From a hotel in the Chamonix Valley, I looked out as the August morning sun lit up the highest mountain in western Europe. Situated in an already magnificent part of the Western Alps, Mont Blanc is a snow covered monstrosity in its own right. Some ten miles wide, 30 miles long, and at an elevation of 15,766ft it's a massif of ice and granite wholly impossible to see completely from the ground. I stood at the window from my hotel room looking at it equally with excitement and trepidation at how the coming days would unfold.

The Tour du Mont Blanc, or TMB, is a hiking trail that circles around the entire mountain, crossing the borders of France, Italy, and Switzerland for 103 miles. Most hikers start at the trailhead in Les Houches, a French town in the west end, and hike counterclockwise around the mountain before reaching the same place again, roughly ten days later. I had taken a bus into the mountains from Geneva, got a hotel close to the trailhead, and was about to start with the goal to complete the south circuit from Les Houches to Orsieres over about a week.

The trail left the road and immediately ascended the first pass, Col du Tricot with about 1100m gain over one of Mont Blanc's western ridges. It was a steep and tiring climb, but doable. I reached the top at noon and started down the other side, hiking through forested hollows and past numerous rushing mountain creeks. I reached an open field and looked down at the small towns spread out along the valley ahead. After some gradual decline, I found the campground at Les Contamines and checked in.

Which made me glad that it was pretty straightforward so far, especially considering how little planning I had done. I started the trek with no idea where I would get food or lodging throughout the week. There are refugios where you can stay, but all of those got booked months in advance, forcing me to bring a tent. But how available the campsites would be in the busy season was another question, one with no immediate answers. But it seemed to work so far.

I continued south the next morning along the narrowing valley, hiking among numerous groups of people and an occasional dog. The ascent from there to Col du Bonhomme was steep and painful as it went over rocky terrain in the alpine heat. I was out of shape and exhausted barely halfway up this bastard of a climb. I thought, is every day going to be like this? The TMB is laid out so that you hike over about one pass, or "col", per day. I tried not to think about it as I pushed myself upward, nearly scrambling at times in my heavy pack, all in the view of immense, limitless rugged mountaintops and alpine sheep.

I finally reached the top and threw my pack off, exhausted. The valley from which I came faded far below in an emerald colored haze. Even on that exposed ridge it was a clear day with barely a breeze to be had. It was indeed August in the Alps.

Continuing on, the trail went along the mountain to the left for what ended up being a painful mile of uneven, rocky surfaces. But I finally got to the Refuge de la Croix, and was able to restore my badly depleted energy with a bowl of meat and pasta. I didn't know at first where I would get food out here, but it turned out that the TMB was full of village cafes and refugios where you can refuel before the next mountain pass. No need for a stove or backpacking food or any of that nonsense. Seriously, would you like a fucking baguette with your wine and cheese? It was great.

I refilled my water and continued east. The trail went steeply down the mountainside for hours. I could see the Les Chapieux Campground and two restaurants way down at the bottom the whole time, making me feel like I was closer than I actually was. I finally reached the valley floor at mid-afternoon.

I was doing it wrong. There has to be a better way, I thought, to get over these mountain passes without pushing myself to the edge of exhaustion. Back when I did bike tours I would haul a touring bike with cargo and gear over the steep mountain grades in the western US and had the same problem at first. But I eventually figured out that I needed to pace slower, drop the gears, and pedal slowly at a high cadence. The point was to set a slow pace and save my energy. Today's pass, Col de la Seigne, was my next chance to try this theory on foot.

After a couple hours of gradual incline, the trail suddenly started winding steeply up the right side. I relaxed and slowly made my way up the winding trail. Like a turtle. Three hours later I reached the top. I felt great, partially because the overcast weather spared me any punishment from the sun, and because I did it the right way. I crossed the into Italy, which would have some of the most magnificent scenery yet.

I had originally thought to camp somewhere soon, but realized that I could push over the next pass and get an extra day of rest at a hotel in Courmayeur. So I sat down by the trail, got out my phone, and changed my reservation to an additional day.

"Hey, did you hike the Camino before?" somebody said. I looked up. It was another hiker who saw the tattoo on my wrist of a seashell and cross, the emblem of the Spanish Camino de Santiago.

"Yeah, I hiked it last year," I replied. He introduced himself as Steve, or more specifically, Camino Steve on his Instagram. He went on to say that he was inspired to hike the Camino because of a dream he had that his late father spoke to him of a "World's End Sign" a number of years ago, which upon waking turned out to be the Camino's final milemarker and western terminus at Cape Finisterre: The mythical edge of the world and end of all things. And so, he went on a quest across the Spanish countryside to reach this place in his father's memory.

For me, though I made the same journey by way of a different story, we both ended up in the same place and with the same understanding that such a prominent cape on the edge of the Galician coast is truly of another realm. And yet, it would not be the last adventure. Not for either of us. When will that ever happen?

In any case, I needed to get going. The trail forked, either to continue along the valley towards the next campsite, or over the ridge to the right towards the town and my hotel, some eight horrible miles further. Well, you only live once, I guess. I started upward, already exhausted.

The trail wound its way up a mountainside hollow, and even at a slow pace was absolutely backbreaking. I stopped for a break just after the tree line and met Antonio, who started his trek in Courmayeur about ten days ago. He was making an extra push to get to the end of his hike in the late day. A 400 meter gain shouldn't be this bad, but there we were, hauling our gear and our miserable selves up an impossibly steep ridgeside, begging the mountain to spare us of anymore pain. Meanwhile, Mont Blanc itself showed its most magnificent presence yet from across the valley in thundering, resounding glory.

We finally crested a mountain spur, marking the end of the horrible climb. The trail continued along a gradual decline for the next hour before crossing a ridge saddle and descending towards the town. I reached a refugio at the ridge top in the late afternoon and bought a few snacks.

A familiar face sat at a nearby table. It was Camino Steve. He went on to tell me more about his Camino adventures while I sat down and gave my body some badly needed calories. It was all really interesting but I needed to get going in the late day and wished him luck. He went on to finish his Tour du Mont Blanc a week or so later, and continued trekking into the high places eastward.

I started downhill towards the town, already disappointed that the gondolas were closed, forcing me to hike the ski resort's maintenance roads instead. It would have been okay if it weren't for the fact that I developed a shitty case of chafing in my groin area. A day's worth of friction between my thighs and my balls had finally caught up with me as I walked miserably down the mountain. And the Vaseline only went so far. Fuck, I have to get to my hotel!

But I finally made it, waddling into Courmayeur at 6pm like a penguin. Another backpacker and his girlfriend passed me on the sidewalk. Sensing my distress and exhaustion at that hour, he said "You're almost there!" Finally I got to the hotel, checked into my room, went straight for the shower, and then crashed for ten hours.

And after that was two days of well-earned rest.

I frequented a pizza restaurant just across the river, somewhat daunted by the language barrier. English isn't as common as a second language in Italy as in other Western European countries. I thought it would be fun if I stayed, downloaded Italian on a language app, and started learning how to talk to the people.

And the rash cleared up by the second day, but I needed to find something to prevent it from coming back. In the states we have things like Chamois Buttr or Body Glide for this, and I thought that surely the outdoor stores in a touristy mountain town like Courmayeur would have something similar. I went from place to place in the city centre and none of them carried anything. They just pointed me to the next store and eventually named the place where I had first started. There were plenty of mountain bikes and Patagonia jackets everywhere, but not a single outfitter sold anything to help with chafing? I mean, maybe the Italians are averse to the idea of a daunting scrotum rash, but who really knows?

In a last ditch effort, I went to a grocery store to see if there was anything useful in the skin care section. And suddenly there it was. Chapstick. That could do it. Of all things, freaking chapstick. I bought a few sticks and went back to my hotel.

Early the next morning, I got pastries at a cafe and continued north out of a neighborhood and up the forested side of the next mountain. Near the top was a good view of the town, and thankfully no more apparent chafing problems. That chapstick ended up saving my ass (or more specifically, my nuts), and the trail continued around the mountain going northeast above the valley.

I reached Tronchey, the next campground, at midday. After setting up my tent, I laid on the grass and watched the colorful parachutes of four paragliders slowly turning and flipping about high in the wind in front of the steep wall and craggy spires of the mountain.

Continuing on the next next day, I had one more pass, Grand Col Ferret, to cross on this circuit. I started as early as I could to get to the ascent while there was shade. Because if there's one thing that really drains my energy out here, it's the sun. From the summit, this pass had one of the most remarkable views of the entire hike. I looked back at twelve miles of the valley, spread out beneath a vast panorama of stone gods, crisp blue skies, and lazy summertime clouds. Then I turned northeast and took another step, crossing into Switzerland.

That evening in La Fouly, I went to get pasta at the restaurant next to the campground. I wanted more protein after a long day on the trail and looked at the appetizers. One of them was "Polenta". I looked it up on my phone and it said that it was a type of corn based porridge. It sounded good so I ordered one. When they brought it out, I suddenly lost track of thought at what I was looking at.

Good old American grits. Out here. A diner staple of many a USA road stop, family restaurant, Denny's, and Waffle House, had found its way out here - or more likely by coincidence it was always part of their cuisine. I almost asked them to bring me some butter and cheese. This trail was full of surprises.

The TMB went along the road for most of the last morning. Just before Orsieres, it veered left and up the northeast end of Mont Blanc, disappearing into the next pass. It would go around the north side of the mountain for what would be three more days of hiking, most notably up the facing mountain of Le Brevent - most assuredly with a great view across the Chamonix valley - before finally descending to the starting point in Les Houches.

It was an alluring idea but I was on a schedule. So I continued on the road instead towards Orsieres to catch the next train out of the mountains. But only after getting a charcuterie board and beer from the restaurant next to the station. Again with the food out here.

The whole area has a great transit system. Even the remote towns have passenger trains going to the major cities on semi-hourly schedules. And the road on the Italian side had buses going by every hour. At some point I want to come back and finish the north circuit. And I know exactly how I would fly to Geneva, take a train into the mountains, get a taxi to the trailhead, and keep going.

You can check out the Insta videos I made about it here and here.

I wasn’t always this interested in culinary exploration. But Chicago changed the way I think about food. Since I moved there, I discovered that some of the most brilliant, innovative artists that the city has to offer are not only the ones who build the art galleries, street murals, and warehouse collectives in places like Pilsen or Humboldt Park. But there are also many talented people who work in the restaurants and the kitchens all across the city every single day. And their creations are among the best that you will find anywhere.

Among the very best of them was Hot Doug’s – the wildly popular hot dog restaurant in the Avondale neighborhood. For 13 years, owner Doug Sohn had served a variety of amazing hot dogs and sausages, including classic Chicago-style dogs, Polish sausage, and beer soaked bratwurst, to thousands of loyal, hungry people.

But what really made his restaurant stand out was the gourmet specialty selection. His menu rotated ten different gourmet sausages of all different kinds of game meats, aged cheeses, sauces, and other random flavorful combinations and toppings, all on a hot dog bun.

Over the years, I had patronized his store for things like a Thanksgiving Turducken Sausage with pumpkin cream and cranberry-infused gourmet cheese, a smoked shrimp and pork hot dog with Cajun shrimp remoulade, goat cheese and honey drizzle. And sometimes just a plain old Chicago style hot dog with all the decorations would suit me just fine.

But he was best known for his world famous Foie Gras Hot Dog. A foie gras and sauternes duck sausage with a spread of truffle aioli, chunks of foie gras mousse, and a dash of fleur de sel sea salt. It was as legendary as the culinary kings of old, and is still to this day one of the best things I have ever eaten.

It was amazing enough to capture the attention of Anthony Bourdain, who had nothing but great things to say about it when he visited the restaurant. Thanks to the publicity, the clientele in that otherwise uneventful industrial corridor in Avondale continued to explode.

In May of 2014, owner Doug Sohn announced on his website that he planned to close the store for good in October of that year, giving his patrons five months to enjoy whatever they could from his one of a kind menu. Since then, the lines became exponentially more and more insane. Before, I would wait ten minutes in line on any given weekday, but after the announcement it took me at least two hours to get inside. I went once on a Saturday at the end of June and got through the line three hours later. And it didn’t slow down. It doubled, tripled, and quadrupled in size over the summer.

Having just got back from a five week trip to Virginia at the end of August, I wanted to go one last time, and it was now or never. So on the following Saturday, Mike and I agreed to meet in line at 8am. Word on the street was that the wait time was about 8.5 hours (yes, I’m serious) if you failed to beat the morning surge, so I bumped it ahead to 7:00 for safe measure.

We lucked out. When I got there, the sun was coming up and only ten people stood ahead of me. Crowds started showing up exponentially over the next few hours, backing up to what looked like a 6 hour wait around 9am. It didn’t stop there; the line kept growing and growing.

