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 this trip for months now (Mark first had the idea for it two years ago), but we haven’t announced ourselves until recently because we were unsure we would be able to secure the time to carry out the attempt. As our circumstances have allowed us the time to leave, and we are excited to begin hiking! We will start out in Denver and hopefully finish a month later in Durango. This direction of travel allows us to move through the less snowy portions to start, and then into steeper and snowier terrain once the snowpack has had a little more time to settle.
While we will spend much of our time traversing snow fields on our skis, there will be a fair amount of hiking involved at lower elevations where the snow has melted out. So in conjunction with our lightweight ski touring setups, we will bring sneakers to change into when we encounter long stretches of bare trail. Besides that our setups look a lot like a normal lightweight backpacking setup plus a few extra items for winter travelling.
It has been a crazy week of preparation as I wrapped up my last week of work with a three day certifying exam (as a ski instructor) and Mark got ready to leave his Mom and niece after over a year of being with them in a caregiver capacity. We have been dialing in gear for months now, but still had a few last minute purchases to make and I sewed myself a backpack specifically for this trip. We also decided to pack all of our food ahead of time to save weight and time on trail. This meant packaging loads of food and distributing it to our friends along the trail. We are receiving support in all but three of our resupplies, and are extremely grateful to the friends that are working with us to make this trip possible!
I will be posting updates from the trail, but because of our ambitious goals, I am not planning on spending much time writing during the trip. Most of my posts will probably be short and sweet, but I’ll look forward to writing a more lengthy account when we return!
We have so many people to thank for making it possible for us to depart on this outing. We are so excited to give this new kind of challenge a try, and I look forward to keeping in touch with you all as we do! – Nic