The Trail Provides: How the Colorado Trail Healed My Post-Trail Depression

Thirty-seven days of hiking in Colorado rewired my brain.

It broke everything I owned, but put me back together.

Handies Peak from American Basin

In my post-trail depression, I felt that who I was on trail — the strong, capable, positive Stitches — was completely separate from me now.

When I started at the northern terminus of the Colorado Trail outside Denver, I was still deep in my post-trail depression following the Pacific Crest Trail.

My depression was compounded by major changes to my work that had occurred while I was away on the PCT. I had lost two of the identities that grounded me, and I didn’t have energy for the third (outside of hiking, my primary activity is cycling).

In my depression, I was not taking care of the core, essential aspects of being human: sleeping, eating, drinking water, moving, and getting sunlight and fresh air. I was at the point where I was cooking and eating only cabbage because it kept well in my fridge and was easy to fry up. Even making eggs seemed like too much effort for me, in my depression.

I felt that who I was on trail — the strong, capable, positive Stitches — was completely separate from me now. Stitches was gone. A shell remained, and I didn’t think it would ever get better. This is just who I am now, I thought. 

My doctor recommended that I find a trail to hike so that I could remember myself and so I’d have a sort of forcing function for recalibrating my priorities: on trail, you have no choice but to take care of sleeping, eating, drinking water, moving, and being outside. 

Summit of Columbia

I introduced myself to other hikers as ‘Stitches’, but I did not feel like Stitches.

This is how I ended up on the Colorado Trail. Luckily, the trail is fairly accessible and easy to thru-hike, logistically, so it was possible for me to spend only the week before my departure putting together a barebones resupply plan at the kitchen table of my friend’s house in Boulder, CO. I added a list of the fourteeners accessible from the Colorado Trail thinking I’d try them if I had the energy. 

I’m not even sure I was excited about it. My friend Liz dropped me off at the northern terminus, noting, “I can’t believe you’re about to walk for a month and you’re so calm about it.” I shrugged. In my journal, I wrote: “I don’t really see it as a big deal. Or maybe I’m feeling numb idk.”

Initially I spent all my energy comparing it to the PCT. The terrain, the conditions, the landscape. (In my journal: “The terrain reminds me of a very gentle Oregon with its red rocks, but the trees look like the desert, and the scenery right now is more like NorCal.”) I introduced myself to other hikers as ‘Stitches’, but I did not feel like Stitches.

Hiking through thunderstorms

There is nothing like the power of nature to shake you from whatever civilized anxieties you’re mentally mired in and remind you that the first priority is survival.

Very quickly, though, the Colorado Trail woke me up with its recurrent afternoon and evening lightning storms. There is nothing like the power of nature to shake you from whatever civilized anxieties you’re mentally mired in and remind you that the first priority is survival. On my first night, massive wind gusts accompanied by a lightning storm unbolted my tarp’s stakes. My depression had made me careless. I was camped in an exposed area without hammering them in all the way and weighing them down with rocks. I had to reset it in the howling wind. 

On my third night, rain pelted my tarp even under a small tree, and the slight slope of my campsite was enough to send water dribbling under the eaves of my tarp. I had to dig and re-dig little moats on the upslope to collect the water and drain it away from me. 

A storm brewing in the San Juans.

When it seems you’re at a dead end, the trail provides… This was the beginning of my recovery, of my thirst for life again. 

What the trail is really good at is surprising you with the grace, over and over. When it seems you’re at a dead end, the trail provides. 

The first fourteener I did on the Colorado Trail was Mt. Massive, at sunrise. After summiting I continued on to Elbert, and had planned to try to descend again afterwards and walk into Leadville the following day. The elevation hit me hard, though, and by the time I summited Elbert, I was the last hiker up and it was already late in the day. 

Luckily, I had service at the summit and realized that the weather that evening was going to be very mild, even at 14k feet. A warm, clear night with very little wind. So I set up to cowboy camp in one of the rock nests at the summit of Colorado’s highest peak, and was witness to both sunrise and sunset, and stars in every direction — nothing blocked my view. I was the highest. 

Sunset at the summit of Elbert.

This will sound cheesy, but descending the next morning, I came across a single flower lit perfectly by the morning light. I felt a deep rush of gratitude that things had worked out the way they did: that I would be so late up Elbert, that I would luck into good weather at the summit, that I would happen upon the sun and the clouds and this plant’s choice to grow where it did.

