Pathways to Purpose
Explore how Rachel Jones, Ed Talone, Isaiah Maxi, Brooke Pavek and Bobby Whittaker made their lives extraordinary on America’s pathways.
At Rails to Trails magazine, we know that when trails are part of our everyday lives, they can have an impact—whether that’s improving our health, providing safe transportation options or simply connecting us with the people in our neighborhood! But sometimes they can also push us beyond what we think we’re capable of, helping us to change and grow in ways we might never have expected. Here, we share the inspirational stories of a handful of people doing unique and extraordinary things through trails.
This article was originally published in the Fall 2025 issue of Rails to Trails magazine and has been reposted here in an edited format. Subscribe to read more articles about remarkable trails while also supporting our work.
One Step at a Time: Rachel Jones
For those used to the relative flatness of most rail-trails, Colorado’s Manitou Incline would come as a shock. Following the path of an old cog railroad, straight up the eastern slope of Pikes Peak in a series of more than 2,700 steps, it’s equivalent to climbing the Statue of Liberty six times. Although the trail is only a mile long, even the city’s website lists its difficulty level as “Extreme (we promise we’re not kidding).”
Now imagine making that climb 1,000 times within a year. That’s exactly what massage therapist Rachel Jones did—becoming the first woman to do so.
“I tried to climb the Incline for the first time about 15 years ago or so with some friends, and we struggled to make it to the top,” said Jones. “But a few years later, I heard about a man who did it over 500 times in a year, Greg Cummings, and he started what he called the ‘500 Club’ for the people that did that. That just blew my mind. I thought it was such a cool challenge. It made me feel like I would have to become the best version of myself to be able to do something like that, physically, mentally and emotionally. But it wasn’t until 2021 that I finally felt like I was in a place where I was ready to go for it.”
To accomplish the goal, Jones did the math and realized that she’d need to run multiple Incline laps per day, so she worked up to doing doubles, then triples, then quads—pushing herself to become stronger and faster. Eventually, she was able to do a lap in less than an hour and maintain that pace for several laps in a row. But then she heard about an “inclinathon”—doing 13 laps back to back, the equivalent of a marathon since each round trip was 2 miles—and a new challenge-within-a-challenge formed in her mind.
“It was difficult, but if you break any challenge down into pieces … and then just do those pieces one by one, eventually you get there,” said Jones of her strategy.
With the extra laps Jones was now doing, she was actually disappointed to discover that she was on track to finish her original 500-laps challenge early, so she decided to up the ante to 1,000 laps, a feat that only three men had also accomplished at the time. In all weather and in all seasons, she kept climbing, even through snow drifts when “only the most extreme locals were out there.” But as she approached the latter half of her new challenge, something unexpected happened.
“By the end of September 2022—when I had finally done all those inclinathons—I found out I was pregnant,” recalled Jones. “My doctor said, ‘Whatever you’ve been doing leading up to pregnancy, you can continue doing; you just have to listen to your body.’ Going into October, I was definitely hit with all the first trimester symptoms, which slowed me down quite a bit, but I was still out there pushing myself. I knew I was safe, and my doctor knew I was safe, so I continued with my challenge, and at the end of that year, I reached my goal.”
Jones’ 1,000 party was a “huge celebration” that included a handmade plaque from her mentor Greg Cummings, her pregnancy announcement and a gender reveal.
“The people that had been in the 500 Club became my friends,” said Jones. “I took so much good energy from them, and having someone that’s already done it look at you and say, ‘You can do this’—that’s huge. As humans, we can do extraordinary things. All of us can. We just have to believe in ourselves, commit to it and put in the effort.”
A Walk on the Wild Side: Ed Talone
What’s kept Ed Talone hiking, even after hitting nearly 1,300 trails? An insatiable curiosity to find out what’s waiting just around the bend. Talone grew up in suburban Maryland, and a pivotal childhood experience sparked his passion to explore the world by foot, an endeavor that continues to this day with each hike meticulously logged in an Excel sheet spanning hundreds of rows.
“It was 1966, when I was 8, and my dad took my brother and I up to the C&O Canal Towpath,” Talone explained. “We were at the Monocacy Aqueduct and came to milepost 42, where my father said, ‘It’s 42 miles back to Washington, D.C., and 142 miles to Cumberland, Maryland.’ I did a little math in my head and figured those 184 miles would take me my whole life! And I thought that was wonderful, because that meant it would never end. I’ve now probably walked with a pack maybe 80,000 miles. I never thought I would walk that much, but that’s what started it.”
