About a month ago, Mark and I did an interview with Mason Gravely from “The Adventure Sports Podcast” about our ski traverse of the Colorado trail. The episode was just published and you can listen to it on the podcast website, adventuresportspodcast.com, or find episode 882 The First Ski Traverse of the Colorado Trail – Nicolette Jones & Mark Johnson of The Adventure Sports Podcast on most streaming services. If you want to learn more about our experience, you can read my blog post about it here and find a piece I published in Wild Snow here.
Category: Backpacking
A Big Effort on the Colorado Trail
I usually start my mornings slow when I’m backpacking: waking up whenever my body chooses and letting the sun warm the air before I start moving. When I started hiking the Colorado Trail this time around, I knew that would not be the case, I was trying to cover more miles than I usually do in an attempt to finish the 485 mile trail in 14 days. Early starts were a must, and I while I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed the predawn starts, the long days were challenging. I ended up completing the trail in just READ MORE
A Spring Ski Traverse of the Colorado Trail
On April 9th Mark and I set off from the Waterton Canyon trailhead to attempt a spring ski traverse of the Colorado trail. Less than a month later on May 6th, we arrived at the southern terminus of the 486 mile trail in Durango! The most remarkable part of this experience is that there is no brief way to describe it, thus the lengthy blog post. (Take note of the different pages on this post and be sure to click through all of them to see photos from the whole trip and read about it from start to finish!) At READ MORE
Let’s go for a walk in the snow: Mark and I set out to ski (and hike) the Colorado Trail
Mark and I are setting out to do a ski traverse of the Colorado trail: a 486 mile trail that stretches from Durango to Denver. We will resupply every 3-5 days with the help of some friends who have graciously agreed to help us out. We are planning about 25 days total from start to finish. Although Mark and I have both done long distance treks before, the snowy element provides an extra challenge on this endeavor. We have spent this winter refining our winter camping skills and dialing in gear to use on this trip. We have been planning READ MORE
Sleeping in the Snow: Some More Experiences Learning to Winter Camp
Mark and I have spent a couple more nights in the snow as we continue to refine our winter camping system. While we won’t say winter camping is easy for us just yet, every time we go out it feels more manageable. Right now, the biggest challenge that we have been encountering is balancing comfort at camp and the weight in our packs. Winter camping requires a fair bit more gear than summer backpacking, but we are doing our best to keep pack weight to a minimum to make it easier to hike faster and spend more time in the READ MORE
No one told me it would be cold here!
Night two for Mark and I sleeping in the snow! Tucked inside our sleeping bags atop our mega sleeping pad (more on this later) inside our tent, Mark and I were certainly protected from the dangers of the cold clear night, but we were not entirely immune to it. At 3 am, we were both too uncomfortable chilly to sleep, so we boiled hot water bottles, added an extra and layer and got a few more hours of slumber before waking to a bitter cold morning. Sleeping at the base of a western facing slope, we were not greeted with READ MORE