It felt like the whole world had conspired so that I could see this little flower so beautifully aglow. I couldn’t have orchestrated it if I’d wanted to. Then again, isn’t every moment like that?

Aforementioned flower

An important thing I noticed, when I was Facetiming friends and family at the summit so they could see the sunset, was how we miss so many of these miracles when caught up in our ‘normal’ lives. My mom said she needed a few more minutes to write a check and then would call me back — but I knew that in a few minutes, the sunset I wanted to show her would be gone. It would be different already. 

I wrote in my journal: “When I’m not out here, I might be writing a check instead of witnessing the sunset, like my mom was. Is it even possible to live like this more fully without sacrificing something of our contemporary world? Tonight I have an unobstructed view of the stars. I’ll enjoy it.”

This was the beginning of my recovery, of my thirst for life again. 

Stars from the summit of Elbert. Taken on iPhone.

This is where I belong. Let nothing come between this and me.

Due to my depression hampering my planning for the trip, I was flying by the seat of my pants, trying to access the different 14ers on Collegiate West. From my journal: “I guess I didn’t plan this section very well, because I only had a vague idea of which mountains I’d do and how or when, so I was scrambling a bit.” I was mapping and calculating routes on Caltopo while hiking, instead of executing a defined plan. 

And yet, the lack of a plan still worked out. On my summit of Missouri, Belford, and Oxford, I made a local friend who then drove me down the road to stage for my next peak, saving me five miles and approximately 2 hrs of hiking and enabling me to target two peaks (La Plata and Huron) the following day. 

In my journal, I wrote that while descending La Plata the following morning, I “felt so emotional (maybe my period) and so lucky that I got to be there and be so alone. Grateful for the chance to be out here hiking, to be so in and among the mountains. To be so isolated and wild. As I rounded the bend towards Huron, “This Is Where I Belong” from the movie “Spirit, Stallion of the Cimarron” started playing on my phone. Then I actually cried. ‘Under the starry skies, where eagles have flown / This place is paradise. It’s the place I call home… Let nothing come between this and me,’ croons Bryan Adams. It felt so fitting for me then.”

There was a sense of empowerment I’d forgotten since leaving the PCT: I slowly rebuilt myself.

At Cottonwood Pass the following day, I had my first taste of hiking on the actual Divide. It felt so open and expansive. ‘Homeland’ by Hans Zimmer was playing on my phone, and it paired perfectly. I continued cross-country and made my own way up a talus slope to access the ridge that was the continental divide, and stayed on the ridge until reaching Monarch Pass. There was a sense of empowerment I’d forgotten since leaving the PCT.

One challenge I’d had in my depression was never being able to acknowledge how much I was actually accomplishing per day. But on trail, it was impossible to ignore the visceral reality that yesterday I had been at that mountain, and now it’s far behind me. 

Like this, I slowly rebuilt myself. 

Summit of Harvard.

The trail provides again, again, and again.

Repeatedly, I would seem to be at a dead end, and the trail would provide: 

• At Monarch Pass, after completing Collegiate West, I was trying to decide if it was worth trying to coordinate public transportation to flip up north to Buena Vista so I could hike Collegiate East and access the nearby 14ers. The guy who gave me a hitch from Monarch Pass happened to be driving up to Denver, so he dropped me off at Buena Vista on the way, allowing me to complete the Collegiate loop.
• After summiting Columbia and Harvard, I was soaked in an evening thunderstorm. In the chaos of trying to get somewhere dry, I lost my lightning cable to charge my phone. I contemplated trying to hitch a ride out with some local peakbaggers from the trailhead back to Buena Vista to hopefully try to purchase another cable. The first guy I asked left his truck unlocked for me so I could sit inside, warm up, and charge my phone from his vehicle (he left on his hike and trusted me with his car). Later, thinking I still needed to solve for missing a cable, I asked a second guy if I could buy a cable off him, and take a Venmo handle down so I could pay him when I had service again. Instead, he just gifted it to me. 
• Later on, I was trying to figure out a plan to slackpack up Mt. Princeton knowing I couldn’t stash my heavy things along the access road (it was private property). Just then, a truck drove up and asked if I wanted a ride up to the trailhead for Mt. Princeton. They also drove me to their house so I could throw my wet sleeping bag in the dryer and finally have a warm night. When I realized later that day that my phone’s port was malfunctioning and no cable was working, one of them offered their wireless charging pad, which I used to the end of the trail. It was lucky break after lucky break after lucky break. I’m still in touch with the people I met on this day. 
• On one of my last days on trail, I was very low on rolls of film. I had previously accidentally washed my unused rolls of film in the laundry a week prior, and the extra rolls I’d shipped to myself never made it. As I hiked out towards Silverton, I saw a man who appeared to be hiking with an analog camera. “Is that analog?” I asked him. “Yeah, it’s film,” he said. “Do you have any extra rolls? Can I buy one off of you?” And once again, another person just offered to gift me what I was trying to buy. 
• In the San Juans, near the end of the CT, I summited Redcloud and Sunshine at sunrise and took a very sketchy emergency bailout route down a cliff band in very loose scree along with two guys I’d met at the summit. These guys gave me a ride around to American Basin, where I hiked up Handies and then descended over the other side back to the main basin. At the summit of Handies, I met a man who said he’d give me a ride back to the connecting trail to the CT if the timing worked out (he was descending via the American Basin side, whereas I was heading to Silver Creek). Not knowing his pace and having no way to contact him, I was resigned to hiking an extra 8 miles that evening, but he rolled up just as I arrived. I couldn’t have managed all the peaks I hiked had I not had the help of these people.