Our wait turned out just shy of 4 hours, and was actually quite a bit of fun. The ladies in front of us generously shared Bloody Marys with us to help kill the time. Because why not tailgate to such a noteworthy occasion?

Before we knew it, it was 10:30 and the doors opened. The bittersweet feeling of closure was already setting in as I walked inside for the last time. Doug was at the front counter taking orders as he always did, giving Cindy a hard time for having never been to Hot Doug’s before. His banter was as fun as ever, easily getting the customers laughing at the expense of one or two people. “What am I gonna do, get a bad review on Yelp?”

Mike and I put in our orders and sat down with our new friends at a table for five.

We both got a Foie Gras Hot Dog for obvious reasons. In addition, we ordered four more sausages and shared halves of them: The Smoked and Spicy Alligator Sausage with Crayfish and Shrimp Remoulade and Raspberry-infused Bellavitano Cheese, the Smoked Shrimp and Pork with Creole Mustard, Hominy Grits and Goat Cheese, a Veal Saltimbocca Sausage with Sage Mustard, Sheep’s Milk Brigante Cheese and Fried Prosciutto, and a Lamb and Pork Belly with Onion Butter, Brie Cheese and sweet fucking Tomato Preserves.

I didn’t know what half of that stuff even was. But it all tasted as awesome as it sounds.

And I’m never one to waste any time savoring the flavors, fuck that. Even if they are out of this world. A few months before, I had visited Au Cheval, a great diner in the West Loop that is well known among locals for their high quality cheeseburgers. As soon as I finished one, a guy came up to me and told me that it was the fastest he had ever seen anybody eat a burger. And he was right. When something is that good, I will mow it the fuck down.

Mike was pretty much the same way. We finished off our share of the sausages with some room left for duck fat fries. The ladies finished their decadent array of gourmet food and we all got up, satisfied and sad all the same that our favorite place in town would soon be gone forever.

When I walked outside, the line was at least as long as a football field.

It’s been ten years since Doug closed his iconic sausage restaurant. Since then, there has been no shortage of great places where I could still find a good Chicago style hotdog or Maxwell Polish sausage. For a time, the cooks from Hot Doug’s even opened their own restaurant in the northside, Hot G Dog, and continued to sell Doug’s style of gourmet sausages to people like me, Mike, and anyone else who didn’t want to let go. But eventually they, too, moved on.

Because it was a great thing for a moment, and nothing great lasts forever.

Chicago always keeps me coming back for its food. Since Hot Doug’s made its historic closure, many other chefs and restauranteurs have continued to craft unique creations in their kitchens, contributing to what is still an exceptional food scene. And I will continue to explore it for as long as I can. But I don’t know if anything will ever capture the magic and the moment of what Doug Sohn had done. As it continues to resonate in my thoughts, I am certain that Hot Doug’s will be remembered for many years to come as a truly, truly quintessential culinary venture.

#foodporn courtesy of Mike Bacos

It may be hard for anyone who has seen photos of it to believe, but the highlands of south Iceland are indeed part of our own Planet Earth, and not something taken from a dark, hostile moonscape of light years and lifetimes into the astral void. It's a real place, and is a remarkable example of our own planet's geological diversity.

The famous Laugavegur Trail goes through this remote place, commanding a degree of experience and humility in the face of the country's wild terrain, thundering ice capped volcanoes, raging river canyons, volatile weather systems, and more. But if you're prepared and the weather isn't working against you as it often does, you might have a moment, an hour, a day, or perhaps even a few days to enjoy it.

I hoped so, anyway. It was a rainy July morning at sea level in Reykjavik when I was about leave for a three day trek through this wilderness. What it would be like in the mountains was anybody's guess. I boarded the shuttle bus outfitted by Arctic Adventures at the main cathedral.

I was greeted by our guide, Anika. Other hikers boarded the bus and we left for the mountains. Rain continued as we traveled out of the city and into the countryside. Three hours later, we arrived at the north trailhead at Landmannalaugar. Clouds were low and imposing, hovering just above the tops of the dark green mountains that surrounded the site. Our group brought our packs into one of the huts and we got oriented with our guide and itinerary for the next three days.

To ensure our preparedness, Anika took us on a day hike for the afternoon along the nearby colorful ridgeline. Luckily, the rain backed off and the clouds lifted. Coming back, sulfuric steam blew out of the geothermal surface of numerous mountainsides, perhaps warning modern civilization of a seismic event beyond reckoning. We returned to the shelter, ate dinner, and slept in anticipation of our first steps into this alluring, beautiful hellscape.

We started on the trail the next day, hiking into a lava field full of gnarled basalt formations covered in patchy moss. It would certainly be impassible if not for the well cut mountain trail that was carved out for us. Steep elevation gains continued. Fortunately, the rain cleared last night and the sun was out, though there was no way to know for how long. At this latitude and altitude, the weather can be outright vicious.

We stopped at the Hrafntinnusker hut at midday for lunch. It was situated at the top of the pass, giving way to about an hour of flat hiking and a steep downhill trajectory towards Lake Álftavatn and our next shelter. I remember looking out at the edge of that huge, open valley. I couldn’t see any trace of civilization besides the trail that made its way towards the lake, and tiny dots of what would be our shelter for the night.

I knew I was going to hate this descent as I saw the trail curve its way down the mountainside. For the next hour, I cautiously maneuvered my way down the steep, ragged trail, digging my poles into the dirt whenever possible, regretting that I didn't bring newer shoes with better traction.

But we finally reached the valley floor, including the 78 year old grandfather whose family convinced him to come along. I mean, why not take the next step if you can, right? It reminded me of Dan the Storyteller from the Camino. He was in his mid seventies and had the energy of a fifty year old. I guess some people have the feeling in their age that there is still so much more in life to see.

We forded a fast, freezing river without incident and hiked the final three miles to Álftavatn, escaping what would be another night of rain and sharp, cold wind. It was one hell of a day.

Continuing east the next morning, we crossed another freezing glacial river and turned south through a large flat plain of black sand in stark contrast with a large, mossy mountain of prominence just to my right. We passed over more ridges and hills, one with a large field, sparkling with broken shards of obsidian scattered about the ground.

There was also the raging waterfall of the Innri–Emstruá around midday, a wild glacial river thrashing its way out of the high country. But we finally made it to the Emstrur shelter a few hours later after a somewhat uneventful descent.

The final day from there to Þórsmörk was about nine miles and mostly went along the side of the river canyon, descending at last out of the highlands. Here, the prominent Mýrdalsjökull Volcano stood high to the left. Near the end of the trail was a forest, one of scarce number in the country. And finally, Þórsmörk, the south terminus of the trail.

Anika planned to take the rest of the group on day hikes for the next day. But I was ready to get back to the city by then and took the bus out of Þórsmörk instead. It was the end of a remarkable Icelandic adventure.

Well, not really. There's more.

I sat on the bus with four other backpackers about halfway back to Reykjavik when we suddenly saw fire blowing past the right side windows.

"STOP THE BUS!!! STOP THE BUS!!!!" I heard a woman behind me yell, and the driver stopped in the middle of the road. "EVERYBODY GET THE FUCK OUT NOW!!!!" She kicked the side of the door open and we all ran into a field along the road.

We looked back as the front of the bus was engulfed in flames, with each of us a bit rattled but nobody hurt. We feared that the diesel tank might explode, but the local firemen showed up pretty quickly. One of them shuttled us away from the scene, and I thanked the fellow and shook his hand.

In the end, that whole fiasco delayed us by an hour and I still got the Icelandic hotdog that I had been craving for days.

Check out the reel I made about it on Insta here.

Snæfellsnes is a large peninsula two hours north of Reykjavik with a mountain system extending towards Snæfellsjökull, a large 1400m snow covered volcano at the western end. On a good day you can see it from Reykjavik some 100 miles away.

It was a 3 hour drive from the rental agency in Keflavik to the campground on the south end of the peninsula. After checking in, I enjoyed the calm, sunny evening surrounded by horse ranches in view of a good mountain vista. Early the next morning I continued driving west and stopped to see Bjarnafoss, just one of many waterfalls in this region (and all of Iceland for that matter), and its freezing meltwater crashing its way down basalt cliffs and rock piles.

I could have continued west towards the volcano but cut northwards over the mountain pass instead. Looking back at the shore from near the top, the sun was barely breaking through the fog, reminding me yet again that Iceland is not of this world. None of it.

Continuing on the peninsula's north shore, I reached Kirkjufellsfossar at mid-morning, where multiple waterfalls poured into a small lake in view of the prominent Kirkjufell Mountain. This is a vista recognized on many a postcard, and now on my social media as well. From there, it was a long day going east on a dirt road along the north coast, an hour's drive northward on the mainland, and then a rough two hours going up, over, down, or around the many fjords of the southern Westfjords region, before finally reaching the village of Flókalundur, 60 miles across the water from where I slept last night.

I slowly drove north the next morning on a dirt road over a mountain pass and reached the oceanside again, some 40 stressful minutes later, making a well earned stop at Dynjandi, this cascading masterpiece of nature.

The road going north was easier after this. Most of it was paved and cut through the mountains over bridges and tunnels before reaching Ísafjörður, the largest town in the Westfjords. If there was one mistake I made when planning this trip, it was that I didn't set aside an extra day to check it out. It reminded me a lot of Seward, Alaska, another cute town by the water from a where and when of years ago. At one point, Ísafjörður also drew quite a bit of local attention after my favorite Icelandic post-rock band performed there. Regretfully, I was on a schedule and only had enough time to get lunch and refill the gas before going south.

I continued southeast for an hour along a number of pronounced fjords in view of the more remote snow covered peninsula in the north. Eventually I hit mainland and stopped at a campground halfway back to Reykjavik in the late afternoon. I made one last stop at the Hraunfossar Waterfall the next morning. Here, water crosses a porous lava plain and pours out of holes in the cliffside above the river. As if the rest of Iceland's waterfalls aren't already unique enough.

Back in 2017, I left Iceland thinking that I had unfinished business in the north country. I certainly wasn't wrong. But now it was time to start another chapter in the south. I dropped off the van in Keflavik early that afternoon and started gearing up for a big adventure in the highlands.

Check out the reels I made about this roadtrip on Insta here, here, and here.

The towers of the Santiago Cathedral are shrouded in morning fog. Leaving west from the plaza, I follow the Camino Fisterra, ocean bound, through the western edge of town past old oak groves and city trails. Santiago is quiet in the early morning, as is this trail compared to the big crowds I saw from the Sarria stage.

I didn’t give much thought to the elevation profile, or I would have expected the steep hike up the ridgeside of Mar de Ovellas at midday, which despite its difficulty has a spectacular view of the valley behind. Descending the other side, I cross the medieval Ponte Maceria, a picturesque 12^th century bridge over the charging waters of the Tambre. Negreira, the largest town before the coast, is just a few miles further. I check in there for the night.

The path continues into a flat valley for half the next day, passing cornfields and cattle farms. Galicia is rich with agriculture, which is evident whenever I see a tractor go by or livestock wander through the villages. I like it in every way but one: All of the farms smell like cow shit. But I still enjoy the overcast day as I walk along the old farm roads. That night in Olveiroa, I reconnect with Choi the Korean Chef, the only other person from the Camino Frances who I have seen out here. It’s the first meal I’ve had with her since she made dinner for me and the others back in Leon. We have one last pilgrim dinner together with Diane from Australia.

From here, the trail winds into the mountains for half the next day. I leave right before sunrise and hike along the ridge next to the charging Rio Xallas and its cascading waters far below. The morning sun lights up the mountain fog behind me in tones of orange before lifting and breaking up above the hilltops. I continue over hills and open fields as I have done now for too many days to count. Finally clearing one last steep ridge, the scenery changes.

Here, pilgrims have journeyed for hundreds of miles far from their homes to reach this place, where for the first time in their lives they see the vast blue horizon line of the Atlantic and the roar of the ocean. Steep ridges descend down to the water along a ragged coast, including those of the mythical edge of the world, Cape Finisterre, which is still a three hour hike away. I hike towards it, passing by coastal towns until I reach Fisterra, leave my pack at the aubergue there, and continue on.

Here at the south end of the cape lies the lighthouse, where the westbound pilgrim can go no further. Like a beacon, it stands above the eastern harbor and the open ocean to the south and west on what was once thought to be the end of the western lands. To kill time, I hike up the ridge. From the summit I can see the lighthouse, Fisterra, and the neighboring towns, and I wonder how many pilgrims from ancient times continued on from Santiago to reach these shores – to watch the sky in the west change from blue to gold as the sun descends above the water.

Early in my trip, I spent a night in a village albergue just outside of Burgos where the abuela who runs the place told me something I would never forget just as I was about to leave. She said that as I walk the path of the Camino, that the Camino will show my own path to me. Which at the time I didn’t quite understand, let alone believe. I never doubted her sincerity, but how does something inanimate like a hiking trail show me anything that profound? And how do I find my metaphorical path? What does that even mean? And even though I doubted her at the time, her words stayed with me ever since.

