“Why would you want to hike 500 miles alone?”
“You need to be careful; anything could happen.”
“I really wish you wouldn’t hike this trail.”

These are all things I’ve heard as more friends and family learned of my plans to hike the Colorado Trail, taking the Collegiate West route. Thankfully, I’ve never been one to let fears stand in my way of what I wanted to accomplish. 

I didn’t know about the Colorado Trail until I moved to Colorado in 2013. It was a trail I quickly learned about, but it didn’t seem like anything I’d ever be able to do. I had hiked and camped a lot growing up, but my dad was the type to bring everything except the kitchen sink. If I ever wanted to do the CT, I’d need to learn how camp very differently. Even if it was only a pipe dream at the time, I knew it would be life changing if I could accomplish it. Over the years, I began hiking, camping and backpacking all across Colorado, getting more and more comfortable with my abilities, and loving every minute of it. Still, hiking 500 miles seemed impossible.

It started with a kidney donation.

Fast forward to 2020/2021. One of my friends needed a kidney transplant and I decided to see if I was a match. To my surprise, I was, and surgery was scheduled for February 2021! I spent a lot of time in 2020 backpacking (I mean, who didn’t need a mental health boost that year). I didn’t know the time spent on the trail would also help me prepare for and recover from surgery. Once we had our surgery, I was already looking forward to the next time I could get back out there. I started hiking again only a month post-op. 

After learning about how many people struggle with kidney disease, I decided I would find a hike and turn it into a fundraiser for the American Kidney Fund. I landed on hiking as much of the Collegiates as I could manage, with the goal being at least 100 miles. Just 6 months out from our surgery, I started my hike. I fell a bit short of my goal with only 60 miles of the Collegiates completed, but I raised around $2000 for the AKF. After that, I knew I would eventually come back to attempt the full trail. 

Time is ticking.

In my “real life,” I work full-time as a nurse in Arkansas, so I wasn’t sure if I’d even be able to hike the CT. Who can afford to quit their job or take a month of PTO just to hike?! Well, turns out working as a nurse is helpful there, and I was able to take a month of PTO to do just that. Now, I’m only a few days out from starting my adventure on the Colorado Trail. In preparing for the trail, let’s just say “mistakes were made” may as well have been my nickname.

This past year has been full of ups and downs to get to this point, and I’m not sure any amount of training would have me feeling ready. But I’m here, and the time is ticking down until I step on that trail. Yes, I will be hiking alone. Trust me, I’d love to share this experience with a select one or two humans, but schedules don’t always align. I know I’ll meet some new friends on the trail, though! I’m as ready as I can be and I am so excited to share my journey with you all!

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Another peaceful night spent on a dining room floor of an AMC hut. No raiding parties came for the propeller last night, which was weirdly disappointing as it would have made for great blog fodder. 

Chestnut and I quickly packed up a little before 6am. Our plan was to hike about fifty metres over to the adjacent campsite and enjoy a zero. The reason for the zero was twofold. First, the body needed a break. Second, it was needed if I wanted to take advantage of the free hut nights I’d been gifted the day prior.

So we wandered over to the camp, let Sofia know the questionably good news that she would have the pleasure of our company for another twenty four hours, and then started to plan how much mischief we could possibly cause in the middle of the forest. 

Breakfast

In a change to normal programming, I had to prepare my own breakfast. Whilst sitting in the communal cooking area of the campsite, and contemplating what bar to eat for breakfast, we were joined by a few overnight campers that were enjoying their first adventure in the wild. It was fun to talk with these fresh face newbies, and share what limited wisdom we could to help them in their endeavours. 

In return for this supposed wisdom (and more likely because we look like the walking dead), the hikers gave us food before moving on with their day. The situation was becoming quite precarious. I now had my last resupply that was meant to last four days, and at least three more days worth of food gained from the kindness of strangers. Couple this with not consuming any of the food in my pack because of the generous hut system, and my bag was really getting heavy. A wonderful dilemma indeed.

So I did what any self respecting thru hiker would do and started stuffing my face with food. This seems a solid strategy to deal with the challenge of overstocking, I’ll continue to update on my progress. 

