April 26, 2025
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What do you do when Ganesh hands you the keys to the universe? Well, if you’re like me, you write off the whole experience and continue on with your dirtbag life and pretend as if a ten foot tall elephant man(woman?) didn’t hand you the universe disguised as an old ornate brass key while floating in the middle of countless psychedelic galaxies. I’d finish that bikepacking trip by spending a day in Vancouver, Canada where I’m pretty sure I slept in the home of a serial killer(that’s another story for later). Then two weeks later I’d start hiking the Continental Divide Trail southbound starting from Glacier National Park in northern Montana.
That CDT SOBO is still my favorite thru-hike. Hiking the desert of the PCT in 2022 and hiking the Te Araroa in New Zealand also rank up there, but the CDT wins. Why these three trips and not any of my other hikes(I’ve hiked the AT 3x, CDT 2x, PCT 1x, CT, AZT, LT, TA)? Because in these three hikes I had a “tramily”, a trail family. I’ve spent more of my hiking time solo than with a tramily. I’ve accomplished objectively impressive feats of endurance that few in this world can claim. I’ve set records and won multiple hundred miler races. But none of that really stays with me beyond the short lived high when you accomplish something big. What stays with me all these years later are the good times and belly laughs I’ve shared with my trail families.
The CDT was my second thru-hike. I hiked the Appalachian Trail two years before in 2016 and felt like a seasoned pro coming onto the CDT. I was in the Two Medicine ranger station booking permits and having a difficult time finding open campsites. There was another hiker in there doing the same and having the same difficulties. The ranger said “why don’t you two guys just get on the same permit?” Brilliant! Our problem was solved and we both saved money. That was how I met Will, a math teacher from New York City. He took a month of his summer vacation to hike each year.
Will was LOUD. Boisterous, even. When I first met him I thought, “wow this guy is rude AF.” But as I got to know him more I realized that Will has a really good heart and just had a loud and blunt personality which could be easily mistaken for rudeness, but he never meant to be rude. Maybe that’s the personality he needed to navigate the mean streets of New York City. Will wanted me to come take his photo at the border monument between the US and Canada when we started our hike but the border guard told us only one hiker was allowed at the border at a time. Wouldn’t want to threaten Canada with invasion by having two hikers walk up to the border.
“Yeah fine, I don’t mind.” Well, Will did. He argued with that guard at great volume and I was afraid he was going to get us thrown in detention before our hike even started. “Will, stop arguing with him, just go take a selfie!”
Thru-hikers are notoriously gassy. Our diet is horrendous. Candy bars, ramen noodles, peanut butter. Everything you eat is ultra processed and full of sugar. This naturally leads to hikers being gassy 24/7. If hiking up the Grand Canyon with a fully loaded bicycle is purgatory, then sitting in a car full of dirty, gassy thru-hikers is hell.
It’s not unusual at all to fart through the night and to wake up farting. Except on this beautiful day I awoke to the feeling of crisp mountain air, was greeted by the sight of towering green trees framing a vast blue sky, and the sensation of sharting myself.
I knew there was a stream nearby and awkwardly waddled over there to clean myself. On my way there I met another hiker and briefly filled him in on what happened and asked him to make sure no one else walked over to the stream for about five minutes while I cleaned up. I later posted this story and keyboard warriors came out of the woodwork to say how this was unsanitary and unsafe for the stream. I see their point but what are you supposed to do when you’re in the middle of the backcountry and have no other means to clean yourself? “You should’ve taken a bucket of water and cleaned yourself 200m from the stream!” Okay cool I would love to do that if I had a bucket. Guess everyone needs to add an “emergency shart bucket” to their packing list. Also a great lesson to always filter your water. You never know if a hiker shat their pants upstream of you.
At our next campsite I met the same hiker and his partner. Their trail names were B(not Bee, just B) and TomTom. Their romance had started the year before when they met on the PCT. Now B was going to thru-hike the CDT and TomTom was joining him for two months until her PhD program in Astrophysics in UC Davis started. You truly meet the most unexpected and interesting people while thru-hiking.
