Hiking the Continental Divide Trail [Show]

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Gretchen Roe: 00:00:04.036
[music] Welcome everyone to this episode of The Demme Learning Show. This is Gretchen Roe and I am so delighted to have a very special guest with me today. I have the opportunity to have a conversation about goal setting and future planning and not giving up. And this opportunity is a very special one indeed for me because we’re going to talk with my son, Duncan Roe, who had the opportunity to hike the Continental Divide Trail this past summer. And as we get started, everyone, welcome today. We are delighted to have this opportunity to share with you. This is a little bit different than a typical webinar that we do, because this is going to be much more a storytelling event. So I’m delighted to welcome Duncan, and I’ll let him introduce himself.

Duncan Roe: 00:00:55.296
Hey, everyone. My name is Duncan Roe. I’m a systems engineer for an IT company located in Western North Carolina. I’m a lifelong outdoor enthusiast and a very big advocate for spending time in nature. And I am now a major section hiker of the CDT, which I’m very proud of that accomplishment, so.

Gretchen Roe: 00:01:16.887
Great. So Duncan, as we begin, I think it would be great for people to know where you hatched this idea. And that actually goes all the way back to 2016. And I think it’s safe to say you didn’t even know the CDT existed in 2016, right?

Duncan Roe: 00:01:34.683
Yeah, that is correct. I had known about the idea of doing a long-distance trail because I was familiar with the AT, having grown up in Appalachia. And so I was very familiar with that concept. And then in 2016, I spent a few weeks with my friend in northern Maine. And in that time, we decided to hike Mount Katan, which is the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail. And on our way up, we saw some through hikers, that kind of stuff. And it was just a very interesting thing, to be exposed to that kind of community and those people and the idea of doing that long immersion in the wilderness just seemed so intriguing to me, all the way back then when I was a senior in high school. So that was that’s where I started, kind of me and my friend were talking about it while we were hiking down. And he said that he didn’t think that hiking the Appalachian Trail was something he wanted to do. And I kind of on a whim was like, well, maybe, I don’t know. It seems like I’d like to give a shot before I can’t do it anymore, so.

Gretchen Roe: 00:02:35.776
Right. Exactly. And then really in our conversations this week in preparing for this, I have to say as a mom, there’s a lot of things I’m glad I didn’t know in advance. But it’s been a fascinating conversation that we’ve had ongoing for about 10 days now, preparing for this. So tell our viewers, when did you really get intent about this and how did you get there?

Duncan Roe: 00:03:04.886
Yeah, so I started– I had been backpacking, not backpacking, but camping and hiking in Western North Carolina for a long time since I moved here, basically. And that had like exposed me to being in nature, but really backpacking and spending days at a time on trail was not something I had ever had any exposure to. And I started going, we went with my friend on a little– I think we did like one mile maybe. And we hiked to a little camp spot and set up our gear and then took a camping trip. And that was that was in 2019. And so it was like my first exposure to backpacking. And then I really just fell in love with this idea of spending multiple days at a time on trails and like kind of just living in the wilderness, like living on the trail and trekking day to day and that kind of stuff. I really just fell in love with this idea. And in 2020, when when COVID happened, I was given the opportunity to spend a lot more time out in the wilderness. And so that summer, I basically backpacked every single weekend aside from two, actually. I spent every single weekend out there.

Duncan Roe: 00:04:15.819
And so I just fell in love with this. And those kind of short bits, just two or three days at a time really made me starting to think about spending weeks and months out in the wilderness and how much that just enthralled me. And that seemed like such an amazing opportunity. And so that kind of is where I got my basis in my grounding of my love for backpacking and being in the wilderness. And so I continued backpacking, it remained almost nearly a constant thing that I was going every single weekend for about two or three years. And then, last year in the spring of 2022, I decided that I was going to embark on doing the AT in 2024. It was something that I had dreamed about since I was in high school, and it had become more of a reality as I got more into backpacking. And my partner, she told me that I should go for it– that I should go for my dream. And so I really set in in 2022 that I was going to hike the Appalachian Trail. And so I started the process of researching and preparing and training and all of that.

Gretchen Roe: 00:05:26.144
And then your friend Jack, there’s two friends here that are named Jack, but your second friend Jack kind of hijacked that idea because he had an adventure out West, correct?

Duncan Roe: 00:05:36.637
Yeah. So he spent, I think it was somewhere around a month out in Wyoming with NOLS doing a outdoor wilderness training course, basically. And he really loved it so much, but he wanted more freedom with his adventure. And he felt that NOLS, being a structured course, didn’t provide that for him. And so getting that exposure, he spent the entire time out there on the CDT in Wyoming. And so getting that exposure to the CDT really kind of made him want to continue it and want him to start on that journey from the beginning. And so he proposed the idea to me and my friend, Brandon. Brandon being the friend that I had spent most of my time backpacking out here in North Carolina with, he had proposed this idea of doing the trail. This was in September of 2022. And I, at the time, felt that it wasn’t something I could do because I didn’t think I could take any time off of work. But I told Migna about it, my partner, and she gave me the full go ahead. And she told me that I needed to pursue it and take on my dream. And then I talked to my boss about it. And he said that they would give me six months’ leave to go pursue this. And so the door just opened right up for me, basically.

Gretchen Roe: 00:06:56.859
And so how did you then pursue an exploration of doing the Continental Divide Trail as opposed to the Appalachian Trail?

Duncan Roe: 00:07:06.794
The Appalachian Trail, it always enticed me because I love Appalachia. I just believe it’s such a beautiful place and it’s home for me. So accomplishing the AT has always been a major goal of mine because of that. But the CDT, what enthralled me about the CDT is– it’s the solitude and just the wildness of it. I mean, and on the Appalachian Trail, you can be in town practically any day. You could get onto a road pretty much whenever you wanted to. On the CDT, it is weeks between getting into town and that kind of stuff. You have at least 115 miles at about the medium for the distance between towns. And so it’s a lot longer stretches, and that kind of stuff. And some of the the core tenets of the CDT is to embrace the brutality and embrace the solitude. And I felt that that seemed, that might be deterring to some people, but to me, that challenge felt like something I had to do. And on top of that, they call the Continental Divide Trail, the King of Long Trails, because it is the most intense trail of the three triple crown trails being the Appalachian Trail, the Pacific Crest Trail, and the Continental Divide Trail.