Accommodation 

The next step after eating three donated bars and a large handful of pistachios was to set up tents for the rest day ahead. 

As there aren’t many thru hikers about in the Whites, and the long weekend had come to a close, Sofia was kind enough to let us setup on an oversized platform with stellar views. My tent continues to delaminate and essentially disintegrate before my eyes as I set it up. It’s had a solid eight years of life, and all good things must come to an end. I will need to start thinking about a replacement as I cannot imagine I’ll stay dry much longer. 

A Masterclass

The two children we had entertained the day prior eventually escaped their parents from the hut and came and sat with me, Sofia and Chestnut. Sofia felt this was an opportune time to teach the seven principles of leave no trace to the children. I of course saw an even better opportunity to teach a slightly modified set of LNT principles.

Did I mention I was keen to work on some zero day mischief? After thirty minutes I’m pleased to say that the children were now very clear that all seven of the LNT principles were essentially the same, and all involved hugging a bear whenever you were lucky enough to spot one in the wild.

Sofia did seem to think the class had gotten away from her a bit, and maintained that hugging bears was not the right thing to do, but I’m reasonably confident that the kids were more comfortable with the direction I had taken the class. When the parents joined us, I think they realised their error in leaving their kids in my general space. 

Pancakes?

I was now about 10am, and the family needed to get moving. The children were reluctant to move on, I suppose mainly because of the valuable lessons we were imparting about nature. Eventually the family headed back to the hut and it seemed my fun for the morning had come to an end.

Sofia then came up with a brilliant idea. She suggested we cook pancakes. This idea was brilliant on all kinds of levels. One, pancakes. Two, fun. Three, pancakes.

So we headed to the caretakers cooking space, and began to make chai pancakes.

I was left to run the grill, and it’s fair to say results were mixed in regard to size and quality. The children had made another miraculous escape from their parents so of course we made them pancakes too. Eventually the escapees were located and led off to hiking jail.

After eating pancakes until we were all full to bursting, we decided to go and hang out in the hut. The huts in the middle of the day are essentially empty as all the guests have moved on to enjoy their hikes. Upon arriving at the hut, there had been a croo change and a relief croo were busy prepping food for dinner. They offered us some burnt pancakes. Did we say yes? Of course we did.

An hour or so later around 1pm, the croo came over and gave us more pancakes. Unburnt. Did we say yes? Of course we did.

Hammock Time

So after three separate pancake sessions, I decided it was time to sloth out. I set up my hammock and spent the rest of the afternoon catching up on blogs.

The afternoon sailed on by as I let my creative juices flow, and before I knew it the heat had gone out of the day and it was time to start contemplating dinner.

Now I cannot lie, the triple pancake day had filled me up. Never had I thought that while spending time in the White Mountains would I be eating better than I had anywhere else on the trail. Even a zero at a campsite had resulted in multiple trail magic moments and thousands of calories of free food.

While cooking up my tried and tested pad thai ramen, a few fast moving NOBO’s from Georgia came into camp. They looked absolutely shattered as they are by and large maintaining their twenty mile a day philosophy through this difficult section of the trail. This equates to 14 hour walking days and 2000m plus of elevation gain and loss. Hike your own hike people, I’m sticking to zero day pancakes thank you very much.

The sun had set on another magnificent day on the trail (or to be more precise off the trail). I curled into bed very content with my work, and looked forward to seeing if any trails had been created for the next part of the Whites while I had rested for the day. My gut says probably not.

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What was supposed to be two days from Whitehall to Ennis ended up being 4 hitches and one long climb. Pretty quickly while leaving town, we stuck our thumbs out to get a short ride along the 8 or so miles of road between town and the trail. Quickly, a red mini van pulled up offering us a ride that we couldn’t resist. However, as soon as the doors were closed and as we were trying to iterate our desired destination, sweet Laurie turned the car around and began driving East instead of South. As we explained to her where we wanted to go, she mistakenly thought we were trying to get to a popular local trailhead. As we attempted to steer conversation back to our drop off point, she evaded until we reached the post office. Finally, I showed her on a map where we needed to go and ultimately, we ended up cutting off a whole day of hiking. Laurie was very sweet though and spoke so highly of her kids and grand kids. It was hard to be upset with her.

