The Rocky Mountains. Perhaps no mountain range better resembles the image of the American west. Soaring spires of granite, vast alpine landscapes of lush greenery, and hidden lakes that serve as reminders of their glacial origin. The Continental Divide Trail (CDT) affords a front row seat to it all. From the snowy San Juans of...
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Mountain of Indifference
It’s a habit I ought to break. That’s what I told myself hardly an hour into our hike after returning to the trail following a much needed day off. The man who’d delivered us back to the string of white blazes beckoning us ever northward was Rick Swanson. He and his partner Tim own and operate the Swanson Inn, an idyllic Vermont inn just outside the town of Waitsfield…
Green Mountain Rainforest
Hearing the patter of raindrops on the roof of the tent, it was hard to know whether last night’s storm had overstayed its welcome or if the winds that had swept it away were simply ushering downward the moisture that had collected on the canopy above us. By the time we realized it was the latter, it was on to a familiar routine.
Mountain Monogamy
It's not every hiking day that begins by rolling out of a hotel room bed, then walking down the trail and to a fast food drive-thru, but there ya’ go. That's Silverthorne for you. Not that we were complaining. A bit of extra sleep and a substantial morning injection of calories seemed like just the right medicine for four bodies that had been worked by yesterday’s sun.
Rocky Mountain High
The sound was enough to wake me from a dead sleep. The confusion that followed was the kind that comes only when your brain, in its sleep-induced fog, strains to make sense of the unexpected. It was the sound of machinery, but it couldn't be. Not way out here.
Mountains will be Mountains
The heat of the day passed well into the evening last night. The kind of stifling heat that you'd expect from a closed up motel room and that makes you feel as though even the fitted sheet beneath you is oppressive. The middle of the night brought a brief return to cool before the morning sun threatened to turn the thermostat back up.
The Mountain that Blew its Top
Four months before I was born and a small, towheaded terror was introduced to the Brownscheidle household, an altogether different sort of terror was unleashed on the Pacific Northwest not far north of the Columbia River that divides Oregon from Washington.
Mountain Mom
Just when I thought they were beginning to dwindle, there they were: the juiciest, most plump berries we've had on the entire trail. Blue and purple-hued huckleberries, bright red thimbleberries, and golden salmonberries with their equal mix of bitter and sweet.
Mount Hood
The shortest of nearos began with a lot of anticipation, of Timberline Lodge, of the breakfast buffet, and of finally seeing Emily and my Mom. The breezy morning whipped up clouds of dust and sand that made it look like low lying fog in the photos we took of the sun casting its first rays onto the mountain.
Mountain Relay
Today was divided neatly into thirds: 8.5 miles of uphill sandwiched between two 8.5 mile sections of downhill. It's unusual for a day to be carved up like that and for the downhill sections to have very few moments of climbing and vice versa. Regardless, the grade was always pleasant and steady and it made for easy going even for another long day.
Mount Shasta
The heat wave continued, though we rarely suffered the sun's full wrath since the trail was mostly covered in shade. Beardoh even remarked how much the trail reminded him of the Appalachian Trail, a.k.a. the "Long Green Tunnel."
Mountain Yellow Frog
A pretty uneventful, low-key day today. After a cold night, our little gang of now 6 with Sweet Pea and Beardoh set off hoping to warm up a bit. Just 2 miles into the day, we hit the pavement for a roadwalk detour around a section of trail that has now been closed for years in an effort to protect the habitat of the endangered Mountain Yellow Frog.
Mount Laguna
We awoke this morning tucked on the edge of a meadow along with Rich, XC, and Gazelle. Three short miles up the trail was our first resupply at Mt. Laguna, and also an opportunity to address a couple of nagging problems, namely Emily's blisters and our failing pack frames.
Meet Mountain Man
Better known as “Mountain Man” among hiking circles, I’ve completed over 10,000 miles of long-distance hiking on some of America’s greatest trails, all with a pair of my beloved Chacos underfoot. But it’s no secret who I have to thank for my love of wilderness adventure: my dad. That's me—the little guy in the blue...
Roan Mountain
Good. Scottish. Weather. Should be self-explanatory, but I woke up in the middle of the night to see that a cloud had been blowing into the windward-facing shelter all night, scattering my clothes from the clothes lines and soaking my down sleeping bag in the process (not a good thing). Left this morning and climbed onto the grassy ridge for some rise-and-shine miles through driving rain and 40-50 mph wind.
Overmountain
Not much excitement today other than a big climb up and over Roan High Knob, the last big mountain between Erwin, TN and Damascus, VA. Feels good to have it out of the way, especially since it was the toughest climb I've seen on the trail so far, and it's the last time I'll be above 6000' all the way until New Hampshire on Mt. Washington.
Triple Lava Loop
11,249 feet. Not ninety minutes ago, it had basked in the first rays of morning light before anywhere else, the sun spilling down from Mount Hood’s summit until it wakened the glaciers and, eventually, the forests below. Towering some 6,000 feet into the dizzyingly empty space above our heads, it’s a height difference that human minds aren’t fully equipped to understand. Judging with only your eyes, it might as well be 60,000 feet.
Ghosts of the Columbia
Close your eyes and picture the Pacific Northwest. Tell me what you see. Gray skies? An unshakeable mist? Maybe bright green sword ferns, super-sized trees, and fountains of Starbucks coffee on every Seattle street corner?
The Shining
Fifty miles east of Portland, Oregon, a snow-capped cathedral of glacier and stone holds a blue sky atop its broad shoulders. Even on a sunny day in August, ski lifts spin skiers to the only place in North America where turns can be had all 12 months of the year. But even that may not be Mount Hood’s most well known feature. That honor belongs to a place that has haunted people’s dreams for 42 years.
