Thruhikers, Tim Beissinger and Renee Miller started dating in college and have always been active people. Tim grew up hiking and camping with his family, and Renee was a runner. The two dragged each other along on their respective outdoor outings. Eventually they worked their way up to thru-hiking, a sport that they've fallen in love with and built a life around.
Thruhikers, Tim Beissinger and Renee Miller started dating in college and have always been active people. Tim grew up hiking and camping with his family, and Renee was a runner. The two dragged each other along on their respective outdoor outings. Eventually they worked their way up to thru-hiking, a sport that they've fallen in love with and built a life around.
Connect with Renee & Tim:
Check out:
If you enjoyed this episode:
Thank you to our sponsors:
Tim Beissinger:
For Renee and me, it was a huge leap to quit our jobs and go hike our first trail. But it was so worth it. And you hear that from so many people who are out there, that they're in the midst of some reason that they decided to give up their former life and go hike for a little while, or they just said, "Why not now?" And I know of very few people who regret that.
Shelby Stanger:
Thruhikers, Tim Beissinger and Renee Miller started dating in college. They were both active people. Tim grew up hiking and camping with his family, and Renee was a runner. The two dragged each other along on their respective outdoor outings. Eventually they worked their way up to thru-hiking, a sport that they've fallen in love with and built a life around. I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living, an REI Co-op Studios Production brought to you by Capital One.
Renee Miller and Tim Beissinger got engaged while running the Chicago Marathon. There was no getting down on one knee. They just talked about their future life together as they ran side by side and a decision was made. In 2013, the couple got married. Since then, they've trekked thousands of miles together on Epic hikes like the Pacific Crest Trail and the Continental Divide Trail. They even invented their own route that they call the Pacific Northwest Circuit.
Over the years, Tim and Renee have come up with quite a few thru-hiking hacks and they share how-to videos on social media. In fact, the pair went viral in 2021 when they posted a clip of them dehydrating cooked rice. Who knew rice could be so exciting? Tim and Renee have continued to share educational tips, recipes, and vlogs of their hiking adventures. Along the way, they've built an online community of serious outdoor enthusiasts. Renee and Tim, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living. We're excited to have you on.
Tim Beissinger:
Yeah, it's really exciting to be on. Thank you.
Shelby Stanger:
How did you guys really get into thru-hiking?
Tim Beissinger:
I blame it on Renee.
Renee Miller:
Yeah. So Tim's mom gave me the book Wild for Christmas one year, and I just was like, "Oh wow, that sounds really cool. I want to do that someday, thru-hike the Pacific Crest Trail." And Tim was like, "No, that's something for retirement. We have to focus on our careers." But it was always in the back of my head that I wanted to do it sooner rather than later.
Shelby Stanger:
Okay. So now you're seasoned thru-hikers, but there was a time where you didn't know how to pack a backpack, I'm sure.
Tim Beissinger:
Yeah. So when we first set out on what we thought was the longest hike ever, it was a John Muir Trail and we loaded up all of the food for the entire trip. So 17 days of food, we didn't know what it meant to resupply. More stuff than you can imagine.
And our packs were so heavy and we set out on the John Muir Trail and had an amazing time, but there were all of these people leaving at about the midway point to go get more food. And we didn't understand exactly going into it that that was something that a sensible person would do, is carry part of their food and then get more.
Renee Miller:
And then on that trip we ran into an actual PCT thru-hiker and we were just astonished. He was wearing short shorts and a tiny backpack and trail running shoes, and we just were like, "Whoa." He was out on a four and a half month hike and we were out on a two-week hike and he was carrying so much less stuff. He was so strong, moving so fast.
Tim Beissinger:
Even his clothing. We were traditional hikers, we had big heavy boots, pants, big hats, and he had trail running shoes and running shorts and probably a 10 pound backpack. And it was like, "Oh, that's how you move huge miles every day is you lighten your load and hike like a runner."
Shelby Stanger:
After that first thru-hike on the John Muir Trail in 2015, Tim and Renee were hooked. The couple decided to step up their game and take on the Pacific Crest Trail. Before setting out in May of 2018, they spent months saving up money and prepping gear and supplies for the trek. Tim and Renee have a unique situation.
Because Tim works as a scientist, and Renee is a mechanical engineer, it's relatively easy for them to find jobs. They're able to work for a while, live simply and save money before quitting their jobs to hike for a few months. I'm just kind of curious how you did it. It sounds like you saved money and then you quit your job and then you saved money and you found new jobs. Talk to me about this.