Duncan Roe: 00:08:18.828
And so that idea of conquering the King of Long Trails was just– it just lit a fire in my heart. And it was something I had to pursue. And in my research on backpacking, when I was really getting into it in the summer of 2022 or 2020, actually, I came across lots of content on through hiking and lots of people on YouTube creating videos about through hiking. And one in particular that grabbed my interest was a woman who hiked with a professional video editor, and they had a drone. And so they took amazing, beautiful shots of the landscape and of the journey. And I feel like the story they told was a really beautiful one. The YouTube channel is called Homemade Wonderless. And it’s just that that excited me so much about the Continental Divide Trail. And it exposed me to this idea of doing something wild and out in nature and totally at the– basically at the whims of Mother Nature. I thought that that seemed like a fascinating and incredible journey to embark on.

Gretchen Roe: 00:09:20.284
And you did an enormous amount of preparation from purchasing an ultralight backpack to– tell people about the ice baths you were taking to condition your body because this to me was bananas as somebody who doesn’t ever like to be cold at all. I’ll let you tell this story.

Duncan Roe: 00:09:41.157
Yeah. So being a sufferer of Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, I knew that coming into this, I was going to have to prepare differently than my peers and then anyone else who was going on the trail because, having a connective tissue disorder means that I’m going to have to work harder, basically. And so with that comes a whole list of ailments that kind of plagued me. And one of the big ones is something called Raynaud’s syndrome, which is an issue with your blood vessel. Basically, you don’t get blood moving to your limbs like you should. And so you end up getting very cold, your feet are very cold, your hands are very cold, that kind of stuff. And so I did a lot of research on how I can kind of prepare myself to be exposed to the cold environment. And then also to the brutal day-to-day trekking upwards of 20 miles every single day exposing myself to that as well. And so I did a lot of work for Raynauds. I did a lot of work with cold exposure therapy. And so I would take these ice baths. I could usually only stand it for a minute or 20 seconds at a time sometimes.

Duncan Roe: 00:10:50.865
But it got better as I did it, but it was brutal torture. And I definitely had a very hard time doing it. But I would kind of– I knew that this was kind of a little bit of the preparation for preparing my body, but also it was preparation for preparing my mind to be able to take on this embrace the brutality mantra that the CDT holds. And so I knew that I was going to have to go a little bit above and beyond. And then on top of that, as far as my joints and that kind of stuff go, I did a lot of work with a physical therapist to ensure that my gait was proper and that I didn’t have any outstanding weaknesses in my joints, my ankles and my knees and my hips that needed to be addressed. And so I spent a lot of time working and training to make sure that my body and my mind was ready for this.

Gretchen Roe: 00:11:40.597
I think one of the things that’s a good takeaway here is to recognize that you had this adventure in mind, but you did fully almost a year of planning to put this adventure together because you started talking about the CDT a year ago. And we sat down at Thanksgiving and watched videos of the CDT. And by then you were already well into training. So you were getting up at 5:30 in the morning and marching around the apartment complex.

Duncan Roe: 00:12:10.475
Yeah. Yeah. So between 5:00 and 5:30, I’d wake up and try to walk. I would shoot between three and five miles every morning. And sometimes I would take my backpack and sometimes I would just carry weights or I would just run. I would basically just try to make myself move every single day. And that kind of moving from– I don’t think I have a sedentary lifestyle but working in IT means that I kind of sit throughout my whole day. So I have to kind of compensate for that. And so I was getting up every morning starting last September, basically up until I left in March. I was waking up and training between 5:00 and before I had to go to work at 7:30. So I had good two and a half hours of training basically every single morning. And then on top of that every weekend and every chance I could find during the week, I would be hiking in the woods or backpacking or just preparing myself as much as possible, basically.

Gretchen Roe: 00:13:10.284
Okay. And so now let’s fast forward to your arrival in the desert southwest. You were telling me this last night and you said here you were on the border of Mexico. Describe that for us because it sounds other worldly to me.

Duncan Roe: 00:13:28.176
Yeah. So coming from the tunnel of trees in Appalachia, I’m used to being constantly surrounded by fauna and plants and water flowing and soft, nice, cushiony dirt. And that was not something that I was afforded out there on the CDT. I was very shocked right away by the fact that there was absolutely no shade. I mean, there was nowhere to hide from the sun or the wind. It was just constant. I think that the first day, I found a little gully that I hid in. And luckily, the sun was just lined up perfectly but it wasn’t in the gully. And so it was like a little crack, like not even a gully, but a ditch almost that I was hiding in with some of the people that we started with. And that was like our only reprieve from this constant exposure to the sun and the wind. On top of that everywhere you stepped there was sharp and pointy things everywhere. If you went off trail even a little bit, you would kick a cactus, or a needle would go through your shoe or something like that. It was just constant that there was this sharp environment everywhere, basically. And so–

Gretchen Roe: 00:14:35.218
Now did you expect that or was that a big surprise for you?

Duncan Roe: 00:14:39.833
I expected it, but I don’t think that you can actually prepare yourself for the shock of it. So I had expected it and I knew that it was going to be a part of what I was dealing with. But I think that the shock of it was kind of the most upheaving part. So yeah, I knew that it was going to be brutal in the desert but the lack of shade was something that just took me by utter surprise for sure.

Gretchen Roe: 00:15:05.866
And then how you were less than a week in when you developed Achilles tendonitis, right?

