Girl Gotta Hike with "Click" 📸 feat. Olivia Sippel

[00:00:00] Melissa Goodwin: So I started with finding hikes that maybe I had been to before by car but that could also be accessed by public transit, so it basically started as a once-monthly public transit series hike for women.

[00:00:16] Brett Barry: I have been wanting to go on a hike with Melissa Goodwin and her guide service, Girl Gotta Hike, but there is one issue. I am not a woman, and so our production intern, Olivia Sippel, so graciously stepped up and embarked on an overnight camping trip with licensed guide Melissa Goodwin, who runs this fully outfitted hiking service to encourage women of all ages to connect with the outside world. Here's Olivia with the story.

[00:00:44] Olivia Sippel: Hello, my name is Olivia, and this was my first camping trip ever. I met Melissa at the 2024 Margaretville Cauliflower Festival as she stopped by our table to say "hi" to Brett. Lucky enough, I was tabling that day. We hit it off, and by the end of our conversation, we'd set a date for an overnight hike and camp in the Catskills. I am originally from the city, from a family that you would not consider the outdoorsy type. We never went on hikes, let alone a camping trip together. Now I've been on day hikes, but nothing like this, but in the hands of a licensed guide like Melissa, I knew this would be a fun trip. One month later, I reconvened with Melissa on the trail, and she told me about her trail name, "Click."

[00:01:29] Melissa Goodwin: Have you heard of the trail name?

[00:01:31] Olivia Sippel: No.

[00:01:32] Melissa Goodwin: Okay, so when people do a long-distance hiking trail like the Appalachian Trail, which is 2,190 miles [Georgia to Maine]...

[00:01:40] Olivia Sippel: Oh my god.

[00:01:41] Melissa Goodwin: I've hiked the whole thing, and people will get what's called a trail name. It's kind of like your alter ego, your persona, so I'm—my trail name is Click.

[00:01:49] Olivia Sippel: Click?

[00:01:50] Melissa Goodwin: Because of my camera, so yeah, it's like, oh, Melissa might not have her hair in braids, but Click does. I am one, though, like the longer I live, I'm like, "No, I'm just always Click," I think... prefer to be Click.

[00:02:07] Olivia Sippel: I need to make up a trail name.

[00:02:08] Melissa Goodwin: Yeah, well, usually, I mean, there's different...

[00:02:11] Olivia Sippel: You know there's different ways to come about it.

[00:02:13] Melissa Goodwin: Some people say you can't pick one for yourself. I don't agree with that.

[00:02:17] Olivia Sippel: But I feel like it should come from the trail.

[00:02:20] Melissa Goodwin: For me, it came from the trail, like the trail and the people on the Appalachian Trail were the ones that, like, helped solidify that it would be Click.

[00:02:30] Olivia Sippel: Yeah, now the Appalachian Trail, or A.T., passes through 14 states stretching from Georgia to Maine. The trail is completed over 2,000 miles and can take five to seven months to finish. For Click, she got to cherish these moments with her dad as they took on the adventure together. Although she'd already had hiking and camping experience, this was the first time Click set out to complete a thru-hike.

[00:02:56] Melissa Goodwin: I grew up day hiking and car camping, so going to, like, a state park campground where you would drive the car in and set up a tent. There's a picnic table. Most of the time, at least in the New York State ones, there are also bathrooms, so my parents took me and my brother out to do that kind of thing where we'd hike or we'd swim or we'd canoe during the day, and we would camp in a tent at night, but I wouldn't say you're limited, but there is a limit to how far out you can go in a day if you have to come back to your camp at night, so the idea of being able to get a little deeper into the woods was appealing to me. I had heard of the Appalachian Trail. My dad had wanted to hike it since he was like 17. It became like a bucket list for him, and he was gonna retire early, and he wanted to hike the 18 when he retired. My mom was very nervous and said, "I don't want you doing this alone. You need to find someone to go with you," and he said, "Oh, well, Melissa's a freelancer." Like maybe she'll have a little time. Maybe she'd wanna come out for a month with me, and as I started researching more and learning more, I kind of realized, yeah, wait, I'm a freelancer. Like maybe I can do the whole thing, you know, maybe I can take the time and energy, and so I did. From there, I just haven't stopped.

[00:04:38] Olivia Sippel: And while our hike would only spend about 12 miles over the next two days, it's important on any hike to sign in, so at the Meads Meadow Trailhead in Woodstock, New York, that's exactly what we did.

