Thru-Hiking Journal

Permits, Itinerary, and FOMO-Inducing Photos To start: an apology for being absent for the past month! These last few weeks have been full, I've barely been home, and writing has been very much on the back burner. As a peace offering, I've decided to tell you all about my most recent, very fun, very scenic adventure: the Four Pass Loop. This trail has been on my to-do list since I moved to Colorado. People kept talking about how spectacular it was, and I was genuinely worried

Tackling Redcloud Peak and Sunshine Peak in a Single Effort Colorado is famous for its 14ers -- 58 distinct peaks that surpass 14,000 ft above sea level. It feels like a rite of passage to complete one of these hikes and look out over layers of shorter mountains nearby. There is certainly a spectrum of difficulty, but there's truly no such thing as an "easy" 14er. When Mitch and I first moved to Colorado, we had just finished thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail and were in the

Why Your Sleeping Bag Isn't Enough to Keep You Warm Have you ever been cold while camping? Most of us have. It's easy to turn first to the sleeping bag or quilt and bemoan its temperature rating, but the issue may not be what's wrapped around you, but rather what is underneath you. I use a 10° quilt, which means if the outside temperature gets down to 10°, I will survive the night. Maybe not comfortably, but I'll live. The main reason I use a quilt instead of a sleeping bag i

Weight, Capacity, and Comfort: How Do They Stack Up? Getting into backpacking is a deeply intimidating activity as far as gear goes. While it’s relatively cheap to enjoy once you have all the necessary equipment, actually acquiring the gear can be expensive. There are ways to cut costs -- outfitters have sales, a lot of items (especially clothes) can be purchased secondhand, and most pieces should be durable enough to last a lot of time once you have it -- but the upfront exp

Seriously. Stop It. I was recently in wine country, California for a bachelorette party. Our Airbnb was pretty secluded -- a little over 5 miles up a hilly, windy, wooded road that ended in a half mile long driveway that 2 Uber drivers refused to go down because it was "too sketchy" for them to drive for some reason (true story... despite the fact that 3 of us made that drive in rental cars without hesitation, they both made us get out of their car and walk the rest of the wa

Plus A Few Other Summer Sales to Note Getting outside should be simple, right? It doesn't take a lot of time, gear, or money to go for a walk around your neighborhood, or read on your porch, or have a picnic with your friends in a nearby park. Even activities like hiking should be fairly budget-friendly, as you probably already have most of the items you need lying around your house to get started. (Check out this post to see everything you need to begin your hiking journey;

5 Trails So Nice, I've Done Them At Least Twice, and I'll Do Them At Least Thrice! When I moved to Colorado in 2021, I was on a mission to explore as many places as possible, and this almost certainly meant every hike would be a one-time venture. No trail repeats. But I've found several that are worth doing over and over again -- not just because they're beautiful, but because they give me something new every time. These recommendations are, of course, going to be biased base

How Going Alone (and Being Afraid) Set the Foundation for Future Adventures My sixth backpacking trip was this solo adventure. The seventh would ultimately be the Appalachian Trail. Deep into the COVID lockdown, I was feeling itchy for an adventure. I was living in Columbus, Ohio, and I was working a series of odd jobs. People kept asking me what my plan was -- I didn't feel comfortable returning to teaching until the pandemic was over, as my online teaching experience in the

Spoiler Alert: You Probably Have Most of it Already! Getting into hiking can be intimidating. There is so much stuff out there, and some of it looks so technical. People from every direction are telling you to buy this exact outfit or use this exact water bottle; how do you decide what you actually need and what's just fluff? Fortunately, you likely already have the majority of items you need to begin your hiking journey! Until you have more experience under your belt to get

And I Wouldn't Change a Thing! Thru-hiking is one of my favorite exercises in minimalism. The practice is simple: if you want it, you have to carry it. If it's not worth the weight, it's not coming. After all, if the gear is coming along for thousands of miles, it has to be worth the ride. Ultralight backpacking has become increasingly popular in recent years. UL backpackers pare down gear to the basic necessities. The weight qualification to consider yourself "ultralight" is

This step-by-step guide shows even the most Type B traveler how to find free campsites on their road trips.

How Backpacking Cerro Chirripó in Costa Rica Changed My Whole Dang Life It was autumn, 2018. My final year of college. Somewhere along the way, I’d realized that I was on track to graduate a semester early, and I wasn’t prepared for that, so I leapt at the opportunity to study abroad. I landed on a program in Costa Rica studying ecological resilience – a program far outside the scope of my special education and English literature majors. All I knew was that I wanted to be out

Timed entry permits for some U.S. national parks have changed in 2026 from previous years. Read how to get the permits you need for your national park vacation this year.

Day 152: September 8th, 2025 Forward progress: 20.7 miles Total distance on trail: 2,391.6 miles Our plan to be hiking by 7:00 was immediately thwarted by... you guessed it... rain. It started drizzling around 5:30, pouring by 6:00. None of us were interested in starting our last day in those conditions, so we shouted through the walls of our tents at each other that none of us were going to start packing until the rain let up. By the time we had originally planned to leave,

Day 140 Forward progress: 21.1 miles Total distance on trail: 2,165.3 miles Well, I slept terribly. Not sure why. Perhaps the soda I had at dinner? But that's not unusual while I'm in towns, so I'm not sure why it impacted me so badly last night. I got under 5 hours of sleep, which is not ideal. But whatever. The guy who gave us a ride to Augusta also gave us a ride back to the trail. The drive was just as overstimulating as before -- despite changing seats, the dog still cho

Day 129 Forward progress: 10.0 miles Total distance on trail: 1,952.9 miles It would have been so easy to stay in town another day. There are so many ways to exit Butte, one of which would cut off 25 miles -- a full day, if we wanted to. But we didn't. We did only have a short day planned today, so we hung around town until around 2:00. Vibes and I hoped to get Bushwhack and Zoolander to come out with us, but they wanted another day in town and are planning a different route

Day 116 Forward progress: 15.0 miles Total distance on trail: 1,701.8 miles I can feel my motivation slipping. Town feels too comfortable, hiking feels too exhausting, filtering water feels too annoying. We spent several hours yesterday mapping out the remainder of the trail. If you would have asked me even two weeks ago if I would consider taking the Big Sky Cutoff, which routes the trail such that it removes about a few hundred miles, including basically the whole part of t

Day 107 Forward progress: 16.7 miles Total distance on trail: 1,540.1 miles I really tried to sleep in. I did. But I hit 6:30 and simply couldn't stay asleep. The others slept longer. Since I'm by far the shortest, I had a weird spot on the floor in the corner, and I had to play Frogger to get around the two beds and two other sleeping pads on the ground to get to the bathroom without waking anyone up. The morning was hectic; since I had sort of been anticipating today being

Day 96 Forward progress: 15.4 miles Total distance on trail: 1,273.3 miles Even with blackout curtains, we were all still awake before 7:00. Habit, I guess. But none of us were willing to get out of bed for a while. Just felt nice to mindlessly be on our phones, not being social, not thinking about anything. After eating our money's worth at the motel breakfast, we had second breakfast/early lunch at a coffee shop. We only planned 15 miles for today, so no need to start too e

Day 83 Forward progress: 10.4 miles Total distance on trail: 1,032.1 miles Waking up inside is always a weird mix of comfortable and jarring. Comfortable because... duh. Jarring because my tent comes to feel like home, and it's always strange to wake up not in your home. Sarah agreed to drive me and Shadow back to the trail in the early afternoon, so we just had a bunch of time to kill. Vibes was going to come too, but his abdominal muscles have been spasming for the last day