52 Hikes Challenge

Late last year I was inspired by this spunky ginger-haired woman who was finishing up her final dozen hikes on her own Quest for finishing the 52 Hike Challenge in a single year. I thought it was impressive that she had decided to commit to 52 hilke for the whole of 2018. At 52 hikes, that’s one hike a week on average. While we were on a hike at Gothic Basin, it got me thinking about what my hiking/mountain running frequency was like already. The big difference meant committing to more driving but besiedes thtat, with how often I already went hiking, I thought to myself this would be an incredible challenge and shouldn’t be too difficult to suceed at. Simply knowing that I don’t go hiking every week but at the same time that on some weekends I had gone on multiple hikes, and there were even times when I had done the occasional weekday hike after a hard day of work, or even to start my day, with that knowledge it seemed that hitting 52 was something I could probably achieve fairly easily. Her challenge became my challenge, and it came at the perfect time.

When I found about this, it was around the time I was about to have surgery on my left hip. Knowing this was going to be my challenge for 2019 gave me a great carrot on a stick to chage for after I had a life-changing surgery which has allowed me to remember what it’s like to live a pain-free life. In October of 2018, October 26th, to be exact, I had surgery on my right hip. The labrum had torn in an accident that involved rolling down a mountainside in Vernon, NJ in a utility vehicle that I was the passenger of four years prior. With this hard reset and the timing of my recovery leaving me capable of doing mild hikes by early January, I set out to complete the fun challenge of completing at least 52 hikes in 2019. The reality is, I’ll probably be able to do a few more than 52 but who knows what life will throw my way. Everything over 52 will be a bonus, but no matter what, I will hit 52 in 2019.

For the remainder of 2019, I will share my many hikes here on this post and on my Instagram page. You can follow the adventure, and maybe even tag along if you’re up for the challenge of keeping up with me during one of these outings. Sometimes, I’m down for a slower hike, but most are at maximum effort. Request a discussion and maybe we can plan an adventure together!

Overtime I will write individual posts for a lot of these hikes and will link to those posts from here. A few companies and organizations I would like to thank are the US Forest Service, Washington State Parks, National Parks, Washington Trails Association, Suunto, All Trails, Garmin, all of you make my adventures fun, safe, and reliable. In future posts, you can expect links to trail pages, reviews/recaps, and Strava data from my excursion as well as photos and videos.

I look forward to sharing all my experiences with you and hope you find the inspiration to go have your own adventures in endurance.

FINAL UPDATE: As it would turn out, I got very close to finishing all 52-hikes and by some calculations I may actually have finished. But, due to some of the limitations I decidedly implemented to determine what constituted as a hike (a minimum of 1000′ of gain) I ultimately decided that I came up short by 4 hikes. If I were to eliminate that qualification as to what counts/doesn’t count as a hike, then I am certainly well over the 52-hike threshold for 2019.

Note that I did not record every hike as some were meant to serve as an escape from the social constructs of society, technology, and media consumption, so with that said feel free to scroll below to see my Instagram posts from all of the hikes that I did record and a few I did not.

Reflecting back on this challenge it’s safe to say that it was an incredible challenge and I am quite happy that I took it on. All-in-all, I consider this challenge a success with an asterisk as I would have liked to have completed 52 hikes with a minimum of 1000′ of elevation gain. But as things go in life, sometimes things just don’t go as planned, it also didn’t help that after the Cascade Crest-100 I found myself nursing a mild foot-injury for 6 weeks post-event which caused a setback in my planned hikes, however I acknowledge that is just an excuse and should I decide to take on this challenge ever again (I’m shifting my focus this year in 2020), I will take what I learned from 2019 and better prioritize and plan my hiking adventures. I hope you consider taking on this challenge, it’s a great way to explore and an even greater way to stay mentally and physically healthy. It’s also a fabulous way to fight off depression (seasonal or otherwise).