when I moved from Chicago to Las Vegas because I wanted to get out to the desert, do some day hikes, mind you, one two hours day hikes. See the to go car camping and see the stars, and you never truly realize how the impact that it can have on you and the doors that open because people want to hear the story, they want to hear the adventure, and it just just yeah, it's an inspiration also just to get out and explore. Maybe you can't do the the hike that you have on your on your site, you're not gonna get the blister, hopefully. But doesn't mean you like you said earlier, you still have to take that first step.

SPEAKER_00 38:12

I mean, adventure is out there in your neighborhood, just go somewhere different, somewhere new, short trail, short lake. I mean, this morning I think I was sharing with you, I was just went for a hike in my neighborhood, and I'm fortunate enough my uh housing development backs onto BLM land here in Nevada. There's a white horse just standing there, mining its own business. I got to sort of share a little bit of a moment with the horse. That's just just woke up this morning, went for a hike, and there it was. Adventure is right there. It doesn't have to be a big mountain or Mount Whitney or Grand Canyon. They're in your neighborhood.

SPEAKER_01 38:46

Just get out there and do it. I love it. Well, listen, Phillips, been a pleasure to have you on the podcast. And I hope you enjoyed yourself today. Uh, we're gonna provide uh backlink to uh the blister uh pop adventures uh com website as well as to the podcast URLs and also the uh the the Tahoe hike as well. We'll have all those on the on the back show notes on our back linked, and then we'll also have your your Facebook and Instagram pages as well, just so people can learn more about you and your work and just again great story. Appreciate you sharing that with us on a Saturday morning. Hey, you're only our seven hours, eight hours. So if I ever get up to Reno, I'll give you a shot. We'll go on like a little hour hike, okay?

SPEAKER_00 39:31

I I would absolutely love that, Howard. And just just uh plugging a few adventures I'm having this year. If people do want to follow me on social media since I'm new to it, in June, I'm going to the UK to do the UK six peaks. Six peaks are on the UK in 72 hours is gonna be an epic logistical nightmare. July, I'm gonna go to Japan. We're gonna I'm gonna try and climb a less popular way up to Mount Fuji, and then in the fall, gonna go to the Atlas Mountains in Morocco and climb the highest mountain in North Africa. So if if you like that type of thing, love to take you along for the adventure. I love it.

SPEAKER_01 40:03

And I I just definitely will share the all the links on our show notes so people can learn more about you. And the one in Morocco sounds exciting. We just did an episode with a gentleman that plans one, two, three, four-week adventures in Morocco. And I and I know if you go there besides the great food, you want the the the blue the Atlas Mountains experience. So that's gonna be fantastic. So very excited for you again. Phillips, it's been a pleasure to have you on the podcast and look forward to continuing to learn more about you and your work and following the podcast as well. So thank you so much. Thanks, Alan. All right, listen, stay in a line. We're gonna do a quick close, and then you and I can have a final chat. Okay, all right, folks. I hope you enjoyed uh today's episode with Philip Clark, he's up in Areno, Nevada. Just a seven and a half, eight hour drive, no big deal. Uh, he is the founder of Blister Pop Adventures and the host of the Off You Pop Podcast. And listen, go out to this website, check out the hikes, and if if whether it's your hiking, an adventure, or perhaps you have friends and family that are into this kind of adventure, it's exciting adventure, these great day hikes. Uh do check out the the cards that are available. You can again visit him on and learn more about blister pop adventures on their website, blisterpopadventures.com. And on that website, you'll also have links back to their the social sites like Facebook and Instagram. As for us, you can find this episode on our website, outdooradventures.com. We're also on LinkedIn and Facebook on our outdoor adventure series pages. The YouTube of this episode will be up on our outdoor adventure series page, and that will include the tour that Philip gave of the website. And of course, you can listen to this episode wherever you get your podcast from. So go on that road trip, go on that day hike, download episodes from the Off You Pop podcast and the Outdoor Adventure Series, and so you will have entertainment as you're walking up on those trails. Okay, folks, wherever you are, whatever you're doing, go out there, have a fantastic day, and we look forward to having you join us on a future episode of the Outdoor Adventure Series Podcast. Take care.