How to walk 2000 miles
Liz Thomas ’07 is a professional hiker, adventure conservationist, and outdoor writer who held the women’s unsupported speed record on the 2,181-mile long Appalachian Trail. A guest editor and regular contributor to Backpacker Magazine, Thomas has been featured on Good Morning America and has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Yahoo!News, Men's Journal, Women's Health, Outside, among other publications. Her book Long Trails: Mastering the Art of the Thru-Hikereceived the 2017 National Outdoor Book Award for Best Instructional book. Thomas serves as the vice president of the American Long Distance Hiking Association and ambassador to American Hiking Society. A former staff writer at Wirecutter/New York Times, Thomas is a currently editor in chief at Treeline Review, an outdoor web magazine and is writing a guidebook to Southern California waterfall hikes.
A 2007 graduate of Claremont McKenna College where she majored in EEP (Environment, Economics, and Politics) and was the Athenaeum student manager, Thomas holds a masters in Environmental Science from the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, where she held a Doris Duke Conservation Fellowship for her research on trails, conservation, and trail-side communities. She currently is on the board of the Robert Environmental Center at CMC.
Since graduating from CMC, Thomas has hiked over 17,000 miles on more than 20 long distance hiking paths around the world!
Food for Thought: Podcast with Elizabeth Thomas