Duncan Roe: 00:15:12.602
Yeah. So I basically started developing these blisters on the balls of my feet. And then over top of that, a callus would form. And so I’d have fluid trapped between a callus and the ball of my foot. And that was something that it was an issue that kind of persisted until I finally got it under wraps when I went out there the second time. But it was something that just kept coming back at me and kept messing up my feet, basically. And it made every step excruciating pain. It was just unbearable at some point. And so because of that, I was kind of my gait was very messed up and I was like walking kind of strange to compensate for this pain in the ball of my foot. And so I developed Achilles tendinitis in my left foot that was so bad, I ended up having to cut that section short because I just couldn’t make it between water caches. And it was getting kind of dangerous. I was running out of water and I wasn’t able to walk fast enough to keep up with my water consumption. And so I ended up having to go home or not go home, but jump forward to Silver City, which was the second town in the journey. So that was, a little bit, it was not planned at all, but you have to kind of roll with the punches.

Gretchen Roe: 00:16:28.086
Well, I think one of the things that surprised me so much is here in the mountains of western North Carolina, you can find water within a mile of any direction you go. And you were walking 13, 15, 18 miles between water caches, right?

Duncan Roe: 00:16:46.431
Yeah, and these weren’t even pumped. I mean, there was no natural water out there. All of the water sources in the beginning were supplied by trail angels who would show up. A trail angel is someone basically who would take care of through hikers on a trail, whether it be giving them a ride to town or resupplying water caches or just giving out food, something like that. That’s what a trail angel is. And so trail angels would supply the water for us for the first section. But after that, we basically were drinking out of cow well, like wells that were pumped up out of the ground for cows to drink out of. But don’t think I was– I was not drinking out of the same water the cows was drinking out of. I could get to the tanks that they couldn’t get to. But it still was cow water that was coming out of the ground. So it was very dirty, at least.

Gretchen Roe: 00:17:32.627
But at least you had a filter on you that you could filter it a little bit, right?

Duncan Roe: 00:17:37.091
Yeah. Absolutely. Yes, I never would go anywhere without a filter. That is a very important thing. So I was able to filter it, but it tasted like it had a lot of sediment. So that was something that far to get used to.

Gretchen Roe: 00:17:50.700
Sounds delicious.

Duncan Roe: 00:17:52.286
Absolutely.

Gretchen Roe: 00:17:54.119
Okay, so let’s talk a little bit because I found it fascinating how often you were given information that when you actually walked it out, it turned out not necessarily to be accurate. And it kind of codified the beginning of your journey because people were telling you there were places you couldn’t to go. And part of that was because the winter of ’23 had been so brutal. So let’s talk a little bit about that.

Duncan Roe: 00:18:21.392
So from the very beginning when I was out there, it was Brandon Jack and I and then Simon, another man we met out there who’s from Germany. We were the only four people in the group of 20 or so of us that started that had never done a long distance trail before. So everyone that was out there had already done upwards of 2,000 miles on a long distance trail. And so this, we were spring chickens, as you call it, for sure. And so we had been told from the beginning, people kept telling us like, “Oh, this is your first trail. Maybe that wasn’t the best idea. Maybe you should try something a little bit easier first or something like that.” And so we had been– we kind of had heard that for the first section. And then when we got to Silver City, the second town on the trail, we were supposed to be taking the Gila River alternate, which is an alternate that cuts off a large section of trail that goes to the Gila wilderness area in southern New Mexico, a very beautiful place. And because the water levels were so high due to the snow melt, we were getting word from people up ahead that it was sweeping away any hiker who tried to attempt it, basically. And so me coming off of my Achilles tendonitis, I knew that that was something I couldn’t risk because a river crossing is dangerous when you’re stable and when you’re healthy, but going on it on a leg that you aren’t sure if it will make it is very, very dangerous.

Duncan Roe: 00:19:50.141
And so we ended up walking the highway all the way around and then reconnecting to the trail later on. I think we did 52 or 56 miles on the highway so when we finally reconnected back to the Gila River, we crossed it for the first time. And it barely was even up to my knees. It wasn’t even that high. There was no issues at all. And so we kind of had started to get like a this idea that people would fearmonger and kind of blow things out of proportion for us. And they would act like things are a lot more intense than it actually is. And that that trend continued as we trek north, we were getting word. And it was just outside of Grants, New Mexico, that the next section we were going to be going into is going, there’s an alternate and that section that goes over Mount Taylor in New Mexico. And and that was something that I was not going to miss. I really wanted to hike Mount Taylor.

Gretchen Roe: 00:20:40.949
Is Mount Taylor the highest point in New Mexico?

Duncan Roe: 00:20:45.143
No, I think Mount House is or something like that. I forget what the tallest point is, but Mount Taylor is pretty close and I think it’s the closest that you would get if you were on the CDT in New Mexico. So we had heard that that was basically impassable because there was still around four to six feet of snow at the top and that people were post-holing in it and having a really difficult and dangerous time getting down the mountain. And so we–

Gretchen Roe: 00:21:10.063
I understand what post-holing is, but for our viewers, can you explain what that means?

Duncan Roe: 00:21:15.244
Yeah, so that basically is when you fall into the snow up to your hips. And it doesn’t sound that bad, but when you’re hiking 20 miles a day, that is kind of a pain. And it very much slows you down. And also on top of that, it can be very dangerous too because you don’t necessarily know what you’re falling into and if you’re falling into a hole in the snow that could fall deeper, or if there’s something dangerous underneath the snow. And so post-holing is never the best, but obviously it’s something that kind of comes with it. And so we went up over Mount Taylor. We hiked very early in the morning. We started around 6:00 or so in the morning and trekked up over it and it was perfectly fine. We had no issues at all. By the time we got over the mountain and got to the the north face, which was the part that was snowed in, the snow was still frozen and we just slid down like it was a little slide. So that was very fun.

Gretchen Roe: 00:22:10.550
So at that point then, you’re starting to second guess the information you’re getting from other through-hikers and starting to make your own decisions based on the environment as you encounter it, right?

Duncan Roe: 00:22:25.121
Absolutely. We basically developed this mantra of, “I need to see it with my eyes before I make the call.” And so that’s basically what we were locked in on is that we had to see it first before we decided. And that had been something that we had kind of picked up because we just felt as if people kind of blew things out of proportion a lot. And so yeah, we were kind of forced to make our own mind and kind of disregard. We will listen to the information that was given to us but we’re not going to make our decisions based on the information alone.

