We are planning to start backpacking the Colorado Trail on June 25th. Over the seven months leading up to this through hike* Julie spent hours each week studying the trail guide, watching videos or reading the internet, thinking about food (recipes, calories per day, and how to re-supply), and we both worked on our fitness. Some of the online resources are listed below.

  • What is a through hike? Normal backpacking is usually either a “there and back” or can be a “shuttle” hike from one end of a trail to the other, but a through hike involves hiking a long enough distance that you have to stop in some towns to re-supply.

We also took a few shake-down / test run short backpacking trips both to get used to carrying packs loaded like we expect, and also to test some of the new gear we purchased. Speaking of new gear, another thing we did to get ready was a lot of shopping. We bought a lighter tent, I bought a lighter sleeping pad and rain gear, we paid stupid tariffs to import four ounce hiking shirts made in Japan, and we both tried different shoes and clothing.

We also weighed things. We know how many ounces of socks we are carrying, how much our rain coats weigh, and that our tent weighs two pounds three ounces. Here is what we are bringing and how much it all weighs (courtesy of the free, open-source LighterPack website):

Brian’s List

Julie’s List (Note: several items with quantity zero are in my pack - these are the back-up plan in case I bail out)

Note that the weights are all just the permanent things - food, water, and cooking gas weight will add ten or more pounds to each our packs.

Resources we found helpful:

  • Colorado Trail Guide book and Data book published by the Colorado Trail Foundation
  • Snackbox on YouTube - Outside Comfort Zone - Snackbox (his trail name) creates very detailed and helpful videos covering each segment of the trail, and he has even re-made several of the videos to update them.
  • Reddit r/lightweight has discussions about how to lighten your pack base weight
  • Reddit r/coloradotrail discusses the CT
  • Facebook has a CT group for every year
  • Chef Corso on YouTube has creative backpacking meal ideas