Renee Miller:
We did our first thru-hike when we were 30. So we had, I guess maybe, what is that? About eight years of time to save up with real jobs before our first thru-hike and then quit our jobs. It was a big risk, but we had savings. And also on the trail you really learn to live simply.
So when we got back from the trail, we moved to Germany and got a new apartment and we had no interest in buying furniture. We got some chairs from the thrift store and didn't have a couch, and then worked for a few more years and continued to save up money and...
Shelby Stanger:
So was it hard to quit your job though? Was it hard to ask to just be like, "We're both done?" I mean, there's two of you in this relationship, so you both had to quit your jobs.
Tim Beissinger:
Yeah. It's terrifying and people judged us for it. One of my PhD advisors was furious at me. He said, "Tim, what do you mean you quit your job with nothing lined up?" And it was so worth it. Society has this attitude that you can't be without a job, but you can. And it's hard to leave people. I mean, I liked all of my colleagues at that job, but that's life. People move on from jobs for one reason or another, and I think there were no hard feelings in the end that we did that.
Renee Miller:
No. I mean, I'm actually, so before we hiked the Pacific Crest Trail, we were living in Missouri and I worked for a company in the St. Louis area, and I'm actually back working for that company right now, so.
Shelby Stanger:
You're leaving a couple things out. One, you guys have very skilled professions and you've gone to school for them. You have these degrees and skills that not everybody has that are in demand that people will hire for. And two, you probably kept in touch and left on great terms so that your employer did want you back years later and you end up working for them again. Is that correct?
Renee Miller:
Yes, that is all correct.
Tim Beissinger:
Yeah. If we're coming across as saying this is normal, no, it's not normal and we're really lucky, but I also think this probably is more typical than people realize, that taking a risk like this is not necessarily a bad move for a career.
It feels like it and it feels scary, but often it can lead to an experience like what Renee and I had. And we have many friends who have thru-hiked who had similar types of experiences, that they went through a scary moment and quit a job and didn't know what they'd do with their career. And then they came back and it was okay.
Renee Miller:
Yeah. And we met, I mean, lots of people on the trail. We've met retired people, we've met people who really do just thru-hike all the time and in the off season they work on ski lifts. One of our friends does firefighting and trail work in between thru-hikes. So yeah, there's all different types of people with all different types of careers out on the trail.
Tim Beissinger:
And maybe one of the biggest necessary things to make it possible is saving money. I mean, it's not free to be on a thru-hike. We tracked all of our expenses on the Pacific Crest Trail, and that was in 2018, and still it was several thousand dollars for the two of us to do that hike.
And we achieved that by saving. And I think that could be a really big barrier. If people don't have a buffer of several thousand dollars, then it would be a challenge. But with that buffer, which is achievable with almost any job. We know people from all ends of the income spectrum who have done thru-hikes, then it can be done.
Shelby Stanger:
With lots of planning and hard work, Renee and Tim have been able to create a lifestyle that allows them to have some pretty wild adventures. After completing the PCT in 2018, the pair moved to Germany for work. Even though they went out trekking as much as possible in Europe, Tim and her Renee missed the wilderness of the US and decided to come home.
Before they returned to the States, they planned to attempt the Continental Divide trail, which they did in 2021. It was on that trail that they got the idea for their next thru adventure, which would be a combination of hiking and canoeing. Okay, so what is the Pacific Northwest Circuit?
Renee Miller:
We came up with it. So it's our own imagination, but-
Shelby Stanger:
Okay, it's your own thing.
Renee Miller:
Yep. We didn't have access to internet or anything, so we were on the CDT. At that point, we were getting towards the end, walking at least a marathon distance a day. Our feet were tired. We were thinking, "Okay, next year we should do a canoe trip because then our feet won't be so tired."
So we just kind of were thinking, "What rivers do we know while we're out here hiking without access to internet?" And we thought of the Columbia River and we realized we could probably somehow connect the Pacific Northwest Trail, which goes from the ocean in Washington to Glacier National Park in Montana and the Columbia River into a big adventure.
Shelby Stanger:
How crazy. What was it like canoeing versus hiking?
Tim Beissinger:
It was hard.
Renee Miller:
It turns out your arms get tired when you canoe.
Tim Beissinger:
Yeah. So this whole plan we had of, "Let's relax in a canoe next year," was a terrible plan because the canoe was really, really hard. It was so fun, but we were really worried about the weather window in Oregon and Washington. And our way to finish this river before the rain has got to be to stay in the boat always. So we would do 12 hours plus a day without ever leaving the boat. You can take breaks in a boat and so on. The problem is the Columbia River doesn't flow. It's 95% a lake, not a river because of all the dams along it. So it was just a ton of work, but super fun.
