In May, a little over a month from now, assuming nothing untoward happens in the meantime, I will once again find myself being dropped off in the middle of nowhere New Mexico at the Mexican border. I’m going to re-attempt a thru-hike of the Continental Divide Trail, which runs approximately 3000 miles from Mexico to Canada through New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana.
Many of you reading this will remember my attempt to thru-hike the CDT in 2019. It didn’t go so well. One of the toughest challenges on that hike was the long, drawn-out winter that Colorado, and even northern New Mexico, experienced. I found myself using snowshoes before I even reached the Colorado border. I don’t think any northbounders made it all the way through the San Juans. Once in Chama, we all split and went different ways, taking whatever alternate routes we felt comfortable with. The snow in the mountains was no joke. One hiker that I met who tried to push into the San Juans got stuck and had to be helicoptered out. It wasn’t the highest snowfall Colorado has ever had, but as you can see from the graph below, it was one of the latest winters the area had experienced in quite a while in terms of snowfall.
I had my share of calamities along the way for sure, from equipment failure to some gnarly blisters in the Gila wilderness. It hailed and rained, as it is prone to doing on the divide. It continued to snow into June. I spent lots of time road walking in Colorado, schlepping around snowshoes, microspikes, and an ice axe in addition to my normal pack contents. Unprepared to deal with the heavy snow, I took the Great Divide Alternate, which is really a bike route, around the tall mountains as much as I could. I pieced that route together with roads and the Colorado Trail to maintain continuous footsteps. By the time I got to Steamboat Springs, it was time to start post holing (term used to describe stepping into snow drifts) my way into Wyoming.
But why did I stop my hike? It wasn’t due to injury. It would be easy to blame my lack of finishing on the winter weather, but I could have kept going and maintained continuous footsteps to Canada. The CDT is not like the Appalachian Trail. There isn’t one single path along the way; rather, there are many alternate routes to choose from. In the end, I think my resignation from the hike was a mix of death by a thousand cuts and just not being committed enough to the act of completion versus how I was spending my time. In other words, the completion of the hike didn’t seem as important to me when I weighed how I was feeling once I got to Northern Colorado. Of course, the way I was feeling was heavily influenced by the trail conditions, the routes I had chosen, etc. I was lonely, I missed my wife and our kitty, and I was feeling like I needed to get back to work.
I didn’t regret quitting at the time. There are a lot of trade offs to a long-distance hike. Quitting just meant that I would have more time for things with my wife and family. On the employment front, I had left a job and a career in tech to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail in 2018. The CDT hike was an extension of that sabbatical that I had not originally planned. At the time my thinking went something like this: “Well, I loved the first hike and, if not now, when? If I go back to work now, won’t I just want to do this in a year? Better to get it out of my system.” In fairness, since I did not really know what I wanted the second chapter of my career to be, it wasn’t a horrible way to think about it. Carpe Diem, as they say. But, somewhere during the hike I got inside my own head about this. I started worrying about having been out of the tech world for too long. It changes fast! I was in my early 40s and had significant business experience, but every day tons of people half my age were flooding into the various software and SaaS companies that might employ me. What if I waited too long to find that next job? In reflection, while I generally pride myself on being pragmatic, I can be so to a fault. There were some things I could have done to alleviate these concerns, such as:
- Checking in with old colleagues as I got closer to ending my hike – just shooting a few emails out to get some irons in the fire.
- Not worrying about a month or two here and there – it probably wouldn’t have made a difference.
- Downloaded whitepapers and podcasts in town to keep myself abreast of the latest industry developments while hiking, or simply spend 15 minutes at each town stop doing something “job” related, even if that was just reading news.
Instead, I just fretted over it. That and how I was spending my time merged into a mental pinball trapped between two spring-loaded bumpers in my mind. Boing boing boing boing! I started to feel incredibly anxious about it all. Couple that with missing my wife intensely and it is easy for me to see now why I pulled the ripcord. Lots of good ended up coming out of it. We tend to just go on being happy, no matter which way life turns. But there has always been a piece of me that has regretted not finishing the hike.
I am not a person who doesn’t finish things. Well, I guess I am, since I didn’t finish the CDT, but you know what I mean. I generally don’t commit to something unless I am going to take it all the way. It’s just not in my nature to quit. It may take me a while and I may struggle through something, but I’ll get to the end eventually. I can definitely think of goals that I have set and failed at achieving; however, the CDT thru-hike is the only big one that comes to mind that I could have finished, but just didn’t. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying there is anything wrong with pulling out of something. In fact, most people would probably say “Hey man, if you’re not having fun, what’s the point? You don’t need to hike that trail, it’s just something random that you chose to do. Not finishing will only matter to you. Everyone else will just be glad you’re home safe.” And that is true. But the unspoken truth is that it DOES matter to me. That’s just how I’m built. And that is why I’m going to hike it again, from the beginning.
I don’t even really understand how I set these goals for myself. Somehow they just get into my head. There’s no rhyme or reason, but for hiking, there tends to be a pattern to the criteria I need to add the challenge to my list. It goes something like this:
- There needs to be a defined beginning and end, whether that is point to point or a loop, and I need to feel like that journey will give me what I’ll call “completion satisfaction.”
