My Hiking Story

For me hiking is about unique experiences. I believe there are certain things that can’t be captured, and the only way to experience them is to place yourself right in the middle of it. And there are certain experiences that only happen for a brief moment and then it’s gone. Yes, there are times that I’m cold, tired, sore and lonely for the comforts of home, but the high points always outshine the lows.

One of the best examples happened to me while in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. It was my second day into the Whites and it was a day that I had been looking forward to for some time, the hike across Franconia Ridge. This includes a 2.5 miles stretch of ridge walking above tree line, providing some of the best views in the Whites. The only problem was that it had been raining since the moment I woke up and the closer I got to the ridge, the deeper the realization became that this iconic section of the Appalachian Trail (Also referred to as the "AT") was going to be covered in cloud. As I trekked across the ridge line I simply stared down at my feet, carefully placing each step between rocks.

A foggy hike across Franconia Ridge.

It was during this section that I noticed my shadow, I had not seen it all day, and now I was staring down at it. When I looked towards the west the clouds broke apart for a moment revealing such a beautiful sight. When I saw this happening I was instantly overwhelmed with joy forgetting all of the cold rain and challenges of the day. I yelled out to the the mountains with a triumphant shout, rejoicing in the surrounding beauty! During this moment I realized it would be short lived so I scrambled for my camera to capture the last few moments of that experience.

The clouds break on Franconia revealing a great view!

The Decision
The decision for me to start hiking long distanced began in May of 2006 when I went for a 3 day hike on the Appalachian Trail. At the time I had no idea what I was doing, I had a heavy external frame pack that I had outgrown from my Boy Scout days and it was filled with a lot of unnecessary gear, including what I thought would be enough water for 3 days of hiking. I started early that first day, and by that afternoon I found myself lying on my back, worn out and almost out of water... but I was happy! I was experiencing a sense of freedom and adventure that I had never felt before! I was alone in the woods, but I had everything I needed to support myself(besides the dwindling water supply) and I loved it! When I got off the trail at Neal’s Gap I looked North up the trail and knew that I wanted to continue all the way to Maine. I wanted to continue right then and there, but it wasn’t time yet, and ever since then it has been an ongoing learning experience and adventure.
One of the things I find interesting is that everybody on the trail has a different story about how they got there, but almost everybody has the same goal. To get to Finish!

Continue reading after the break for info on planning, challenges, rewards and lessons learned!

Planning
Once I had made the decision to start long distance hiking I moved onto the planning phase. At first I spent very little time planning, it was mostly trying to figure out how to get to and back from the trail, but it seems like the more experienced I gain, the more time I spend planning. I spent more time planning for my 500 miles on the Colorado Trail, then I did for the entire 2,100 miles of the Appalachian Trail. One of the reasons for this is because I now know what I want to accomplish, and I know how to plan so that I can reach those specific goals. It’s important to determine what your goals are for a specific hike before you start to help keep your focus and not loose sight of what you want to do. It can be easy at times, especially after a few days of poor weather to forget why you are out there, sleeping on the ground, uncomfortable and cold.
I’m not going to get into all of the specifics of planning, but the things I take into account include daily mileage, appropriate gear, nutritional needs, resupply locations, specific skills, and seasonal weather.
While planning for the Colorado trail I had to factor in a temperatures ranging from freezing to 90 degrees. Here is an example of how varied conditions can be on the Colorado Trail

A hot day on the Colorado Trail

Taken the day after the previous photo

Nutrition also plays a big role while hiking. Without the proper foods you simply wouldn't have enough energy to make it through the day. My early days on the Appalachian trail it was simply throwing a few bags of ramen noodles and trail mix into my bag, but by the the time I got to the Colorado Trail I was making my own energy bars from scratch and repackaged everything into daily servings, and once again this was all so that I could achieve a very specific goal.

Planning is crucial to maximize efficiency on the trail.

Preparing to box up my meals for the Colorado Trail!

And my goal for the Colorado Trail was to see how quickly and efficiently I could complete it. It was not to see how well I could prepare food in the back country.

Home made food may not always look the best, but it gets the job done!

Now just a quick side not about trying to complete the trail as quickly as I could. Some people would argue that when your goal is speed you don’t get to stop and soak in the beauty around you, and my response to that is: I’m still at a walking pace! And I find quite the opposite is true, as a lot of wildlife is active in the early mornings, and late evenings. By hiking with every bit of daylight that I can, I put myself in a better position to view some of these very personal moments with the wildlife that I’m sharing the land with.