Renee Miller:
Yep. And the Columbia River has 14 dams, so we wanted to do it all human power, so we just put the canoe on our heads. We only had our backpacks, so we each put on a backpack, kind of balanced the canoe on our backpacks over our heads between the two of us. And our longest portage was about three miles, I think. So we carried the canoe for three miles.
Shelby Stanger:
Damn, three miles. Seriously? Sorry I had to make a damn joke, but that's crazy. Three miles-
Tim Beissinger:
That was good.
Shelby Stanger:
... with a canoe on your head.
Tim Beissinger:
Yeah. And it's a homemade wooden canoe that I built, so it's not quite as light as a fiberglass.
Shelby Stanger:
And you built it yourself?
Tim Beissinger:
Yeah. Yeah.
Shelby Stanger:
So how did you drop your canoe off at the point where you needed it to be?
Renee Miller:
Well, we drove it there and dropped it off, but we found a lady through Facebook. We just kind of messaged a town on Facebook and some nice woman volunteered.
Tim Beissinger:
It was like the town's Facebook group. The town of Canal Flats, Canada has a Facebook group. So we found her on the town Facebook group. And she said, "Yeah, no problem. I've got a garage with nothing in it." And that's where the canoe sat.
Shelby Stanger:
Amazing. Do you have any other trail magic stories?
Tim Beissinger:
Yeah. So we were hiking the CDT in New Mexico, which is dry, and we were trying to stick to the full official route of the CDT, which is not usually what hikers hike. They usually take detours. But we stuck to the full route, which went through this apart called the Black Range of New Mexico, which is really empty. And we ran out of water and we ended up backtracking doing a 22 mile backtrack total.
And we had to hike through a really, really dry stretch of trail without as much water as we'd like. And then we came to a trail register and we were still 10 or so miles from the next water source after going 30 miles without water. And opened up this trail register and sitting inside were a few Gatorades. And it was just so great to magically, of all the times you sometimes get trail magic that's a cooler on the trail or those things, but they're usually at accessible points where hikers congregate.
And this was just in the middle of a very remote stretch of trail, and the Gatorades were just what we needed and tasted so good. And a few days or weeks later, we met a guy in his truck on a different part of the trail who gave us some coke and some snacks. And we were chatting with him and we learned that he was the one who had put those Gatorades there in that trail register. His name was Mosey, so thank you Mosey. And he had put them there the year before. So that stretch of trail was so remote that they had sat there for over a year and he said, "Oh, I guess it's time for me to go refill those." And what a nice thing for someone to do.
Shelby Stanger:
When we come back, Renee and Tim talk about how they prepare for these trips, including dehydrating all of their own food. Plus, they tell us about their massive TikTok following and why they sometimes split up on the trail. Tim Beissinger and Renee Miller have thru-hiking down to a science. They save up for months or even years before heading off to spend three to five months at a time on the trail.
When they come back, they get new jobs or return to old jobs and start planning and saving for the next adventure. So far, the couple has trekked more than 10,000 miles together. Before they depart for each trip, they plan stops in towns for resupplies, pack their gear and make all of their meals for the journey. Okay. So what goes into planning these kinds of adventures you do?
Tim Beissinger:
Spreadsheets. Renee's the spreadsheet expert. So she really is on it saying, "Let's make a spreadsheet and we'll go through all of the cities that we think we want to hit." And then we go in and we make our resupply plan. And a big part of our prep is preparing our food. We really like to dehydrate and assemble our own meals as opposed to buying off-the-shelf stuff. So we will run the dehydrator for months and put stuff together and then box it all up and send it to those towns.
Shelby Stanger:
Okay. Our Wild Ideas Worth Living team, there's some serious foodies on this team and they went on a deep dive into your dehydration process. I mean, you guys have made some delicious dehydrated meals on the internet. What kind of things do you make?
Renee Miller:
I mean, we like to make sure all of our meals have a carbohydrate, some vegetables, a protein and flavor. Flavor's important. So a lot of ours are noodle or rice-based, and we do a lot of dehydrated beans. They're tasty and lightweight. My favorite recipe that we have is our peanut butter pasta, which uses powdered peanut butter and some powdered coconut milk and it's tasty.