Unfortunately, despite losing a day of hiking, we were still 10 road miles to the nearest trailhead. After a few miles, a young guy in a white pickup truck up offered us a ride closer to the actual trails. Being a former thru hiker himself, he knew how much we appreciated cutting out the roads. We hopped in the bed of his truck and sat along the gun walls since a four wheeler occupied the main bed space. We bumped down a gravel road until we intersected with a trailhead. We thanked him and he sped off.

However, once again, we realized that we’d been taken to a trailhead where we’d be leaving a trail for another gravel road walk. Feeling a little defeated, we headed off down the dirt road determined to just start walking. After another few miles, a couple who were out prospecting in the area offered us our third ride of the morning. Begrudgingly, I hopped into the bed wary that we’d get any hiking done today. But my spirits were boosted when we nearly passed by Stitch. She was a French Canadian hiker who’d flipped north due to the snow in Colorado. She was very nice, knowledgeable, and best of all, a woman. I was craving female company so I yelled out “Stitch!” As we passed and the couple slowed the truck to a halt so she could jump in. I smiled as we bumped down the road to where we were finally able to join a trail.

I didn’t even care that we had a steep climb ahead of us. I was thrilled to be back in the comfort and safety of the woods. We be following a steep uphill climb to over 9000 feet of elevation. But I was ready to dig my feet in and climb. And boy was it beautiful. There was a waterfall, an abandoned cabin near the summit, an out of place storage container at the summit, and the joys of climbing up to the pass were indescribable. The valley below looked so far away and we had just hiked up from there.

We hiked the remainder of the afternoon downhill towards a beautiful lake where Plan B and I took a plunge. The water was chilly but it felt good in the mid day sun and even better to lay on a warm rock and dry off afterwards. I felt a bit cleaner at least and even brushed through my tangled mess of hair feeling 1000x more human than before the swim.

We were still quite a ways from Ennis and figured we’d either walk or hitch into town the following day. But Stitch knew of a trail angel in Ennis who drove the dirt roads out to us to snatch us up for the evening. And this is where I Introduce Queen Margaret of Ennis and her right hand dog, Tonka. Margaret was such a cool human being. She had just returned from a long canoeing trip through the Yukon and detailed her day to day of the paddle. For contexts sake, Margaret is not a young lady. She is not old either but when you picture a woman paddling the Yukon, you may be biased to picture a 20-30something year old lady. Nope, she was a greying badass.

As she shuttled us around town to get food and then to her house where we were staying, she recounted numerous other adventures she’d been on. We laughed about the irony of losing her gps device during a trip. Then were left in awe of how she was able to utilize the connections she’d made on that trip to get the device bounced around from hand to hand and shipped back all the way from Alaska. With each adventure story she told, she became more and more a matriarchal idol to me (sorry Steve Irwin, you’ve been replaced).

Back at her house, she offered us laundry, put us up in her guest house – which she has been working on a building herself – and we each took turns throwing a ball or frisbee with Tonka while winding down for the evening. In the guest house, there were 4 rooms. Two rooms with beds, a kitchen area, and in between both bedroom was a bathroom with an open shower in the middle of the room. Unfortunately her hot water heater was not working and so I took a brief cold shower while enjoying the freedoms of moving throughout the whole space by placing one part of my body under the water at a time.

Just as the sun was setting, Stitch and I sat on Margaret’s back porch chatting more about her adventures, our adventures, and the finer details of life. Without getting into politics, we were able to talk about things such as healthcare, since she was a nurse and me now a PT. I appreciated the perspectives she shared and was almost shocked by her modern ideas. I also appreciated Stitch’s perspective being from Canada. It was an open and honest conversation and changed my perspective on having these types of conversations. They didn’t need to be polarizing or argumentative. They could totally be a sharing of ideas and understandings.

Finally, with the sky dark and the hour late, we retired to our suite. I threw the ball over the deck for Tonka one last time and smiled as he bounded down the stairs and into the darkness after it.

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To learn more, please visit the About This Site page.