On the stolen land of the Blackfeet, Ktunaxa, Salish, Cayuse, Umatilla, and Walla Walla peoples.

This post is about my 2022 thru attempt. I’m not currently thru-hiking and will not be in the 2024 season. I’ll announce concrete plans when I have them.

The Jungle Gym from Hell

The day after the thunderstorms brought more challenges. I’d survived the night camping alone near a water source in grizzly country and managed to keep my bag dry (If you missed the last post, it was the only spot without a ton of standing dead trees for miles in either direction). I woke to gray skies and followed the usual morning routine, crossed the river, and went on my way.

The downed trees started up again a few hundred feet after the water source, and within a mile it was a jungle gym none of us had needed or asked for. Someone on Guthook referred to it as “Lucifer’s Lincoln Logs” and their description was accurate. I am fairly confident this is the area where a hiker had been airlifted out with a broken leg a few weeks earlier, and I understood why. I was hand over hand climbing over downed trees, often not touching the ground between. It went on as far as I could see and there wasn’t much I could do about it. I knew I had about 4.5 more miles until I would hit the North Fork of the Sun River Alternate (Hereby the North Fork) and I knew from FarOut comments and from Butte Flip hikers that the North Fork should be clear. I didn’t know how bad the trail would be between now and then, but I suspected this was the section I’d been warned about.

There were times when, due to how trees were laying over the trail, it took me a little bit to see or plan a way through. I often had to take my pack off and set it down ahead of me in order to be able to get over or fit under downed trees. My pace slowed to well under a mile an hour, and I scraped my legs up pretty good. At one point a trail runner came through and was jumping from log to log like it was nothing. I don’t know where he came from or where he was going but he had achieved a level of balance and steadiness that I still can’t fathom.

I didn’t take any pictures in this 4.5 mile section, but I did take a video. If you want to see what the trail looked like, click here.

I put on music through one headphone and climbed. It started to rain early on so I threw on my bright yellow raincoat and slowed down even further, as the water made the logs slippery. At one point I lost balance with my pack on and fell sideways off a log that was around 4 feet in the air, landing largely on my pack. A lot of the downed trees were pines with broken branches that had created sharp chutes sticking out of the sides of trees, and as I regrouped I was so grateful to have not been impaled or otherwise injured.

At a few points I stopped for quick food breaks as I watched my hopes for reaching any kind of a reasonable daily mileage fall away. I had woken up with the goal of getting around 15 miles in at a minimum, but by the time I’d spent a couple hours gaining marginal ground, that was looking like a pipe dream. It was rare that I could take two back-to-back steps on the ground.

People pretty regularly tell me that they wouldn’t be able to handle something like this, that they would not be capable of getting through it. I understand the sentiment because I’ve had times on trail when I’ve wondered if I’d really be able to get through obstacles, and I’ve learned that most people don’t give themselves enough credit. You can’t just tap out mid-section on a backpacking trip. When facing an obstacle, you have the following choices. You can:

1. Turn around and go out the way you came in.
2. Hit the SOS button.
3. Lay down on the ground and hope a grizzly eats you before you starve to death.
4. Keep going.

I did not want to log hop. No one wants to log hop. It’s not Type 1 fun. In this particular instance I don’t think it was even Type 2 fun. But what else could I do? It was possible for me to continue which meant I didn’t need SOS services. I don’t really count laying down and dying as a choice, and turning back would’ve meant going back through all the logs I’d already scrambled over. We all have to do hard things sometimes. The sooner I powered through it, the sooner I could get back to walking. For a lot of the time I was log hopping, I wasn’t really thinking. I was just looking ahead, planning the route, and doing. I can’t think about stuff like that too much until after or I’ll get bogged down by my own brain.