Tim Beissinger:
We have a curry rice that we've been making for years. Ever since our very first backpacking trip we made this recipe and it's evolved a little bit and it's cashews and raisins and rice and vegetables and super tasty. I mean, you could dehydrate almost everything. So we dehydrate sauces.
Renee Miller:
We have a chili that we like to dehydrate.
Tim Beissinger:
The chili is really cool. You can basically take any chili recipe as long as it doesn't have too much oil or fat. So if it's a vegetarian chili, it works. And dump it on a dehydrator and run it and it'll turn into almost like crackers, just really crispy hard stuff. And then when you add it to hot water, it just comes back to life like it was chilly all along. And it'll stay like that for months and months and months, so.
Shelby Stanger:
So all your recipes are vegan, which is awesome for people who are vegan. Are you guys also vegan or is it just better in a dehydrator and better to take on the trail?
Tim Beissinger:
It's both. So we plant-based food. We're both vegan. But it's in a lot of ways easier to dehydrate vegan foods because oil doesn't evaporate. So to make a food that doesn't spoil, you don't want to have oil and you don't want to have fat. And there's ways to do that with meat, but it's a little more challenging and we don't know exactly how to do it because it's not what we do.
Shelby Stanger:
So tell me about the process of making something like that. Let's take the peanut butter pasta, for example. How do you do it?
Renee Miller:
Well, for that one, it's a lot of dehydrated vegetables and sometimes we put peanuts in it. If we want to be more ultra light, we put beans in it because beans are lighter than peanuts. And then combine that with some pasta. We don't dehydrate pasta. We put everything in the pot, bring it to a boil. We don't drain the pasta, we bring it to a boil, boil it for two minutes and then let it sit for 10 minutes. And by the time it's done, it's all absorbed and cooked.
Shelby Stanger:
Renee and Tim can talk about food for hours. Tim does most of the cooking on the trail, but they both do a lot of recipe testing and development before a recipe is deemed good enough to take on a thru-hike. There are a lot of adjustments you have to make in order for food to taste good when it's rehydrated. Tim and Renee's videos explain the recipes, how they store their dehydrated food and how they cook when they're out in the wild.
Between prepping food, making videos, planning expeditions, and actually going on thru-hikes, Tim and Renee spend a lot of time together. Their lifestyle allows them to experience some of nature's greatest beauty as a couple. Of course, when you're away from showers for weeks at a time, you also see some not-so-beautiful moments. I want to talk to you guys about all the time you spend together, especially on the trail. How do you guys keep the romance alive when you're stinky, sweaty, tired, you got bug bites and you know?
Tim Beissinger:
We like each other. It seems easy. I mean, we like to talk about big things and most of the time on the trail we are walking together just chatting about whatever or not chatting if there's nothing on our minds, really just being in the moment however we feel and we like to share that.
Renee Miller:
Yeah, it's pretty cool to share the experience with each other because then we can talk about the memories and they stay in our heads longer.
Tim Beissinger:
When we finished the Pacific Crest Trail, our first big thru-hike, we kept playing this game, which was, "Let's try to remember every single night that we've spent out here." So we were out there for 141 nights and we could talk through the first night. "Well, the first night that's when we stayed at Hauser Canyon and the second night..." And so on every single night for 141 nights. And I don't know, Shelby, can you tell me what you did 137 nights ago? Probably not.
Shelby Stanger:
I can't. No, that's amazing. That's beautiful.
Tim Beissinger:
It was so cool. And part of that was because it was such an experience, but the other part was because we talked about it together and it was this joint thing that we could spark each other's memories together.
Shelby Stanger:
I love that.
Renee Miller:
And we had a lot of time on our hands.
Tim Beissinger:
True.
Shelby Stanger:
Any advice to other couples who are going out and want to hike with each other?
Renee Miller:
Yeah. I mean, I think just realize that you might have different paces. Tim's a little faster than me, so if we want to hike together, I usually hike in front so we can stick together. If we do get in an argument, we just hike separately for a few hours and then next time we see each other, it's fine again.
Tim Beissinger:
Yeah. And that's more likely to happen when the terrain is hard. We have these paces that when it's easy, we can match each other. But when it gets tough, when we have steep climbs and steep descents, our paces don't match anymore. And that leads to disagreements. And we've gotten pretty good at knowing ahead of time, "Hey, let's split for this part," and it works.
Shelby Stanger:
Do you guys ever get sick of each other?
Renee Miller:
Definitely. I mean, we like to make videos and have a fun time talking about video making and coming up with video ideas when we're hiking, but Tim always drives me crazy because we get to the top of the mountain and he says, "Oh, we might have cell phone service. Let me just turn off airplane mode." And I always get mad at him for wasting battery and just like, "Wait until we get to town. Stop wasting time and battery on the top of this mountain and enjoy the view."