[00:04:51] Melissa Goodwin: So this is a logbook from the DEC [Department of Environmental Conservation]. You wanna sign in [in case something happens to you] when you're out there—that they know where you've intended to go a lot of times on a day hike. You're coming back right to the same spot, so there's—we put the number of us too, and then there's...

[00:05:09] Olivia Sippel: Hey, do you need to check out?

[00:05:10] Melissa Goodwin: You need to sign it. Okay, here, I will leave it open for you.

[00:05:12] Olivia Sippel: Thank you.

[00:05:13] Melissa Goodwin: So we're telling them essentially where we're going in case we don't come back. That's one safety. Two is that the usage that they then see in that book helps to fund the region. You know, maybe it says we need to have more rangers in this area, or we need to have more trail stewards, or, oh, this trail's getting super heavy. It's like maybe we should send out a volunteer group to do more trail cleanup, stuff like that, so yeah. So this—you'll notice this trail is a bit wider than what we were just on, and that's because at one point there was a hotel up here, and we're heading towards a fire tower, so that's why it's a little wider and clearer right here as opposed to the footpath that we were just walking through earlier, so we're at the ruins.

[00:06:09] Olivia Sippel: Wow!

[00:06:09] Melissa Goodwin: Yeah, this is like a hotel that, I think, it burned down like three different times.

[00:06:16] Olivia Sippel: Three different times?

[00:06:18] Melissa Goodwin: Yeah, I think there were a lot of mountaintop hotels that, you know, were all the rage at one point for people of, you know, who could afford it, right, who could come up and spend the summers, escape the heat of the city.

[00:06:31] Olivia Sippel: While I was not escaping the city this time, Click and myself explored the ruins around us. It is not only a great hike with her, but an educational experience exploring the mountains.

[00:06:42] Melissa Goodwin: Yeah, this hike kind of has it all, really, in a way that not everywhere else does. We get hotel rooms. We're gonna get a fire tower. We're gonna get a view. We're gonna [tomorrow] see a waterfall like that's a lot of bang for your buck.

[00:06:59] Olivia Sippel: With rain.

[00:07:00] Melissa Goodwin: Yeah.

[00:07:01] Olivia Sippel: One of the best parts of through hiking is who you're able to meet along the way. Melissa met some great people along the A.T., including one of her best friends, Sprout.

[00:07:09] Melissa Goodwin: You asked if there were a lot of people from the A.T. that I'm still friends with, like probably my—one of my best friends, Sprout. She and I hiked the same year. We were in each other's vicinity for maybe three weeks, a month, something like that, but at that time we were two of a few women. We were just a few and far between. I would say there's a greater mix these days of all genders and a lot more solo females. Kind of an instant bond just from that.

[00:07:44] Olivia Sippel: Feeling supported like that for mothers made this multi-month hike just a little bit easier. These connections will last for a lifetime and create everlasting bonds that all started on the trails. Now, Click and I approached our first lookout for lunch. She explained how to maintain a healthy diet while on the trails.

[00:08:03] Melissa Goodwin: So in the outside of your pack here, I've got some dill pickle-flavored potato chips, which are delicious.

[00:08:13] Olivia Sippel: Oh nice, those are great.

[00:08:14] Melissa Goodwin: And there should be another Ziploc with, like, a tortilla, and I gave you peanut butter, so yeah, just sit down your sit pad, wherever you want. This is kind of like a typical trail lunch. The cool part is you can bring whatever you want as long as it's, you know, doesn't need refrigeration, but in terms of getting a lot of calories in, right, like a tortilla has a hundred calories, probably a burrito wrap, right, and then I've got tuna, you've got peanut butter. This is 110 calories [single served pouch]. I'm gonna throw mayonnaise and relish in it, so that'll add a few more. The peanut butter cups are like 200 each, so you can eat it on its own, you can spread it in the tortilla, you can do like a trailside pizza in a way you could do sun-dried tomatoes and a cheese stick and, you know, pepperoni, if you eat it all on a tortilla. Flour ones, as opposed to corn, hold up a lot longer too in your backpack, so if you're going, you know, many days between resupplies.

[00:09:17] Olivia Sippel: After we got to enjoy our first meal together, we got to Overlook Fire Tower to enjoy some more beautiful views before heading down to our campsite.

