Month: October 2021

CDT Reflections Pt. 3: Surprises, Disappointments, etc.

Reflections on a small pond in the Wind River Range.

This is the third and final installment in my CDT Reflections blog series. The first post was an overview of the MT/ID section, and the second an overview of the WY/CO section. In this post I’ll address various topics individually. 

Romance: I knew it was a long shot, and I didn’t have very high hopes, but there was a very small glimmer of hope that maybe I would find some romance and a future partner on the trail. It didn’t happen. Had it happened, I probably would still be going as that would have been a big incentive not to quit. Haha. Not a big disappointment since I didn’t have high expectations to begin with, but still a bit of a bummer. 

Trail Magic: I hate bringing this up because I don’t want to sound like I’m entitled to trail magic or that I’m ungrateful for the help I got. I am so thankful for all the help and trail magic I received. From a trail magic perspective, I knew there were much better trails to do than the CDT, so once again I didn’t have real high expectations. However, it was frustrating hearing stories from other hikers about awesome trail magic they had been a part of, not having received anything like that myself. From another perspective, the hike was great for getting ideas for future trail magic I could do for hikers, and I was recently able to drive over to NM for a few days and give some trail magic, which was a blast. 

Friendships: Similar to trail magic, I knew this wasn’t the trail to be doing if I wanted a really social experience along the trail. However, I had hoped that I could find a trail family (“tramily”) along the trail and within that tramily make some great friends along the way. Despite the high number of people on the CDT this year, it still ended up being a very lonely experience on trail for me up until the last couple weeks. It definitely made me cherish those couple weeks I had hiking with the group, but I wish I could have had more time with them. Not having more time with them down the trail was one of the biggest bummers for me when I decided to quit. 

Quitter/Failure: This didn’t hit me right away, but after I had a bit to process calling it quits, I realized this was another thing to add to my list of things that haven’t gone my way, that I have quit, or that I have failed at (along with storm chasing, fire fighting, selling fine art prints, etc.). I was really hoping prior to starting the trail that this was something I could finish and put on the success checklist. Despite being a great accomplishment, it didn’t help with the struggle of wondering if I’m not trying hard enough, if I quit too early when things get hard, or if I just haven’t found “my thing” yet. 

Road Walking: There are a couple different aspects to this. First, the large amount of road walking. I had heard it was a lot of road walking, but it surprised me how much there actually was. Most of it was on backcountry forest roads and not highways, which was good, but it was still a lot of roads. Second, the highway walks were awful on my feet. The highway walks were generally great for keeping a fast pace, but some of the worst blisters I got were after walking on a long highway stretch. 

Job Opportunities/Future Location: When I started the trail, my plan after finishing was to find a job and move close to the CDT, preferably somewhere in Montana or Wyoming. I had hoped that hiking the trail would give me some leads on job opportunities. That didn’t happen, but it did give me an idea on the trail towns that would be at the top of my list to live in, which was nice. Ironically, though, by the time I had quit the CDT, I had decided that NW Arkansas was actually at the top of the list of where I would like to end up. If that didn’t work out, I would start looking into jobs in my top trail towns. 

Anaconda Pintler Wilderness: Outside of my friend Kate, this was an area that I didn’t hear much about before trail, but it ended up being one of my favorite stretches of trail. I would love to go back there again sometime and take some time to really enjoy it and take it in. 

Towns Days: I had thought before trail that town stops would be a nice relaxing break from the hiking. They were a nice break from hiking, but there was often a big chore list to do, so I’m not sure I would say they were particularly relaxing, especially if it was in town one day and out the next. I still loved town days though. 

Recovery: The first couple weeks after quitting were pretty rough physically. I must have hurt my left shoulder more than I realized in the fall right before quitting, because after getting home it was sore for a few days. My legs felt awful when I went running. There were a few days when my lower back was quite sore. I found it quite ironic that I never took any pain medication while on trail, but took some a few times for the back pain after I was home. Thankfully after a couple weeks I started to feel a lot better. 

Do I Regret Quitting?: After giving it some thought for a month and a half, do I now regret calling it quits early? I still feel like it was the right choice. However, that doesn’t mean that I don’t second guess myself. I often wonder if listening to music on the hard climbs would have made a difference. Someone in our group mentioned this early on in Colorado, but for some reason it never crossed my mind to put in my earbuds and listen to some music during the big climbs. Should I have thought more of all the people cheering me on and sending me encouragement? Seeing the pictures from the San Juans with the fall colors has been a bit depressing. That was one of the things I was looking forward to the most.  Some of the hikers in the group I was around were part of a fairly large group in southern Colorado, and had I kept going, I may have ended up in that group, which likely would have been a lot of fun. 

