Post AT 2013

AT, March 18 - October 5, 2013

What are you supposed to do after spending six months in the woods and walking 2000+ miles? You can go back home but the world doesn't look quite the same after all that. The problem with great backpacking trips is that they take a lot of time, which is sometimes hard to find. In the years following our AT thru-hike, we managed to go on some great trips, but always in the back of our minds was the thought of another thru-hike. As early as 2014 we had decided that the 500-mile Colorado Trail sounded pretty interesting and would be a great trail to thru-hike. The only question was, when?

In the summer of 2014 we took a trip out west to Colorado to scout out portions of the CT. We wanted to see what the trail conditions were like and at the time were thinking about trying to thru-hike it in 2015. That didn't work out, however, but the thought of thru-hiking the CT remained in our minds.

Four Pass Loop, Maroon Bells, Aspen Co, 2015

Billy with his video gear.

Wanting to return to Colorado but not having the time for a long hike, in the Fall of 2015 we hiked the 24-mile Four Pass Loop near Aspen, Colorado. This loop goes over four 12,000' passes and is a Colorado classic. We hiked this loop along with our friend Billy, also from Indiana. He carried a video camera and recorded a lot of the trip. (Someday we might get to see it!)

Arctic Circle, Grimsey Island, Iceland 2016

In the Fall of 2016 we traveled to Iceland for two weeks and drove the 800-mile Ring Road around the island. Not really a backpacking trip, but there were plenty of great day hikes to do everywhere.

AT May 2017

In May of 2017, I again partnered up with our friend Billy to introduce his sister-in-law to the world of backpacking on the AT. We started at Springer and went 70 miles to Dicks Creek Gap in 8 days. It was the third time that I hiked that section, the first being in 2005 and again in 2013. We all had a great time and completed our hike with no problem.

Sheltowee Trace, November 2017

 In 2012 we hiked the southern half of the Sheltowee Trace, which is a 300-mile long trail in Kentucky through the Daniel Boone National Forest. After the AT, we finally finished section hiking the northern half in the Fall of 2017, and consider it, along with the AT, the two long trails that we have completed.

Tecumseh Trail, December 2018

There are several local trails in Southern Indiana that we can escape to for a quick weekend trip, the relatively new Tecumseh Trail, east of Bloomington, being one of them. In the Fall of 2018 we had what I thought was our final setup for the Colorado Trail, and took several practice overnight trips close to home.

Changes

It is the first day of summer and it is raining again. In the mail today came a few last stuff sack kits made of Dyneema that I wanted to try, some elastic cord for pullouts on our new Zpacks tarps, and amsteel blue for more continuous loops for use with our hammock suspensions and ridgelines. If none of that makes sense then welcome to the world of backpacking!

All of this is in preparation for our upcoming thru-hike of the Colorado Trail. It has been six years since we thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail in 2013, taking six months to do so. We have always wanted to do another long trail since then. The time never seemed right, however, for such a long break from normal life, until now, when I think we are once again ready to go for a walk in the woods.

We plan to start in a little over four weeks on July 21.

Today was Kristie’s last day of work, while I have three more weeks to go, with a business trip to Canada thrown in the middle just for good measure. After that we have a week to pack our truck, drive to Colorado, park the truck in Durango, fly back to Denver, meet Billy, our friend from Indiana who is flying in on the same day and will be hiking with us for the first 70 miles, meet Kim, our other friend from Indiana who is now from Denver, who is picking all three of us up at the airport, have one last night out on the town, get any last minute supplies, and then start the trail the next day. Hopefully not hungover. What could go wrong?