Come Walk With Us on the Trans Canada Trail (TCT)

People have a great misconception of us.  When they see us, or pictures of us, they are surprised (and often a little disappointed) that we are not Olympian athletes and we don’t really look like explorers.  While hiking we don’t stride confidently and move unhindered across the landscape and wildlife doesn’t perch majestically wherever we go.  Instead, for better or worse, they realize that we are just two ordinary people on an extraordinary trek.   So we thought we would share a story that hopefully reflects our constant ability to overestimate ourselves, critique others, and learn through experience.   We hope you enjoy, have a good laugh (at us), and discover – as we did – that often you have to put yourself in someone else’s place to see the world from their perspective.   A Trail, in Theory… “Theories look great on paper until reality scribbles all over the page.” Richelle E. Goodrich In early 2019 after a year of planning to begin our trek ...

What worked ? What failed?  What have we changed? Given the range of gear choices we all face in undertaking a long distance trek, we thought we would share what we have in our backpacks, what has changed and what has worked so far.   The issue of equipment on long distance treks often quickly transforms into discussions regarding the need to negotiate between need, priorities, costs, weight, durability, and the ability to resupply. Each of these are matters and concerns which are not easy to balance against one another. Certainly our desire to hike and encourage others required us to be able to get online, post online, remain in communication with groups and schools regularly and to be able to take and post images daily – all which significantly altered what we carry as well as how much weight we need to trek with.  The reality is that there are a lot of great companies which develop and produce wonderful and durable backpacking gear. Over the years, our own experie...