All of The Details of My 15 Month Hiking Project

I feel like I’ve been waiting almost two years to write this post. I’m going to be attempting to hike all of the trails in the White Mountains in a set amount of time, AGAIN, starting June 19, 2022. June 19 was the day that I started my attempt in 2020 and it only seems fitting to pick this date this time around, too. I know that it’s not going to be the same as it was in 2020, I’m counting on it not to be because 2020 led to a cancer diagnosis. What I am counting on is that it is going to be the hardest physical challenge I’ve ever taken on and that regardless of how it ends, I’ll learn from it. 

The other day I was talking to a friend that navigated her own cancer diagnosis which paralleled my own, only she finished a few months after me. I told her that I’m giving myself this hiking adventure because I went through nineteen months of active treatment and I deserve it. She shared that she bought herself a hot tub as her gift. It made me feel validated and like I have every right to “give” myself something after what I’ve been through. 

This hiking goal has always felt rather selfish in many ways because, quite honestly, it was. I wanted to quit working to go back to graduate school, but I also wanted to quit working so that I could attempt to red line the Whites in a year. Leaving a stable, full-time job to chase my “dream” of becoming a writer and to attempt my hiking goal in 2020 led to a few months of hiking followed by the hardest nineteen months of my life fighting cancer. I feel like I got jipped out of what was supposed to be the start of chasing my dreams (graduate school and hiking). Now, two years later, I’m still in grad school, although I’ve come to the conclusion that finishing my MFA isn’t as imperative now, and I’m about to start over attempting to red line, only in fifteen months this time. 

In planning this goal for what I consider the second time around (since the first time only lasted two months due to COVID) it feels redundant and repetitive to share what the project entails. But, since I added a twist to my plans, I will rehash them for what feels like the umpteenth time.

Originally, I wanted to just try hiking the 653 trails (give or take) in the 30th edition of the White Mountain Guidebook in a year. But I have been really into the New England 100 Highest in the last few months and was sad that I would have to put them off for another year. I started doing the math, and came to the conclusion that if I gave myself a few extra months to work on red lining then I could probably squeeze in the additional hikes needed to do the New England 100 Highest (NEHH). I would start hiking June 19, and hopefully finish on September 19, 2023 after 15 months hiking roughly 3-4 days a week, every week. 

Red Lining AKA Tracing

Red Lining has been renamed the Trails Objective by the GRID website which oversees this objective. Trails Objective feels clunky so I’m going to call it Tracing in my posts. Tracing means hiking all of the trails in the White Mountain Guidebook. There are roughly 653 individual trails as well as short unnamed trails to tent sites, views, and springs. You must make an honest effort to hike all of the trails, according to the GRID committee. 

The GRID committee has a spreadsheet on their website which includes all of the trails. Most people who are tracing use this spreadsheet to keep track of their data, and I will follow suit. There are 1,453 miles of trails included in tracing and they are all over northern New Hampshire and into Maine. However, in order to hike all of the trails, it’s inevitable that you will hike the same trail multiple times. It is estimated that mileage totals will be around 1,800 or more by the time I finish this part of my goal.   

There have been 74 people that have finished this hiking challenge. According to the Fastest Known Time website, one person has finished this challenge as an “FKT” back in 2013, a man named Matt Hickey. He finished tracing the Whites in 193 days. Most people take years to finish this hiking challenge. Only four people have completed the challenge more than once, and only one person has completed the list more than three times. Tracing is one of the most complicated hiking challenges in New Hampshire because it requires a lot of logistics and meticulous data keeping. What I love about tracing is that every day you do a different hike and a lot of the trails are seldom used so they are more challenging to navigate. Tracing feels like a real wilderness adventure to me. 

The Routes  

I created 182 individual hikes out of the 1,453 miles of trails in the 30th edition of the guidebook. Out of those hikes, there are 3 overnights. The rest are day hikes. I also have planned out 17 traverses which will require car spots. I will hike all four seasons in order to accomplish my goal. 

The New England 100 Highest

On top of working on hiking all of the trails in the guidebook, I am going to be working on hiking the 100 highest peaks in New England. This list is something that I’ve been working on slowly since 2018 and it contains the 48 4000’ers of New Hampshire, 5 4000’ers in Vermont, 14 4000’ers in Maine, and an additional 33 peaks in Vermont, Maine, and New Hampshire. 16 of the 100 highest peaks are herd path/bushwhacks (not including Owl’s Head). These peaks require backcountry navigation skills, and are not maintained trails. The peaks are scattered all across New England, from the border of Canada and Maine, to near the border of Canada and Vermont, and everywhere in between.

In the process of tracing, I will inevitably hike the 48 4000’ers of NH as well as 7 of the 100 highest peaks. The rest of the peaks on that list I have planned out as both day hikes and overnights. 

In total, I will add an additional 21 days of hiking to the 185 days of hiking that are required to complete tracing. In the next fifteen months, I will hike 206 days, give or take, and drive thousands of miles all over New England. I will do this while working part time and living a semi-normal life on my “off” days. 

Why I’m Doing This

Since my diagnosis, I’ve never really stopped thinking about my original tracing attempt. In so many ways it was tied to my cancer journey and I’ve come to the conclusion that I can’t possibly separate them from each other. I can’t start over and erase the past by reattempting my hiking goal, and I wouldn’t want to. Cancer has made me into a different person and I don’t want to change back to who I was before it. My tracing attempt prior to cancer feels like the prequel to the hardest nineteen months of my life. But over the course of those nineteen months I never stopped wanting to try my attempt again. I have unfinished business with this hiking goal. I have a deep rooted desire to try again at accomplishing it and unless I try again I can’t move on. There is nothing that I want more than to take the next fifteen months and put my all into finally accomplishing the goal that was taken from me in August 2020. August 2020 was not my swan song and I will not let cancer take this from me.