Gretchen Roe: 00:22:58.879
All right. And so you hiked on northward, but then the weather started to– the snow got deeper, the trails got more treacherous. So you guys made the collective decision to bypass Colorado, correct?

Duncan Roe: 00:23:17.238
Yeah. And so getting in north of Cuba, New Mexico– New Mexico is very weird because you can be hiking in the desert one day and the next day you’re in a high terrain, kind of alpine area that’s covered in snow. It’s just a weird place for sure. And so we had left Cuba and we had gotten fearmongering, again, that the the section up ahead of us, it is called the San Pedro wilderness area. It was about a 10 mile section on the CBT that apparently it was about 10,000 feet. So it still had snow at that point. And they said all of the comments from other hikers basically that it was impassable or at least extremely difficult to pass.

Gretchen Roe: 00:23:57.409
And this is like late May, right?

Duncan Roe: 00:23:59.877
Yeah, I think this was May 16th or so, so definitely getting close to the summer. And so we went up and over it and it turns out that they definitely– some of those comments had some precedence because there was it was very difficult. It took us about– I started at 4:30 in the morning and I hiked from 4:30 in the morning until 3:00 to get through the 10 mile section, and so nearly 12 hours of hiking to get through a 10 mile section.

Gretchen Roe: 00:24:30.135
And so to put that in perspective, on average, when you began this hike, you were hiking, how many miles a day?

Duncan Roe: 00:24:36.992
So when I began, I was doing– the first day was like 13 miles, and then I did– I basically was bouncing between around the region of 10 to like 17 miles a day, never below 15 usually. But the first few days were kind of slow because I wanted to prepare my body for this. But by that point, this was north of mile 650 for the Continental Divide Trail. So at that point, we were doing 24, 25 miles a day. And so to be at the point where you are crushing miles like that and then be stuck in something that should be simple, should be just an easy 10 miles, was very, very demeaning, and it definitely kind of broke my will to push through more snow, just seeing how slow that was. And so then when we got out of the San Pedro wilderness, we had word that the next section was going to cross a river, Rio Vallecitos, that the river had blown out the bridge that was used to cross it. It was so flooded– or not flooded, but just so overflowed with snow melt.

Duncan Roe: 00:25:48.103
And we had seen on Rio Chama that Rio Chama was also in a similar condition that it was completely blown out and just incredibly dangerous. And so we made the calls that rather hiking all the way to that river and then turning back around and kind of risking ourselves for this food, because we were having to measure out how much food we needed, and if we walked all the way there and then walked all the way back, we would definitely be at an issue for food. And so it was either that or like 80 miles on the highway from Ghost Ranch to Chama, New Mexico. That sounds terrible. And so instead of doing that, we decided to bounce up to Wyoming because there’s a desert in Wyoming called the Great Divide Basin, which is still– it was generally free of snow at that point in time.

Gretchen Roe: 00:26:39.912
So how did you get across Colorado then?

Duncan Roe: 00:26:42.594
So we just took a– there was a bus from Ghost Ranch and we took the bus from Ghost Ranch to Santa Fe. And then we took a train from Santa Fe to Albuquerque. And then I took a Greyhound from Albuquerque to Denver and then up to Rawlins, Wyoming.

Gretchen Roe: 00:26:59.865
Right. Planes, trains, and automobiles, right?

Duncan Roe: 00:27:03.049
Every form of transportation, for sure.

Gretchen Roe: 00:27:06.694
So I want to pause for just a minute before we go into talking about Wyoming. And I want to talk about something that I think is a cool feature through hikers, and that is how you guys get your nicknames. So can you tell a little bit about that?

Duncan Roe: 00:27:20.147
Yeah, so on trail, this doesn’t happen for everyone. Of the three of us, I was the only one who really got a real trail name because we just weren’t around. There wasn’t a lot of people on the CDT. But it’s much more common on the PCT and the AT that you get a trail name. Basically, they kind of give you a moniker for– usually someone, another through hiker, will find some characteristics about you or something will happen, and then they choose that as your name. And so my name, my trail name was Lark, because one of the women that I met on trail said that I was incredibly upbeat and I was upbeat. And I had a light heart like a songbird. And so that’s how she gave me that name.

Gretchen Roe: 00:28:12.984
That’s pretty cool. That’s pretty awesome. All right, Lark. So now you’re stepping into Wyoming and it’s still four of you– no, now you’re up to six, right?

Duncan Roe: 00:28:23.605
We’re at six. Yeah. So the three of us had met three other people that we started on the border with. We all started on the same day. And we kind of bounced around each other in New Mexico. And then about halfway through New Mexico, we decided to team up as a group. And so it was the six of us in Wyoming. And at that point, two of us, Brandon– or not Brandon– actually, he was a part of a– Brandon, Jack, and Simon. So three of us had gone up ahead and they were already trekking through Wyoming. And then I was with Gracious and [Sherbert?], who’s the two other people that we met. And we trekked together through Wyoming. So yeah, we kind of split apart a little bit in the Great Divide Basin just because the traveling kind of broke us up a bit. But for the most part– we met back up together in Lander, the six of us.

Gretchen Roe: 00:29:17.966
Okay. So now tell the story of what happened in Lander.

