There’s no way to ever fit an entire thru hike into a book, much less an article or a blog. You’d need a series of books if you really wanted to get it on th...

I dreamed about hiking the CDT for a lot of years before the opportunity finally made itself available in the spring of 2019, in what would turn out to be on...

These are strange times that we’re living in. I really don’t know how to say it any more simply than that. After 34 years of living a life of relative ease a...

In 2015 I met another thru hiker on the Pacific Crest Trail who had taken the trail name “Seventy-Five.” For weeks I’d been hearing rumors about him from oth...

Thru hiking changes your priorities. Thru hiking reminds you that water is more important than money, that food is more important than fashion, and that shel...

The practical stuff is fairly straight forward. It’s basically a list of things that helped me to stay alive and somewhat sane along the trail this year. By ...

There is no singular reason for why I spend months on end hiking across the country. There’s no singular reason for why any of us do it. Rather, there’s an e...

About six months back I found myself staying at a little bed & breakfast for a couple of days before starting out on my last leg of the Colorado Trail. Mostl...

Fear is an integral part of any long trail that I have ever walked, and I’d like to believe that anyone who tells you that this wasn’t the case for them as w...

1) Trail towns are not necessarily your friend. *They are sirens. They too easily become places of temptation and sloth. Do not give into the temptation. Get...

Looking back on it now, I think that it’s funny that I was in the act of thru hiking when I first heard the term “thru hike.” I didn’t know what it meant, an...

I’ve been here in front of my keyboard now for more than an hour... trying to figure out where to begin... trying to find the right words. But it’s too overw...

If I had known that we were going to have to pass through a border patrol check point, I would have told my ride to take a different route. But the thought n...

It’s quite hard for me to know what to say anymore. How do you put words to an experience as profound as this? What is there to say when it comes to an end? ...

Oh how it rained today. It rained and it rained and it rained and it rained. And when it finally came to a stop, it was only so that the sky could take a big...

In a way I feel bad that I spent so much time in the preceding days dwelling on the impending end of this hike. I look back on those journals and I wish that...

Several years ago I was making plans to marry the woman with whom I’d been in love for the better part of four years. We had a dog together, we lived in a ho...

It rained today. It rained, and it rained, and it rained, and it rained. And then it blew. And then it became cold. It was a hard day on trail today, but I’m...

This trail is different to me than the trails that I’ve hiked before. Or maybe it’s that I’m different than I was when I was on those other paths... either w...

Well, at least I finally got a day of rest... funny writing that now... somehow a “day of rest” has become a day where I hike 22.6 miles with over 3,000 feet...