It is only at the end of my Camino that I finally understand that she was speaking from her own life. That she too had hiked on these ancient roads on a wonderful journey of her own, maybe even more than once. And that the Camino itself revealed to her the next step to take in an incredible life adventure. And she believed that this powerful place could do the same for me – so much so, I think, that she wanted to see the same Camino in the eyes of each pilgrim who wandered through her hostel in that tiny village.

And I can’t deny how right she was as I watch the sun descend like a giant ball of fire over the horizon line of the sea. I think that there is something about this that resonates with me more than I will ever know how to say in written word, photos, videos, or anything else. I didn’t believe it, nor did I look for it, but that didn’t matter.

The Camino finds you. It calls you. And if you answer, it will show you your path.

I sit and look out over the peaceful water. Clouds light up above the red sun as it slowly falls behind the edge of the world, still casting a soft glow on the cliffsides while waves crash on the rocks below.

At last, as the curtain of nightfall covers the ocean, I get up and make my way on the trail back to the town in the fading daylight, already thinking about my next adventure.

Thanks for reading! This story begins in The Pyrenees!

I have been hiking all day on a winding mountain road past little towns, highland farms, and wandering cattle. The terrain – and the weather for that matter – is a welcome change from the continuously flat Meseta and its April showers that consumed the last week of my life. I’m a few miles out from the Cruz De Ferro, an iron cross standing at the top of the pass just after the hillside village of Foncebadón. I check into an aubergue after a hard day uphill.

Many pilgrims regard the Cruz De Ferro as an important place to address the burdens in their lives, symbolized by a stone that each person brings with them on their journey. They hike for hundreds of miles, carrying their stones and the emotional weight of their hardships that it represents to this summit, cast their burdens at the foot of the iron cross, and continue on, hopefully in a better state of mind and heart. I too had my stone that I carried with me up this mountain. In my case, my burden was guilt.

There was a family dog who I neglected in my teenage years when he needed me. We didn’t know how to handle such a wild dog back then, so we left him chained up in the yard most of the time and I became busy with other matters. Eventually my family brought him in the house when he was older and calmer, but it was long after I had left. Only later in life did I realize the weight of my mistake – not being part of his life – far later than I would ever have the chance to repair.

Before I started my journey, I went to his burial site at the family farm and picked up a stone. I have carried it with me, and the weight of my guilt, on the Camino since the very beginning. Now, standing at the cross at the top of the mountain, I take it out, determined to never treat another family pet, or any animal, like that ever again and I cast it onto the pile.

The descent from there into the Ponferrada valley entails about three hours of steep, rocky downhill trails before leveling off at the valley floor. It isn’t much fun, but the view is great and the morning is pleasant. Flowers appear along the forests, soon blooming across entire hillsides. I try my best to enjoy the morning without twisting my foot on the rocky trail. I reach the bottom and stay in Molinaseca at the valley’s eastern edge for a night and then continue across the valley for an entire day through Ponferrada’s city centre, going west to the postcard town of Villafranca. The path leads me through gentle rolling hills, vineyards, and hazy mountains in the distance.

I meet Becky from LA, eating dinner by herself at a terrace and just starting her Camino. She has questions about logistics, like how easy is it to find available aubergues, should she make reservations, what the heck is she doing out here, etc. I was nervous on my first day too. Next morning, she already passes me at a faster pace. She’ll be fine.

After Villafranca and its beautiful Castillo, the trail follows a rushing creek along another big uphill ascent to O’Cebreiro, the second highest point of the Camino. Leaving the main road behind, I hike steeply up a large ridge for about three hours, soon revealing spectacular views of the valleys below. The Galician border is marked by a large sign at the summit of the pass. Becky catches up and we team up, hiking in and out of the mountaintop clouds before we reach her planned stopping point. I stay in the next town after and we keep going west the next day, hiking downhill out of the mountain fog.

Something dawns on me as I descend on the western side of the pass, going by countless villages and tattered yellow arrows: For the first time ever, Santiago is about a week away. This place that I spent years dreaming about was actually materializing – the end of all of this, by the gods, is in sight. And I don’t know how to handle it. Because up until now, I have been dealing with nothing but frustrating delays and setbacks.

For seven years, ever since I briefly dated somebody who hiked it, I was fixated on the idea of doing the Camino myself. I started learning about it, obsessively watched Youtube videos, and even bought a guidebook and outlined it at one point. My obsession snowballed into my first nervous decision to travel to Spain in 2018. Unfortunately, I realized then that I didn’t have the money to take the trip after paying for some unexpected dental work. I couldn’t meet the budget at that time, and I don’t travel in the red.

I tried again in the following spring, but canceled my trip last minute because I couldn’t find comfortable hiking shoes to work with my widening left foot. It’s possible that I could have used what I had for distance hiking, but I’ll never know. It was a situation fraught with anger and disappointment. Instead, I traveled around Europe for three weeks, visiting different countries as a contingency. To an extent the unexpected micro-adventures brought comfort and healing, but it wasn’t where I really wanted to be.

The third time I attempted the Camino was in the fall of 2019. I successfully hiked for the first third of the trek, finishing at Burgos with the intent on returning the next year to reach the end. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the foresight to anticipate an imminent global health crisis that might well complicate my plans.

The fourth attempt was derailed in 2020 by worldwide Coronavirus lockdowns.

And the fifth time? Well, that was my decision. It was the fall of 2021 and tourism was allowed again in varying degrees between America and the EU. The problem was that even though travel was allowed for vaccinated tourists, I could still be exposed to the virus – and if so, be required to quarantine for 10 days in a hotel. But where? How does it even work if I catch the virus in a remote village without any hotels? Further, I would also need a negative Covid test to return to my own country. And if it fails, I could end up in Quarantine Gulag for that as well.

It led me to the conclusion that we as nations really didn’t have a grip on this problem yet. And places like Spain were allowing just enough people to keep their tourism industry from collapsing. Which I understood, but I realized I didn’t want to be dealing with so many unknowns. Is this how I’m supposed to travel now? Wondering if and when I get sick? As painful as it was to come to terms with it, I felt rushed and ultimately wrong in doing this. And so, once again, my Camino was delayed. This time by my own choosing.

And this time, I broke my own heart.

Well, that’s in the past. It’s a perfect sunny morning in the forest after Sarria. I got out of the mountains a few days ago and Santiago is closing in. Despite all of my sadness and hesitation, I’m not slowing down. Rather, I’ve been starting each day with a surge of pure energy. The weather is perfect and the hill country out here is gorgeous.

Galicia is noted for its lush forested hills, farms, and towns of ancient stone buildings - some converted for modern use, while others are left to crumble in time and the overgrowth of the woodlands. Going from to village to village each day, I’m reminded continuously that despite all of its modern advancements, Galicia bears the history of great kingdoms, old forests, and lovely hillside vistas that have stood throughout the ages. This place feels like a Shire by the sea.

The main cuisine out here is mariscos and pulpo caught from the coastal towns. That along with the local wines, which are always cheap, are perfect after a long hot day. I stop at the famous Pulperia Ezequiel in Melide, and then a cervezeria selling Pilgrim Beer, on my last day before reaching Santiago. Continuing past other bars and cafes, I see numerous people drinking together. They’re not in a hurry. Because tomorrow they will get to the end. And they don’t want tomorrow to come. They don’t want this dream to be over.

I keep seeing Becky, Ginger, Nick the Brit, the Canadian Ladies, and Dan the Storyteller, whenever I stop in the towns. I call him that because he started calling me Dan the Cowboy because of my hat. But every time I see him, he recalls some kind of interesting anecdote from the people he meets. He said he saw one guy on the trail with a cloth photo of a man’s face on his backpack. When he asked him what it was, the guy said it was a picture of his father. And that before this, his father had hiked the Camino eight times. This time would be his ninth.

Another time, Dan met somebody who was carrying a small pack over his chest. He told Dan that it was the ashes of his mother. That she always wanted to hike the Camino, and now they were doing it together.

Back in Villafranca, several of us shared a terrace behind an aubergue with a young Spanish lady and her father. She said that he was hospitalized a few years ago with a severe case of Covid that almost took his life. After he recovered, he said to her, “I want you to come with me on the Camino de Santiago.” And there they were.

And then there is the story that I heard from my archive of YouTube videos about a young woman from South Africa whose father was murdered right in front of her. For her, the Camino was her way of working through her trauma and healing from the pain.

I’m sure there are so many other tales like this. So many simple, genuine, broken people – in person or in spirit – who are out here on a journey for reasons that I will never know or hear of. But we each have something calling us to walk together on this ancient Way of Saint James, ultimately bringing us each to the outskirts of Santiago de Compostela. Here, I choose to spend the night in O Pedrouzo, a half days walk from the plaza.

And so, Santiago is finally in sight.

I start early the next morning, and whatever sadness and hesitation I felt about this place is gone. I’m charging harder than ever through the outer suburbs with an incredible rush of endorphins like I have never felt in my life, unable to slow down or stop. It feels like tsunami of energy is pushing me from behind. For four straight hours. My pack is the only reason why I’m not running.

Passing the outskirts of the city centre, I see Kirstie from Scotland, who for the last few days has been limping painfully on an overused, swollen ankle. I saw her early yesterday and was worried about her, but it looks like she’s about to hobble gloriously over the finish line. Which I understand. At this point, something has to physically stop us from reaching the end of this dream. We chat for a bit, and I tell her I’ll see her at the plaza.

HOLY SHIT!!! IT’S THE TOWERS!!!! The spires of the cathedral stand out above the rooftops. It’s only blocks away.

Finally, I descend a stairway and walk into the plaza below the façade of the mighty Santiago Cathedral, unable to hold back my tears. The towers cut sharply in the brisk morning sky. This whole place is full of pilgrims celebrating: relieved, sad, joyful, and victorious people pouring into the plaza all day long. I find a few of my trail friends near the middle, like Caleb the drinking Irishman, the Israeli who reminds me of Borat, and Becky and Ginger arriving soon after, and Kirstie, limping in pain and glory. Below the overpass coming into the plaza, a guy on a bagpipe starts playing Amazing Grace, and with it, a reminder of home. I’m losing it.

Santiago de Compostela was a lifetime away. But not anymore.

That night, pilgrims and locals of faith alike come together in the cathedral to attend the Pilgrim’s Mass. I don’t find out until later that the priest reads the name of each pilgrim who received their certificate at the Pilgrim’s Office in the last 24 hours, which must have included me. But I admire this immaculate, beautifully adorned sanctuary as he leads the congregation through each prayer from the high altar. I understand very little, and am certainly not familiar with any Catholic prayers and traditions, but I, a Pilgrim of the Camino, am welcome among them. The priest ends the mass with a beautiful prayer and blessing to the pilgrims.

I stay in Santiago another day, as some of my friends like Becky, Ginger, and Kirstie the Limping Scotsgirl, have already left town. But a few people like Dan the Storyteller and Nick the Brit are still around. Then there’s Vivian the Filipino, who was apparently around the whole time, but I only met her yesterday. We find Silvia the Italian at the plaza that evening and invite her to join us for mariscos and wine.

We’re about to end the evening when we pass by another group of pilgrims, already drunk and on their way to the next bar. They became a wild, close group of best friends ever since Pamplona. Before I realize it, we’re all drinking together. Cassie from Australia found them weeks ago. She tells me how she went through an extremely difficult situation in her personal life before coming out here and being swept up in her friendships with them. At the next bar, a guy on a guitar is singing cover songs. Everybody in this room has a smile. Pilgrims and locals alike are singing and dancing. Two of them are in love. I’m on my fifth drink as the guy sings La Bamba and everybody joins in.

And so, together in a tiny bar under the vibrant city lights of Santiago, we celebrate into the beautiful night. I can’t think of a better way for each of us to bring this crazy life adventure to its cathartic and inescapable end.

Only for me, this is not the end and my dream isn’t over. And so as the new day begins, I continue on the path going west out of the city.

This story concludes on the shores of Cape Finisterre.

I return to the cathedral and continue west out of the city. Following the riverwalk along a nice grove of trees, Burgos is awfully quiet. This is because it’s the end of the Semana Santa, the Spanish Holy Week and today is Easter Sunday. At 10am everybody is inside the churches attending Mass. And though I could count the number of locals on the street right now, I would find out later that the main plaza will eventually be packed wall to wall with people.

Going out of the city, the path winds uneventfully west along the highway for the rest of the day. Neither I, nor my gear, feels broken in – something that I lost by splitting this trip into sections. Having landed from a redeye flight into Madrid early this morning, my body thinks I stayed up all night as I hike into the afternoon, drowsy and exhausted. I expect my hiking schedule will force me out of my jetlag sooner than later, but right now I would rather lay on the grass than cross another bridge or pass another marker. I check in at the little town of Rabé de las Calzadas, where the only lady in the building stamps my Pilgrim’s Passport, the first of many to come.