Duncan Roe: 00:29:21.875
Yeah. And so in Lander, by the time we got up there, it was just shy of June. I think it was March 28th or so– or not March, sorry, May 28th. And we had gotten word from the locals that the Wind River Range was not only impassable, but it had upwards of 14 feet of snow on trail still. And so that is just not even– that’s not something that we could even consider doing. And so we were kind of unsure what to do. We were lost a little bit because we had already jumped– we had already skipped a lot of the trail. We couldn’t go back because we couldn’t go through there. And so we decided to just hang out for a little bit in Lander and kind of see how things go. And so while we were doing that, Jack and Simon and Brandon, who are all avid rock climbers, they went to Sinks Canyon and they started rock climbing. And the rest of us came out and joined them. And we didn’t have anywhere to stay really. So we just camped underneath the rock wall. And around 6:00 in the morning, I woke up because I really had to go pee. And I packed up all my gear because I thought I might as well. And I was sitting against the rock wall and a rock slide came down over– not over top of me, but it was probably about 10 feet to the left– or to the right of me. It came down and landed directly on top of Simon, one of the other thru-hikers I was with. And so he took several direct blows from 40-pound boulders. And definitely, he was very lucky to survive that encounter. And so…

Gretchen Roe: 00:30:54.338
And you said that part of the reason Simon survived is because he was a big guy.

Duncan Roe: 00:30:58.792
Yeah. He was probably 210 pounds and 6’4″. So he was a large guy for sure. But he deflected a boulder with his hands. And it lacerated the tops of his hands very badly. He deflected one off of him. One hit him right on the spine square in the small of his back. One hit him in the head. He took several extremely hard blows.

Gretchen Roe: 00:31:26.653
Oh, so then what happened? You guys did what?

Duncan Roe: 00:31:29.586
So then, yes, we had our personal locator Beacon, our Garmin in reach. And we hit the SOS button on that. And so that started the search and rescue call. And then we were able to find service. And so we called 911 and associated the 911 call with the SAR request. And so they just deployed some first responders to us. And a team of medics hiked up the trail to us. We were probably a little bit over a half a mile in this trail, basically Sinks Canyon. And so the medical team hiked up to us. They stabilized Simon and put him on a stretcher, and then we all had to carry him down. We carried him probably a quarter of a mile until we met the fire department who put him on a big stretcher with a large wheel, and they wheeled him all the way down to the helicopter that landed in the field. And so they put him on the helicopter, and then the helicopter flew him to the local medical center, but they were in no position to be able to handle a trauma response like this. And so he had to go on a fixed-wing aircraft and fly over to Casper, Wyoming, where they began surgery and all that kind of stuff. One of the rocks that hit him landed square in the small of his back and blew apart the common procedure, which is the fins that stick off of your spine. And it basically turned them into shrapnel and it shredded through his kidneys and his spleen. And so he was in terrible, terrible condition, and they had to get him stabilized as fast as possible.

Gretchen Roe: 00:33:00.975
So that was something you guys did not– nobody could have anticipated, but the six of you decided at that point enough was enough.

Duncan Roe: 00:33:10.638
Yeah. So we stayed with Simon for a week and a half, and the others stayed a little bit longer, but Jack and Simon and I decided it was time to go home. And so they found their way home, and I ended up making my way separately. But we all decided that it was too many roadblocks. There was so many things that had stopped us on this journey. And then on top of this, to have this happen in front of us, and our friend nearly being killed in front of us was just too much. And so we all decided that it was time to call this journey quits for now, basically.

Gretchen Roe: 00:33:46.569
But the good news is Simon’s okay. He recovered well. He went back to Germany. You’re in touch with him periodically, right?

Duncan Roe: 00:33:54.158
Yes, yes.

Gretchen Roe: 00:33:54.516
So you came home, but the dream wasn’t dead. The goal changed. So let’s talk a little bit about that because I think this is kind of a little bit of a wild story. You reset the goal and then reset the goal yet again. So let’s talk a little bit about that.

Duncan Roe: 00:34:10.490
Yeah. So when I came home, I needed to do a little bit of recovering from the traumatic experience that I endured with the whole situation. But I wasn’t going to let this opportunity escape me because I had six months off. I had until October off. [crosstalk]–

Gretchen Roe: 00:34:27.061
Now, I should say as an aside, you’re six foot one, and when you came off the trail, you weighed 134 pounds.

Duncan Roe: 00:34:33.676
150. I lost 35 pounds.

Gretchen Roe: 00:34:36.830
You lost 35 pounds. You were a bean pole.

Duncan Roe: 00:34:39.149
Yeah, definitely. [laughter] Much thinner than before I started.

Gretchen Roe: 00:34:42.562
Absolutely.

Duncan Roe: 00:34:43.824
It’s just really hard to keep on calories out there. You have to carry everything. So it’s hard to keep that up. But yeah, so I basically decided that I wasn’t going to let this opportunity slip. And that I was going to– what I had decided is I was going to go hike to the Vermont Long Trail, which is a 200– and I think it’s 250–somewhere around there. I think it’s 272, actually. 272 miles up in Vermont. That’s a little bit of a section with the AT. I decided I was going to do that, but my transportation plans kind of fell through. And on top of that, Vermont received a once-in-a-lifetime horrendous downpour that flooded out the whole state. And so that was a door that closed very immediately. And so I decided that I was going to go back out to Ghost Ranch, New Mexico, and continue on the CDT from where I left off.

Gretchen Roe: 00:35:33.949
Okay. So by then, now it’s July, and the weather is entirely different. So let’s talk a little bit– tell me the story you told me last night. I still have goosebumps. So tell me this story about getting back on the trail and then learning what a summer thunderstorm is in the Rockies.

Duncan Roe: 00:35:52.658
Yeah, yeah. So going back out there, I had this gut feeling that it was the wrong decision, but I was too stubborn to kind of back down from that. And I was not going to to turn around at that point. And so I knew that it was kind of I was making a bad call. And then New Mexico greeted me with 110-degree weather as soon as the first day I stepped out of the bus. And so that was very intense and extremely dangerous. So I had to go very slow and take lots of water breaks and rest as much as possible. And so–

Gretchen Roe: 00:36:21.595
And you got to carry that water and it’s heavy.

