The Onion's CDT F.A.Q.
What are you doing?
Where's that?
How long's that going to take you?
I beg your pardon!?
How long is the trail?
Will you ever get lost?
Are you going to use GPS?
How many miles a day do you do?
Are you carrying your cellphone?
How do you resupply?
Are you going alone?
What do you think about all day long?
Is this safe?
What about school?
How can you afford this?
Do you have any sponsors?
Why do you call yourself "The Onion?"
What's with all these acronyms and slang terms you're
using?
Q:What are you doing?
A: I'm hiking the Continental Divide Trail, possibly in both directions.
Q: Where's that?
A: Along or near the continental divide (hence the name) from the
Mexican border to the Canadian border through NM, CO, WY, and MT.
Q: How long's that going to take you?
A: Six and a half or seven months.
Q: I beg your pardon!?
A: Yeh, about three or three and a half months each direction.
Q: How long is the trail?
A: At least 2800 miles each direction, but the trail's totally not
finished on the ground or anything, so you get to make your own route
and go cross-country or follow a compass bearing a bunch.
Q: Will you ever get lost?
A: Several times a day.
Q: Are you going to use GPS?
A: A paranoid girl I know named Emily Christensen offered to buy me a
GPS unit, so I accepted. I'm a Luddite about some things, so I'm
not really stoked about using it (or the ultra-violet water
purification pen that I bought) and I'm pissed off about the combined
eight ounces of extra weight. We'll see how long I really carry
them.
Q: How many miles a day do you do?
A: I'm guessing I can do about 30. I did the 2168-mile
Appalachian Trail in 113 days (19.19 mpd, actually sorta fast given my
inexperience, my 50-pound pack, and the knee-busting nature of the AT)
and the 2658-mile Pacific Crest Trail in 93 days (28.58 mpd) and my
pack is a little lighter since then.
Q: Are you carrying your cellphone?
A: Nope. I wouldn't get much reception, nor do I really want to
be getting calls in the middle of the wilderness. If you want to
get ahold of me, e-mail me or call my mom. I'll check e-mail when
I resupply in a town that has a public library.
Q: How do you resupply?
A: The trail crosses a road every hundred miles or so, so I'll hitch to
the nearest convenience store or gas station and buy food, then hitch
back to the same point on the trail and hike on.
Q: Are you going alone?
A: Yep. Alone. On the other trails you meet other people
that are also trying to do the whole thing and hike with them for a few
days, but the CDT isn't very popular and since you pick your own route,
I might not see many other people. Good thing I like the sound of
my own voice. If you look at my itinerary and
Q: What do you think about all day long?
A: Sometimes I practice long division in my head. Sometimes I do
metric to standard unit conversions. Sometimes I make lists of
things I want to do in life. Sometimes I practice funny
conversations with friends of mine that aren't present. Sometimes
I yell random emotional lines from movies I like ("No matter what
occurs, you stay alive. I will find you!") Sometimes I
recite whole scenes from movies I've scene hundreds of times (Willow,
The Princess Bride, Star Wars).
Q: Is this safe?
A: Sure. I mean, I might run into a grizzly bear or a mountain lion,
and I'll certainly run into scorpions, rattle snakes, lightning,
extreme heat, extreme cold, long distances between water supplies, and
stuff like that, but it's like I once told a friend of mine, "the
number of times you think
you're going to die is significantly greater than the number of times
you actually die." It's probably safer than commuting on the
freeway.
Q: What about school?
A: Barring death by bear mauling, mountain lion mauling, exposure,
lightning, dehydration, falling off a cliff, stabbing from a crazy
person that picks me up when I'm hitching, or a permanent job with the
UN, World Bank, IMF, State Department, Oxfam, USAID or any other big
development organization falling into my lap without my lifting a
finger, I am re-enrolling in school in January 2008, taking one more
semester of classes, and passing a second field exam in August
2008. I'm just breaking grad school up into more easily
digestible chunks.
Q: How can you afford this?
A: I don't know. I'm 27 years old and I've never made more than
$15,000 in a year in my life. Short answer: student loans.
Q: Do you have any sponsors?
A:No, why, do you know somebody with hookups at Vasque, Montrail, or
Inov8? Shoes last me about 400 miles, so I could use about 14
pairs of size 10.5 trail runners if you've got any lying around.
Q: Why do you call yourself "The Onion?"
A: It's my trail name. Most thru-hikers have hobo monikers,
perhaps because it's easier to remember that a cool dude with a big
beard and a green backpack you met was named "Daddy Mention" rather
than "Matt" or "Duckface" instead of "Scott."
Q: What's with all these acronyms and slang terms
you're using?
A: To yo-yo is to hike a trail in both directions in the same year,
most likely northbound and then southbound, the Bob is the Bob Marshall
Wilderness in Montana, trail angels are folks that help out hikers on
the trail, trail magic is free food, rides to town or other good stuff
that chance or trail angels provide, the AT is the Appalachian Trail,
the PCT is the Pacific Crest
Trail (there is no such thing as the Pacific "Coast" Trail), the
CDT is the Continental Divide Trail, to yogi is to bum free food off
locals, a zero day is a day on which you hike zero miles, a nero is a
day where you hike almost zero miles, and the ADZPCTKOP is the Annual Day Zero Pacific Crest Trail
Kick-Off Party, the weekend that a lot of northbounders start
hiking the Pacific Crest Trail.