The CDT - The Spirit Eagle Contract (1999)

When I was in "engineer school" I was taught that if I couldn't define something mathematically then I didn't really know what I was talking about. Likewise, if I can't specifically define my hike, then how will I know when or if I'm hiking my own hike? For me, "Hike your own hike" means knowing my own ground rules. It means writing my own contract and then living it. If you don't know what "your" hike is, how are you gonna know if you're hiking it? Or if you're not?

If that doesn't make sense to you, then this is the time to find something else to read. But if you’ve thought about (or are willing to think about) your hopes and fears and expectations for your thruhike, and you're willing and able to define specifically what you want your hike to be, then the probability that you’ll finish the hike will be significantly increased. Experience is that vague and/or unrealistic expectations is one of the major reasons why people don’t finish a long hike.

We talked about our 1999 CDT hike for more than 3 years before we actually started walking. We knew what our fears and expectations were, what our “contract” was, before we started. But we didn’t actually write it down until someone asked us about it after we'd been on the Trail for nearly 6 months. Writing it down wasn’t a necessity for us because our “contract” was an extension of our personalities, our lifestyle and our deepest core beliefs.

I finally wrote this when we were in Deming, NM. Keep in mind that this was “our” contract – it’s not meant to fit anyone else. But it may give a few people some insight into the thought processes involved in our planning and execution of a thruhike. Some people will think it’s not important. Maybe they’re right. Make up your own mind, write your own contract (or not). If you do, make sure it's what "you" really want it to be. We wanted our hike to be 'unique' and it was. We hope yours will be too.

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27 Nov 99 - The Spirit Eagle contract

Over the last 5+ months there have been a few questions about what we’re doing, about “how” we’re doing it – about why we’ve done some things. We’re now less than 3 days from the Mexican border and I’ll do something I hadn’t intended to do - talk about our “contract”. Before we started our hike, we did some serious thinking about what we wanted it to be – and why. And we (Ginny and I) decided and agreed about - what our “contract” would be.

Those who read this should understand that this is “OUR” contract and “OUR” reasoning, based on “OUR” priorities, experiences, preferences, etc. It has no relation to anything that anyone else is doing, has done or will do. And it’s NOT a comment on, criticism of or comparison to anyone else’s hike – we don’t have the time, energy or inclination to judge what others are doing – we’re too busy living our own lives – our way.

The Spirit Eagle contract isn’t complicated - it only has 5 points. And it reads like this:

1. We’ll walk from the Canadian border to the Mexican border along or near the Continental Divide.
2. We’re out here for 6 months.
3. We’re here to see the country, to meet the people and to learn whatever lessons God has to teach us.
4. We’re here to walk the mountains and the wilderness as much as possible - not to “roadwalk” the Trail.
5. Finishing the Trail is important, but not as important as enjoying the Trail. If the push to finish gets in the way, we’ll re-examine what we’re doing and why. If necessary, we’ll take 2 years to finish rather than compromise on points 1, 3, and 4.

Now comes the hard part - the underlying assumptions, implications and explanations that go with that contract.

The first point of the contract raises the question - Why didn’t we just follow the CDT? Why did we allow our hike to be “impure”? And the answer has several parts, some of which concern the nature of the trail and some of which concern the nature of thruhiking.

The first part is that there is no such thing as a “pure” CDT. There are “official” routes for some of the trail, there are Jim Wolf’s guidebook routes (and alternatives), there's Jardine's route, there are routes that have been used by other hikers and there are a gaggle of “undocumented” or “possible” routes. The fact is that much of the Trail is not only unmarked, but undesignated and arbitrary. For example, of the northern 350 miles of the CDT in New Mexico - only 25 miles is “marked”. [This was true in 1999] Much of the “trail” has no treadway - only axe-cut blazes through untrodden forest or cairns across rough desert and grasslands. And some of the “official” trail is so waterless as to be unfeasible and useless for either hiker or horse travel.

The second part is that, in keeping with contract points 3, 4, and 5, we’re out here to see what WE want to see – not someone else’s idea of what we “should” see. If we’d followed the “official” route through the Black Range in New Mexico, we’d have missed the West Fork of the Gila and the Gila Cliff Dwellings. Worse yet, we’d have been walking trail that passes through miles of burnt forest - with the accompanying massive blowdowns that other hikers have reported – rather than through beauty. We did hike some of the Black Range - and we CAN confirm just how bad some of that trail is. We had enough of burned out forest along the rest of the trail.