Going west, the terrain crosses numerous hills and plateaus in the following days, with huge open vistas and often little protection from the erratic weather patterns that I should have expected in Mid-April. Clouds and scattered showers roll across the countryside as I approach the town of Castrojeriz on the fifth day. It is situated on the side of a large hill with a castillo at the top.

I have time to kill that afternoon and leave my pack at the aubergue to scuffle up to the summit. The overlook across the valley is spectacular, revealing the quilted terrain of farms spanning out across the plains and rolling hills far into the distance. Wind is fierce, blasting me in the face each time I look out from the castle walls, but I don’t care.

Hiking on, the chilly wind continues over more exposed ridges under grey skies. People try to ignore it and take selfies on the windy face of each dramatic hilltop overlook. Eventually these hills will level into the flat plain of the central Meseta, where I plan to hike for about a week.

Others are out here too. Though we almost never hike at the same speed, I start to recognize more people whenever I stop at a café or hostel. So far, I have met Karen the funny Belgian, and two Germans, one of whom looks like an older Johnny Knoxville. We sit together in the evenings, exhausted, eating pilgrim dinners with some hearty combination of meat, potatoes, wine, and pastries. Karen especially makes me laugh, often being the kind of person who makes others laugh at their own jokes.

For the most part, the weather is okay during my first week. Well, nothing great in life comes easy. And for every great high point in life that I achieve, there must be a time when my circumstances amount to an absolute, unmitigated pile of shit. Out here, it manifests in the form of what appears on the radar to be the remnants of a huge tropical depression poised to cover the entire Iberian Peninsula. It’s going to start tomorrow and continue for an undetermined number of days.

With no practical choice but to continue on, I leave the little town of Carrión de los Condes in the morning in my rain gear. The first few hours are bearable as clouds and scattered showers roll across the path, and are easily ignored. Continuing into the Meseta’s flat open farm country, hills and mountains farther off are obstructed by the fog and rainstorms. One in particular is closing in from the south like the arm of a giant beast. This dark wall of rain looks like it will get here in about 20 minutes. It hits us sooner.

With nothing protecting me as I hike on a straight road through the open countryside, the rainstorm pummels me with lateral gusts of wind and hard, cold rain pelting me in the face. Hours go by as I push myself through the monsoon, rushing water, and puddles on the dirt road. I look down and see shards of sleet on my jacket.

I hate to stop, but I have to go around a bush to pee. I struggle, shivering, to get my fleece gloves off of my numb fingers, and for a second I wonder if my own dick is frozen.

This goes on for ten miles. With no respite. Finally, I descend a hill and see a café at the edge of a small town. It’s crowded with pilgrims trying to get out of the rain. Everyone has a blank look of shock on their faces, like they’re trying to process what the fuck just happened. I find Karen and the Germans and try to warm up with a café con leche.

After two more hours of the same, I finally get to my aubergue. Both my Pilgrim’s Passport and my real one are soaking wet – turns out my rain cover wasn’t enough out there. So I check in, wondering if it’s still valid for border crossings – a question to eventually bring to the fucking embassy in the coming weeks.

That was my day, how was yours?

I leave the next day as the harsh winds continue from the southwest, though the rain seems to have let up slightly. It picks up again around mid-morning as I pass through Sahagún, the official halfway point of the Camino. A nice old abuela gets out of her car. She sees me and yells “Buen Camino!” making me feel encouraged as I continue on with this punishment.

I forget that the Camino forks into northern and southern routes and I lose a couple hours by hiking on the wrong one. Backtracking for hours east, south, and west straight into headwinds and scattered showers, I reach the aubergue, get dinner, and crash.

And then all is quiet. The rain system that ruined the last two days (and maybe my Passport) has moved on. And so has the wind, leaving barely a breeze behind for the next morning. I go back out on the street at sunrise and continue into the country. Sierras in the north are completely covered in snow, reminding me of Colorado.

I continue onward across the drying landscape. I’m set to reach León tomorrow and I’m making an extra five mile push reach a town aubergue in Puente Villarente just outside of the city.

I want to get to León early and rest for the day. So I leave an hour before daybreak the next morning, hiking slowly on the path under the stars. Behind me, a sharp yellow crescent moon rises above the quiet farmlands. Slowly, a red glow brightens on the eastern horizon, the stars above fade away one by one, and a new day begins.

I reach the city centre of León at mid-morning, and enjoy the rest of the day walking around the main plaza next to the cathedral. There are three of us at the aubergue – me, an older German lady, and Choi the Korean Chef. She invites the host and fixes the three of us a bibimbap dinner, with more than enough protein and rice for everybody. It’s a welcome break from all the great serrano ham and queso bocadillos I’ve been eating since I got here. As it is with this Camino, the dinners often become an exchange of cultures, cuisines, experiences, and the shared ethos of goodwill. Because while we each walk this path for ourselves, we also share a part of whatever this is with each other.

I go out to get something from the supermarket. As I’m walking by a tavern at the main plaza, Kirstie from Scotland waves at me and yells my name. She’s at a table with twenty other people and points to an empty seat. They’re all pilgrims. And they have been drinking here for five hours. What I think started as a small group turned into a party as more and more familiar faces found the table.

There is wine. There is food. There is each of us – all pilgrims celebrating together that we have gotten this far. To the backdrop of the huge cathedral just across the plaza.

“Do ye know tha Space Ghouls?” Kirstie asks me.

“Huh?”

“I said do ye know the Spice Girls?” This is her test to see if people can get past her thick Glasgow accent. I didn’t pass.

Kara the Canadian sat across the table. She ended her Camino at the halfway point a few days ago after some foot problems. The rainstorm was her breaking point. She intends to come back. There was Caleb the loud Irishman, Nick the Brit, the Israeli who reminds me of Borat, and so many others, carrying on into the evening. I decide after a few hours that this is great but I should get going. I have a big day tomorrow and I don’t want to ruin it with too much wine.

Speaking of wine, I had ordered about five or six glasses over the evening and then asked the server to bring me my check. For the quality and quantity, I would easily be paying at least $80 at any wine bar in Chicago. He brings the ticket back and I look at it. 6 Euros.

It’s a full day hike from León to Hospital de Órbigo. The clouds are back, threatening to ruin my day again with more rain showers. By mile 15, my feet are beyond sore and hurting with each step – not enough to warrant anything serious like an evacuation, but enough to get into my head and distract me from this lovely fucking countryside. To make it worse, the bottom of my left foot gets spasms if I hike on it for too long when I’m out of shape, causing my toes to clench together. This has already happened a couple of times out here when I hiked farther than my body wanted me to. Well, sometimes my body needs to listen to me. So I keep going.

After what was an hour of pain and felt like longer, I reach the iconic Puente de Órbigo, a long bridge of many arches crossing a river into the town. I’m exhausted, but not so much that I don’t appreciate such an impressive medieval landmark. Even if the cobblestones are hard on my miserable feet. I check into an albergue in town just as soon as another downpour starts.

It’s day 24. And a perfect bluebird morning. I start out at sunrise and make my way past the little town of Villares and the edge of the plains. As I hike into the hills, I look back one last time at the vast plains of the Meseta, green and hazy in the sunlight of the morning.

Two hours later, I reach a cross on a hilltop looking over Astorga, a city like so many others noted by its centuries-old winding streets, vibrant plazas, and magnificent cathedrals. Beyond the city is the backdrop of the western mountains, slowly changing in colors under looming springtime clouds. Somewhere out there, the Way to Santiago continues on a hard gravel road, beaten down each day by the feet of a thousand pilgrims. It still feels like a lifetime away – and it will until the day when it’s suddenly not – but I’m energized and hopeful as I descend the hillside and make my way into town.

This story continues on The Way to Santiago.

I start west in the morning after a passing rainstorm. The way out of Pamplona is well marked, either by yellow arrows or the famous Camino shell, which can be found on signs throughout the pilgrimage. The story is that pilgrims would reach Santiago de Compostela and receive a scallop shell to wear on their journey home as proof that they reached the end. Over time, it became the official symbol of the Camino, and can commonly be found on trail markers, in churches, at souvenir shops, or on the backpacks of pilgrims. I reach an intersection in western Pamplona expecting to see one. “Puedes ver la señal del Camino por allá,” a lady behind me says, pointing at the seashell emblem engraved on a sidewalk tile, marking the way out of the city.

I spend two hours hiking past the outskirts of Pamplona before starting an ascent up the barren ridge of Alto de Perdon. When I reach the summit, I find an incredible panorama marked by famous sculptures of pilgrims. I look back and see the sprawling city in the east. To the north are the jagged mountains of the Basque Country. And in the west is the way of the pilgrim, crossing into a vast plain and beyond. I look out at the western horizon, where Santiago and the ocean feel like a lifetime away. But I don’t need to think about it right now. I just need to get down the mountain.

I pass three towns that afternoon, exhausted in the late day. It is at its hottest part of the day from mid to late afternoon, and I realize why most people start at daybreak and finish around 2:00. When I reach Puente la Reina, I hike a painful quarter mile through the town to my hostel. The blinding sun feels like it’s trying to push me backwards. A cute Spanish girl passes and says “Buen Camino!” which is a welcome and encouraging distraction from the hot, blistering afternoon. I finally check into my hostel and look for the first restaurant I can find.

Learning my lesson, I set out the next morning at daybreak. I soon reach the town of Estella, which feels secluded by three different hillsides. After another foot assessment I realize I’ve been hiking out here for a week and have yet to develop a single blister. If a seasoned backpacker knew this, they would tell me that my foot strategy is working. In other news, this is a picture of me getting unvirgined to paellas:

I leave early the next morning, joining a group of Koreans leaving the city. Out of nowhere we reach the Fuente de Vino. I completely forgot about this fucking place. Agua or vino? You decide!

The land going out of the Navarra region is an old landscape, where to the westbound pilgrim the mountains will eventually change into rolling hills, some with hilltop castles in the distance. Much here has moved on, but many old, crumbling buildings remain to this day. Each day I walk through the country, cresting the hills and looking out at the surrounding towns. My Camino begins to feel like a dream – a timeless and stateless and perhaps even endless trek, always with one more seashell or yellow arrow to guide me onward. The kindness of the common folk and the pilgrims, and the transient nature of the Camino itself, are forcing me into a state of mind without any regard to time or attachment. With each grinding step on the gravel, each hillside town, each dinner at a plaza restaurant with new friends, and each sunrise from a new day, this road is becoming my own Camino – mine among other wanderers, each with their own story.

I meet Leah and Greg, a couple from Cleveland just outside of Logroño after an especially hard day. They invite me to watch a bull fight that evening. I tell them thanks, but the idea of slaughtering an animal in front of a cheering crowd doesn’t seem very appealing. Instead, I walk around the centre during a big city wide festival. I run into the Brazilian peregrinas, Maria and her mom, and we find a good pinchos restaurant a couple blocks from the main plaza. It’s basically a butcher shop where they grill all kinds of meats on demand. The thick bacon was especially good.

I leave Logroño the next morning on a well maintained bike trail out of the city. Villages come and go in a blur, many with their own unique story, like the lovely Torres del Rio, which translates to Towers of the River. In Belorado, I hike the main street until I reach this landmark left behind by Martin Sheen ten years ago when he filmed The Way.

Then there was the cathedral on a hilltop above Santovenia, where I come out to see the sunrise for the simple reason that the sunset the night before was just as amazing. It is the thirteenth and last day of this stage. I clear one final ridge that day and see the city of Burgos sprawling across the valley ahead. After three more shitty hours hiking past the airport and along the main highway into the city, I finally reach the magnificent Burgos Cathedral, marking the end of my second stage of the Camino.

I was paranoid for the longest time that this trip would get derailed by blisters or something worse. But after checking my feet in Burgos, I note that I didn’t get a single blister the entire time. No problems with soreness or swelling either. My feet are at 100%.

It’s the shoes. I used the the Altra Lone Peak Mid model, namely for the soft cushioned insoles and outer traction that work so well on hard, flat surfaces. For many backpackers, it comes down to a lot of trial and error before they find out for themselves what the best footwear strategy is for long-term hiking. When they figure it out, it is often just a short list of things that work uniquely for them. For me, it was Altra shoes, Injinji toe socks, a thin merino wool outer layer, and a gel toe cap to cover a chronic callus on my fourth right toe. The bastard toe. The one I’ve had since I was a teenager and could never for the life of me get rid of. Usually it is the first thing on my feet to give me trouble when I go hiking. But even that turned out okay.

Unfortunately, I can’t hike any further at this time. I don’t have enough vacation hours left for the remaining four weeks of the trek, and I will have to save them up and continue in the future. But this stage was never really about completing the Camino, it was about answering the question that drove me crazy for years: Can I really do this? Now I realize that not only can I hike this trail, but I can kick ass at it.

