The 77-mile Foothills Trail jumps back and forth along the North Carolina South Carolina state line, along the rugged Blue Ridge Escarpment. Backpackers who thru-hike the trail generally take 5 to 7 days to complete the challenging trek. And those are backpackers who typically have several years of experience and have trained for the hike. Now imagine being someone with little or no hiking experience and being challenged to hike more than a third of the entire 77-mile Foothills Trail in one day, but you have to be ready in four months or less to do it. That’s the challenge faced by folks who undertake the Make-A-Wish Foundation’s Trailblaze Challenge: train for 16 weeks, then, in one day, hike the westernmost 28.3 miles of the Foothills Trail.

Today, we talk with Chris Webber, Director of Development for the Central & Western North Carolina chapter of Make-A-Wish. Chris tells us a little about Make-A-Wish and the Trailblaze Challenge, then provides some personal insight — he did the training and the hike in 2016.

If you're intrigued by the Trailblaze Challenge — and by the opportunity to help a child with a critical illness fulfill the dream of a lifetime — you can learn more through Zoom information sessions starting in June for the fall Trailblaze Challenge. You can sign up for those sessions, and learn more about the program, at the Central & Western North Carolina Chapter website; find the link here.

Live elsewhere but are interested in participating? Find a link to the Make-A-Wish chapter near you, here.