Post-Trail Depression after the Colorado Trail

Thru-hiking the Colorado Trail was an adventure 3 years in the making. I had so many sleepless nights on my laptop researching and obsessing about this trail and the ways it would change me. I had attempted and failed the thru-hike in 2023, and went back for successful redemption in 2024. 

Before and during my thru-hike, the thing that drove me to the end was the anticipation of feeling that level of success. When I envisioned touching the final trailhead I imagined all the ways I would feel healed. I thru-hiked so that I would learn to believe and trust in myself, and finishing would mean that I could do anything. 

I became “Raspberry” on the trail, now somebody I deem a character in my life, a free and happy version of myself.

Raspberry was confident, excited, and outgoing. She overcame fears and pushed her own boundaries. She was in touch with her intuition, a feeling she never had before because she was riddled with low self-esteem. Raspberry loved her body and thanked it every night for how far it had gotten her and was proud of all the ways it had changed to keep her going. 

Feeling full of life at the highest point of the CT.

As I got farther along on my thru-hike, I realized it was soon coming to an end. I have never really been good with endings or goodbyes. Packing up at my last campsite took me a couple of hours. I was refusing to leave. I needed a moment of stillness with the trail. I needed to soak my feet in the river and say some proper goodbyes. The trail had become my closest companion and teacher, and I felt like it was my home, or at least where I felt most at home.

I felt a close relationship with the trail, often referring to it as “her”. When I needed something, she would provide. When I felt unsure, sad, or exhausted, she lifted me back up and patted me on the shoulder. When I was unsure what to do, she validated my decisions. That relationship made me question if I believed in a god, or if what I was experiencing was my intuition. Whatever it was, I felt it every step of the way, and my closeness to it only grew stronger. Intention seemed to be masked as coincidence, and I felt like I was being told that I was exactly where I was supposed to be. That feeling, god or my intuition, was what got me through the trail. I could chalk it up to feeling like I could finally trust myself, which is a feeling I never had before.

In all her glory.

I first felt post-trail depression hit as soon as I completed the trail. The final steps up to the trailhead were filled with so many tears, each one coded with different emotions. I was bubbling over, feeling the final climax I had been searching for all these years, but it was so much different than I imagined. Not only did I feel overwhelmingly proud of myself, my strength, and all of the lessons I had learned, but I also felt indescribably sad and scared. 

A note in my journal from one of my final nights reads

“I’m scared of going back to real life again and worrying about my appearance or my weight or if people like me. I hope I have grown out of that enough. I am so happy out here. I am so incredibly happy and sad. This has been what’s kept me going for the last three years and it is about to be over. I don’t know what’s next for me, but this can’t be it. This is a part of me now, and I’ll never be able to shake this off. This is life, this is truly living. I feel so alive and present. I am going to miss this more than anything I have ever experienced. This is my home.”

I had looked forward to this moment for years and it had come to a screeching halt with no idea where I was going from there. I was going back to the same job, same coworkers, same friends, same house. I was going back into a world where I was Allysa again, no longer being referred to as my trail character. I was scared of letting go of Raspberry and my relationship to the trail.

A journal entry from my very last night on the trail reads

“I am going to miss stinking as bad as I do. As weird as it sounds, I keep smelling my stinky gear and clothes to try to remember it, like when you cuddle a stinky dog. I am going to miss the freedom. This was all my own schedule, my own pain. This was mine. For the first time in my life, I had something that was truly mine. I will forever be so grateful to myself for giving myself this chance.”

After coming home, the depression hit harder. It became more difficult to make valuable connections, just like how it felt before going on the trail. During my hike, friends came easy, and so did meaningful connections. Back home I went right back into my socially anxious people-pleasing personality. With this social anxiety came the body dysmorphia. Now that I was so aware of being perceived, I was so scared of gaining my weight back. I had lost nearly 30 pounds on the trail, and I knew people were noticing because most people mentioned it. I started doing anything I could to prevent weight gain, not caring if it was healthy or not, and not acknowledging that I was burning an insane amount of calories on the trail that I would never be able to duplicate. 

Weight gain should have been a no-brainer.

On the trail I was living off of candy, ramen, and peanut butter and burning thousands of calories a day. I was not healthy on the trail. My gut health was destroyed and I’m sure I was in a deficit in some vitamins for a short while. Outwardly though, I looked healthy. I began thinking the only way to keep this weight off was in unhealthy ways. Having a history of an eating disorder and now being very conscious of my weight was not a good combination of events. 

Being home meant I needed to work extra hard for my money, or so I thought.

I gave 110% as much as I could at work as soon as I came back because I was excited to be back, but also because I was trying to focus my energy on something that would keep my mind off of the trail. Making work into the thing that did that for me was probably not the best idea because I became very burnt out after about a month or so. Work shortly became a symbol of who I was trying not to be- burnt out, confused, people-pleasy, socially anxious, type-A, and exhausted. All of these characteristics that had gotten me so far were things I started to resent about myself. 

I tried blogging about my daily experience on the trail after I got home but very quickly became tired of it because it all felt watered down.

I didn’t feel like I was that version of myself anymore, so it was extremely hard to write as that version of myself. I started to regret not taking adequate notes along the way and making posts about it as I went so that it was raw and honest. Writing it from home as “Allysa” felt like I was playing a character.

I began journaling as a way to express my thoughts because I didn’t feel like I had anybody near me that would be able to fully understand, which felt alienating.

It was hard to express why I felt so “off” to people who couldn’t conceptualize what a thru-hike is in the first place, or how impactful it can be. I would go to coffee shops and write for an hour or so. My main takeaway being that I need to “find Raspberry” again. I needed to find a way to rekindle that relationship with my intuition. I tried incorporating some characteristics of Raspberry back into myself. I’d push myself out of my comfort zone, like taking up yoga or doing a jewelry fabrication class. I tried to start loving my body again, confront my eating disorder, and accept my weight gain. I started seeking out small adventures, which sometimes were as small as going on a walk at a local park or reading a new book at a new coffee shop. 

I have realized that thru-hiking cannot be a one-and-done for me.

It will continue to be a part of my life for as long as I can see. The trail is the place where I feel I have a true purpose, where I feel like the most raw and honest version of myself. The cycle has become something I dream of. Being home and witnessing my reactions and habits has taught me just as much about myself as the trail did. This has all led me to the decision to go back again this summer, this time with my fiance. Thru-hiking has become a non-negotiable in my life. It is who I am, and I am so proud of myself for figuring that out.

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