Duncan Roe: 00:36:24.343
Exactly. Yep. And so I was having to carry water through the desert too. And so that that was very intense. Luckily I started towards the evening. So the sun started to set. And then the next day I ascended up over 10,000 feet and the weather cooled down dramatically. And so I started off in New Mexico. The weather was extremely hot. Every local I passed on trail– and I was not seeing a lot of people because I was completely by myself. And there just wasn’t many people out there. But every single person I passed told me that no one had ever seen the heat like that or the biting bugs like that. And I could definitely agree that the biting bugs were awful. They were biting flies. And any time I would walk slower than 1.5 miles an hour, they would be all over me. They were just horrendous. I had the system whenever I would take a break, I would see a spot, I would choose it, and then I would run up to it and throw my pack off and then sit down and pull on my rain pants and put on my rain jacket just to cover up from the bugs because they kept harassing me so much. So I went through that and that kind of felt like a bad omen a little bit, but I again was going to push through regardless.

Duncan Roe: 00:37:38.510
And so I get to Colorado and I start off in the South San Juan Mountains, which is the first thing that you hit north of Kubrick Pass in Colorado. And so the South San Juan, they had a little bit of snow and I was able to practice using my ice gear, which thank goodness I had this opportunity because I was really going to need it later on. And so I practiced some of my finer skills like arresting with an ice axe and using some of my equipment, like my crampons and that kind of stuff. And then I get the second to last day that I’m in the South Saint Juan. Basically, in Colorado, you hike along the ridge of a mountain. And then you do that for a really long time. And then you go down a valley and cross a stream or a river. And then you ascend up a path and then you hike along the ridge of another mountain. That’s basically how you would do it the entire time. And so I was it was about 3:00 o’clock in the afternoon, which is thunderstorm o’clock out there. And so I knew I was already kind of rolling the dice a bit, but I was about to ascend over this path. My garment and reach, I could get the weather report from that and the weather was perfectly fine.

Duncan Roe: 00:38:48.648
And so as I started ascending over this past, the skies are perfectly blue and clear and the birds are chirping and everything’s happy and sing songy fun. And I get up and over this past and I’m underneath this mountain and the storm, basically it starts swarming these gray clouds over top of me. And within 15 minutes of that, lightning is striking the mountain that I’m underneath. And so if you can imagine, I’m basically in an area that is a little bit shaped like a horseshoe. And so the trail to two mountains form this. It’s like horseshoe shape, basically. And the trail goes along the edge of that horseshoe. And then in the center of that horseshoe is a deep kind of valley, basically, not super deep, but I would say a high alpine valley. And so I am running along the outer perimeter of this– or I’m running along the trail, basically trying to get away from this storm because I have seven miles before I get back to the tree line. And I can’t turn around because the storm is now behind me.

Duncan Roe: 00:39:55.728
And so I’m running down this path. And as I am running, the trail starts ascend alongside this cliff, basically. So how it is is I have this the sheer rock wall that is the horseshoe shape to my right or to my left. And then to my right, I have an 800-foot drop down to this the bottom of this little center of this horseshoe. And as I’m running, I come across this snowfield that’s probably about 40 meters across and it’s angled at 70 degrees. And so it is, I mean, it is a good slide down this 800-foot drop. And I can’t hike up over it because it is slammed right against a sheer rock cliff. And so there’s nothing I can do to hike up and over it. I can’t turn around because the trail behind me that I was just on 15 minutes prior is getting struck by lightning now. And so my only choice is to start crossing this snowfield. Thank goodness there had been a hiker who had already or maybe a moose. Something had already been through there that had cut footpaths. And so there was a thin place for me to put my feet, probably about this thin, about half the length of my foot that I could put my feet to fully kind of walk across this little cliff thing.

Duncan Roe: 00:41:17.729
And so what I’m doing is I’m planting my ice axe and then using my trekking pole to push myself along and then kind of just shimmering my feet along this little edge. And I get to the center of this snowfield, not the center towards the end of it, probably about really close to the end, probably a little bit less than 10 meters away from the edge of this snowfield on the other side. And I’m at the steepest part now. The snowfield is genuinely at least 85 degrees. I mean, it is so close to a rock or to an ice wall that I have nowhere to grab onto and it is just straight up and down. And I get to this point and the snow, this little ledge that I’m standing on just gives away underneath my feet and creates a small avalanche that tears down the snowfield. And I am left hanging there just by my ice axe. I’m left hanging there just by holding onto this with my 40-pound backpack on my back, literally feet dangling over this 800-foot drop. And I don’t have a choice other than to– I basically swing my leg up into the little ledge that I was on and I take my trekking pole and just jam it into the wall.

Duncan Roe: 00:42:35.423
And then I rip the ice axe out and I start to fall. And as I’m falling, I slam it into the wall and I start swinging. And then I landed on my back on the trail. And so it was crazy intense like a movie scene, basically. My hands are shaking so hard that I can’t even hold my phone to take a video of what just happened or to show people what it looked like. And the storm is still coming at me from the East. And then on top of that, now I have a firm that’s forming and coming at me from the West. And so I can’t even have a moment to process what I just went through. And so I just start running as fast as I possibly can. And as I’m running, I get underneath the second kind of corner of the horseshoe. And I’m underneath this mountain that is again getting struck by lightning. And I am sprinting as fast as I can with my pack on with all my gear. And thank goodness I find this bush or this group of bushes that I throw my gear aside and I just dive in there and I take my lightning stance and pray for the storm to pass basically. And thankfully it did. So I was safe there, but.

Gretchen Roe: 00:43:44.840
So just as an aside as your mother, I’m glad I didn’t hear this story until yesterday because I’d have probably been unglued, but. So let’s talk about why you decided enough was enough.

Duncan Roe: 00:43:59.241
Yeah. So after that happened I kind of felt that I was playing this game a little bit too close to the edge, obviously, and I felt that I was really putting my life on the line too far past what I was willing to do. But I knew that there was a way that I could kind of out-plan this. I know that storms are going to hit from between 11:00 and 6:00 at night. I know that in that period of time, storms are going to hit. And so the only thing that was making me make these dangerous decisions is the fact that I’m being chased by lightning storms. And so if I out-plan myself and trek when I know that the storms aren’t going to be coming, then I can get through this. And so I start off on the next section in the actual San Juan Mountains, this time in the Weminuche Wilderness, and I start trekking. The first day I hike until the evening, and I hike late into the evening, and then I wake up the next morning around 3:30 AM and start trekking again. And I hike until about 11:30 AM. And at this point, I have ascended over a path that’s 12,600 feet. I’ve dropped down to 11,700 feet. And in front of me, I have another path that’s around 12,800 feet.