In particular, Talone loves rail-trails, because they typically have the tunnels, trestles and other structures that have always fascinated him (both his father and brother were engineers). But for a man who typically walks alone, they also offer a sense of connection.
“It’s visiting all the interesting little towns that you might never see otherwise,” said Talone. “Without the C&O towpath, I would have never visited Hancock or Cumberland or Little Orleans in Maryland. I would have never visited places like that unless I was doing these trails. That’s what keeps me going back—that never gets old.”
A self-described “list keeper,” Talone has also kept track of all the towns he’s visited on his hikes, noting that it’s almost 9,000 now.
In addition to trails in the United States, including the famed long-distance Appalachian Trail, Talone has also hiked throughout Europe and Canada and has no plans to stop. “The one thing I’ll always do, as long as I physically can, is walk,” Talone explained, noting that he typically covers 20 to 25 miles in a day. “Only positive things come out of walking—there’s no downside to it. I feel like the luckiest person in the world that I get to see all this.”
The Roll of a Lifetime: Brooke Pavek
It’s hard for Brooke Pavek to remember a time when skating wasn’t part of her life. Her dad enjoyed being active outside in the Florida sunshine with the kids, and Pavek loved being on wheels as soon as she put on her first pair of roller skates. “I thought it was the coolest thing, and I wouldn’t even take them off in the house,” Pavek recalled.
Her passion for wheels carried on through college, where it also served a commuting purpose to get around campus and to downtown, as she didn’t have a car. “I’m always on my skates. I’ll skate to get my groceries!”
But last summer, the 23-year old Pavek wanted to give herself a fun challenge before she had to buckle down for law school. She was mulling over hitting some of the state’s longer rail-trails, when she happened upon a map showing the Florida Coast-to Coast Trail, a nearly complete, 250-mile route across the state, and instantly knew that that’s what she wanted to do—on her traditional quad skates, of course.
Although the experience was at times difficult, said Pavek, she “learned that sometimes stubbornness pays off. Because there were a couple moments where I was just going like, ‘It’s too hot. Why am I even trying to do this?’ But then I was like, ‘OK, I can get this many miles in and I can push myself to do this.’”
That July, Pavek launched her adventure from Titusville on Florida’s Space Coast, zipping through 80 miles on her first day. The coast-to-coast route links more than a dozen trails, and Pavek’s favorite was the one she happened upon when she needed it the most. Her scariest moment of the journey occurred on the first day as she was coming down a steep bridge and took a tumble, resulting in a nasty gash on her thigh.
“I really liked the Seminole Wekiva Trail because it has nice asphalt and goes through a lot of woods and is very peaceful,” said Pavek. “It was what I needed after that emotional moment, because I was like, ‘Maybe I just quit right now’ because I had just fallen and was all bloody. But going on that trail, it calmed me down and I was like, ‘OK, this is why I do it.’”
Shortly after her fall, the trail’s murals also gave her a much-needed morale boost. “I saw a fox on one of the murals, and I love foxes. It was the coolest little symbol to keep me going.” When Pavek says she loves foxes, she really means it: She competes in roller derby for the Gainesville Roller Rebels, where her name is Swift Fox, and her skates are, of course, adorned with foxes. She even helps out part-time at a fox sanctuary.
The second day of her trip went smoothly, spanning another 80 miles or so. The occasional gaps in the trail were navigated via sidewalks and bike lanes, plus one short car trip. She finished her skate on the third day by rolling onto the St. Petersburg Pier over Tampa Bay at the end of the Pinellas Trail—a moment that brought her to tears.
When she reflects on the experience, Pavek noted, “Skating has gotten me to like my body a lot more. I think it makes me focus less on what it looks like in the mirror and more on what my body can do. It’s about the strength and the power and the endurance that it has and how I can appreciate that.”
In Memoriam: Isaiah Maxi
Aug. 16, 1994–July 10, 2025
There’s a picture of Isaiah Maxi smiling in front of a colorful mural in Sedalia, Missouri, that says, “Let’s Cross Paths”—a motto that perfectly incapsulates his worldview. In 2022, he challenged himself to visit every Missouri state park, where he enjoyed sharing his experiences with others on social media. That adventure led him to create a Facebook group called “The Journey to 100 Hiking Friends” to connect with new people across the state.
