ASHEVILLE— Hike the more than 2,100-mile Appalachian Trail? Check.

Trek nearly 8,000 miles from the Atlantic coast in Quebec to the Pacific Ocean in Washington? Been there, done that.

Outdoor adventurer extraordinaire Andrew Skurka is not just looking to blaze trails, but trails that no human has done before.

Two years ago, Skurka undertook the 4,679-mile Alaska-Yukon Expedition, a trek consisting of hiking, skiing and rafting solo around the perimeter of Alaska over the course of six months.

Skurka, 30, will relay his exploits in a slide show Wednesday in conjunction with the grand opening celebration of the Nantahala Outdoor Center at the Grove Park Inn.

The next day, March 22, he will conduct a backpacking skills workshop as a companion to his newly released guide, “Ultimate Hiking Gear & Skills.”

Skurka, who has been named Adventurer of the Year by both Outside magazine and National Geographic, is one of the country’s most revered adventure athletes for his impeccable planning and navigation skills and his ability to travel lightweight and at lightning speed, and alone.

Now living in Boulder, Colo., Skurka spent two summers working at Camp Carolina in Brevard. He said anyone who spends any time hiking or in the outdoors will find some interest and usefulness from his talks.

“My Wednesday talk about the Alaska-Yukon Expedition is a replacement for movie night,” Skurka said by phone this week. “It’s entertaining, thoughtful, has beautiful images and is a pretty compelling story about the wild north. The Thursday night workshop will be chock-full of helpful information for people who are looking for tips on backpacking.”

Alaska trumps Wall St.

And Skurka knows his material.

In 2002, with degrees in economics and political science from Duke University, Skurka decided to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail before beginning a career on Wall Street. His first long-distance hike was like a vampire’s first taste of blood.

“Thankfully, I discovered the outdoors before I ever committed to Wall Street,” he said. “It’s doubtful I’d ever go back to that world. I’d struggle with the lack of freedom.”

Instead, he turned to bigger and better adventures, getting more meticulous in his planning and efficiency.

“Alaska — it was like the logical next step. It fit the criteria I had for myself — it had to be different from anything I’d done in the past, and it had to be challenging, force me to step it up.”

Reaching near the top of the Earth, Alaska doesn’t have a network of long-distance hiking trails as the Lower 48 do, Skurka said. It took him six months to stitch together natural travel corridors, such as the floodplains of big rivers, animal migration trails and alpine tundra.

He began his travels in northwest Alaska, in the tiny town of Kotzebue, 30 miles north of the Arctic Circle.

His journey through the “big wilderness” began on skis for the first 1,200 miles, then by raft and by foot. He went long stretches without seeing or speaking to another human — the longest was 24 days — which he called difficult, but not because he was lonely, but because he had no one to relive the events of his days with.

Saying he didn’t want to “give anything away,” although we know he lived through it, those days were filled with adventures such as grizzly bear encounters, avalanches, big tidal currents and mosquito harassment.

He found his way by map and compass, and planned out all his resupply posts and meetings with the National Geographic crew that filmed parts of his expedition.

“I think that on these trips, it was the height of living,” Skurka said. “All of my senses are at this elevated state. It strengthened two out of the three most important relationships I have. I consider those relationships to be with nature, with others and with myself. The ones with nature and self go through development.”

He said while he considers himself a “reserved, calm, calculated, methodical type,” he doesn’t think he is a loner. And although he loves the aloneness of the wilderness, Skurka says he is the “anti-Chris McCandless,” the protagonist of “Into the Wild,” who wandered into the Alaska wilderness without a survival plan and perished there.