- I need to be able to do the whole thing, or if there is no fixed route, I need to feel like the route I’m doing is fairly comprehensive.
- I want to be in beautiful natural surroundings. I’ll do some road walking, but I have my limits depending on the types of roads.
- Ideally, the road traveled will be new to me. That said, I am ok occasionally repeating trails/adventures if I really love them.
If the above first three criteria are met, then generally I will feel “completion satisfaction.” This can range from just feeling generally good and like I had fun, to achieving something more akin to catharsis on the longer journeys. There is no set length, but the longer the hike, the more potent and complex the completion satisfaction is (generally). In normal daily life, I often visit local parks or string neighborhoods together to make running routes for myself. I get regular and consistent satisfaction from doing so, and it also helps to keep me fairly healthy and in shape. These events exist on the simpler side of the spectrum, with the long thru-hikes on the other end. There is definitely a correlation between the level of extremity and the intensity and complexity of the realized catharsis. I will add that not every cathartic aspect of a thru-hike feels good, though. Some of it is inevitably fairly miserable. There is a much greater swing of experienced emotions than, say, on a 6 mile run around a new park. This only adds to the ultimate feeling of satisfaction if I am successful.
It’s important to be clear on any epic journey, major commitment, business venture, etc. on why you are doing it. This will ultimately optimize the chance for success. As such, I have thought about why I am re-attempting this thru-hike. Here is what I came up with:
- I want to prove to myself that I can do the hike, end to end, and that I have the mental fortitude to push through and finish, absent any injury that may necessitate me stopping.
- I want to challenge myself to stand up to and face whatever comes at me and to not let anything keep me from finishing. I want to work on trusting my instincts and not letting others’ views/conjecture/experiences/quips unreasonably alter my decisions or mindset.
- I want to do it now, while I still have the health, time, and means, and not assume that the opportunity will be waiting for me later.
- I want to see the rest of the trail – many of the best spots are yet to be experienced.
- I want to work on the mental acceptance of allowing myself this journey. I am my own worst critic, and I find myself sometimes repeating societal narratives about what I should be doing with my time, when those narratives are not mine, and largely patterned hogwash.
I guess when you boil down these reasons, I have a desire to do some work on myself. I also just want to let go, enjoy being outdoors, look at beautiful things, appreciate, and hopefully make some new friends along the way.
I’m still a little nervous about the hike. I really want it to go well. I want to succeed. I don’t want to disappoint myself. I know I will get lonely; I know I will miss my wife. I know that when it hails and storms and when the sage brush chews up my legs I will have moments when I want to quit and return home to my comfortable life. But, at the same time, I am getting excited now and I am grateful that I have the chance, and support, to do this again. I’m ready for these challenges and thrilled to have the opportunity to confront them. It is going to be quite the journey!
I do plan on sharing this journey with you all here. I am not sure yet if I will do daily posts, but if you’re subscribed, you’ll get post notifications. I usually thumb-type a journal at the end of each day, but I may combine them into posts depending on how it goes. Most posts will need to be uploaded in town, as there is not a lot of great cell signal out on the CDT. I’m going to just let the creative process happen and see where it takes me. In some ways, having a blog like this is a nice accountability measure in itself. Now that I’ve told you what I want to do, it’s much harder for me to tuck my tail between my legs and quit! You now also have a way to encourage me to keep going!
I will be filming as well, though I am not going to try and produce a vlog while hiking. I like the filming, but I don’t want to edit while on trail. I plan to create some type of video series post hike, but only when I have the time and my preferred editing software so that I can produce a high level of quality. I’ve gotten attached to producing videos, both as a way of collecting and sharing my visual memories of these hikes, but also as a different type of creative story-telling challenge.
This is definitely going to be an interesting experience! In a way, I feel a bit like I am going into some kind of ayahuasca ceremony, with the trail as the shaman (and hopefully no hallucinations). What sets this hike apart from others for me, including the AT, is that I actually do hope to experience some personal growth on this one. On other hikes, I’ve been ok just wandering and seeing what happens. I’m not naive enough to prop a journey up on the toothpicks of expectations, and I know I need to go easy on myself. I think the personal growth will come just by trying to be present through the experience and see where it leads.
I waited until now to write about this, mostly because I have been busy with life, prepping for this journey, and also training. The biggest risk to this hike that is outside of my control is injury. I am really hoping that my right shin can handle it. I believe I have recovered from the shin splints I sustained this past fall. I’ve had no issues during my recovery and gradual ramp-up in training. I think the reason I am uneasy about them is that I am still surprised that I got them when hiking in Linville Gorge. Fortunately, the desert section of the CDT is fairly flat, and I plan to try to ease into my pace and mileage (which is hard for me!). Other than that, I need to stop obsessing over it and just keep doing what I need to do to get ready.
This post is long enough, so I will stop here. I will talk about routes, gear, and planning soon. I’m almost done finalizing my gear list. I’m making a few changes from last time and carrying a camera, microphone, and related video equipment. I hope you’ll enjoy sharing in this journey with me! It will be good to get back to some solid writing again.
Until soon….
–Hungry Cat
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