Rewarding encounter with a bear early in the morning.

By the time I finished preparing my food for the Colorado Trail I had a total of 52 pounds, and it would be crazy to try to carry this much food on top of gear and water weight. So I used a technique where I would mail packages to myself at different locations along the trail. The most food I ever carried at one time was around 16 pounds and that kept me moving for 180 miles over the course of 7 days.

One thing I should have included in my drop boxes was a fresh pair of socks.

They still have some life in them yet!

First Steps
I think it’s a pretty common thing to worry about forgetting something while packing for a vacation, but it seems even more so the night before departing for a extended hiking trip I am constantly thinking about every piece of gear I need to bring, and trying to remember that one thing I’m forgetting. Because once I’m out there, it’s not easy to find replacements and then you are forced to make due with what you have. Sometimes you have to get a little creative, once I forgot my toothbrush and I used the soft side of a velcro strip as a substitute.

One of the methods I use to help prevent myself from making mistakes like the forgotten toothbrush is the use of a spreadsheet. Along with listing every piece of gear I also plug in the weight to help myself find areas where I may be able to cut additional weight.

Example of gear spreadsheet.

Once you finally get to take that first step on the trail, it’s a liberating feeling, you know that you have done everything you can to prepare yourself and now the only thing you have to focus on is reaching your goal. The first few hours, and even the first few days can be filled with excitement about the journey ahead, but the reality about the challenge generally sets in fairly quickly. My past three major trips have all started on rainy days, so I knew right at the start that this was much more than a day hike.

Poor weather builds character!

Challenges: Bugs
I wish I could say that hiking was trouble free, just one beautiful view after another but it’s not. You have to work hard for the rewards and there are quite a few challenges that stand in the way.

And a lot of these are mental. Just constantly dealing with little things for extended amounts of time... rain, extreme temperatures, bugs, hunger and pain. They are all things that you can deal with, but after a few days in a row, or in conjunction with each other they can become overwhelming.

Let’s start off with one of the most annoying aspects in my opinion... the bugs.

17 mosquitoes on one leg!

This photo was taken on a particularly frustrating day. As you can see there were a lot of mosquitoes in the area, and I had no bug repellent. The only real option was to keep moving, or if resting to cover as much exposed skin as possible with additional clothing. Occasionally I would break down and just start swatting, and slapping at myself, trying to squish every last one of them... which unfortunately is impossible - I gave it my best shot.

While on the Appalachian Trail In Maine I was dealing with biting flies, and with one swat to my head, caught three of them in my hand. You probably know how difficult it can be to catch a fly, so if I’m catching 3 in one swat that should give you an idea about how bad they were.

Another time in Connecticut, I found a tick crawling on my leg while I was sitting in a restaurant, so I quickly excused myself to the restroom and flushed him.

In addition to biting insects I walked thru one swarm of insects in Colorado that was so thick I was worried about inhaling them! And it can be a little difficult to hike while just breathing thru your nose at 10,000 feet!(the final clip of bugs in the following video)

I’m thankful that these guys weren’t the biting type!

Challenges: Weather

Finding the trail can be quite difficult in deep snow.

Depending on your location and time of the year, snow can be an issue. Because the Colorado Trail is not marked for snow, there were times I had to rely on a map and compass to help find my way. My first major snow travel in Colorado was a memorable one.

My college roommate, Eric was hiking this section of the trail with me and the previous day we had gotten a lot of sun, and were almost out of sunblock, so we needed to get into town quick. We hatched a little two part plan that would allow us to avoid hiking in the sunlight for a good portion of the day, and make it into town by lunch giving us some extra time to relax and eat pizza. The only problem was that we had to wake up at 2am. We had also received a warning from a horse rider the previous day that Georgia Pass was impassible. Well that wasn’t going to stop us, we had it on our minds to have pizza for lunch, and besides he was on a horse, they aren’t made for snow travel anyway. So that next morning we woke up at 2, and were quickly on the move.

We first started hitting around 5:30 in the morning, and then by 7am it was all snow. At first it was a lot of fun, we would laugh at each other when we would hit a patch of slushy snow and sink to our waste, or take a slip. Eventually we passed two hikers who had set up camp on a sloping, but dry patch of land. They had hiked until the point of exhaustion the previous day and were taking their time to get started. Once we past their camp we noticed that the footsteps we had been following were no longer there, we had to slow down a lot and look for any sign of the trail. Including cut branches, trail markers, or areas that had melted out revealing trail. This was working out fine for awhile until we reached a large open area with no definitive sign of the trail.