I leave on a bus for Madrid the next day. I think about how the last two weeks went by in a flash, and I’m not yet sure how I feel about it. As the bus departs from the city, I think back to the evening I spent at a small aubergue in Viloria three nights ago.

The host family made a pilgrim dinner for me and two other hikers. There was Ivan, a loud, opinionated fellow who started his Camino from his home in Belgium. And Catherine, a recently retired woman from North Carolina who just started her Camino for the first time. And then there was me, the guy from Chicago with all of the drive in the world and no understanding of why.

The wife, an abuela originally from Italy, told us that she had lived in the town for twenty years, and watched the Camino change a lot as it became a popular trail all over the world. And while others like Ivan and I weren’t as interested in how commercialized it was getting, she didn’t seem to mind. Because to her, the Camino is for everyone. And each person can find their own path, no matter what was or wasn’t.

I was almost about to leave the next morning when she came over to wish me farewell. She told me that I must walk the path for myself, and I must find my own Camino. I don’t remember exactly how she said it, but I do remember the kindness of the person behind it. And to be completely honest, I still don’t know what I was doing out there, or why that trail matters to me so much. I went through a lot of fucking trouble to get there, but the reasons for it are not something I can put into words. And while I may not know yet what it means to “Find my Camino”, with each new day maybe I can.

The bus continues south through the Spanish countryside. I’m an hour outside of Madrid, where I look forward to a few days of rest and good food. I look out at the passing hills as we approach the city, thinking back to an old road that goes across Spain, where many unforgettable stories have only just begun. And whether I’m hiking across the formidable Pyrenees Mountains, sharing tapas and wine with pilgrims in the bustling city centres, crossing an endless Meseta among the kindred spirits on the trail, casting a lifetime of burdens at the foot of Cruz de Ferro, or watching a golden sunset on the shores of Cape Finisterre, there is no question to me that there is something wonderful and cathartic about the Camino de Santiago.

This isn’t over.

This story continues on the Meseta.

“If I take one more step, it will be the farthest away from home I’ve ever been.” -Samwise Gamgee

There is an old road in Spain where you can feel its ancient history with each step. Where you can pass countless vineyards, farmlands, villages, and kind hearted Spaniards. Where you can walk in the company of pilgrims for hundreds of miles – and on the footsteps of many more for a time spanning over a thousand years. Where the kindness of a pilgrim’s spirit has been known throughout the ages. Where your path can become an inward journey as much as an outward adventure. Where with each step, your own tale becomes another part of the trail’s rich history.

There is an old road in Spain called the Camino de Santiago. And I was trying to reach it.

I had first heard about the Camino several years ago from adventure bloggers who had posted about their own journeys online. And to be honest, it didn’t get my attention at first. But as I learned more, it became increasingly apparent that this wasn’t any ordinary adventure. And though I didn’t understand why I felt drawn to those old Spanish roads (and I still don’t even to this day), I could not deny my own unrelenting feeling of curiosity about them – right up to the point that I first made the nervous decision to book a flight to Europe and hike the Camino in the spring of 2019.

The problem was that I had no idea how. I had been on plenty of smaller hikes, but never anything of this scale. This was a 540 mile trek across an entire country. And it is not forgiving to the underprepared – something that really set in when I read this from a Camino message board, posted by a first aid medic on the trail who encountered a Swedish hiker in trouble:

Her problem was that she had put a Compeed onto a heel blister. The blister had grown over the days of walking until it burst and forced an edge of the Compeed open. Dirt got in and it became infected – what did she do? Just kept walking. When we saw her she had blood poisoning, her ankle had already started to swell. Had we not found her she may have died of that blood poisoning somewhere, going to bed with “just a little fever” and waking up dead. The doctor cleaned it all up, gave her horse-pill sized antibiotics and told her that her Camino was over, she had to go home.

This hit me in the face like a bucket of cold water. I went on, reading thread after thread, about the foot problems that so many hikers were having. And how many different things they tried to prevent and minimize their suffering. My ex is an active backpacker of many years who told me that she always gets blisters no matter what she does. While she seemed to have the experience and willpower to push through it, I didn’t yet know how this would play out for me.

The first thing I did was look for a good pair of trail runners at REI. I immediately liked the Altra Lone Peak runners for their mega-soft cushion and good traction. I started to field test them with every suggested maintenance strategy I could find. Thin socks, double lined socks, vaseline, antiperspirant, runner tape, moleskin, and any variation on the local city trails in Chicago almost every weekend. All with a loaded pack at 20lbs. My feet were generally okay, even with hotspots that I learned to quickly cover with Rocktape.

I thought I was cruising. But something started to happen two weekends away from my trip. The backs of both shoes had broken in and started digging into my achilles. Which I knew for sure would cause a huge problem if I tried to hike with them for hours every day. I tried everything. I padded the shoes, put moleskin layers on my feet, doubled the socks. But nothing worked. And I knew I couldn’t rely on normal shoes for this either. Casual walking is one thing, but hiking day after day with a pack is a completely different matter. Out of desperation I even cut the seams on the backs of them to relieve the pressure. That didn’t help either. It eventually got to be the night before my planned 540 mile trek. What the fuck am I going to use?

I came back to REI in one last desperate attempt to find something. I tried almost every runner and sandal they had, but nothing seemed to fit. The problem was that my left foot was starting to widen for some unknown reason, and made anything with arch support too uncomfortable. The simple fact is, if it’s not comfortable when you buy it, it definitely won’t be when you use it. I must have tried more than 15 different pairs. I left with nothing.

In a last ditch effort, I tried to glue moleskin padding on the backs of my already ravaged trail runners. But I made the mistake of using superglue. When it dried, the glue hardened through the padding, causing it to rub against my feet. It was shot. Unwearable, worthless, destroyed. I threw the fucking shoe across my apartment and gave up the idea of figuring this problem out.

I flew to Paris the next day as planned, but had to reschedule the rest of my trip. I remember hiding in my hostel room for three days in Paris of all places, just to work through all of the stress and figure out the next step. When I came back home three weeks later, I rescheduled my Camino for the end of the summer, giving me a few more months to reset and figure out a system.

I spent several weekends trying out barefoot shoes, which seemed to work with my widening foot. Eventually, I realized that even with padding, they were too hard on my feet and I still needed something with more bottom protection. I finally found it when I revisited the Altra brand to see what else they had. The Lone Peak runners didn’t quite do it, but a different model perhaps? I knew it when I saw it on their website: the Lone Peaks had a boot model. It was essentially the same shoe, but with higher ankle support – something that should mitigate the achilles problems I was having with the other ones. It’s what I’ve been looking for and bitching about for months. It’s what my feet wanted and I knew it.

So the shoe problem was solved. But now there was something else. My widening left foot was happening because of a lump that was growing on the upper inner arch for about a year. I didn’t know what it was, so I did what any normal person would do and probably shouldn’t: I looked for answers on Google. And while it was reassuring to read that most foot lesions are benign, the vast array of awful things that Google said it might be ended up freaking me out. I needed to get it diagnosed.

I went to an orthopedist a month out from my trip. After ruling out any bone related problems from an X-ray, he told me that I needed an MRI to properly diagnose the tissue mass. When I scheduled it, the earliest available MRI was on Monday, four days before my flight to Europe. I was cutting it close.

I spent three weeks waiting for the scan, paranoid, trying not to think about a worst case scenario (like a sarcoma, for example), keeping busy with work, and for fucks sake, trying to avoid Googling my symptoms. Then at the end of the Friday before the MRI, one week before my flight to Europe, I received an email that my scan was cancelled.

What??? Stunned and confused, I called the radiology center. The guy didn’t know why, but he told me that the next available date was on the 18^th. Nine days after I was supposed to leave. With great effort, I was able to stay calm with him on the phone, and bitterly rescheduled the scan to the 18^th. Then I hung up the phone.

WHAT THE FUCK!!!! YOU FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT!!!! DO I HAVE CANCER OR NOT????

The reason it was cancelled was because MRIs are expensive, and the radiology center didn’t get coverage authorization from my insurance in time. So I had to delay the scan to allow more time for them to process the authorization. At one point I even tried unsuccessfully to reschedule the MRI sooner and pay it out of pocket. Welcome to America.

Eventually it was authorized and rescheduled, as was the doctor’s followup appointment to the following Monday. The same day that I had rebooked my flight to Europe to hike at least part of the Camino. I really was working this down to the wire.

On that day, my life would go one of two ways. The doctor would give me the scan results, I would either be well enough to leave on my plane to Europe, or I would have to stay in Chicago for more testing. And with that outcome, my life without a doubt would go in a completely different direction.

The only thing I had to go by as I waited in paranoia was that malignant problems in the feet are extremely rare, as I had already learned. But I couldn’t get out of my mind the people in my life who have fought these battles. Some were taken seemingly out of nowhere, while others are living out normal lives in remission. And one fabulous woman I’m friends with is fighting and winning against her own Stage 2. But I was reminded as I waited how my life is becoming more and more precious with each passing day.

The first good report during the entire ordeal came in that Saturday. I received the findings summary of my MRI from the reviewing physician. Other than noting an insignificant cyst in my big toe joint and some mild bone degeneration, he noted that “no soft tissue lesion was identified” in the area in question. It was medical speak for what I assumed to mean that not only was it benign, but there was no evidence of a tumor in that area at all. While I still needed my ortho doctor to confirm it on Monday, it was already a huge relief.

That Monday, the doctor confirmed the same thing and told me it was a mass of overgrown muscle tissue, likely because of some kind of trauma. As long as I wore flat shoes, I should be able to manage it. Then he and the resident assistants left. The appointment didn’t even last five minutes.

I went outside and called my parents to give them the news. And then I stood there on the street, unsure how to even take the next step. This whole ordeal had burdened me for months, to the point where I hardly thought anything about hiking trails and epic Spanish adventures. But no more. Now here I was, standing on the verge of the next chapter with literally nothing holding me back.

It was time to let the arrow fly.

The Camino de Santiago Part 1: The Pyrenees

I hike up the steeply winding mountain road along the north foothills of the Pyrenees Mountains. St. Jean and two other towns are visible from the ridgeside among the haze and rolling hills. I’ve been hiking with Dianne, a lady from California, for an hour. We look back at the countryside behind us. She is also walking her Camino for the first time. Reaching the small refuge of Ithurburia we run into six other pilgrims having a picnic. I refill my water and take my shoes off. “You got blisters already?” I hear a man say. “Not if I can help it,” I say back, inspecting my toes for any signs of trouble and applying Vaseline. We hike on, reaching a series of switchbacks and steep uphill grade, which eventually will leave the tree line, only to change into alpine pastures and huge herds of roaming sheep.

I’m hiking the first and most difficult day of the Camino de Santiago from St. Jean-Pied-de-Port France, across a mountain pass of the Pyrenees to the Spanish town of Roncesvalles. It consists of a brutal twelve mile uphill climb and steep downhill for two miles to the valley floor on the other side. It is considered by pilgrims to be the hardest stage of the entire trek.

Clouds are shrouded on the ridgetops, but open up enough at times for the hot sun to burn on my arms. I’m out of breath and sweating as I follow a seemingly endless ascent to the spine of the range. I take a break at an overlook and air out my feet again. “I keep seeing you tending to your feet,” I hear Dianne say when she catches up. I do think I’m becoming the Foot Guy out here. I’m not yet sure just what my feet will be like on this trip. But I know that if there are any problems with my foot strategy, now is the time to handle it.

We hike on together in a group for another hour in the company of cows and grazing sheep. Soon we reach the refuge of Orrisson, an albergue halfway up the climb where many pilgrims choose to rest for the day. I consider it, but feel well enough to keep going. The truth is that I have no idea yet what I’m doing out here, how far I can get, how long I can go each day, and if my feet can handle the abuse of continuously walking across an entire country. What I do know is that I’m not going to finish the entire 540 miles of the Camino this time. I have given myself two weeks to get as far as I can, and as slowly as I have to. Then I will take whatever I learned from this trip and make it to the end next year.

Clouds have completely covered the high trail in mist. I continue on, feeling the weight of my jetlag as I push myself forward, exhausted. Chiming bells echo through the hollows. Farmers put them on one in every fifty of their sheep, and each bell has its own sound. When they wonder together, it makes a song. And when I hear that song, I want more than anything to lay down in the soft grass and sleep among the sheep and mountain fog. But I know that I need to find a hostel sooner than later. That, and I don’t want to wake up on a stone table with bound hands and feet, surrounded by 200 cave goblins. So I keep going.

I clear the summit at last and hike one final ridgeline to the downhill trail. The clouds break up and I see sunlight on the forested ridge on the far side of the valley. But no sign of the valley floor or the town. I have to hike steeply downhill for two more hours to get there. I have already overworked my legs by now, and with each step, my quad muscles are having spasms as I descend miserably on the rocky trail.