On the other hand, I’m really happy I got to participate in the Oklahoma City Memorial Half Marathon. That is always one of my favorite days of the year, and I’m glad I was able to keep my streak in tact (now at 9 consecutive years). I’m also really happy I got the opportunity to do some trail magic on the CDT this year. As I mentioned earlier, that was a blast. Seeing the pictures of the snow and cold weather the last 2-3 weeks has made me pretty glad I’m off the trail as well. 

Most of all I keep thinking about how hard it’s going to make it to finish out the trail. If I finish it out, I would like to do it a bit earlier in the year so I’m not having to deal with winter weather, but that would put me in a time where there wouldn’t be many (or even any) other CDT hikers on the trail around me. I would be starting from scratch again with getting my hiker legs (although starting with a fresh body may not be a bad thing). Finally, at this point I would really like to get a job, buy a house, and start getting plugged into and settled into a community instead of continuing to put life on “hold” and having a temporary job and living situation for almost a year. I think the chances of me finishing the trail are pretty small at this point, but we’ll see how things unfold. Maybe we’ll meet again at some point. 

So there you have it: a very long response to the question “How did your hike go?”. I’m sure there is still a lot I’m leaving out. Haha. 

CDT Reflections Pt. 2: WY & CO Overview

Fog rising off of Shoshone Lake in Yellowstone.

This three part blog series is my attempt to answer the question “How did your CDT hike go?”. If you missed part one (overview of the MT & ID portion), you can check that out here. As you can tell from the title, this is an overview of the WY and CO portion. 

I was super excited to get into Wyoming. It is my birth state, the state where I spent most of my childhood, and it was nice to finally be finished with the MT/ID portion. Ironically, I think this is where things started to unravel on me though. Yellowstone ended up being really easy hiking, but I didn’t find it particularly scenic/interesting. Shortly after that I had a really frustrating town stop in Dubois (the town wasn’t bad, just didn’t go well). Then it was into the Wind River Range (“the Winds”), which was supposed to be one of the main highlights of the entire hike. In the northern part of the Winds I had one of the hardest days physically, and definitely one of my low points mentally/emotionally: the climb over Knapsack Col, where I broke both trekking poles and put a good gash in my shin. In the southern part the smoke returned, so the views were diminished. I rushed through the beautiful Cirque of the Towers area to get over a couple passes before rain moved in. Then a big climb on a cold and rainy morning, followed by awful blowdowns, made for an absolutely miserable day. So while there were some absolutely amazing views and scenery in the Winds, that stretch got heavily tainted by the abundance of miserable moments. Based on how much I struggled with the big climbs in the Winds, I knew I might be in trouble in Colorado and I really started to worry about making it through Colorado. 

Lander, WY was a place of big changes in my hike. The first one was with the trail itself. I was going from big mountains into relatively flat desert. This desert section had really worried me since the start of my hike. The second change was that it finally worked out so that I was hiking with a group after leaving town. In the 50+ days up to that point I had done very little hiking with other people. I had run into lots of different southbound hikers up to that point (mainly in towns), but had never been able to consistently stick around the same people for any considerable length of time. I thought it felt a lot like what speed dating must feel like. If the national parks (where camping is regulated) are excluded, up until Lander I believe I only had 3 nights outside of town (out of around 30) where I camped with other hikers. It had been quite lonely, and I was really glad to have some company leaving Lander. 

After Lander is the stretch known as “the Basin”, which is the relatively flat desert area I referenced in the previous paragraph. I got lucky and went through the Basin with great weather. It wasn’t near as bad as I had thought it might be (due mostly to the cooler weather I had), but it was still quite boring and monotonous, and I was really glad to have some company going through there to help break up the monotony. I managed to get in 40 miles during a day in the Basin, but it involved hiking the last 1.5 miles or so cross country (no trail) in the dark (with a headlamp), which was miserable and I highly discourage. Haha.

Unfortunately for me most of the group I was hiking with left Rawlins, WY about a half day ahead of me, but they were making a brief stop in a town that I would be skipping, so I knew I had a chance at catching them. I hiked the first couple days out of Rawlins really hard to try to catch up to them. I managed to link back up with a few of them on the third day, which was great, but my legs were completely exhausted. The stretch between Rawlins and Steamboat Springs, CO is when I really started to have serious thoughts about quitting, I think mainly due to exhaustion, as well as being miserable and/or “bored” through much of Wyoming.

After getting into Steamboat, getting some rest, and having what is likely my favorite memory from trail (staying at an Airbnb with several other hikers), I decided to keep on going. If I had been by myself, I think there is a high likelihood I would have called it quits in Steamboat. Despite feeling so exhausted getting into Steamboat and not taking a zero, I actually felt pretty good leaving town. Our group got spread out a bit between Steamboat and Grand Lake, CO, but I was still able to stick around a couple of the people in that stretch. There was a really big climb on the third day out of Steamboat that I really struggled with, but it helped a lot having someone with me to help motivate me to keep going. The next day had another big climb that again was a big struggle. There was a portion of the climb with blowdowns across the trail that were really difficult to get around, which made for miserable hiking and put me in an awful mood. After getting to Grand Lake I decided I would be taking an alternate route that would skip the highest point on the CDT and save me some miles and elevation gain/loss. The big climbs had been kicking my butt, and at this point I just wanted to get through Colorado. I could do a “14er” another time with a daypack if I really wanted to check that off my list. 

