year of hiking

Before we get too deep into ski season, I wanted to recap all the hiking we did this past year.  The idea took hold back in September 2017 when, on our trip to Bryce Canyon National Park with H's parents, we first learned about the Under the Rim trail.  As we read more about it, we decided that we should do it all in one day.  Once that plan was made, we knew we'd need to train for it because walking 23 miles in a day isn't anything we do on a regular basis.

H came up with a training plan with hikes scheduled each weekend, increasing the miles as we moved through the early summer.  We didn't worry too much about elevation, even with the UtR's uphill finish; we just needed to get the miles on our feet.  Some of the trails were ones we'd done before (anything in Big or Little Cottonwood Canyons) and others were new to us (Naturalist Basin, Mid Mountain Trail).  We got rained out one weekend in May and were traveling one weekend in June but other than that we did the work, even when we had weekends away for the Crusher in the Tushar and Great Basin National Park.

The Big Hike was the first weekend in August and after that, we didn't want to slow our roll.  We kept hiking every weekend, and while we weren't quite as obsessive about high mileage, we did try to work in longer hikes because we were eyeing a new goal:  to reach 300 miles before the hiking season ended.  We didn't hit that goal - we got rained out one weekend, plus we needed/wanted to spend time with Milton - but we came close, logging 280.70 miles from the end of April through the mid November.  It doesn't sound like that much said like that but we were weekend-warrioring only for a total of 32 hikes, and we ended up with an average hike length of 8.77 miles / average climbing 2,066'.

I thought it was a fantastic hiking season.  Hiking is probably my favorite activity out of all we do - it's certainly what I'm best at (because it's just walking) - and I really loved getting out there so much, doing the longer trails.  And, with a couple months' distance and lessons learned, H and I think that we wouldn't mind taking another all-in-one-day shot at the Under the Rim trail - but this time in the fall when it's cooler (and with better/saltier foods). 

But that's in the future.  For now, I'm going to bask in our accomplishment from this year, our year of hiking.