It turned out to be 4.5 miles of blowdowns, and it took me a bit over 8 hours. I know a good number of people who did it faster, but all of their legs looked like they’d been through a meat grinder and several had other minor injuries. I had some scrapes and some bruises on my legs, and I tore a small hole in one of my pant legs, but I was otherwise completely fine. I am extremely grateful that I happened to hit this particular section in the morning because it would have been incredibly dangerous in the dark.

When writing this section, I referenced my journal from on trail. I wrote the following: “Fell off a tree. Fortunately wasn’t hurt. Also had one water bottle stolen by the blowdowns. I have words for Bob. Mostly I want to tell him to go fuck himself.” That about sums it up.

The North Fork of the Sun River Alternate

After 4pm I found the turnoff to the North Fork Alternate and hung a left onto completely clear trail. Trail crews had come through with chainsaws and there was not a single downed tree in the way. I got back up to my usual pace and found a nice spot to take a food break and regroup. Once I got back to hiking, the sky cleared and the sun came out. I did a couple of smaller stream crossings then ascended a couple hundred feet to the top of a hill. I stopped and looked out at the mountains all around, at the pine trees, at the river that was now a couple hundred feet below me. Far off in the distance through a break in the mountains I could see the Chinese Wall, an escarpment that the CDT runs alongside. It was still at least a full day away, but it’s the biggest highlight of the CDT in the Bob Marshall Wilderness and something I’d been looking forward to since before I started the CDT. The view in this moment breathtaking, the kind of that commands your full attention.

I was listening to music again and the song I Don’t Want Your Voice to Move Me by Laura Gibson came on. I don’t remember ever hearing it before and I don’t remember putting it on the playlist I was listening to, but it nearly brought me to my knees. Laura Gibson had captured in a single song something that I’ve felt over and over again not just on trail but also in life. The feeling of holding onto what sometimes feels like a futile resolve through moments of loss, and of what it feels like to find hope in those moments of devastation.

I did something I generally don’t do on trail. I stopped, dropped my poles and my pack, put both headphones in, and listened. I cried, but it was not grief. I felt so seen.

The rest of this day was a real high point for me, especially during my SOBO attempt. I’d gotten through an incredibly difficult morning and was proud of that accomplishment. I’d entered the log hop without stopping to think or dread it first. I just saw what was ahead of me, thought “well this sucks” while walking to it, and then stepped over the first log. I was drawn to the CDT by its hard parts as much as I was by its beauty, and having the brutality followed up by such beauty was profound.

For those who want to know why I do this, why I would endure all of the rest of it, this is why. For the moments when everything else falls away and it’s just you and the Earth. Backpacking sucks sometimes. Crouching in the lightning stance during a thunderstorm is not fun. Hand over hand climbing over blowdowns with a 30lb pack is not something I crave. I could’ve done without the giardia. At night on trail, I generally rotate like a rotisserie chicken on my sleeping pad, 90 degrees for every time I wake up with a numb shoulder or pain in whichever hip I’m laying on in that moment. Foot pain is a constant and a guarantee. When you list out all the suffering that comes along with backpacking, it seems ludicrous that anyone would ever enjoy it, but nothing else I’ve ever done has made me feel so completely liberated. And I think part of the value, for me at least, is in the suffering. It’s in putting in the work, embracing every part of the hike. Backpacking is mad, sure, but it’s also magical. I’ll keep doing it until I’m no longer physically able; I’ve never found anything else quite like it.

I did manage to get close to 15 miles in, making up most of them in the evening because the trail was clear and relatively flat. I ate cold mashed potatoes (as one does), pitched my tent, and was out like a light.

Note: the music video for Laura Gibson’s I Don’t Want Your Voice to Move Me is of Laura walking barefoot through changing terrains (the woods, the mountains, and the desert) to find her child-self standing in the middle of open desert, holding a crystal in her outstretched hands. She accepts the crystal, then retraces her steps. Watching it after coming home was eerie. Going out into the wilderness and walking across large swaths of the Earth to find something only your child self can offer was completely on the nose.