Tumanguya
The buzzing on my wrist comes as no surprise. In those brief moments drifting in limbo between asleep and awake, I struggle to register what exactly it is floating above my head. Beyond the soft armor of mosquito mesh surrounding me, and through the tarp stretched taut above, an amorphous shape of white bends into unrecognizable shapes and patterns, like sunlight seen from beneath the surface of water.
Where Stone Meets Sky
The Sierra. The range that has captured the fascination of icons like Ansel Adams and John Muir. Superlatives have been spilled over its incredible beauty, its almost idyllic climate, and the trails that beckon you to explore it ever more deeply. It may best be known as the Range of Light, but to me, it is simply the place where stone meets sky.
The Second Time Around
As with most evenings on this trail, I am cozy in my hammock before 8:00pm. Sweet Pea would be proud. This is the second time I’m doing this hike (the first time was in 2015). And with each passing mile, I can’t help but think how little has changed and how much has changed, all at the same time.
The Glacier and the Avalanche
It’s easy to love John Muir, or at least the idea of him. That’s the appeal of idealists. Soaring rhetoric and a righteous cause in the proper hands can bring a groundswell of change that compounds like an avalanche. But it is a rare idealist who is able to effect change in the world. John Muir was certainly one of them.
The Golden Staircase
The confluence of two creeks, a mere stone’s throw from our proverbial bedroom window, seemed not to care that morning had broken. Nature’s white noise machine chugged along, ignorant of day and time. The alarm on my wrist was more particular about exactly what time it was, and its buzzing was as inescapable as the reality it brought with it. Everything ahead of us was in one and only one direction: up.
Nüümü Poyo: The People’s Trail
Reality came knocking early. Saddled with 6 days of food for the final stretch to Mount Whitney, we could delay the inevitable no longer. In accordance with the first law of hiking—that what comes down, must go up—we pointed our steps back up toward Bishop Pass for the second day in a row, aiming to reverse everything we’d done the day before.
Uncharted Territory
To wake with the realization that you’re not on the trail you’re supposed to be, might normally be cause for alarm. But in this case, it was by design.
Mysteries, Revealed
Morning broke with a chorus of crashing water and overlapping birdsongs, melodies and harmonies, calls and answers. To hear these as the first sounds of morning, and then to open your eyes to the scenery you’d almost forgotten in your dreams, is very nearly the definition of waking up in paradise.
Evolution
Evolution is a very very slow process. We need only look at ourselves to know how true that is. How long does it take for us to change even the smallest of things—a habit, perhaps? Real change, it seems, requires a patience that does not come naturally to a species whose lifespan is but a fraction of the earth’s.
Sierra in Bloom
If you’ve ever read John Muir’s book, My First Summer in the Sierra, it’s plain to see the deep and endearing love he had for the mountain range that his name has become nearly synonymous with. You also may have noticed that he had an equally deep and unwavering loathing for the sheep that grazed throughout the Sierra at the time.
A Tale of Two Winters
The Sierra Nevada—literally, “the snowy mountains”—has recently begun to challenge its very name. In the past twenty years or more, the cyclical nature of snow and sun in these mountains has become anything but cyclical.
Troubled Horizon
When dawn broke, it started by touching only the tops of the mountains surrounding our camp, before spilling down the flanks of granite to where we lie in our hammocks. It was nature opening the blinds.
A Banner Day
From our perch on a hidden bench above the trail, the same soundtrack that had lulled us to sleep was now the first to greet us. There’s something a little comforting about it. That while you’ve been asleep, the gears of nature have kept turning, almost completely unchanged. That everything is, by all appearances, exactly the way you’d left it the day before.
Skill Short #1: The Figure 8 Wrap
Whether you’re dealing with wired headphones at home, or guy-lines and ridge-lines on the trail, there’s an antidote for all of your cord headaches: the Figure 8 Wrap. It’s simple to learn, and can be the difference between pitching your shelter in record time during a downpour and struggling to untangle knot after knot.
On the Trail with Ulysses
Writing, like sleep, has never come easily to me. There’s a restlessness to it. Perhaps, because the search for the right words is a struggle that haunts every writer—the burden of imperfect communication. Then again, perhaps it’s because nearly all of my writing happens in the unlikeliest of places…
Southwest Wall Art
The southwest is a land of mystery and contradiction. Sweeping desert landscapes, stately saguaro, and an arid ocean of seeming desolation that hides a wealth of life in plain sight. On thru-hikes of the Continental Divide Trail and Arizona Trail, along with a section hike of the Mogollon Rim Trail, we saw up close the...
Pacific Northwest Wall Art
Ice-capped hulking volcanoes. Mountains cloaked in ancient forests. Coastal beaches shrouded in mist adjacent to one of the quietest places in the United States. One word always comes to mind when I think back to the landscapes of the Pacific Northwest. No, not rain: diversity. Not far from our home, two trails wander—with unparalleled access—through...
Wilderness First Responder
The wilderness is—news flash—a wild, and scenic place. The fact that it occupies a romantic place in our brains outside the familiar is, in large part, the essence of its appeal. It also explains the sheer terror that many people associate with being out in that wilderness.
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The Residentially Challenged Life
Ever since June 2020, when Mountain Man and I embarked on our hike of the Continental Divide Trail (CDT) we have been what some may call “location independent,” “nomadic”, “wanderers”, or even “homeless.”
We prefer to call ourselves “residentially challenged.”
Trails of a Different Kind
Skiing isn’t an inherently sensible thing to do. Think about it. From the time we realize, as infants, that standing up seems like a cool thing to do, we spend nearly every moment from that day forward trying to avoid the pitfall of that decision. Namely, we try not to fall flat on our faces. Gravity, it turns out, is an effective teacher.