[00:09:25] Melissa Goodwin: And then, tomorrow, we'll keep going along the ridge so where we see how it's that deep, like, drop-off, that's kind of where we went down on the Platte Clove and then came back up so you can kind of see the notch, but right here in front of us, this is the Devil's Path. There are—it's 25 miles long. There are six—five or six peaks right on the trail, and then you can get two more, and when I say "peaks," I mean the 3,500 peaks, so the one nearest here is called Indian Head, which I wonder if they'll ever change the name of that, but it's supposed to look like the profile of a head with a long forehead from back in, from a distance to the left of that, you can kind of see there's like two, one right behind the other, that's called Twin, then it's Sugarloaf, then it's Plateau, which is the really, really long one. It drops down, and then on the other side we can't see it from here, but it's Hunter-West Kill [Southwest Hunter], yeah, and so all of those in a row are called the Devil's Path, and people will hike it in sections. They'll overnight. They'll do like a three overnight. Some people do it in a day. It's called the Devil in a Day. I've never done that yet.

[00:10:43] Olivia Sippel: Sorry, eating more snacks.

[00:10:44] Melissa Goodwin: This is the key to keeping them in your hip belt, as you can just, like, hike and eat at the same time.

[00:10:50] Olivia Sippel: We both got to eat some snacks as we continued on our hike. Personally, my favorite was the fruit snacks. As we walked, talked, and ate, one thing I wanted to know is what inspired Click to start their company and what makes her want to continue.

[00:11:06] Melissa Goodwin: So after thru-hiking, you know, after spending six months on the trail, it definitely had an effect on my life. You know, I day hiked mostly before then, but I just—the need to just get out more often and be out more often was in me, essentially, and people, friends, acquaintances, knowing that I had done this trip, would ask me, you know, "Hey, thinking about going backpacking, you know, do you have advice?" One friend, she was like, "My friend invited me to go do this trip with him in Yosemite this summer, and I wanna make sure I'm fit. Like, can you load me up with gear? Can we go practice, right?" So she and I started going out, and then there would be like another female friend and another female friend, and it was, it was just, I like hiking with everybody, but there's just something special about hiking with other women where there isn't the like, I don't wanna say like, one-upmanship, you know, there's just sometimes there's some ego involved when in mixed company or less like, oh, you only went that far. I'm gonna go this far. You know, I can flex if I need to flex, but yeah, it just became a really fun thing to do, and also I'm comfortable going out for a hike on my own, but it is really something different to go out with other people and just have that space, have that time to have long conversations, to pick them up here and there throughout the day, and just catch up. Like, one of the friends that I did all that hiking with is a friend from college, and we had, you know, not spend a lot of time together in the intervening years, and so... just such a great way to connect and get to know people that mixed with people asking me advice on where to go and how to get there, and then, you know, my husband getting a little tired of me asking if he wanted to go hiking all the time was sort of like, well, if I am feeling this way, they wanna get out there with other people. I'm sure other people are too. There's plenty of meetup groups, and there's other guide companies that exist, but what can I bring [kind of] to the table that's a little bit different and that is that connection? Like, you know, I didn't start Girl Gotta Hike till five or six years after I thru-hiked the A.T., but in the meantime I had done all those other hikes with Sprout, my trail bestie, and it was just, again, like something different about doing a trip like that with other women, so it just kind of naturally happened, but I wanted, if I was gonna take strangers out, not just my friends, I thought there's gotta be some legality to this, and so I studied to get my guide license and picked off all of the requirements, and then I just put it out there. What can I help people