His 2024 challenge was to walk across Missouri on the 240-mile Katy Trail State Park. RTC interviewed Maxi about that journey on July 1 before his sudden passing on July 10 of a heart condition. While we spent less than an hour together on the phone, Maxi’s warmness, curiosity and kindness showed through. Here, we share the inspirational words about his experience and what he learned from the people with whom he crossed paths.
Growing up an athlete, “everything I did was sports,” he told us—even his birthday was spent on the football field—so as an adult, he had a lot of firsts to catch up on, like his first visit to a Missouri state park during his 2022 challenge. For this new endeavor, he landed on the Katy Trail after deciding that he wanted something that would be “obtainable but also could be tough, and I also wanted to meet as many people as I could along the way.”
He’d walk about 12 miles a day, though sometimes more and sometimes less depending on the distance to the next town. For the self-professed city guy, “it was cool to visit these smaller towns, like in Rocheport, where I think I met half the town—places where people just showed up and were hospitable.”
Throughout the journey, he had the support of what he called his “trail angels,” people who would invite him to family meals at the kitchen table, cover his housing for the night or warn him to take shelter from impending storms. “I grew up with one parent, with my dad, so it was cool to have, like, 76 mothers who were looking out for me.”
Using his Facebook page “Walking Across Missouri,” he was also able to connect with others who wanted to join him for parts of the hike. “A lot of steps were taken with me. That meant a lot, because it was challenging mentally and emotionally more than physically.”
But the best thing about the experience? “I think seeing how that journey created a little community, and that community was so kind to one another. I’d see them interacting with each other in the comments on the page, and it’s awesome just to see different people meeting up with one another. I’ve always been confident that if you put good energy into the world, somehow, in some way, it’ll come back—even if it’s not to you.”
If you would like to support Isaiah Maxi’s family during this difficult time, contributions are welcome on the family’s GoFundMe page.
A New Song and Dance: Bobby Whittaker
Growing up in Seattle, Bobby Whittaker didn’t expect to become a hardcore trail advocate, but “being a part of something” has always been important to him. Whittaker thrived in the city’s music scene, which shaped his 25-year career in the industry, including as a manager and tour manager with iconic bands such as Mudhoney and R.E.M.
He’d often take breaks from the frenetic pace of touring life in nature, especially in northeast Washington’s rural Ferry County. But in 2006, something exciting was happening in this place he’d always come to “slow down.” There was talk of converting an old rail corridor in the county into a trail.
As the county had no parks department, Whittaker jumped at the chance to help, gathering a few friends and like-minded community members together to work on the project, eventually forming a volunteer organization, the Ferry County Rail Trail Partners, to manage it. As Whittaker once told Rails to Trails, “There’s nothing more positive or punk rock than giving back to your community.”
Sections of the 25-mile trail have been opening at a gradual but steady pace ever since, in large measure through donated labor and equipment. The crushed-stone surface that the group has been putting in was a huge improvement from the railroad ballast that once lined the route, which Whittaker jokingly likens to traveling across “sharp golf balls.”
Last summer, Whittaker—who used to “skateboard everywhere” as a kid—was also thrilled to add a new skate park at the trail’s southern end. “I call it a gateway drug for teaching kids healthy activities,” he chuckled. “They’re learning to get outside, to be independent and to connect with other adventurous souls.”
But not one to hold still, he had his eyes on another project, too, the Children of the Sun Trail in Spokane. “My love of trails expanded to this urban trail, which connects to the Centennial Trail, a well-known path along the Spokane River,” explained Whittaker. “Spokane is becoming a bike town, and that’s exciting for me.”
Whittaker, who has a self-professed “sweet tooth for historical buildings,” bought a 1907 hotel along the trail in the city’s historic Hillyard neighborhood with his partner Sandra Bilbrey, and they’ve been working on the two-story “little fixer-upper” for the past few years. On its lower level, the hotel now includes the Hillyard Bicycle shop, which he hopes will make it easier for folks to explore the trail.
The Children of the Sun name comes from the region’s Salish people, and Whittaker is excited to work with the Indigenous community to help amplify their voices. A whimsical mural by Tribal artist Emma Noyes now graces the side of his hotel, and he’s participating in a garden project in the trailside Wildhorse Park, where efforts are underway to sow plants that have cultural value to the Tribe.
But Whittaker’s first trail love will be finished this fall. “We’re now putting in the last piece,” he said of the Ferry County Rail Trail. “It took us years and years, but we just kept working our butts off, and now we have this beautiful community as set. Sometimes the impossible just takes a little longer.”
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