We spent at least an hour walking the perimeter looking for anything that resembled a trail, but with no luck. We backtracked to the two hikers from earlier to see if they wanted to look with us. They were hiking fairly slow, so we beet them back to the clearing and this time actually found the trail with some luck. We made sure the other two hikers knew where the trail was before we headed on, but quickly lost the trail again. Eventually we gave up looking for it. We had a pretty good idea about our location and knew if we just kept walking north we would hit the Swan River, and that intersected the CT.

We had to be pretty cautious walking down the mountain in this fashion, Since we weren't using the switchbacks it was extremely steep in areas and we had no idea what was under the snow. A few times we would suddenly drop down finding that we were walking over a fallen tree that had been covered in snow. By this point we were exhausted, and all of the mishaps from earlier were no longer fun. We did make it to the Swan River and found a dry, snow free trail less than 100 feet from where we had crossed the river. It was such a huge relief to see a CT trail marker. By the time we got to town we did eat pizza but it was for dinner, not lunch.

This next clip shows some of the fun, and challenges of hiking in snow.

When it’s a little warmer, you get to deal with rain. And in addition to the obvious problems of trying to stay dry, there can be lingering problems as well. Once the clouds have cleared and the sun is shinning, you can still get stuck with wet, muddy, slippery trails. One day while in Vermont I got so tired of trying to get around all of the muddy spots on the trail I thought if I could start running, and get enough speed there might be a chance I could use my momentum to carry me across the tops... here is what happened.

Once again I’m glad there was another hiker with me at that moment, because having someone to laugh with can completely turn a situation around.

I don’t have many photos or videos that were taken during stormy events. This is mainly to preserve my camera, but it’s also because during these events you don’t care about taking photos... you just want to keep moving and hope that it passes quickly. These lack of photos taken during poor conditions lead people who view my photo albums to think the weather was great the entire time. Simply not the case. Here is a quick glimpse from White Top Mountain in Virginia showing how intense the weather can become at times.

There is one more from of precipitation that I have only had to deal with a few times, and that is hail. {photo of clouds that produced 3 waves of hail} While on the Colorado trail I was hit with hail three times in one day. Fortunately I was able to take cover under a combination of trees and umbrella, only taking a few hits on my legs.

Rewards

A reward after the storm.

This rainbow formed shortly after the final wave of hail, instantly moving me from a state of discomfort to a state of amazement. It’s moments like these that inspire and keep me moving.

If hiking was nothing but challenges, I probably wouldn’t have much of an interest in it. But for all of the challenge there are rewards. I like to think of the challenges and rewards on the trail like eating a good meal. The longer between meals, the better they taste. On the trail it can be days without a real uplifting moment, and then at other times it is one highlight after another.

A lot of times, the reward comes at the end of a difficult stretch, like the clouds breaking apart on Franconia Ridge, or the rainbow after dealing with the hail. It’s difficult to fully capture these moments, so I have put together a short clip showing some of the joys of hiking.

One reward that I didn’t expect to find was a Styrofoam cooler.

Trail Magic!

This is an example of Trail Magic, and it is always amazing! This is basically an act of kindness from someone who you will most likely never meet nor have the chance to thank face to face. I have been blessed several times, on both the Appalachian, and Colorado trail with this selfless act and it is so encouraging to know that somebody has gone out of their way to bring some joy to my hike.

Finishing
Finishing a long hike can be bitter sweet. I find myself looking forward to returning to the comforts of home, but also saddened about leaving the beautiful land I have been experiencing both day and night. While in Maine, near the end of my Appalachian Trail hike I asked a lady who had completed it several years earlier what the biggest adjustment was for her when moving back to city life. And her response was one that has stuck with me ever since. And it was, taking the time to find a restroom, and not just going whenever the urge should strike.

Impact On My Life
While hiking, and preparing to hike I have learned many lessons, and I want to share two with you. First off: never underestimate the impact of a small choice. While preparing my gear for trips I cut off every extra tag, loop, strap, my tooth brush is cut in half and all of these little choices make a big difference in the weight of my pack. The same principles can be applied to life off the trail. Pay attention to little details, don’t make exceptions and you can make big changes, either at home or in the office. Second, one of the biggest blessings on the trail was from strangers that I never got to meet. Trail magic doesn’t have to be just on the trail. Take the chance to do something nice for somebody that may never know it was you, it could completely change their day.

Mt. Katahdin - Northern Terminus of the Appalachian Trail