with? Like, where's the need in New York? A lot of people don't have cars. I happen to have a car. Not everybody could get to the trail, so I started with finding hikes that maybe I had been to before by car, but they could also be accessed by public transit, so it basically started as a once-monthly public transit series hike for women, and I just kind of like sent out what people should bring. I was like a lot of women, maybe going into a new venture, having imposter syndrome. I have thousands of miles of experience under my belt, but I don't think I've ever actually been a guide before, so therefore I can't charge for things yet, you know, until I'm the hundred percent expert, so for the first year or so I actually just had free hikes, which was way longer than I needed it to be, and then I started accepting I was like, well, how do I transition? Like, there's a lot of work that goes into planning trips, you know, and this is a small business that allows me to, like, write off all of my camping trips, and it allows me to, like, keep my hiking habit alive, but it is also a legitimate business, and people's lives are in my hands, so, like, yes, I can charge for that. It just kind of has grown from there. I started offering some further field trips where, you know, I tried to get people to carpool together, you know, oh, let's meet at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, and then we'll, you know, carpool up to the Catskills. Those are very long days, so then, okay, well, I like camping in the Catskills. I know what gear to have. I know a lot of people wanna get into backpacking or overnights, but there's so much gear out there. It's so overwhelming. Apartments in the city are small, like it's a lot of money to invest all at once, but if I have the gear, then people just have to come, and they can see if they like it before investing. I have this rotating roster of repeat hikers. Like just last weekend, a woman who came on the day hike—she was on my very first day hike six years ago as Girl Gotta Hike, and then she's been coming a couple of times a year ever since. People bring their friends. Somebody moves away. Somebody else cares about it. A lot of people just find me by word of mouth or by Google. I don't, but I should post more often to Instagram, but people will find me there. Some hikers, they're new to New York. They just want maybe they've hiked other places. Now they don't have a car, so they just kind of wanna learn the ropes of how to get to the trail via public transit, and then maybe I'll never see them again. Other people, it's the comradery of a bunch of people getting together who didn't know each other before, but you all have this thing in common, and none of their other friends like to hike, but they don't wanna do it alone, so I provide that space for people to come together and to learn, and then others who've done backpacking trips with me have gone on afterwards to hike the whole Appalachian Trail. I have some alum who are now expert backpackers and, you know, probably don't need a guide anymore but may still come on a trip here and there because, you know, they like the group effort, but yeah, it really just evolved, I would say "over time," and it continues to, and I'm continuing to try and figure out ways to fit more of Girl Gotta Hike in my daily life as a freelance photographer. Like, there's some natural fits, like, hmm, I'd love to be shooting more for outdoor brands. You know, I just haven't really marketed myself that way yet, so like the idea for me now living between Brooklyn and the Catskills, we have a cottage on the back of our property eventually that's a place that hikers who don't have cars can come up the night before, and it's not so much of a slog to get up here, do a 10-mile hike, and then all the way back in one day. It's an exhausting day, so I've done, you know, backpacking 101 workshops before with different groups. I do some solo one-on-one, learn how to backpack stuff, corporate trips... I think I give people enough information ahead of time that, as far as I know, if no one's ever been upset. You know, they know what they're in store for, and I think that's the best way also to help prevent an incident from happening: letting people know ahead of time what they should bring, what they should wear, what the weather's gonna be like... It goes a long way.

