Grigory Lukin.com

I’ve just bought the pricey ticket ($175 USD) for the desert shuttle that would take me from a tiny New Mexico town all the way to the Mexican border on the morning of Monday, April 28th, where I’ll begin my Continental Divide Trail adventure. The shuttle ticket also comes with five water caches every 20 miles because, you know, desert.

So close now… Only 126 days away. Not that I’m counting or anything. I still need to buy a one-way ticket from Quebec to Albuquerque (how is that for a mysterious itinerary? heh), where I’ll crash at an old friend’s place: a bunch of catching up and hanging out, then food-shopping and sending resupply packages to my future selves, and then a 4-hour buddy-buddy roadtrip to Lordsburg, woot! Spend the night there, hop on the shuttle at 6am, and spend a looong 3-hour intro sequence (video game-style) with other CDT adventurers as we all drive to the border. (Ironically, all so we could hike back to the town the shuttle leaves from.)

Most of the gear from my 2022 Pacific Crest Trail adventure is still good, even if the tent has a bit of a broken pole and looks mighty sad when it’s assembled. (Still functional, though!) The biggest expense thus far was the anti-bear Ursack, which allegedly keeps all the snacks away from the many, many bears along the trail. The riskiest part of the resupply will be shoes… I have flat feet, and the Altra Lone Peak shoes are the only ones that work for flat-footed hikers. (I learned that the hard way. Damn Merrell.) Problem is, Altra fell prey to the MBA brain rot, and the latest Lone Peak model has much worse quality: they’re still marketed as hiking shoes, but they seem to fall apart in less than 250 miles, as opposed to the 500+ miles like they used to. A friend of mine had to end his big recent thru-hike prematurely specifically because his new Altra Lone Peaks fell apart, and he couldn’t hike without injuring his foot…

I snagged two pairs of hiking boots by the same brand, so here is hoping they’ll be a bit more durable than the plain old shoes, eh.

All in all – assuming I find a good deal on my plane ticket – my transportation + supplies will cost me less than $1,000 USD. A great deal, considering I’d spent over $3K on all that stuff when I had to buy basically everything for my PCT hike three years ago. (I’d had some gear left over from my Search & Rescue days in Seattle, but that was for short outings, and not at all for long-term hiking. The compass was pretty much the only piece of that gear I ended up using.)

For a wide variety of reasons, I’ll also be technically homeless during my hike: gonna break my apartment lease by the end of April, sell my furniture, yeet the rest of the stuff into a storage unit, and save on five months of rent. (#lifehack, I know.) It’ll add yet another reason not to give up during the inevitable bad days because coming back would mean the long process of apartment-hunting and moving, and nobody enjoys that.

And so… 126 days. Just 18 weeks from now, I’ll be sleeping somewhere else. Somewhere distant. Somewhere goddamn adventurous. Can’t wait.