I finally reach the town at 5pm. It is the busy season on the Camino and all of the albergues in Roncesvalles are full. And in the town after it. So the monastery shuttles us to a campground hostel 3 miles ahead in the town of Urrobi. I check in, amazed that I made it this far in good health, and best of all, with no blisters.

Twenty of us sit together for a pilgrim dinner, drinking wine and celebrating the end of the first and most difficult day of our journey. “Buen Camino!” we all say together as we cheer our wine glasses.

I start west the next day after breakfast with the goal to clear two ridges today before stopping at a town in the Arga Valley. I catch up with a steady line of pilgrims after Espinal as we begin the first of two forested uphill walks today. I’m in good spirits and the morning is pleasant.

Around midday I’m at the top of the second climb and reconnect with Aulily and Lily, who I met in Urrobi yesterday. They are a French mother and daughter who started their pilgrimage on one of the French caminos a month ago. People start from far across Europe, heading south and west on ancient roads until they reach the Spanish Caminos. There are more of them throughout Spain and Portugal, though the one I am taking, Camino Frances, is the most famous. I join with the French peregrinas and we descend the ridge together, stopping for a midday break in the cold, rushing Arga River. I rest in the next town for the night and they continue on. But we find each other again at a café along the trail the next morning.

It becomes a common thing in the mornings for people to start early, hike a few miles, and stop for breakfast at an outdoor café. When twenty other people do this, you find other people who you recognize and reconnect, reinforcing the sense of a shared spirit among the pilgrims. As I start to work out my routine, these spontaneous community breakfasts become one of my favorite things about the trail.

I hike out of the valley, passing one town after another, walled in by the ridgelines of the Spanish side of the Pyrenees. There are many more hills which will gradually level out, creating a straighter, easier path to Burgos and the Meseta farther on. From what I understand, the worst climb is behind me. I won’t face anything close to it again until I reach the Galician hills in the west.

I pass by a weekend festival in Larrasoaña, and the trail goes by an abandoned building south of town. A dog starts barking and runs out. He’s a half grown German Shephard. Without a chain and no sign of the owner. And he’s growling at me. Between me and where I’m trying to go.

“Hey perro,” I say, inching along slowly. “No soy peligroso, solo un hombre caminando!” He isn’t buying it – the little fucker nips me in the leg. I have to stay calm or this could get bad. He’s not a big dog, but definitely big enough to give me stitches and ruin my morning. Especially if I have a loaded pack and can’t defend myself.

“Somos amigos, perro, esta bien!” I say as nicely as I can, carefully inching away from what he thinks is his territory. Perhaps he senses it. He starts to relax and wag his tail. I slowly put out my hand and pet him. There we go, I knew there was a good little guy under all that bravado. But I wonder as I continue on how many more people today will have to deal with him.

I spend the rest of the morning hiking out of the mountains and am suddenly surrounded by a huge crowd of people in the busy city centre of Pamplona. Today, I earned an easy half day hike and hotel room.

The first stage of my Camino is over. Tomorrow I head into more hills and farmlands.

This story continues on the Way to Burgos.

What if I told you that there is a magical forest in central Mexico where millions of monarch butterflies migrate to from North America every cold season? What if I said that when the sun reaches the trees each morning, you can see them wake up and fly down the mountainside by the thousands? Would you believe me if I told you such a place exists in the highlands of Michoacán? Because it does. It is the famous Reserva de la Biósfera Mariposa Monarca, an enchanting forested sanctuary where legions of butterflies look to escape the cold winters of the north each year.

They converge around eight colonies throughout the mountain range, two of which were in short driving distance from the centrally located pueblo of Angangueo. I reserved a hotel there on a Saturday in Mid-February during the peak season. Leaving early that morning with mi amiga Itzel, we drove south from Queretaro for three hours and reached the town at midday, optimistic and unsure of where to go. We asked around and eventually kept driving further into the mountains. Sierra Chinca, a colony eight miles further, was just ahead. Itzel drove nervously around switchbacks and steep hairpin turns, but we know that whatever was waiting for us at the top was worth it.

We parked near the trailhead and got out. The path led us through an open field and upward into the forested side of the ridge. It wasn’t a particularly hard trail, except for the fact that it was at about 10,000ft and we were both struggling to find our breath. One saddle crossing brought us to the other side with a great view of the western valley farther off. But still no butterflies. Did all the people scare them off?

Soon we reached the end of the trail and the “Quiet zone” next to the colony. Above, groups of butterflies fluttered and glided slowly among the treetops under grey skies. Other than that, there wasn’t much to see. Hoping for better luck tomorrow, we made our way back to town.

The other colony, El Rosario, is west of the town up the side of a steep ridge. The road leading us there had a great view, despite all of the potholes and scary turns without any guardrails. We drove slowly through it, hoping to get to the trail when it opened at 9. Late by 30 minutes, we wanted to beat the crowds and failed, but at least it wasn’t hot yet when we started hiking. This trail was painfully steep and the air felt even thinner than yesterday. Will I get altitude sickness before I get to see my butterflies? If that happens, I want a refund.

After about an hour of pain, the trail leveled out near the crest of the ridge. We reached the quiet zone about 100 feet away from the colony. Huge clusters of butterflies hung on the tree trunks and branches, still waking up. I read that enough of them hanging on a branch can create enough weight to break it. A crowd of about 100 people stood quietly in the main area, waiting for something big to happen.

I wasn’t sure how well the crowds would be regulated up here, but the park employees seemed to keep a good check on everybody. One them held up a sign reminding us not to talk, and the trail was roped off with signs everywhere, as to discourage the idea of people getting too close. They did well to make sure the butterflies had their space. Which is good because this park draws a lot of people in the peak season.

Soon, the morning sun broke through the treetops and started shining on the clusters of butterflies. One by one, they awakened with a flutter and began their day’s objective to find water and nectar. We started our way back down. As the ridge side brightened, they flew in countless numbers down the mountain hollows, many passing right by us. It went on like this for the next hour, all the way back to the visitor center, one butterfly after another. The forest was alive with them. They were everywhere.

When we got to the parking lot, even more of them went flying by the car. They continued passing by us as we drove out of the park.

I drove west on a busy three lane interstate just east of the LA suburbs, trying to navigate around too many 18 wheelers to count. The construction barrier on the right side threatened to scrape my rental car and send me flying into the other lanes. There wasn’t much to see in this valley besides the loud, crowded highway and all of the traffic trying to get through it. On any ordinary day I wouldn’t be driving in this unremarkable corner of Southern California. But this was no ordinary day, in fact, I waited my whole life for this moment.

Just off of I-10 west of Coachella is a small roadside stop known as the Cabazon Dinosaurs, featuring huge replicas of a brontosaurus and tyrannosaurus looking over their dominion of visitors. They became iconic to many kids in the 80s and 90s – myself included – for their role in important scenes in Pee Wee’s Big Adventure and The Wizard. Now, they’re the main attractions in a dinosaur park, where you can walk among smaller dinosaur exhibits, browse two different gift shops, and best of all, look out from the mouth of the T-Rex. As I drove towards the sun among thousands of other cars, the silhouette of the T-Rex came into my view, looking like a tiny plastic toy that I used to fight with a triceratops as a kid. I was already losing it.

In the film, Pee Wee Herman found this place at a frustrating time in his quest to find his stolen bike, where he no doubt wondered if the challenges he faced on the road made any difference. Out of nowhere, a truck driver helping him turned out to be an apparition of the late Large Marge, scaring the shit out of him and leaving him stranded by the road. He came upon the figures of the Cabazon Dinosaurs, glowing serenely in the late night. There was no doubt some encouragement in this, and at the very least, some cool shit to look at. He went into the Wheel Inn diner and made friends with the waitress Simone. They stayed up the rest of the night in the mouth of the T-Rex, making something of a connection bordering on attraction.

The dinosaurs were also part of a big scene in The Wizard, another cult movie from that era. Two young brothers, Corey and Jimmy, ran away from a broken home and made their way to the West Coast. Jimmy, a young shy kid of few words, repeatedly said “California”, motivating his brother Corey to sneak him out of a behavioral institution and start hitchhiking west. They met a fiery redheaded girl named Haley, played by Jenny Lewis, who figured out that Jimmy was a Wizard at video games. They made it into something of a hustle, with Jimmy eventually winning the national Nintendo competition at Universal Studios. The family finally caught up with them and started driving back after celebrating.

They passed by the dinosaurs on the highway. Jimmy saw them and started yelling “California! California!” The family stopped and they went inside the brontosaurus. Here, Jimmy revealed the reason for his obsession with California. It wasn’t to escape from his problems, or to win at Super Mario 3, or even to be in California. Those things he did for his brother. It was because he lost his twin sister two years ago, and his fondest memory of her was right there, among the Great Dinosaurs of Cabazon. He took out a family photo of them in front of the dinosaurs and left it inside the brontosaurus. Then the family agreed to bring their boys home.

As a result, the dinosaurs found their way into the imaginations of kids like me, and over time, into nostalgia. But it didn’t matter that I was all grown up as I drove into the parking lot that day – the 7 year old me was losing his fucking mind. I had spent my entire childhood and adult life wondering if I would ever have the chance to see these icons for myself. And so this wasn’t just a visit to a road stop or some half assed tourist attraction. This was something far greater. This place was hallowed ground.

I bought a pass at the ticket counter and entered the pathway behind the T-Rex. Dioramas displayed many smaller life-sized dinosaurs, like a pair of velociraptors of eight feet (Spoiler: They look just as vicious in person as they were in Jurassic Park). There was a sand pit off to the side where kids could dig up “fossils” and win free prizes at the gift shop. The path led to the tail of the T-Rex, where a door opened to the inside. Following a stairway up to a small spiral staircase, I reached the inside of the mouth of the beast and looked out at the park below. Sunlight beamed through the teeth – perhaps the last sign of daylight I would ever see if this animal were real.

Outside, the sign of the Wheel Inn Restaurant was the only thing left of that famous diner. They bulldozed it to the ground several years ago, which is bullshit. But I did enjoy walking underneath the brontosaurus, where Andy chased Pee Wee in circles around its legs before he escaped on a passing train. It also had a door leading inside to a gift shop. There, baskets were full of dinosaurs of all types and sizes. They could have easily been added to my collection for some epic dinosaur wars in my basement.

As I drove east, the Great Dinosaurs of Cabazon vanished behind me. A stark full moon rose above the northern mountains against the lavender colors of the early night. I thought that it wouldn’t be much longer before those dinosaurs were glowing beneath the stars of the Southern California desert, as surely they were.

In a great way, Joshua Tree is an odd place. Located on a big plateau in the middle of the Southern California desert, this park is full of strange looking monolithic rock piles and thousands of gnarled Agave trees sticking out of the earth. It is a park for the hiker, the rock climber, the explorer, the tourist, or all of the above. But preferably in the cool season.

And now it was the park for me, after what turned out to be a failed Mexican Visa attempt in Yuma. Doing my best to turn disappointment into action, I rented a car the night before and made the three hour drive to the park at daybreak.

It’s a big park that can easily take a week to reach the other side in a backpack. But I only had about half the day to see it, so I researched what seemed to be the most eventful looking area for a day hike. I decided on the Hidden Valley area and started driving for the south entrance. I don’t know if it was a coincidence, or if some higher power was trolling me, but when I turned off the exit of I-10 for the park road, U2’s “With or Without You” started playing on the radio.

I drove north for 40 miles over two mountain passes and valley floors. Joshua Trees appeared – first small, but getting bigger with each mile until they were easily 10 feet high. Soon, I reached the parking lot at Hidden Valley and got out. For the next three hours I hiked around the rock piles and pathways along the valley. At times I felt like I was walking in an ancient garden. As if it were ruins of some age-old civilization who left their monuments behind, only to be covered in sand and stone – yet leaving a legacy to these trees, who somehow thrive in the dust.

The surrounding rock piles drew climbers of all skill levels for bouldering and harness climbing. I saw young kids slowly going up small boulders with trained instructors above mattresses. Other people repelled down rock cliffs easily 200 feet high. Everywhere, people were scrambling over rocks. It was like Mother Nature’s jungle gym. Even I tried to find a small boulder pile to look out over the valley above the treetops.

Despite the enchanting landscapes in this park, the mid-afternoon sun reminded me that I haven’t acclimated to the southwest. Not even in December. I drove out, leaving this strange plateau behind. I needed to reach the Cabazon Dinosaurs by the golden hour.

I was due for a return trip to the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore to take a thru-hike of its 40 miles of pristine coastline. I hiked and kayaked the Chapel Basin section of it last year and knew I needed to come back, having barely seen a quarter of the shore. I got a backcountry permit in mid-September, hoping for a likelihood of clear weather on the edge of the shoulder season.