[00:19:14] Olivia Sippel: Though she's had so many other groups before, being one-on-one with Click was something really special. It somehow made me feel more comfortable with the fact that I was about to be in a tent for a whole night. If I was with a large group, I might not have been able to learn as much as I did at the perfect pace. For a first-time camper, I sure did get my beauty sleep. Our second day of hiking was ahead of us.

[00:19:38] Melissa Goodwin: It's 11:02, which, you know, for an overnight, is not a bad leaving time. If we had many miles to do today, I would've woken you up earlier. We have around four miles today, so I expect it'll be done around one, probably?

[00:19:56] Olivia Sippel: Nice.

[00:19:56] Melissa Goodwin: The trail's not too bad, maybe... maybe two depending on how much of a break we take, but sometimes in the rain you just wanna be done, you know, move a little more. Alright, you'll notice it might just be a little slipperier today, so yeah, test out your steps with your sticks ahead of time. When I get to introduce other people to these new experiences, there's just something very peaceful, right, about being out in nature and seeing someone's, like, smile at a viewpoint or, you know, maybe they were previously unsure if they'd be able to get to the top, and then they get there and are like rewarded with a great view or just simply have never been outside in the rain and didn't under, you know, realize, like, oh, if you just wear a rain jacket and, like, bring enough layers, kind of expands their idea of what's possible, and you can just, like, see that change on their face or in their understanding, and yeah, I'm not gonna let weather stop me within reason, of course, so that's really helpful for me to, like, know that I'm helping to facilitate that for someone else, and I enjoy the planning of trips like this. There's a lot of logistics that can go into how do I get somebody outside and on this trail who doesn't have a car, you know? Okay, let me look up the bus schedule. Let me look up taxi services, like not letting those be a barrier to entry. If you've never done it before, figuring all that out, figuring what to wear, what to bring, what to eat... It's a lot. It's a lot to consider, so if I really enjoy those things, I can do that for someone else. Take the hard part out of it, and then they get that, like, faster track to the mental peace that comes with walking in the woods. You know, I think that's really a big part of it, but for myself, I've really found that even as much as I enjoy being outside and I have the skills and I have the experience of doing it on my own, I sometimes won't do it if I don't have a hike on the calendar. Once other people are counting on me, like, it actually [that accountability] helps me to get out and enjoy it too because it's really easy in modern life in general, but also being a freelancer and having a foot in two worlds, to let all the things I have to do or that seem very urgent take precedence, and that ends up keeping me inside, and there's days in Brooklyn. I don't even leave the apartment. I just get caught up in emails and should-dos, and I forget how much I need that counterbalance of the outdoors just to kind of like let my mind have some space. It's almost like I didn't even realize at the time when I started putting hikes on the calendar that it's really that accountability to other people that will ensure that I get outside too because I will put myself last sometimes, and once I've gone outside, once I've had that hike, even if you don't wanna get up in the morning, if it's still dark and it's raining, to make your way to Grand Central to catch a train early on a Saturday morning, like you never wanna do that, but as soon as I'm there, I see the other people, and I'm on the trail. It's like, "Oh, this is awesome!" Why did you know? If I didn't have these people who've, like, signed up and paid to come with me, I might have slept in, and wow, how much better my week is gonna be now that I got to go for a hike on the weekend.

[00:24:35] Olivia Sippel: With ways to reinvent trips to cater towards new hikers, Click continually learn something new with each trip she leaves. As we approached the end of the hike, Click and I went to the waterfall where there was no more rain and a clear path to the end.

[00:24:50] Melissa Goodwin: Woo-hoo, we did it!

[00:24:51] Olivia Sippel: You really did. High-five!

[00:24:52] Melissa Goodwin: High-five! Okay, so we did with the extra down and back. According to Gaiam, we did 5.21 miles in a total time [4 hours 16 minutes 52 seconds]. We had an ascent of 845 feet, but we had a descent of 1,039. Average speed: 1.2 miles per hour; moving speed: 1.8 miles per hour; max speed: 3.5 miles per hour. Wonder when that was... great.

[00:25:26] Olivia Sippel: With our hike coming to a close, I wanted to thank Click, Melissa, and Girl Gotta Hike for this amazing journey. As a novice camper, I honestly expected the worst, and even trekking through the rain could not get our spirits down. This experience gave me a better understanding of what truly goes into backpacking, and I still have not a clue how Melissa got through months of carrying her whole life on her shoulders. I also wanted to give a special shout-out to Kaatscast. This has been an amazing opportunity, being able to get taken on as an intern. Thank you for trusting me, believing in my work, and allowing me to be on the team. Working with Kaatscast allowed me to explore the Catskills and become familiar with the Kaatscast family. The saying goes, "This is an experience worth living for, and in my final semester of college, it all made it truly worth it."

[00:26:22] Brett Barry: Olivia, congratulations on your graduation, both from SUNY New Paltz and from this podcast. We loved having you, and while we're on the topic of women hikers, stay tuned for a special deal on a brand new book from Purple Mountain Press, right after this...

[00:26:41] Campbell Brown: Kaatscast is sponsored by The Mountain Eagle, covering Delaware, Greene, and Schoharie counties, including brands for local regions like The Windham Weekly, Schoharie News, and Catskills Chronicle. For more information, call (518) 763-6854 or email mountaineaglenews@gmail.com. This episode is supported by Hanford Mills Museum. Explore the power of the past at their 2025 events that feature woodworking, historic machines, and even ice cream. You can find a calendar of events and more information about visiting the museum at hanfordmills.org and by Briars & Brambles Books, the go-to independent book and gift store in the Catskills, located in Windham, New York, right next to the pharmacy, just steps away from the Windham Path, open daily! For more information, visit briarsandbramblesbooks.com or call (518) 750-8599. Join us as a monthly member listener or make a one-time contribution at kaatscast.com/support. Thank you!

[00:27:42] Brett Barry: This week, Purple Mountain Press is releasing a new edition of Breaking Trail: Remarkable Women of the Adirondacks, including stories of courageous women who trailblazed through the Adirondacks in the 19th and early 20th centuries. There's a link in the show notes, and if you'd like 25% off plus free shipping, just enter the code "Kaatscast" at checkout [deal ends May 31st]. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.