An unexpected wildlife encounter reminded me of my own vitality.

This final story, I want to tell fully and properly:

After summiting Sunshine, Redcloud, and Handies, I was dropped off at the 5-mile Cataract Gulch Trail that would reconnect me back to the CT.

I’d taken the infrequently-trafficked Cataract Gulch Trail out to access the 14ers, so I had a good idea of where the campable spots were. It was getting late, and I knew that I was too tired to climb up to the best sites near treeline, so I cowboy camped at an emergency bivy spot just off the side of the trail — I was practically on the trail, but I figured it was late enough and a quiet enough trail that no one else would be coming through.

Around 9pm, I was journaling on my phone when I heard a crashing sound of a large animal moving through the forest. I switched on my headlamp and saw the shadow of a moose running past me on the trail. Strange, I thought. Why would a moose be scared of me? I should be scared of the moose. Then I heard a loud thud in the direction the moose had been running from, like an animal had just jumped onto the trail.

I turned around and saw two pairs of glowing eyes looking back at me. Okay, I thought, are these deer or are they doglike creatures? One of them turned towards the other and I could make out two pointy ears. Okay, I said to myself. These are doglike creatures. Are they coyotes or are they wolves? I looked at the bushes they were standing behind and estimated that the bushes were probably about 3 feet, so these creatures probably stood about 4 feet tall. Too big to be coyotes.

So now here I was, with my shoes off and my legs tucked nicely in my quilt, and I’m sitting up about 12 feet away from two wolves. In my head I tried to consider my options. I knew about cougars and bears, but I didn’t know what to do about wolves: I was always assured that they didn’t want to see you, so you’d never see them. Perhaps I’d camped on a trail no one uses so the animals use it as their nightly highway, and the wolves were on their nightly highway patrol, and they were just as confused to see me too. Or maybe they were chasing the moose? Should I yell, or would that scare them? Should I get up and make myself big, or should I avoid sudden movements?

I stared at them, staring at me, for what seemed like several minutes. Then they quietly turned and left.

The next morning, I met some hikers at a water crossing on the Colorado Trail and mentioned that I’d seen two wolves. “Oh yeah,” one of them said. “They just released about ten wolves in Colorado. Pretty amazing you saw any of them.”

In the moment, I wouldn’t have described it that way, but yes. Yes, it was amazing.

San Juans on the Colorado Trail

The body remembers what the mind does not.

By the time I left Colorado, 37 days after starting the trail, I had hiked nearly 700 miles of Colorado between Denver and Durango, including most of the Collegiate Loop, and climbed over 167k ft (5.8x Everests) of elevation gain, including summiting 27 (half!) of Colorado’s fifty-four 14ers and one Centennial peak along the way & after. I repeatedly set ambitious goal after ambitious goal, and was amazed when I kept making them happen. 

The body remembers what the mind does not: I am strong. I am capable. I will be ok. Every day I proved my depression wrong, doing my best and trusting that l’ll get there eventually. Being in constant motion did a good job of resetting my nervous system. On the Colorado Trail, I found my joy again. This is where I belong. 

Summit of La Plata

 xx

stitches