The Last Three Months of Hiking the Guidebook (69% - 90%)
The last three months have been insane. I look back at everything that has transpired since my last update on June 18th, when I hit one year tracing The Whites and I have some catching up to do in terms of this post.
Winter Came In The Spring
Up until early March I planned on completing all of the trails in the WMG (White Mountain Guide) and the 100 Highest Peaks in New England in 15 months (June 19, 2022 to September 19, 2023). Then winter came. In March we were hit with multiple snow storms that dropped many feet of snow on the trails that I had planned to hike - trails that I picked because they were lower in elevation and “should” be snow-free early in the spring. By April, I knew that I was going to have to move over a dozen hikes to the summer because the snow was just not melting fast enough. Moving those hikes meant I would have to commit to five days a week of hiking (and driving to and from trailheads all over the state of NH, VT, and Maine) in order to do both the 100 Highest Peaks and the guidebook.
By May the majority of the trails that I needed to hike were snow-free. I finished working the first week of May and started five days a week of hiking the following Monday. I got through two and a half weeks before the Mahoosuc Range threw everything it had at me and broke my momentum. My energy was zapped by the heat, humidity, and rocks, roots, and PUDS. It wasn’t the end of the world, but that hike was a real wakeup call for what the summer had in store.
The Wettest Summer On Record
What I didn’t realize as May turned to June was that we were about to have the wettest summers on record. I hate hiking in the rain. Nobody likes being wet, sweaty, muddy, and getting no views whatsoever but I was committed to doing this, so I set out to hike even when it was supposed to be rainy multiple times this summer. What I wasn’t willing to do, though, was hike the trails in the northern presidentials in rain. I needed multiple days with no precipitation for the rocks on various ravine trails to dry and it just didn’t seem to ever happen.
By mid-June I knew I had to make a decision. Forego my 100 Highest peaks (which would give me over 14 added days to the calendar for tracing) or hike six days a week all of July and August (and pray it didn’t rain most of those days). I realized it wasn’t realistic, and had to give up my remaining peaks in Vermont and Maine (as well as two in New Hampshire) for the “greater good” of the 15 month trace attempt.
Nobody Said I Was Good At Math
And then I realized that I had been wrong in my mathematics. Originally, I planned a 14 month trace/100 highest attempt because I had been in active treatment (minus hormone therapy) for 14 months. It would be a perfect replacement of the 14 months I lost to cancer. But I was wrong. From June to September was 15 months not 14, and although that seems like an inconsequential thing to everyone else, to me, that was a huge deal. I needed it to be 14 months because I needed that end date to have a personal meaning. Otherwise, what was the point of setting the 14 month goal to begin with? Over 90% of reaching this goal has been mental and finding out I had done the math wrong, the non stop rain, and having to give up on the 100 Highest wreaked havoc on my momentum.
Destroying My 1 Million Dollar Investment
I stumbled through July and August wondering what the point was, losing complete sight of the reason behind this attempt in the first place, and wishing I could just remove the deadline altogether since it now meant nothing to me. In early August I was forced to make the decision about whether or not I would put off another semester of graduate school so that I could finish this attempt in 15 months (there wouldn’t be enough days in the week to finish in 15 months if I went to grad school two days a week) and by late August my energy, physical body, and mind were at peak exhaustion levels. I put off school until the winter, but because I was having to postpone so many hikes due to weather in June and July I knew I wasn’t going to reach my deadline. I knew there just wasn’t enough time and every hike was becoming a sufferfest.
I was miserable and I hated hiking. I hated having to get up at 4 or 5 in the morning to drive two hours north. I hated feeling pressure to get the hike done fast so that I would get home with enough time to eat, rest for a few hours, and then get up to go do it all over again the next morning. I hated that there seemed to be no point in any of it anymore, that I had gotten everything I needed to get out of it so why was I still doing this? I learned everything I needed to learn and now it was just this thing I had to do so that I could move on with my life and not have to do it anymore. I envied everyone who had full time regular jobs that didn’t require walking up and down mountains in rain. But most of all I hated that I was beating the crap out of the body that I had fought so hard to save, a 1 million dollar investment, that I was now tearing to shreds all in the name of some obscure and quite pointless goal that wasn’t paying me, was costing me thousands of dollars, and was no longer even important to me anymore.
On day 177, August 29, I peeled off my socks to reveal my feet chaffed to shreds, I said to myself, “ENOUGH”. Enough of this death march of misery, I am DONE.
The Final 10%
I had a breakthrough that day on Blueberry Ledge Trail as I hobbled down to my car knowing that I was going to have raw toes from miles of chafing. My knees hurt, I could barely bend without pain, and as a fellow day hiker seemed to glide down the trail in front of me, a young girl who appeared to float down the mountain pain-free, I became vehemently aware of what I had become. “I used to be one of those people,” I thought. I wanted more than anything to be one of those people again - someone who was just out on the trail for the fun of it - not to complete a forced death march.
After that hike, I suffered through two more hikes before calling it quits. I didn’t post on social media, I didn’t scroll through other people’s posts about hiking, and I didn’t write or reflect on my previous hikes at all. I hit 90.3% traced on day 179 and it didn’t even matter to me anymore because that remaining 9.7% might as well have been 90.7%, it felt like I could never meet my goal because I was spent. I had used up all of my reserves, the tank was bone dry and worst of all, I no longer wanted to go hiking anymore because hiking was a job now (one that cost me money instead of making me money).
I took five days off of tracing after day 179, the most days in a row that I didn’t work on this goal since its fruition almost 15 months ago. Instead, I settled into what life will be like when I am done. And on day three, I went hiking just for fun. Just because. I watched the sun set from the summit of the mountain that started me on this journey in May, 2015, the mountain that I have hiked dozens of times now, and I was reminded of why I go hiking. That, for me, it’s not about “crushing miles” or pushing my body to its limits day in and day out. For me, hiking is about getting in touch with my soul. It’s about the smells, sights, sounds, and sensations that being in the wilderness offer. It’s about the, “impossible to find anywhere else but the woods” that draws me back again and again.
Yesterday I completed day 182 of my trace attempt. In four days I will be at 15 months working towards this goal, and at some point in the next month I will finish round one of tracing, but it won’t be because I need to prove anything to anyone or to set a record anymore. It will be because I love these trails and I love these mountains and I will never ever stop needing to spend time in them. It will be for the “impossible to find anywhere else but the woods” sensation that I cannot re-create on pavement or in cities or among the things that man has made.
I will finish this adventure and continue right along into the next one. Whatever that is and wherever that takes me I know that it will be full of sunrises, sunsets, mountain air, and the feeling I get where the man-made ends and the “impossible to find” begins.