Shelby Stanger:
Okay, let's talk about that because you guys have this huge social media following. When did you start a social media channel and how did that come to be? How do you guys create content?
Tim Beissinger:
We spent a big chunk of the second part of 2020 into 2021, playing around with TikTok. And I was having a lot of fun with it. Renee was a little less excited about it, but it was fun to make little educational videos. And nobody watched them at all. We were in Germany posting English language videos and a good video might get a couple hundred views. And then we flew to the US to start the Continental Divide Trail and posted a video about dehydrating rice.
And it just went crazy because apparently nobody understood why you would dehydrate rice given that it's dry when it starts out and you dehydrate it because then it's cooked and dry. But that was confusing topic. And so that one got millions. And then this is a story I'm sure you've heard before, that you accidentally go viral and then keep it going because it was fun.
Renee Miller:
Yep. And I think another one of our early videos, we said, "We're walking from Mexico to Canada and this is everything that's in our backpack, and we only had one change of underwear." And so people got really upset about that.
Shelby Stanger:
Oh, I love that. I love that. What's it like being content creators? I mean, you're an engineer and a scientist. I don't feel like you ever thought you would be content creators when you started out.
Renee Miller:
No, definitely not. Yeah. I would say I'm a lot more introverted than Tim, so sometimes has to really say, "Come on, this would be fun. Let's go." But I really enjoy helping people get outside. We get a lot of nice messages saying, "I went on my first hike today because of you." And that's just really cool. And if we can inspire people or help them have more fun backpacking, help them preserve the outdoors, that's really exciting and rewarding.
Shelby Stanger:
Renee and Tim have made hundreds of videos. Some of my favorites are about pooping in the wilderness, what they eat in the back country, how they address hygiene on thru-hikes and gear that can serve more than one purpose, like using their bear canisters as seats when they're backpacking.
While their social media can definitely highlight the fun parts of thru-hiking, there are plenty of times when things go awry. One time they lost their only spork and had to use tent poles as chopsticks until they got to the next town. Now that is gear serving double duty. Do you have any stories of things going wrong or something bad that's happened when you've had to figure it out?
Tim Beissinger:
Yeah. When we were hiking the Continental Divide Trail, there's this part that goes through the Red Desert of Wyoming, which is just a hot, flat part of Wyoming. So we took a break one day under a bridge and we got shade down there. And on the other side of the river there was a rattlesnake. You see rattlesnakes all the time on these hikes.
So we were watching it drink water and slither around through the rocks. And then it disappeared and eventually it was time for us to leave, and I was crawling out from under the bridge, and within 18 inches of my head, the rattlesnake rattled and it had come up and crossed the bridge to get to our side. And it nearly bit me in the neck and it didn't. I was okay, but that was terrifying because if a rattlesnake gets you in the legs, you're probably okay as long as you get to a hospital. But as far as I know, if a rattlesnake gets you in the head, it's a different sort of situation. So that was terrifying, but okay.
Shelby Stanger:
So what are some of the lessons you've learned from being on these trails?
Tim Beissinger:
Yeah. One lesson is the trail provides. Probably all the thru-hikers who are listening know that phrase. And whether it's one time we were missing a cell phone charger and had to do a road walk and you look down and there was the exact cable we needed on the road. And that sort of thing always happens. When you go into the unknown, the unknown sometimes makes things line up and work. And so the trail provides is one of the best lessons that's not just a trail phenomenon, but it's a life phenomenon too.
Shelby Stanger:
You can follow Tim and Rene on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube at Thruhikers. That's T-H-R-U-H-I-K-E-R-S. You can also check out their new book that's coming out in August. It's called Thruhikers: A Guide to Life on the Trail. And if you want to try some of Tim's recipes for yourself, you can find plenty of them on their website at ThruHikers.co. If you liked this episode, I'd highly recommend checking out our interview with the woman who inspired Rene to start thru-hiking, the one and only Cheryl Strayed.
We'll put the link to that episode in their show notes. Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI Podcast network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger, produced by Annie Fassler, Sylvia Thomas, and Sam Peers Nitzberg of Puddle Creative. Our senior producers are Jenny Barber and Hannah Boyd. Our executive producers are Paolo Mottola and Joe Crosby. As always, we love it when you follow the show, take time to rate it and write a review wherever you listen. And remember, some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.