# Trail Stories - The Circle on the Map with Kevin "The Animal" Koski

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/hiker-trash-radio-2158694/trail-stories-the-circle-on-the-map-with-kevin-the-animal-koski
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/hiker-trash-radio-2158694/trail-stories-the-circle-on-the-map-with-kevin-the-animal-koski.md
Podcast: [Hiker Trash Radio](https://stenobird.com/podcast/hiker-trash-radio-2158694)
Published: 2026-06-27T08:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://bleav.com/shows/hiker-trash-radio/?post_type=gp_podcast_episode&p=963
Audio file: https://pscrb.fm/rss/p/mgln.ai/e/1385/injector.simplecastaudio.com/6d2da267-75e0-4996-8f52-dc96c283fcb3/episodes/e17bcff4-8932-4627-ba8f-dcf7ebe7eecc/audio/128/default.mp3?aid=rss_feed&awCollectionId=6d2da267-75e0-4996-8f52-dc96c283fcb3&awEpisodeId=e17bcff4-8932-4627-ba8f-dcf7ebe7eecc&feed=TGxnwCmZ
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Duration seconds: 1531

## Resource

Kevin Koski was sitting at his desk one day, looked at a topographical map of the United States pinned to his cubicle wall, noticed an 800-mile-diameter circle nobody had ever officially hiked, and thought: somebody should walk that. The somebody was him. This episode covers three years spent building the Four Corners Loop on a mapping website during lunch breaks, a 47-mile dry stretch that required 14.5 liters of water and a stroke of luck involving two owl researchers at one in the morning, and a piece of hardware-store ice maker tubing that Kevin will defend to his grave as superior gear design. There is also a smoked trout, a 30-foot sandstone cliff he probably shouldn't have climbed, and, in the middle of all the engineering jokes, a quieter chapter about his mother that the episode doesn't rush past.

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## Transcript

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