The third part is that, for us, thruhiking is largely about learning, personal growth and freedom - the freedom to make your own choices and to live with the consequences of those choices. We made our choices - it was our choice to do the Anaconda and Creede cutoffs. It was also our choice to go through the Cirque of the Towers and the Indian Peaks Wilderness - each of which was longer, harder and more time-consuming [and far more worthwhile] than the “CDT” routes. But it was our choice, our time, our sweat --- our hike.

The fourth part is that time, weather, injury, safety, water availability and a host of other considerations can sometimes make following the “Trail” impractical or even downright dangerous.

The last part is that I doubt that anyone has hiked the CDT as a “pure” hike in the sense that the term is used on the AT (and sometimes on the PCT). Undesignated trail sections, mazes of unmarked dirt roads, snow-covered trail, etc. make route-finding a constant challenge such that few hikers manage to stay on “THE TRAIL”. Is there anyone who’s hiked the CDT without getting “lost” or “off-track” or “misplaced” at some point with respect to the “Trail”? If so, I’d like to meet them.

The bottom line here is that on a trail that’s partly undesignated, largely unmarked, generally unmaintained and often a non-existent bushwhack or a cross-country route, “purity” is an alien and invalid concept. So our hike was never designed or intended to be so.

The second point of the contract carries implications in terms of daily mileage. To spend 6 months (~180 days) on the CDT implies a 16 to 17 mile per day average. Getting into “male-macho-mileage” mode and increasing our average to 20 mpd would have us finishing in about 5 months. Higher mpd averages would mean even less time on the trail, an increased probability of injury or burnout, and less time to see the country, meet the people and learn what we’re here to learn. It might also necessitate skipping some of the mountains and road-walking more of the trail. That would violate points 2, 3, 4 and 5 of our contract. It’s not what we’re here for.

There are those who come out here to “do” the Trail in minimum time. Some of them do “big” miles (20 - 30 - 40 miles per day), some take no time off in town, some road-walk or skip sections --- or some combination of the above. God bless them – it’s their hike. But that’s not why we’re here – this is a “Spiritwalk” for us. It was meant to take 6 months and it has. And that’s the way we wanted it to be. We’ve seen a lot of wild and beautiful country and met a lot of wonderful people along the way. And I believe we’ve learned more than a few lessons. We’ll find out about the lessons over the next couple years.

With respect to point 4 of the contract, we did a couple “road-walks” along the way - the Anaconda cutoff, for example. And we’ve talked about them - the conclusion is that, with only one exception, we won’t do those road-walks when we walk the CDT again. We’ll take other routes instead. There’s no regret about what we did - simply curiosity about what the other routes are like and an increasing preference for choosing routes as wild and natural as possible.

The last point was sometimes the most difficult to keep in mind. With both of us being “thruhikers”, there was always the desire to finish in one year. There was also a high probability, given our deliberate decisions about time, speed, distance and routes, that we could have been stopped in Colorado or northern New Mexico by snow or cold and have to come back next year to finish. Resolving that conflict was an exercise in mental discipline. It required a decision about what we wanted - and then a second decision to adopt, internalize and accept the attitude that would achieve that goal. It also meant accepting the possibility of NOT finishing this year - and accepting that as one of the lessons we were here to learn.

One of the hardest parts of thruhiking is the way the push for miles can take over a hike. When it becomes an endurance test - a death march - then the purpose of the hike changes from exploring and enjoying the land and the wildlife and the people to a joyless quest for more and more miles in order to get to the end of the trail. On the CDT, that translates to the “race for the border” – and the destination becomes more important than the journey. Constant exhaustion can easily lead to burnout, both physical and emotional. For us, there were many days (too many) when water or weather concerns forced us to push harder than we liked. There were other times that we stretched the miles just for the fun of it, but we always tried to remember why we were there.

We were lucky. We had snow and cold and injury and long days with little water, and there were times we had to compromise on what we wanted out of our hike, but there was nothing that we would allow to end our hike. More than that, we never lost our enjoyment of the trail. We ended the hike being sorry only that it wasn’t longer. Our contract was a good one – for us.