344 Ultimate LifeStraw Pro Tip For Backpacking?!

Could you thru-hike with nothing but a LifeStraw? Should you eat food at Walmart BEFORE you pay for it? And why was a mysterious jogger repeatedly pooping in the same Colorado neighborhood?

We’ve got a lot to unpack this week.

John and Jeremiah kick things off with a backpacking Pro Tip after a hiker asks whether a traditional LifeStraw would work as a primary water filter for a thru-hike. We compare the classic straw-style filter with more practical backpacking systems and talk about what we’d actually trust for months on trail.

Then we put some of the internet’s finest backpacking pickup lines to the test.

“Is your Patagonia made of boyfriend material?”

Yeah… some of these are rough.

Then Poop Talk returns with one of the strangest stories we’ve ever covered: The Mad Pooper of Colorado Springs.

Back in 2017, a mysterious jogger became nationally known after repeatedly stopping during her runs to poop in people’s yards and on sidewalks—including outside the same family’s house week after week. She was confronted, photographed, investigated by police…and still vanished without ever being publicly identified.

Now the bizarre unsolved story is getting its own documentary, so naturally we had to revisit it.

Next, Trail Court gets heated.

Is it acceptable to grab food or a drink while shopping, eat it as you walk around the store, and simply pay for the empty package at checkout?

Jeremiah says yes.

John VERY MUCH says no.

Parents, this one might divide the room.

Finally, in What’s Trending, we try the new AllTrails AI Trip Assistant live on the show. We give it destinations, difficulty levels, and multiple days to see whether AI can actually build a backpacking itinerary we’d trust.

The results?

Useful for discovering trails and getting ideas.

Planning your entire trip with it? We’re not there yet.

And stick around until the end for another completely unnecessary—but highly entertaining—version of The Backpacking Podcast theme song, this time with John and Jeremiah entering their gangster rap era.

🎒 The Backpacking Podcast with Jeremiah Stringer and John Kelly — backpacking gear, hiking stories, trail debates, outdoor news, questionable opinions, and apparently an unreasonable amount of poop talk.

📧 Send us your stories, questions, pro tips, guest ideas, gear finds, and topics:
backpackingpodcast@gmail.com

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Is it fair or foul to eat something in the store BEFORE you pay for it?

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