I arrived on the west end near Munising and parked at the Sand Point trailhead with a five day itinerary. It was the late afternoon after a six hour drive from Chicago. I began hiking three miles to my first campsite as the evening sun beamed through the trees. The forecast predicted some ugly weather in the coming days, but right now the day was calm. I reached the Cliffs campsite, set up my tent, and went back to the shore to watch the sun descend over Grand Island.

I woke up the next morning to the pelting of rainfall. The downpours had already started, and didn’t let up for three more hours. Which wasn’t the best timing, since the only available campsite I could find was fifteen miles away. As the sky finally lightened, I packed up and continued on the trail. Gradually it went along the beaches and steadily rising cliffside. Off in the distance, the high bluffs of the Chapel Basin gradually approached.

Crossing Mosquito Creek at midday and continuing along the Chapel Loop, I hiked the uneven terrain, already exhausted. Still, it was worth it to see all of these cliff points and overlooks again. Sunlight was spotty across the lake and isolated showers rumbled across the water some ten miles off. It was okay now, but was the kind of weather that could change in a flash. Passing Grand Portal Point, a rainstorm hit all at once, sending me and the day hikers rushing away from the exposed overlooks. Sheets of mid-afternoon rain blew in gusts, obscuring far off cliffs as the waves crashed and roared below. I paced along the winding cliffside trail, feeling wiped out and delirious. I needed to eat.

Stopping at Chapel Rock, a prominent site on the far end of the basin, I felt better after getting food and a much needed break. The rock and the cliffs beyond stood backlit in the clearing weather.

I really wanted to set up camp and stop. But since the sites around the Chapel Basin were in high demand, the only available site I could find was four miles further. Which would have been fine if my legs weren’t already sore and bordering on pain. Well, I can keep bitching about it on a downed tree, or I can get to my campsite before dark.

The sun was out again, beaming in golden tones through the forest in the late day. It was that time near the end of the warm season that’s not quite the summer or autumn, but it’s some of both. There were warm days, and yet, leaves started to wilt and turn yellow on the edges of their trees. Fiery maple leaves lay scattered about the trail. And though the sun was out, it felt dim, as if it was telling us that the bright season on this rocky coast was nearing its end.

With about three miles to go, my calf muscles were getting tighter than I was comfortable with. I stopped and looked at my right calf. Shit, it’s getting swollen! I needed to find my campsite and figure out what to fucking do. The Google Maps marker said it was a quarter mile back. What? Where the fuck is the campsite??? Did I miss it? Should I turn around and look for it again? With an hour of sunlight left and potentially fucked up calf muscles, I didn’t have the leisure of wasting any time. I charged on, exhausted and bordering on panic.

There was a connector trail about a mile ahead, and I at least needed to rule out that it wasn’t somewhere before that. So in a panic, I kept going. It turned out to be the right decision. Just a few hundred feet from where I lost my mind was a sign reading “Coves – Individual Campsites”. I hobbled along the side trail, found my site, and set up my tent.

Not sure what to do about a swollen, overworked calf, I asked some other hikers for advice – notably to read whether or not any of them seemed alarmed. None of them did. They said to take Ibuprofen and apply the RICE method. While there was no ice to be found, rest, compression, and elevation could be done. For good karma, a kilted fellow gave me an ace wrap to reduce the swelling.

This day was equal parts beautiful and ugly, but it was finally over.

I crawled out of the tent the next morning after more rain, and was immediately shackled by my calf muscles tightening overnight. I expected it, but I was still surprised at how tight they were. My body was mad at me over yesterday. But was I well enough to press on? I was about to find out.

My trekking poles, I learned, could be used on my leg muscles like a foam roller. Which was absolute hell. With that and stretching, they loosened up enough for me to walk slowly. The good thing was that the next campsite was only 7.5 miles on a mostly flat trail along Twelvemile Beach. So as long as I took my time and took frequent breaks, I would probably be okay. I said happy trails to the kilted fellow and his friends and continued east.

Moving on slowly, I found a pace that didn’t seem to aggravate my calves any further. It allowed me to focus on other matters, like the wonderful fucking weather. I guessed that a low pressure system was passing on and in its place was a full day of brutal lake effect winds. I welcomed any chance to hike in the trees away from the brunt end of the shoreline wind.

For much of the day, I was exposed to 30mph gusts of wind blowing off of the shore. Waves farther off were easily breaking at 8 to 10 feet – the kind of conditions that will prompt a gale alert by the local weather service. I learned later that Lake Superior can get much worse. I wasn’t surprised that this area has its share of shipwrecks, earning it the maritime nickname “Graveyard Coast”.

At one point the trail went out of the woods, exposing me again to the wind as I passed by a cute thru-hiker going the other way. Over the loud gusts of wind, I yelled “Nice day for a hike!” She yelled back, “Oh yeah, it’s beautiful!” I wasn’t sure if her comment was from the same place of exhausted sarcasm, or if she really was able to see beauty in the madness.

I got to Sevenmile and set up camp, well protected from the wind. And my calves? Well, they weren’t better, but at least they didn’t get worse. That will have to do.

Then I woke up at 2am. The air felt dry. I looked out from my tent. Treetops were still, and the stars returned far above the forest canopy. I got back on my pad and slept soundly to the rush of Sevenmile Creek.

Right before heading out, I shared the firepit with Ashley, who was trying to light a bundle of damp kindling. She told me she was walking along like an old granny yesterday with her sore, blistered feet. Luckily, I figured out how to avoid blisters ever since the Camino, but soreness was another beast of its own. I think we all go through these challenges in backpacking as we sort it out, one problem at a time. Either from new gear, conditioning, and/or learning to ignore what isn’t perfect, we find out what works for us in the bigger picture. Today, I was in the granny club with her, walking half my normal speed.

I got back on the trail, happy to have a calm sunny morning. The wind was backing off and the waves were smaller, glowing in the sunlight as it was breaking over the trees. Over the day, I passed bigger drive-in campsites as I approached Au Sable Point. At the top, the Au Sable Light Station looked over the water. It was built almost 150 years ago to alert ships of its presence at Au Sable Point, a notorious cliff point and sandstone reef. Without the light signal, ships would easily hit the shallow rocks extending into the water.

The trail continued in the trees with a bit of gain approaching Log Slide Overlook. My calves were improving, with greater range of motion and less pain. Finally, they were breaking in and starting to listen to me. Which would have been good, except now my feet were getting the same problem. The muscles around my heels especially were acting up. The good news was that the trek was almost over, so it didn’t really matter.

I reached the Grand Sable Dunes, which follow the coast for five miles before reaching the town of Grand Marias. At one time, logging companies used the dunes to roll their timbers down to the water and float them over to the town. Now, this area is protected land and the trees aren’t going anywhere.

A short hike brought me to the Masse Homestead, a secluded campsite on the backside of the dunes. I needed to catch a shuttle on time at the end trailhead the next day, so I slept under the stars to save packup time. It wasn’t comfortable, but it got me out sooner. I packed up at 5am and hiked the first hour with a flashlight. The trail crossed the road, where I turned for a straighter walk to the visitor center. It was time to take the shuttle back to town and look for pizza.

I reached the end with 90 minutes to spare as I waited for the shuttle. While I waited, I boiled water and made coffee. Just to relax. I recalled the last few days of my hike with the ranger, who was setting up a display area in front of the main building. She pointed me to an apple tree across the road. And so, my trip ended with me eating victory apples in the visitor center parking lot.

“I Iohan want to see the world. Follow a map to its edges, and keep going. Forgo the plans, trust my instincts. Let curiosity be my guide. I want to change hemispheres. Sleep with unfamiliar stars. And let the journey unfold before me.”

Iohan Gueorguiev was an adventurer. He captivated the minds of countless people as he traveled by bicycle and packraft across the Americas, documenting his amazing adventures on his YouTube channel in a video series titled See The World. Beginning in the ice roads of northern Canada in 2014, he spent months traversing the Yukon and Alaskan highways before making his way through the American national parks and continuing south through Mexico.

After volcano hopping in the Central American jungles and taking a paddling detour around the Darien Gap, he finally reached the shores of Colombia, all while filming and uploading his footage for us to enjoy. Years and countless stories later, he reached the high mountains of Patagonia at Lake O’Higgins before returning to Canada to work and wait through the pandemic.

And that was where his epic Pan-American adventure came to an abrupt and tragic end. The cycling community received a note from one of his touring friends in Argentina that he passed away about a month ago. That he suffered from chronic sleep apnea and insomnia, to the degree that he took his own life to end the pain. So many of us had come to love his videos over the years, and were shocked and saddened that this would happen to such a brilliant soul. I’m still trying to process my own feelings as I write these words.

I followed Iohan for years. He was one of the first people to truly inspire me to go on my own adventures and capture the experiences in video and written word. He had a purity to him that I always admired. His sense of adventure was simple and genuine. Whether by making friends with stray dogs, staying with host families in remote villages, or shooting an epic panorama, he was always able to capture something meaningful and tell a story that connects and resonates with us.

And so as I go through his old videos, so many things come back to memory. Like the Athabascan woman who sang about Denali in her native tongue. Or when he crossed paths with Sarah Outen on the Alcan Highway. And then camped on a volcano high above Jalisco. And the time he tried to ride the back roads in Panama, only to see them turn into a mudslide and force him to hitch a ride out in somebody’s truck. And of course there were the incredible panoramas of the remote Bolivian highlands. To the soundtrack of Spanish folk music, Iohan was riding along the bottom of a drone shot, trying to fit the huge landscapes of the Andes into the picture.

And he was always meeting kind folks and animals along the road - a friend among many horses, dogs, cats, alpacas, and townsfolk. And yet, always moving on. Because he wanted to see the world. He wanted to follow the map to its edges and keep going. He wanted to let the journey unfold before him. And then he wanted to share it with us.

It’s impossible to say how many of us have been impacted and inspired by his journey – one so suddenly brought to an end. It never seems fair to see life taken away from someone who lived it to its fullest. But this is a story that will continue to live and thrive. As I speak, a group of his friends are planning a memorial in Ushuaia. I want to see it one day and thank him for sharing his life adventure.

He is Iohan, the Bike Wanderer. And while he may no longer be with us, our hearts are with him in the wilds of Patagonia.

I made a stop on my way back home from Michigan to do a quick trip on the Menominee River. The Piers Gorge rapids are the biggest in the midwest, most notably the Class III-IV drop at Misicot Falls. True North Outpost and a couple other outfitters bring people to run the canyon throughout the warm season.

The trip consisted of two laps in the gorge. We started upstream and towed another raft behind us while the guide taught us the paddling moves and safety orientation. Soon, we approached the falls. It consists of a river-wide ledge with a big tongue on the right side that washes down a 10 foot slide. It’s pretty much the line to use, although they said that other lines open up at higher flows.

The tail waves were big and nearly tossed me out of my seat as they thrashed the boat to the left. The guide steered us downstream, avoiding Volkswagen Rock. Though easily avoided, it is a source of boat pinnings and one fatality about ten years ago. We continued on through the Sisters, two Class III wave-holes close to the end. Then we shored in and hiked back upstream to run the gorge a second time.

The second run was a bit smoother going over the falls without any surprises. For the heck of it, the guide turned us around and had us float the Sisters backwards. As I speak, she and her fellow guides are on their way to Gauley Fest. It will be her first time, and I have full confidence that she is well prepared.

Over the last few years, the sport of packrafting has grown from a small community mostly consisting of backpackers in Alaska and Tasmania to people from all over the world – potentially anywhere that you can find runnable rivers that are accessible by foot. In more recent seasons, my feed has exploded with river footage from all across the US, Central America, Russia, Austria, New Zealand, Lapland, Scotland, Japan, and on and on. Which in one sense is great to see so many new people discovering what packrafting has to offer. But as the community continues to grow, so does the likelihood of mistakes, injuries, and fatalities. To date, there are twelve fatal accidents recorded that relate to packrafting.

In response to this increasingly important issue, Alaskan boater Luc Mehl published the Packraft Handbook in June of 2021, which is a comprehensive guide to amphibious river running. With the help of illustrator Sarah Glaser, this book provides a very detailed yet simple guide to everything a boater needs to learn – from preparation, to paddling technique, to capsize recovery, and swiftwater rescue. Which I feel is long due in this community. Because while packrafts are generally very stable and forgiving as watercraft, they have given many boaters – myself included – a false sense of security to run bigger rivers where we had no business going without proper training.

It was Luc’s goal to change that trend with this book. By adapting many of the river rescue techniques already developed in the kayaking community to that of packrafts, the book encourages a #cultureofsafety as its core ethos – a community where we can continuously educate ourselves and others on the importance of river safety.

The book is divided into four parts, the first being Foundations. Here, Luc describes the types of packrafts available, equipment, boat control techniques, wet entry, and risk assessment. New packrafters especially will benefit from the knowledge it offers on how to get started.