Duncan Roe: 00:45:12.991
And so it is right at thunderstorm o’clock, and I’m about to have to ascend over a path, and so I make the call not to do it. And I see this storm coming, and it is lighting up this mountain that I’m about to have to go over. I mean, it is multiple strikes every few seconds, it feels like. And so I shelter in place, and I basically take a nap. And I wake up about four hours later, and the storm has passed, and I get ready to go. And I see another one is on the horizon coming right for me again, and so I am forced to shelter in place again. I wait another 4 hours for this storm to pass – it’s getting close to 7 o’clock at night now – and I get all my gear ready. The skies are clear. Everything is perfectly fine. The sun is shining. The birds are chirping. So I start trekking over this path, and I get about halfway through this area. And I see that the mountain that I am about to be underneath is now covered in a dark, swarming gray cloud. And so I’m seeing these telltale signs of a dangerous thunderstorm coming, and I know that if I turn around, I’m going to be putting myself at risk that I’ll get caught on this ridge hiking down. And if I continue, obviously I will be very much so at risk.

Duncan Roe: 00:46:28.009
And so I make the call to just throw my gear to the side, because I’m carrying an ice axe and trekking poles. Those things are lightning magnets, if anything is. And so I throw my gear aside, and I just run down the side of the mountain, more like trip and fall down the side of this mountain. And so I get all the way down as far as I can until I find the tree line again, and I start hiding in the trees. And the storm comes over top of me, and it feels like I’m in a war zone because lightning is striking all around me, and it’s so loud and so bright that it shakes the ground. I was in lightning stance. I was covering my eyes. And even through my hands, I could still see lightning bolts coming down. And finally, lightning struck with it. It had to be 15 feet away because I saw the dirt jump at my feet and I felt the ground pulse beneath my sit pad that I had my feet on. And it was so close that I was like, “If I make it through this, then I am being told I need to go home.” And thankfully the storm passes and I make it through, and I decide that I need to get out of there, basically. And so I trek up the mountain, get all my gear, and I turn around and start going the other direction back to the path to take me home. And I find a nice little spot. It’s getting really late at this point. It’s 9 o’clock.

Duncan Roe: 00:47:55.792
And so I find a little spot to set up my camp, and I am camping. And in the middle of the night, I wake up up to, again, the sky is just illuminated, and there are thunderous booms around me. And I’m in a field that is about half the size of a gymnasium. And lightning is striking around me in this field. And, of course, I’m in a trekking pole tent, so I have a trekking pole sticking out of the ground. And on top of that, I’m laying parallel to the earth, which apparently creates a magnetic field, I believe– or not a magnetic field, an electric field that attracts lightning, and so if I get up and move, then I’m probably going to get struck by lightning. If I stay there, I’m probably going to get struck by lightning, too, and so I basically just made the call to roll over and prayed to God I didn’t die. And so I just tucked myself into my sleeping bag and rolled over and feigned ignorance, basically, and tried to pretend like nothing was happening. Thankfully, I woke up the next morning. And at this point, I am dead set that I’m getting home. I just cannot do this anymore. And so I start trekking down the valley, and I’m about 30 miles away from this town that I need to get to to get home. And I noticed my phone’s at 7% battery. And so I plug it in on my first battery bank. Blinks, it’s dead, fried by water.

Duncan Roe: 00:49:21.848
I plug it into my second battery bank. It blinks. It’s dead, fried by water. And it turns out that when I rolled over, I pushed my electronics bag into the mesh of my tent, which just opened it up, and it just collected rainwater throughout the whole night. And so I’m 30 miles away from town. Both my Garmin inReach and my cell phone are low on battery. And I had not seen people in days at this point. And so I really was like, “Well, I definitely need a miracle to get out of this one now because, in the last 15 minutes, I’ve had to check my phone three or four times to make sure I’m going the right direction.” And the trail was just incredibly convoluted out there. And thank goodness, I come around the corner, and there’s a couple fly fishing right there. The first people I’d seen in a long time. And I basically ran up to them and begged them to give me a ride into town and to save my life. [laughter] So they were very gracious and helpful. And that’s what they did.

Gretchen Roe: 00:50:15.299
And then you came home.

Duncan Roe: 00:50:16.039
Then I came home. Yeah. I [crosstalk].

Gretchen Roe: 00:50:17.186
And it was wonderful to have you come home. Duncan, we did have some people who asked some really interesting questions, and in this last 10 minutes or so, I would love to ask you some of these questions because I think they’re really important. Did you ever doubt yourself?

Duncan Roe: 00:50:34.923
Yes, but not necessarily. I never let the doubt take control. I always would kind of– when I first started on the border, I noticed I was really having a hard time because I was just extremely dehydrated, and I wasn’t accustomed to that environment. But I knew that I was going to be able to do it. And so I kind of like– this doubt, it was like it surrounded me like a cloud, but I never let it inside. I always kind of maintained this happy mantra of like, “I can do this. I know I can do this. And nothing can stop me from doing this.” And really, the doubt didn’t ever take hold until I felt that my life was directly on the line. And that’s when I decided that I should listen to that doubt a little bit.

Gretchen Roe: 00:51:20.912
So how about the solitude? Several people asked questions about how did you deal with being by yourself. That was such an interesting place to have to be, to be alone with your thoughts. And I think you said something that surprised me about that. So tell me a little bit more about that.