So now we were four. And the next day we picked up another hiker, Heather. She didn’t have a trail name but had just finished chiropractic school and was planning to open her own practice in Bend, Oregon. We camped together near a creek with giant fresh grizzly prints in the mud near the bank. That night Heather shamed me into hanging my food. I was just going to sleep with it because I was too tired and didn’t want to bother with a food hang. She yelled at me, “you idiot, there’s fresh grizzly prints RIGHT THERE! Hang your food!” Twenty minutes later I’d finally got my food up on a terrible and ineffective hang - the trees out west really aren’t good for bear hangs. I fell asleep thinking that if a bear wanted to eat me then hanging my food 50ft away wasn’t going to stop them.
People are rightly cautious of Grizzly bears on the CDT. It’s the first time most thru-hikers have camped in Grizz country. Grizzlies have a reputation for being more aggressive and more dangerous than black bears. But I’ve found that the things you worry about before setting out, like snakes and bears and storms and hitch-hiking, all of them turn out to be paper tigers and it’s the things you never think about, like being caught in freezing rain and going hypothermic at 12,000ft and having nowhere to take shelter that are the truly terrifying experiences. After two weeks on trail we all stopped caring about bear hangs and slept with our food. We rationalized to ourselves that with this many people camped together we were surely too intimidating for bears. Right?? None of us got eaten so clearly we were right.
We met FlyBy in a farmer’s field just outside of Helena, Montana. True to her name she was flying by us but decided to ride into town with our group. TomTom had a friend from college whose parents lived in Helena. Fritz and Cheryl. Fritz picked us up on the highway and we crammed five hikers in Fritz’s Subaru Forester.
Poor Fritz, picking up five gassy hikers who hadn’t showered for six days. Hell on Earth. But Fritz was a tough guy and had probably seen much worse during his service in uniform. Fritz had been deployed to Thailand during the Vietnam war and then went on to become a Special Forces officer in the Montana National Guard. I think he retired as a full bird colonel. Civilian side Fritz was a public defender. He said the worst crime most of his defendants committed was the crime of being “incredibly stupid.”
Fritz and I hit it off immediately. His house was filled with art from Asia and he loved to share his stories from Thailand. We had a wonderful evening, all of us hikers with Fritz and Cheryl. Fritz cooked us a feast of ribeye steaks, salmon, potatoes, and grilled vegetables. All the foods that hikers crave and topped it off with bottomless margaritas. Since then Fritz has hosted many other hikers and asks me to send him the contact information of any hikers I know doing the CDT. They love to entertain hikers and live vicariously on their adventures. I still send Fritz pictures from time to time from my own travels in Thailand and Vietnam.
Flyby decided to slow down and join our group out of Helena. She had previously hiked the PCT and would go on to triple crown and set the FKT on the Colorado and Long Trails, and complete multiple hundred miler races. Each day we’d set off around the same time but she’d arrive at camp at least an hour before I did. We became great friends and would hike together for 1,900 miles until I had to get off trail due to contracting Giardia in northern New Mexico. She went on to earn her MFA in creative writing from the University of Albuquerque and wrote a short story about the time we almost died in the mountains in Colorado at 12,000ft. Another story for another chapter.
The Appalachian Trail has so many hikers that I often didn’t want to be part of a group because I knew that no matter where I stopped I would meet other hikers. Conversely, the CDT had so few hikers that meeting another hiker was a special occasion and whenever we met we made a point to stick together, to camp in the same places, both for protection against the Grizzly bears and wolves and for the company. It’s not uncommon to go for days or weeks to pass without seeing another human in the vast wilderness in Montana and Wyoming.
This bond is what made my 2018 CDT hike so special. TomTom left us after Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. She would go on to complete her PhD and become Dr. TomTom, PhD and an actual rocket scientist. After finishing her degree she took some time off to hike the Arizona trail and then completed a winter ascent of Mt. Shasta. On May 7th, 2024, TomTom and her partner Andrew summited Mt. Whitney in icy conditions using ice axes, crampons, ropes, and climbing the mountaineers route. They were reported missing that evening after they didn’t return from the summit. They were roped together and must have fallen while descending the crux of the mountaineering route, a steep 400 feet cliff-face. Their bodies were recovered 1,000ft below the crux the next day.