The second section, Rivers and Open Water, explains the basics of navigating different types of rivers and open water crossings. There are different types of paddling environments with risks inherent to each. Technical swiftwater is different from a windy fjord crossing, but both can be dangerous. It is important to be experienced and prepared.

In the third section, When Things Go Wrong, Luc describes many different types of accidents and the proper rescue response to each, detailing things like self-rescue, throw ropes, entrapment, rolling a packraft, equipment repair, and various examples of First Response emergency treatment that hopefully won’t be needed. I think this section is truly the meat of what we need to understand out there.

And finally, Part 4: Putting the “Pack” in Packrafting has two chapters about planning and logistics. Because it is easy to overpack when you already have to carry ten pounds of river gear. But at the same time, you don’t want to cut too many corners and underpack supplies that you might need, like say, a first aid kit.

It makes me wish I had thought about this four years ago when I made the mistake of running a scary glacial river in Iceland. It was a mile-long river connecting two lakes close to the Jökulsárlón Lagoon in the south coast, and appeared friendly on the satellite. I crossed the first lake and started down the mouth of the river, which was swift but calm. Before I realized it, the current started picking up into a Class II section and I was flying down a center line. Suddenly, I was seconds away from dropping over a river-wide pourover ledge of four feet. And a big hydraulic. With no time to find the line, I charged at it unsuccessfully and got tossed out.

And then I froze. Not literally, but mentally. For about two minutes. Flying down a river.

I thought I could kick my way to an eddy, but the current was too strong. Another rapid was approaching. I snapped out of the fog, threw the paddle across my boat, and lunged forward. I climbed back in and regained control, navigating the breaking waves. Ten seconds after I recovered, I went flying past what might have been a pinning rock.

I had originally planned to run another Class II-III river the next day, but realized as I got to shore that I needed proper rescue training and other partners before attempting something like that again. It could have ended differently. I could have died.

I could have died.

The good news is this this book can give you answers wherever you’re at with your skill level. In my case, I needed more practice at wet exit and recovery. A lot more practice. To the point that it becomes second nature to fall out, flip the boat, and jump back in. I also needed to recognize a wild river when I see one from the satellite. And most importantly, to never go alone on a river like that again. To quote my friend Ben on a similar note, “I lived and I learned.”

Since that trip, I have only done solo trips on easier Class I-II rivers in the Midwest and east coast, usually at the end of the summer when the levels are low. Appalachian rivers like the Shenandoah are nearly all pool-drop flows, allowing for easier recovery between the rapids. And many of them are commercially run, meaning that outfitters are already proactively clearing them of strainers and debris, for pretty obvious reasons. But still, I remind myself that paddling solo will always make me inherently more vulnerable to accidents, and that I need to be extremely cautious. Also, I won’t be running the Gauley in my raft.

But most importantly, I’m due for a swiftwater rescue course – for the benefit of myself and others.

In scuba diving, they teach us that the primary objective of any dive is always to get everybody back safe and unhurt. This is my primary goal of any river trip – for myself and the others to get through it safely. The Packraft Handbook by Luc Mehl explains how. From novice to veteran, boaters of all skill levels can benefit from the knowledge that it offers. So let’s make the #cultureofsafety a worthwhile goal this paddling season!

https://thingstolucat.com/packrafthandbook/
https://swiftwatersafetyinstitute.com/ssi-courses/

Meet Kit, my Lensball.

This glass ball is something of a travel companion that I started using a couple years ago. It can be very powerful as a foreground subject, capturing and rafracting the surrounding light in many different situations. The possibilities are endless so long as there is a background to set the stage for light to travel – from source to glass, from glass to sensor. From sensor to disk, and from disk to Instagram. Because this ball is all about the Instagram. It’s all for the likes.

We had some interactive art installations earlier this year, Wndr Museum and Hebru Brantley’s Nevermore Park, that both offered a wide array of photo ops for a ball such as she. On other occasions I went around Chicago and shot the Lensball in front of sculptures or downtown architecture. And other times I just found something random to use, like the hydroponic basil jungle that is my roommate’s Aerogarden.

When this is all over and we can travel safely again, I imagine Kit will be ready for the city lights of Vegas.

The Upper Peninsula of Michigan is a beautiful area for many reasons, notably for the pristine shoreline of Pictured Rocks, a national lakeshore extending for 42 miles along the coast of Lake Superior. I spent half the day driving up there from Sleeping Bear to spend a couple of days camping and exploring the park. I had enough time that afternoon to hike the Chapel Loop, a 10 mile route outlining the most dramatic section of lakeside cliffs.

I parked at the trailhead and hiked through the forest for an hour, often passing by other hikers before reaching Chapel Beach and the sound of crashing water. Turning west, the trail went along numerous overlooks for five miles. I often stopped to photograph the dramatic cliffsides as tour boats passed below. Eventually I reached Mosquito Beach on the far end of the circuit and turned south on a two mile uphill hike to my car.

It was a great trail, but as I already learned elsewhere, a scenic shoreline can only be fully appreciated from the water. So on the next day I took an all day kayaking trip with Paddling Michigan, starting in Miners Beach just six miles west of the Mosquito trailhead. We paddled east along the steadily rising cliffside, where already the cliffs were layered in different colorful minerals. Sections of them included a layer of gravel left behind by glaciers of another age, grinding and burying moraine into the ancient bedrock.

The water was a translucent jade color illuminated in a bright sun as it slowly shifted about in the calm morning. We passed over a shipwreck, which I couldn’t see very well from the boat. But I did get some video footage of the wooden planks of the ship under the flickering sunbeams. There were other wrecks in the area as well, due to Lake Superior’s potentially treacherous weather patterns. I wasn’t at all surprised to find out that this area has its share of dive sites.

We stopped for lunch on the shore for an hour and then continued on past Mosquito Beach. Here, the cliff points were the most dramatic, rising up to 200 feet above the water. We paddled underneath arches, into cliffside mini-caves, and one small tunnel that waves had carved into the rock wall. I understood why more daring people have taken bigger expeditions into places like Alaska’s Inside Passage, where they can explore its coves, islands, and beaches day in and out. The sport of sea kayaking offers an epic, yet peaceful opportunity to any adventurer looking to find their coastal frontier.

Passing Grand Portal point, we made a straight mile to Chapel Beach, where several people made a 60 foot leap off of a nearby jump rock. The rest of us shored our kayaks as they were already getting loaded onto a shuttle boat. Then we made a three mile hike on the Chapel Trail back to the parking lot.

Great as it was, I barely saw a quarter of the Pictured Rocks shoreline. I have no idea when, but a 42 mile backpacking hike from end to end would be a great way to follow up on this tour.

If there was ever a Class 0, it would be the Crystal River in northern Michigan. True to its name, this flatwater river is like a sheet of glass no more than a foot above the sandy riverbed, meandering its way through a dense wood of evergreen to the lakeside vacation town of Glen Arbor. Every summer weekend, an outfitter in the town shuttles people to a boat launch a few miles up the road. I try to avoid spending money just to paddle, and hiked up there on my own.

I set up my raft and got in, and immediately enjoyed the calm and steady current as it made its way through the woods. Many places were a foot deep or less, but usually just deep enough not to scrape my raft on the bottom as I dug my paddle into the sand and grit. I passed several families and on more than one occasion saw kids paddling by themselves out ahead. The truth is that you would have to actually try to screw up on this river.

After about two hours I got to the takeout, packed up, and got a fish and chips dinner at a restaurant close by – the benefits of paddling next to a tourist town.

My plan was to packraft for three days on this vacation – first on the Crystal River, then for two days on the Boardman, a bigger Class II river south of Traverse City. For the past 16 years, the Boardman has undergone a major dam removal project, so far removing three of its four decommissioned dams from the river. I had the idea to spend two days paddling through it with my packraft to see the grassy fields left behind from what were once artificial lakes, and to document the recovering ecosystems. So on the second day, I parked at a river takeout south of the city and hiked the River Road upstream.

Eventually the road crossed over the river and I got a good look at what I was actually dealing with. It rained a lot in the last night, and that river was high. And fast. That along with the fact that camping in the rain already had me in a bad mood, gave me an uneasy feeling about going any further. If I were to go around a bend at that speed and run into a strainer, I don’t know if I would be ready for it. Further on were Class II rapids that I knew nothing about, and also likely higher and faster from the rainstorm. I didn’t want to run it today and end up in the paper tomorrow. So I turned back.

Determined to make something of the day, I got lunch in Glen Arbor and spent the afternoon hiking the trail systems around the Sleeping Bear Dunes. It is a scenic series of sand dunes that span three miles from west to east on the shoreline, with sand bluffs overlooking Lake Michigan and the Manitou Islands across the water. In non-Covid times, you could take a ferry out to them for more secluded camping and backpacking.

I hiked the dune trails as they went along the ridges and scrawling vegetation, occasionally passing dried out husks that were once trees. As the sun fell in the west I parked my car at the main lot and made the Dune Hike straight up and over the ridge system, climbing five or six steep hills before reaching the beach on the far end. I had done this trail before, but it still felt like forever as I cleared each hill only to see another one.

I sat by the water and waited for the late day sun to come out of the clouds that loomed just above the horizon, longing for another sundown of another where and when – one that won’t happen until I’m allowed to return to Europe. It has been a strange and unprecedented year where I had just about everything planned out of where I would go, and what I would do when I got there – only to have life get in the way and change all if it. This week long trip in Michigan might well be the only vacation of note that I take. I, like the rest of America – whether they want to accept it or not – have to wait until we’re not sick anymore. But I’m nothing if not thankful as I allow these times to pass, as surely they shall. There are other worlds than these.

All at once, the sun fell behind the water. I packed up my lensball and camera and made a good pace back in the fading daylight. It was fully dark by the time I reached my car.

I traveled through West Virginia recently on a train and made the most of the fact that Ace Raft is a three mile hike from the Thurmond Amtrak. Timing had it that I could stop by for the last weekend of Gauley Season and all of the river carnage that it brings. It was October in Appalachia with morning temperatures just low enough to bite. Leaves turn into fire and gold, and the river charges its way down the canyon, thanks to the dam release up in Summersville.

We arrived on a bus at the boat launch just above the Fuzzy Box of Kittens rapid and Woods Ferry, which separate the Upper and Lower sections of the Gauley. It’s a wild Class III-V river throughout, although my paddle down the Lower Gauley today would hopefully be more forgiving. The Upper section is famous for its huge powerhouse rapids that go back to back for 13 miles. And while the Lower Gauley has its share of that too, it is altogether calmer, more scenic, and spaced out. The trip would mostly amount to floating down easy flatwater and enjoying the fall colors and brisk mountain air.

Mostly.

We were just getting started on the second rapid, Woods Ferry, when we ran into a bit of a scuffle. Halfway through, the raft got stuck on a ledge and one guy almost fell out. By a miracle, he landed on a rock and it kept him up just long enough for his buddies to pull him back. The guide, Bobby, yelled at us to paddle, trying to steer clear of the Juicer, a huge slanted boulder at the bottom that nearly always flips a raft. We bumped right into it, and amazingly the boat stayed up and went back into the current.

Our problem was that we weren’t paddling together as a group. You have to go together at full momentum to get the power you need to bust through this kind of water. Bobby had us practice our paddling moves in flat water, but I was still nervous and unsure if we could get through this. It was game time again soon enough. Bobby sent us charging through a huge wave train in Back Ender, then an even bigger series of hits in Koontz Flume, the first Class V of the day. We minded a house sized undercut boulder on the right and slammed through four big wave holes.

My camera died right before Canyon Doors, a calmer, scenic cliffside section of the river. We stopped to eat, I replaced the camera battery, turned the camera on, and we kept going. The river picked up its pace again as we had to navigate the clusterfuck of boulders in Upper Mash. The payoff was that it positioned us to run the main channel on Lower Mash with enough force to slam through the huge wave-hole at the bottom. For what it’s worth, I think we were finally paddling together as a team. As long as we listened to the guide, he could get us through all of it. My confidence in myself and the group was at an all time high.

The only big rapid left was Pure Screaming Hell, a Class V monstrosity known for its disastrously big Hell Hole. Here, you paddle for your life and do everything the guide tells you. Unfortunately, my camera died before we got there, but this video does a good job describing it:

From what I can remember, Bobby steered us on the tongue just left of it for an easier line. I only had a second going by to stare into the face of oblivion. We got through it in good standing, but it did give some boaters after us a thrashing – luckily nowhere near the undercut boulders.

This is a scary river. If you look up documentation about it, pretty much every section with a high rating is loaded with bad rocks. Some areas like Tumblehome are completely sieved out. None of it can be done without a guide or proper whitewater training. But despite the threats, I just can’t pass up the chance to see the Gauley on dam season. Even if it means I have to spend one boring final hour floating down flatwater to the takeout.  It was late afternoon by then, and all I could think about was beer and pizza.

I went back to the lodge restaurant for both, slept in a cabin tent, and hiked back to the Thurmond station the next day.