I have written before on the Waterton Canyon section of the Colorado Trail. You can see that post, along with a picture of me in a goofy hat standing beside the trailhead sign, here. But the thing that I like most about this story, titled “What Happens To Your Body On A Throughhike,” is that it is so understated and factual in describing something that’s truly extraordinary.
I only ever hiked the easternmost 10 miles of the Colorado Trail – along with a few short sections up near Kenosha Pass. But this guy – and his wife – hiked all 486 miles from Denver to Durango in just under a month. Then he recorded a number of biometric measures, both before and after. While my goofy hat is off to this guy – and his wife – for their awesome achievement, the thing that strikes me most about this tale of uber endurance and heart are the parts he leaves out. The subtitle to this story says:
The secret to ultimate fitness isn’t all that complicated — just spend a month outside hiking eight hours per day.
Of course, the only way to do that is to have no demands of a full time job, and the resources to arrange for a network of support people planting caches of food at 15-20 mile intervals clear across some of the most rugged terrain in the Rocky Mountains. Don’t get me wrong, it’s doable. But there are a couple of good reasons why only about 150 people complete the full trek each year. And it doesn’t all have to do with cardio-vascular fitness either.
Scenes closer to home: Trail 19 in Roxborough Park. Plenty pretty, all within a couple miles of our back door, no food caches required.