One of the things we’ve found in doing long-distance hiking is that yes, being in good shape physically is certainly needed, but what REALLY counts is where you are at “on the inside.” It takes real mental/emotional/spiritual toughness to hike the whole 2,700 miles of PCT or the 3,000 miles of the CDT.

Part of that includes being able to handle fear. Every long trail has times where it gets really, seriously scary. On the PCT and the CDT we had to face roaring whitewater river crossings with no bridge and very vertical snow “faces” to either climb over or traverse across, where a slip ‘n fall could mean serious injury or even death. There were times where we walked across “knife edge” ridges with huge dropoffs on both sides. And there were the bears (including “grizz” on the CDT), the poisonous snakes, plus the long hauls across desert terrain where no water was available.

If you’ve gotten in the habit of letting fear control your life, that’s really a sad situation. I’m not saying to not BE afraid (I myself was totally terrified a number of times on the PCT and CDT) but you can’t let fear CONTROL what you do. We are very sad to see increasing numbers of people we know becoming increasingly fearful about many things. A fearful person is an easily manipulated person…not good. A fearful person is destroying their own health and wellbeing…not good. A fearful person has no joy, no sense of humor, no ability to have back ‘n forth cheerful “debates”….not good.

We find that facing the challenges of a long trail is a GREAT exercise in learning to overcome fear. Are we concerned about the AT? You bet! We’ve heard about awful rock scrambles with horribly slippery rocks and big dropoffs, poisonous snakes, ticks and energy-draining humidity. Oh no! What will we do? Well, we will just do what we did with the other trails….keep putting one foot in front of the other and pray like crazy and cheer when we get through!

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