TIFFANY CHOU aka ARCHIVE ~ THRU HIKING GEAR & TRAIL WISDOMS
“Once we hit the Sierras, I night hiked basically every single night”
HIKING GEAR RECOMMENDATIONS
SLEEP
• Western Mountaineering Versalight Sleeping Bag
• Therm-A-Rest XTherm
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MISC
• Guthook App
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• Frogg Toggs
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• Garmin InReach
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• Halfway Anywhere
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• Bug Head Net & Pants
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THRU HIKING WISDOMS
THRU HIKING
• Those last five hundred miles or so I got really used to it (camping alone) and it felt so,
so wonderful. I got to sit in my head and think about all the things that I don’t really get to
think about when I’m in the heart of Seattle.
• I would always camel up like crazy in the water source we would hit in the desert because
they were pretty few and far between compared to the rest of the trail.
• Once we hit the Sierras, I night hiked basically every single night.
• There were other things I was afraid of happening in the dark like getting eaten by a bear or something, but getting lost was fortunately not one of them.
• There’s a lot of things that you’ll do to get to camp at the end of the day.
• It’s very lonely if you don’t start with someone. I think we’re all just trying to figure it out and we all want to find friends but we’re nervous.
• You’re getting dropped in the deep end when you start as a south bounder. It starts hard and keeps being hard.
• Looking back on it, I’m like “It’s okay past Tiffany. You’re gonna be totally fine. Don’t worry about it.”
• It was so easy to have something in common with someone on the trail.
• It helps to know that if people are also struggling with post trail depression because you know that you’re not alone… It’s nice to know that I’m not just crazy. That I’m not just weak. That I’m not abnormal.
• You’re never going to hear me say that wasn’t worth the pain. It was! It was completely worth every single horrible day, horrible section, whatever that I had to deal with.
•The happy days are the ones where I don’t want to get off the trail of course. But it was after the really tough days where I thought you know what I think it’s okay for me to think that I can do this.
•It’s nice and its freeing to have that feeling where I think to myself “Things are going to be okay.” What that means I’m not totally sure yet, but it’s okay to not know what’s coming up right away.
• Definitely, I think its okay to carry some things that make you feel better.
• Later on you definitely learn what you need, what you want and what you don’t need or want.
• It is really, really fun and great and scary for awhile to both have a lot of control over your day to day life but very, very little control over the next week. Maybe two weeks, three weeks of your life.