Although the hike out of Grand Lake was beautiful, it was a bit depressing as well since I knew the group I had been hiking with was going to be split up for a bit. Three of the hikers were getting off trail for a couple days to meet with friends. I was the only one I knew of planning on taking the alternate route, which would likely put me a couple days ahead of every one else. The first day out of Grand Lake was the first day in quite some time in which I didn’t see another CDT hiker and camped alone. Hiking with a group had a lot to do with me pushing on the last couple segments, so I was quite bummed to be without the group. Just before camp I tripped and fell hard, which didn’t help anything. The next day had a big climb up above 12,000 ft. Between the big climb, the cold temperature, the wind, and the exposed hiking, I was really miserable that morning. By lunchtime I was already fairly worn out and demoralized, and I had a decision to make: two more big climbs (with a big descent between them) for the day, or call it quits and head into Winter Park, CO. After eating I decided to call it quits. After that morning, there wasn’t much of me that was looking forward to the rest of Colorado and New Mexico. So on the afternoon of Sep. 5 I hiked my final few miles out to Winter Park. 

In part 3, I’ll cover some individual topics about the hike in general, so be watching for that in the next few days. 

CDT Reflections Pt. 1: MT/ID Overview

Morning twilight at Red Eagle Lake in Glacier National Park.

It’s crazy to me that it has already been over a month since I called it quits on my CDT hike. I get asked all the time how the hike went. It’s difficult to give any sort of short (or even long) answer that does the trip justice. Although it’s still quite difficult to put the experience into words, I have spent some time over the last several days trying to put some thoughts about the trip down in writing. I ended up with three different blogs (including this one). I’ll share the other two over the next few days. Hopefully these blogs will give you a glimpse into the main takeaways I had from the trail and give a decent answer to the question “How did the hike go?”. 

When I started the hike, I had every intention of going all the way to Mexico. However, some people may have noticed on my Instagram that I put “attempting a thru hike of the CDT” in my profile instead of a more definitive “thru hiking the CDT”. I knew the chances of actually finishing the trail were quite small, so I felt it was more appropriate to put the “attempting” in the bio until I actually finished, but I also wondered if that was an indication I wasn’t in the right mindset right off the bat. 

Starting off in Glacier National Park (GNP) was amazing, and I’m really glad I got to hike through the park. I really enjoyed spending time at camp with Little Red and Chuckles. It was a great way to kick off the hike. It was a bit difficult, though, leaving the park and losing the magnificent views, running into lots of blowdowns, hiking through lots of burn areas, and being alone at camp pretty much every night. I think it made for a more pronounced “honey moon phase” at the start. 

I said at the start that if I could make it through the first couple weeks, I would feel good about making it to Mexico. After the first two weeks, despite some rough moments, it was full steam ahead. However, it was around this two-week mark that I really started having issues with my first pack not fitting properly. I bought a new pack in Helena, MT and that pack ended up being worse than my first pack. At that point I had my parents send the pack I’ve used on my shorter trips over the last few years to Anaconda, MT. It ended up fitting better, but it still took my body some time to adjust to it. This whole ordeal made for some pretty miserable hiking over a few weeks. 

Unfortunately the pack I got in Anaconda was much heavier than the pack I had started out with, which I knew I might regret in Colorado when the elevation gains and losses were a bigger deal. It seemed to take until early Wyoming before I felt like my body was fairly used to carrying the pack. I really wanted to get a lighter pack before Colorado, but I didn’t want to have another fiasco of trying a different pack and it not working out again. I decided in the end to keep the heavier pack, which may have been a contributing factor to me calling it quits early. 

The other big story for me in Montana was the fire detour. There were all sorts of different things hikers were doing to get around the trail closure, which unfortunately ended up scattering hikers until northern Wyoming. I ended up skipping about 150 miles of the CDT, and instead doing a roughly 100 mile walk primarily on highways through the Big Hole Valley. It was a bummer not going through the mountains, but the Big Hole Valley was a neat area. The highway walking was really tough on my feet. Some of the worst blisters I had on trail occurred during this stretch. 

Other than the pack issue and the fire detour, the Montana/Idaho section overall went fairly well. There were definitely some really difficult/rough parts, but they were sparse enough that they didn’t taint the overall experience. In the next blog I’ll share an overview of the WY/CO section.