Final Prep for the CDT: Family, Food, & Fitness?
The countdown is on! In just a few short days, we’ll stand at the Mexico-New Mexico border to begin our CDT journey north!
After a week with family and friends in Jamaica to celebrate the wedding of my brother and (now) sister-in-law, we’ve had two whirlwind days back in Iowa to repack and make any final preparations for the trail. A bit of a rush, but we seem to be good at this kind of thing.
Here we are doing important trail training for long, dehydrating days in the sun. Soon we will trade tasty umbrella drinks for bottles of water filtered from cattle troughs. Yum. Much excitement.
I know, I know, I mentioned a wedding, so you really just want to see a pic of the bride. Here’s the happy couple!
Congrats to Brad & Madison!
Alright, now back to the good stuff…
We’ve spent the last two days back in my hometown in Iowa, which is where we typically call home base when we’re back in the U.S. Really, home is where you hang your hat. But sometimes, it’s also where you have a storage unit.
Here, we’ve been finalizing our hiking packs, double and triple-checking our gear, running errands, organizing little life bits and bobs (we’re looking at you, bills), and downloading way, way too many offline map sets and apps (seriously, why are there so many?)
If you’re wondering exactly what we carry for a journey like this, the answer is – not much. You can take a peek at Shawn’s packing list here. My gear is fairly similar in terms of the necessities, I’ll be posting my own list soon. I know, suspenseful stuff. Try to get some sleep in the meantime.
Back when our gear was so cool, we were featured in Backpacker Magazine. PCT, 2018.
Other important errands? There have been trips to the library (printer!), post office, bank, grocery store, and our storage unit (‘the property’). Exciting stuff.
We’ve also been eating all the things. Heading out for a 3100 mile trail is no time to watch your girly figure. Two days back home isn’t long enough to do too much damage, but we’ve visited one of our favorite local taco eateries (more than once) and put a serious dent in my mom’s stash of Girl Scout cookies. There may have been a trip to Dairy Queen. And some movie theater popcorn. That’s it, I promise.
Despite our busy couple of days, we still managed to catch a flick. The popcorn was definitely the best part of the show.
Speaking of preparation, you may be wondering what kind of training we did to undertake this momentous 3100 mile journey. In the 2023 CDT Hiker Survey from Halfway Anywhere, hikers were asked what they did, if anything, to train. The results ranged from the obvious (other hiking, walking, running, strength training) to the less obvious (swimming, climbing). We went with an even less obvious route.
When we embarked on our first thru hike, the PCT, we had spent a few months prior to the hike traveling around the southwest U.S. in our Jeep, generally going to many National Parks and other scenic areas where we did a number of day hikes. It wasn’t major training, but it was something.
Hiking on Bruny Island in Tasmania with our friend Michele (hiking = searching for the white wallaby).
In the years since the PCT (six years ago!) we have done many epic hikes, several over 100 miles. However, in the last few months leading up to our CDT departure, we have not been doing any of that. We went on some short hikes in Australia in January. We climbed to a couple of lookouts in Thailand and Laos in February and March. And… that’s about it for hiking.
Actually, most of our outdoor activity has been under the waves, scuba diving. Will 40+ dives over the last few months translate to thru hiking prowess? Only time will tell, but I suspect there will be plenty of aches and pains through the first month… or five.
Heading out for a night dive in Koh Tao, Thailand. February 2024.
And with that, we are obviously primed and ready to roll.
Tomorrow we fly to Arizona to begin our journey to the southern terminus!