The Appalachian Cloud Trail: Hiking, Cloud Economics, and Finding Perspective

About this episode

Corey Quinn and Caleb Hurd discuss their experiences hiking the Appalachian Trail and draw parallels to cloud economics.

What happens when two cloud economists leave AWS behind and spend six days hiking 60 miles on the Appalachian Trail? Corey Quinn sits down with Caleb Hurd to share stories from the trail, including exploding sleeping pads, heroic shuttle drivers, lost phones, and the unique community that makes long-distance hiking special. Along the way, they draw surprising parallels between backpacking and cloud economics, discussing everything from serverless architecture and cloud cost optimization to the hidden challenges of on-prem infrastructure. It's a conversation about technology, adventure, perspective, and why sometimes the best way to solve complex problems is to step away from them entirely. Show highlights: (00:00) Why Hiking Hooks You (00:15) Meet Caleb on the Trail (01:31) Trail Miles and Ultralight Parallels (05:24) The Sleeping Pad Blowout (07:46) Shepherd Saves the Day (09:43) Trail Community and Cloud Community (11:07) Post Trail Perspective and Inside Jokes (15:35) Back to Work On Prem vs Cloud Pain (25:47) Server-less Spend and Lambda Sprawl (32:29) Wrap Up Where to Find Caleb About Caleb: Caleb Hurd is a Cloud Economist at Duckbill, where he helps enterprises make sense…

People in this episode

Host: Corey Quinn

Guest: Caleb Hurd

Topics covered

• cloud economics
• hiking
• technology
• adventure
• perspective
• cloud cost optimization

Keywords

• cloud economics
• Appalachian Trail
• hiking
• serverless architecture
• cloud cost optimization
• on-prem infrastructure
• backpacking

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: AWS, Duckbill, CostOps.cloud

Places: Appalachian Trail, healthcare tech, enterprise Saas

More episodes of Screaming in the Cloud

• Coding Agents, Chaos, and the Future of Dev Work with Dexter Horthy · May 28, 2026 · 33 min
• The Rise of Autonomous Ops: Inside AWS’s DevOps Agent with David Yanacek · May 14, 2026 · 31 min
• Building the Backbone of AI Agents: Telemetry, Open Source, and the Future of Developer Infrastructure with Brian Douglas · April 30, 2026 · 29 min
• The Power of Saying No: Growing by Narrowing Your Focus with Corey Quinn · April 16, 2026 · 29 min
• Build vs Buy: The Hidden Costs of “Just Building It” with Ahmed Bebars · April 2, 2026 · 43 min
• FinOps, AI, and the Cost of Cloud Chaos with J.R. Storment · March 19, 2026 · 48 min