Duncan Roe: 00:51:41.942
Personally, I loved being by myself. There was never a moment that I disliked it. I mean, of course, I loved that I found people that were fly fishing that could save me [laughter] at that point in time. But the entire time, I was so grateful to be with myself. It was just a wonderful experience. And I enjoyed the solitude very much. I listened to lots of audiobooks because that was very nice to hear a person’s voice. And so I listened to lots of audio books and YouTube videos and that kind of thing. And that kind of helped make me feel less alone, especially when it was scary, like at night. That’s when I definitely felt the most alone. But even then, I still felt as if I was enough company for myself. And on top of that, I knew that there was other people out there that was trekking on the trail that was also by themselves. And something about that kind of was encouraging for me. If they can do it, then I can do it too. And we’re kind of in this together with our solitude a little bit. And so yeah, being alone never really affected me. I enjoyed it. I definitely really think that being with people that you can talk about the experiences with and people that you can bounce ideas off of is very helpful. And I am so grateful for the time I spent with my family, but I am very also extremely grateful for the time I spent by myself.

Gretchen Roe: 00:53:05.057
And so the next logical question is, will you go back?

Duncan Roe: 00:53:10.251
Absolutely. Once I start something like this, I definitely cannot just leave it behind. So I totally intend on finishing. I’m going to try to do it the best, at least as safely as I possibly can this time. And I’m going to give it a little bit before I go back out there. I feel like this year, I was very clearly told this was not the year for it. So I know that now isn’t the time. But I will take this on later in the future for sure.

Gretchen Roe: 00:53:36.647
Absolutely. So now there was an interesting question that I thought we talked about this a little bit last night and someone had asked, how would you do this as a family? So let’s talk a little bit about– we talked about ages and kids on trail and you didn’t see kids on trail. So what do you think is kind of if you were looking to do this as a family– By the way, my idea of camping is running out of toilet paper at the holiday inn. So maybe not. But I mean, I’ve done hikes with you, but I know it’s a two-day adventure and I’m coming back. So I can’t imagine doing it for a long term. But people want to know, could they do this as a family? Could a group of individuals as a family do this?

Duncan Roe: 00:54:32.068
Yeah. I mean, not only do I know that that people can do it as a family, I didn’t meet any families out there, but I met people who had met families that were doing it. And on top of that, there’s a very famous book. I cannot remember what it’s called, but it’s specifically about a big family. I think it was like eight of them or something like that, the hikes, the Appalachian Trail with children as young as toddlers. And I know that–

Gretchen Roe: 00:54:55.728
So maybe you’ll remember it by the time we can put it on our show notes for families if they want to read that.

Duncan Roe: 00:55:01.029
Absolutely. Yeah. So there’s also a few couples that I found on Instagram that were doing it with their children that were as young as two. And so people definitely they do it. I’m sure that they do it a lot more differently than I did it because you have to take a lot of precautions with children and you have to be safe. Personally, coming from my point of view, I believe that New Mexico spending that much time out there would be very tricky with children because you have to keep on top of so many things, so much food, so much water, so many electrolytes. I just feel like that would definitely be a large struggle, but I could definitely see it happening. And as a matter of fact, I’m pretty sure there was a family that gave it an attempt this year. I don’t know how far they got, but I believe that there was a family that tried the CBT.

Gretchen Roe: 00:55:54.270
So Duncan, in the last few minutes, what did you learn most about your experience? I mean, you had a dream and and you walked this dream out, and it didn’t turn out like you wanted it to. But I still think it was a remarkable experience. What are your thoughts about that?

Duncan Roe: 00:56:13.550
So in my mind, the biggest thing I learned from this is that life is always going to give you options, and it’s always going to give you doors, and it’s always going to give you opportunities. And you never really are not going to be given an opportunity by life. You just have to keep your eyes open, basically. There were so many times on trail where it felt like it was over, like I couldn’t continue, or that something major was stopping me, or that I had my life directly on the line and that it was over. And then all of a sudden, something comes out of the blue, and I’m saved. I mean, that couple fly fishing, that was the biggest one by far. But there was other times too: when I ran out of water, and then the people who were refilling the water cache just happened to be pulling in at that point in time. There were so many things like that, where I had felt like it was over and life gave me another route. And so I think one of the biggest takeaways I had from this is that you have to keep your eyes and ears open for whatever opportunity life is going to give you, because it will give you them. And you just have to be ready.

Duncan Roe: 00:57:24.290
And it’s important not to let your internal monologue be the deterrent for being ready for life’s opportunities, because you can so quickly go– you can take a bad situation and make it even worse by adding that suffering on top of it. And that situation is not ever really that bad in the first place. And one of the key things that I think of when I say that is what I was telling you about with my feet and the blisters and the pain that I was experiencing the entire time. I learned this from another through-hiker, that if you think, “This pain is the worst, and I am suffering, and I’m going to die because of this; this is awful, and I just can’t stand this anymore,” then that is going to become what you feel. You are going to become your thoughts. That is going to be the mantra that you have, and you’re going to lose all your ability. But if you say, “No, I feel the same, but I’m going to push through it, and I’m going to try in spite of it,” then you kind of remove that suffering that you would have added if you had given in to the pain. And so I think that both of those things are very important and definitely one of the biggest takeaways I’ve gotten.

Gretchen Roe: 00:58:42.163
Absolutely. On that cheerful note and wonderful wisdom, I’m going to thank you, Duncan, for your time. I’m going to thank you for taking a break from work today to spend this hour with me. It has been a different experience than we typically do, but I think it’s an inspirational journey that you had. And I’m going to look forward to you finishing that journey at some point in time. I know that you have given people a wonderful inspiration with what you’ve had to say today. And I think your closing thoughts hold a lot of wisdom. We make our thoughts what we want them to be, and as long as we stay on the positive side, we can always find a way through. And I think that makes a tremendous amount of difference.

Duncan Roe: 00:59:23.746
Absolutely. Yeah, I agree.

Gretchen Roe: 00:59:25.891
I want to thank you for joining me today. This is Gretchen Roe for The Demme Learning Show. Thank you all for joining us. You can access the show notes or watch a recording at demmelearning.com/show or on our YouTube channel. Be sure to rate, review, or subscribe wherever you may be hearing this, especially if you really enjoyed it. Take care, everyone. Have a wonderful afternoon.

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