I hope it wasn’t too scary for her at the end. I hope she wasn’t in pain. I hope she’s at peace now. TomTom, be happy. Be at peace. Be free from suffering. Thanks for being a great friend and a great person and an inspiration to follow our dreams. She was 29 when she died and had already hiked the PCT, AZT, and most of the CDT. She’d run ultra marathons and climbed Shasta and Whitney in the winter. She was a fantastic photographer, avoid rock climber, and true polymath. She’d earned her PhD from UC Davis. TomTom packed her short life full of what she loved. We could learn a lot by how she lived.
Thinking about TomTom has brought me to tears. I didn’t keep in great touch with her after the CDT. It’s a quirk of my adoption, once a person is not in my immediate vicinity I completely forget to keep in contact with them. It’s something I’m working on but still very bad at. I wish I’d stayed in better touch with her. My heart aches to think that I’ll never hear her voice and only get to see her infectious smile in photos. My heart aches but it’s a good ache. She lived a good, full life. I’m glad I got to spend those months on trail with her. I’ll see ya in the next life, TomTom, we can go on another big adventure. Here’s some video clips of her on the CDT:
TomTom’s death made me re-evaluate the risks that I took on my adventures. Is it worth it if death is a possibility? I think it is. Actually, I know that it’s worth it. I know this because in each adventure I’ve encountered sketchy moments where death becomes a real possibility and in each of those moments I don’t feel regret at my decisions that brought me into the dangerous situation. Only a heightened appreciation for life, a determination to push through and survive, and a desire to continue to fill my life with the things that I love, a reminder that we don’t have forever.
Since I’ve started traveling and going on big adventures I can honestly say that I’ve not had a single year where I’ve regretted my choices. I’ve had days and even months where I’m not happy with my situation, but never a single year that felt wasted. The various times that I’ve worked accounting office jobs I felt every day was wasted. I would come home and think “is this what the rest of my life will be? Just day after day in the office staring at my computer until I die?” There hasn’t been a single day on trail where I’ve had a similar thought. No, even in the worst, most painful days on trail I am so happy and so grateful to be out in beautiful nature, living life to the fullest and having a grand adventure. Even when I had to carry a bike out of the Grand Canyon while suffering from diarrhea. I’d still rather do that than work in an office.
Humans weren’t meant for office jobs. We’re meant to explore nature and have wild adventures and face danger! We’re meant to push our limits and use our bodies! We came here to LIVE, not to protect ourselves and be safe and extend our life as long as possible. What a futile effort, no one escapes death.
One final note on danger and fear. Thru-hiking has given me so much confidence and peace in life. Because I have faced dangers and obstacles I couldn’t have ever imagined. And each time I was faced with an unimaginable obstacle or danger there arose within me the strength to face that obstacle.
If you take one thing away from my writings please take away this point. We all have within us, lying dormant, the strength to face great adversity. But many of us have forgotten this vital fact because we simply don’t face great dangers or obstacles in our day to day. However, if you had to, you would find within yourself a deep reserve of strength that you didn’t know existed. And the more often you can put yourself into uncomfortable and difficult situations the more you can tap into this reserve of strength.
That’s why I don’t really worry much these days. Not even when a fascist is taking over our country. I know that if I had to face down tyranny with a rifle in hand I would find the strength and the resolve to do so. I know that if they took everything from me and I had to start over, I would find the strength and resolve within, I would find a deep well of strength. Not because I’m special. Not because I’m tough. But because I am human. And this is a special trait that all humans have.
I’ve been lucky to have the privilege of going on adventures where I’ve had to tap this well of strength and so I know that it’s there within me. But really, believe me. I’m not special. That well of strength is there within you, too. When the moment comes, you will rise to the occasion.
You can read TomTom’s Instagram and read about her adventures and see her photos, it’s @P.bolan.
Your paragraph about how we’re not meant to work office jobs hits hard. I’m stuck there now working to get out. What a beautiful and inspiring story. Your friend lived a beautiful life.
Beautiful reflections on life and death. Rest in strength, TomTom.