Here We Go Again...
Well... it is that time, isn't it?
I've definitely been putting this off, but I'm running out of time to officially announce my 2025 attempt of the Continental Divide Trail.
This time last year was so different. I was jittery -- bursting, even -- with excitement. Every conversation about this trail brought a hungry grin to my face. Every interaction with my friends was almost a checklist of niceties to get me through the days leading up to the drive to the Mexico/New Mexico border. Every plan on my calendar was simply a to-do list.
That excitement came to an abrupt end when I got off trail less than a month into the hike -- only about 10% of the way done -- with a grade 4 femoral neck stress fracture.
I had never experienced any kind of serious injury from hiking. (I'm still fairly certain that this injury had begun to develop before getting to the southern terminus, due to the type and severity, but I'll never really know. It feels like it was a fluke... but then how do I prevent it from happening again?)
After the Appalachian Trail, I believe I described it as an "unshakeable confidence" in what my body could do. With minimal training or experience, I had hiked over 2,000 miles in the span of 4.5 months on what is widely considered the most physically demanding of the Triple Crown trails. I had no reason to believe my body was anything less than spectacular. But after a fluke medical incident took me off the Colorado Trail in 2022 and a fluke injury took me off the Continental Divide Trail in 2024, that confidence in my body crumbled.
There is a lot of shame in the thru-hiking community surrounding injury. Everybody is dealing with at least a baseline level of pain pretty much all the time. It's impossible to do this activity and experience no degree of injury. The day I left the trail to take a break in Albuquerque, I felt like the weak link. I had just had a really awful time in the Gila Wilderness -- I was always more nervous about the height of some of the water crossings because I was at least 6" shorter than most of the people I was hiking with -- and I was wondering if I was letting my bad mood affect my decision to take some time off to rest. Looking around, one of my friends was having horrible foot pain, and another was dealing with pretty intense back pain, and I was wondering why I was the only one so weak and so unable to hack it that I had to leave. Of course, when I found out what the injury was, I felt much more validated in my decision, but when I didn't know it was a fracture, I just felt like a baby. It felt like I should have just kept pushing through. (If you had seen me try to walk those last few miles, it would have been abundantly obvious that "pushing through" was not even a little bit of an option.)
My departure from the trail was anything but easy. I spiraled into a pretty deep depression. I had quit my job for this trail. I had told everyone in my life and on the internet that I was going to be on the CDT. I had come to terms with leaving Mitch and my friends and my life back in Colorado for several months. Being home meant being thrust back into a life that I didn't want to be in. It took me many weeks to allow friends to visit -- once I finally got the definitive answer that I would not be able to resume the trail that year -- because seeing them in my house with my stuff meant that I had accepted that I was off trail for good.
When I got home, I was dependent on crutches, dependent on a chair so I could shower, dependent on Mitch to bring all my gear back inside for me and cook for me and clean for me and fill my water bottle for me and run errands for me... and I am not a dependent person. Mitch frequently tells me that he knows I love him because I don't need him to live my life, but I want him to be a part of it. Being forced to rely so heavily on him was devastating for me. He tells me that I was never a burden, but boy, did I feel a burden.
This is probably pretty obvious to people who know me, but I didn't realize how reliant I was on physical activity to relieve negative energy. I'm not a gym rat by any means, and I don't exercise for the sake of exercise most days, but almost all of my hobbies involve being active. I was told not to walk even from the couch to the bathroom without crutches for a month, which meant I was certainly not allowed to hike, run, or climb. Even after I was cleared to walk, the progression to all of those other activities was slow. Once I was able to walk pain-free around a flat surface for an hour, I was allowed to go for a hike. 0.5 miles for a week, than 1 mile, then 1.5, then 2, then 3, then 4. Then I was allowed to go for a 0.5 mile run for a week, then 1 mile, then 1.5... The restraint was immense.
I didn't recognize myself, those weeks sitting on the couch. Not having the physical outlet meant that I was a worse version of myself -- not just physically, but mentally. I was meaner and I knew it. I was angrier, more snappy, and less quick to laugh. I've always liked my readiness to laugh, and I lost that for a few months there. I gained 15 pounds and was averaging 700 steps per day.
I tried to find smaller, more stationary activities that would let me spend time outside without risking re-injury, and they were certainly enjoyable, but being so close to the mountains I love without being able to enjoy them the way I wanted to was torturous. I tried to get back into music -- I'd been meaning to learn the ukulele -- but it didn't make up for the adrenaline and physical achievement that I longed for. This experience definitely taught me the value of non-athletic hobbies. I just couldn't get into them in the headspace I was in.
For my birthday, which was over Labor Day weekend this past year, Mitch and I did a short backpacking trip in Wyoming. I'd love to say I cried tears of joy being back doing the activity I love the most, but most of what I felt was fear. Every twinge of pain in the fracture area, which realistically was just muscles and tendons and ligaments being sore from a new activity, brought me back to the day I officially got off trail. I was in the town of Grants, New Mexico, hoping that what I thought was hip flexor tendonitis would subside by the time my friends got there. I didn't care that I'd skipped a short section of the trail when I hitched from Albuquerque to Grants; all I cared about was my hip. I had been resting for about a week, and sometimes it felt better, but sometimes it felt agonizingly painful. I met my friends at a brewery, shlepped my backpack over my shoulder, and walked about a mile up the road with them. At first, the walking felt fine; by the end of that mile, my leg felt like it would snap off at any minute. That's when I decided to go back to Albuquerque and consult an orthopedist.
The backpacking trip in Wyoming was perfect, and I was able to do another hike in South Carolina before the backpacking season ended. (If you haven't read about my Foothills Trail experience, feel free to do so here.) Since then, I've been doing a daily stretching routine, lots of hip strengthening, and plenty of training hikes to get me to where I am at least confident I will not repeat this injury.
So here I am, about a month away from starting this trail again, reflecting on the horrible experience I had a few short months ago, wondering what the hell I'll do if I find myself back on my couch, unable to walk, suffering another injury, another failed trail attempt. And you're probably wondering why I'm putting myself back in that position. And the answer is, simply, that I have to. There just isn't another option for me.
As always, thank you for following along on my journey.
This is my year... right?