In the summer of 2016, Kevin Fedarko opened his front door in Flagstaff, Arizona, to find half a dozen cardboard boxes dumped on his porch. Boots from Italy. Headlamps from Salt Lake City. Sleeping bags from Seattle. Backpacks and a tent from Colorado. Shipments were arriving from every point of the compass, all because his best friend, the National Geographic photographer Pete McBride, had talked him into what McBride cheerfully promised would be "a walk in the park."
The walk in question was no stroll. McBride and Fedarko were about to attempt a continuous, 750-mile traverse of the Grand Canyon on foot, from one end of the gorge to the other. There are no towns for resupply along that route, no base camps, and — for the vast majority of the distance — no trails at all. Just a vertical wilderness suspended between the rims of the abyss and the Colorado River thundering along its bottom. The tiny cluster of long-distance hikers who knew that country called it, without hyperbole, the toughest hike in the world.
On Tuesday, September 15, at 7 p.m., McBride and Fedarko will bring that story to Tydings Auditorium in Hobbs, New Mexico, as the next installment of the Jack Maddox Distinguished Speaker Series. The event is free and open to the public, with tickets available through Eventbrite, and doors opening at 6 p.m. Following their presentation — an evening of extraordinary storytelling, adventure, and exploration built around stunning photography and firsthand tales — the pair will sign books in the auditorium lobby, with copies of Fedarko's bestselling book, A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon, available for purchase.
Fedarko's book chronicles the 14-month ordeal that began with those boxes on his porch. He and McBride set out on September 25, 2016, joining a group of veteran desert hikers for the first leg of what would become a year-plus journey through the canyon's hidden pockets of enchantment — places invisible to the millions of tourists gathered on the rim, known only to a handful of humans who have ever laid eyes on them. Along the way, members of the canyon's eleven Native American tribes brought the two men face-to-face with layers of history that forced them to reconsider some profoundly troublesome myths at the very center of our national parks. Even Fedarko's dying father, who had first pointed him toward the chasm more than forty years earlier but had never set foot there himself, opened him to a new way of seeing the landscape.
And always, there was the great gorge itself: austere and unforgiving, yet suffused with magic, drenched in wonder, and redeemed by its own transcendent beauty.
The trek nearly killed them. Inadequate fitness and bad gear choices almost led to disaster right from the start, and the full traverse — a complex three-dimensional maze of delicate routes involving hundreds of thousands of vertical feet of scrambling — tested their friendship, their resilience, and their sanity. The result, as Fedarko tells it, is a rollicking and poignant account of an epic misadventure between two friends with zero preparation and one shining dream: an odyssey, on foot, through the heart of America's most magnificent national park.
Fedarko is no stranger to the canyon's extremes. Long before A Walk in the Park, he wrote The Emerald Mile: The Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History Through the Heart of the Grand Canyon, a critically acclaimed account of a legendary 1983 dory run down the Colorado River during one of the largest floods in the canyon's recorded history. That book won the National Outdoor Book Award for Outdoor Literature. A Walk in the Park went further: it became a New York Times bestseller and won the 2024 National Outdoor Book Award for Outdoor Literature.
A former senior editor at Outside magazine who spent more than twenty years writing about adventure, conservation, and exploration, Fedarko has had his work published in National Geographic, The New York Times, and Esquire. His favorite place on Earth, he says, is the Grand Canyon.
McBride, too, has devoted much of his career to the canyon and the river that carved it. A self-taught photographer, filmmaker, writer, and speaker, he has traveled to more than 75 countries for the National Geographic Society, Smithsonian, Google, and The Nature Conservancy. He is a National Geographic Explorer, an Adventurer of the Year, and a Sony Artisan of Imagery, and his work has taken him from Mount Everest and Antarctica to some of the most remote stretches of the American West. A Colorado native, he has spent years documenting the Colorado River and Grand Canyon from unique perspectives — by foot, by boat, and by air — with an emphasis on conservation, water, and the importance of protecting public lands.
Together, McBride and Fedarko have transformed their adventures into stories that explore not only the beauty and complexity of the natural world, but also friendship, resilience, and what can be learned when plans go dramatically off course. Their Grand Canyon trek, in fact, was driven in part by concern: the pair wanted to better understand a revered landscape and the commercial developments poised to alter it forever.
The Jack Maddox Distinguished Speaker Series, which brings them to Hobbs, has a long pedigree of its own. Since its inception in 1989, the series has been hosted by the JF Maddox Foundation and the University of the Southwest, with the express purpose of contributing to the quality of life in Lea County, New Mexico, and the surrounding area by providing nationally recognized speakers for intellectual stimulation and entertainment. The foundation itself was established in 1963 by Jack and Mabel Maddox to serve the citizens of southeastern New Mexico. Over the decades, the series has welcomed an extraordinary range of figures to this corner of the oil-rich Permian Basin: astronauts like José Hernandez, Olympic gold medalist Amy Van Dyken, NBA legend Shaquille O'Neal, HGTV stars Ben and Erin Napier, and more.
"The Jack Maddox Distinguished Speaker Series is about creating opportunities for our community to hear from people whose experiences introduce us to new ideas and perspectives," said TJ Parks, CEO of the JF Maddox Foundation, in announcing this month's event. "Pete and Kevin are remarkable storytellers, and their adventures offer a unique look at perseverance, friendship and our connection to the natural world. We're excited to bring them to Hobbs and give our community the opportunity to experience their stories together."
For a town in southeastern New Mexico, a night with two men who have walked the length of the Grand Canyon is a rare gift. The hike has been called the toughest in the world, and the two men who survived it are bringing the photos, the stories, and the laughs to Tydings Auditorium, free for anyone willing to show up.
It promises to be unforgettable. And it almost certainly will not, despite McBride's assurances, be anything like a walk in the park.