I completed a thru-hike of the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail less than a year ago, yet I was nervous about running the 20-mile Bridger Ridge Traverse last weekend, my first mountain adventure of the season. In the intervening 10 months, the deepest I’d gone into the backcountry was Zimmerman Park, on the Rimrocks overlooking Billings. The considerations of a mountain excursion felt unfamiliar and daunting again: getting caught in inclement weather above treeline, encountering hostile wildlife, running out of water, or getting injured far from a road.
Add in the drive to Bozeman and the logistics of shuttling from one trailhead to another as a solo hiker, and I couldn’t help but wonder: "What’s the point?" As I went through my final preparations Friday night — piling up granola bars, filling water bottles, setting alarms, Googling “grizzly bears in the Bridgers” for the tenth time — I still had doubts. By then, sticking it to my nerves was as compelling a reason to hike as hiking itself, to prove to myself that I wasn't a coward. Just a few miles into the hike, before summiting the first peak or seeing any photo-worthy views, I had answered my earlier question about the point.
The point was riding the line between the excruciating and the exhilarating. It was tired legs, the crunch of rocks underfoot, how blue Gatorade tastes sacred rather than artificial if you’re tired and thirsty enough. The point was that by just putting one foot in front of another, again.
