Our family hiking trip this year was to the Dolomites, more specifically Alta Via 1. John and I have done several hut to hut hiking trips in the Alps and planned them all ourselves, we never had any problems. As I started to plan our trip to the Dolomites, it became clear to me that it might be easier if we used a local company to help us book our accommodations and transportation. That way when questions came up from family members there was someone we could ask. Also letting the ultrarunner of the group plan the daily hiking itinerary probably isn't the best idea.
I ended up contacting Dolomite Mountains, I sent them my itinerary, the places I had already booked and a few other specifications and Monica created an agenda pretty similar to the one I already had in mind. As much as I like to plan things myself, it was nice to have someone local and not feel responsible for 5 other people's vacation. Plus if they thought the hike was too hard they couldn't blame me.
11
years ago my first multi-day backpacking trip was the 50+ mile loop around
the Three Sisters in Central Oregon. Since then
I have done multi-day hikes all over the world and in the Pacific Northwest,
but the Three Sisters trip still remains one of my favorites and most
beautiful. I have been back to the Three Sisters Wilderness several times in
the last 11 years for overnight trips and even to climb South Sister, but never to do the full loop. Once
Susan and I started talking about doing the loop around Mt. Hood, I knew if we
completed that we could do the Three Sisters.
Mt. Hood is shorter distance wise (~40 miles), but it has almost double the
elevation (10,000 feet), and it has the Eliot Creek washout. We almost completed the
full Mt Hood loop in 2013 and we would of
completed it if it wasn't for getting lost and running out of day light. Even
though we didn't complete the loop we still ran about the same distance and were confident
that we could do the Three Sisters lo…
Ann's story (the planning)
Ever since I did my first multi-day
backpacking trip 10 years ago, I have wanted to circumnavigate Mt. Hood. We
actually planned a backpacking trip to do in 2007, but after doing some
research realized part of the trail had been washed out and was closed. So the Mt.
Hood circumnavigation was put on the back burner until I started running long
distances.
I mentioned to Susan last summer that we should do it, but it wasn’t
until early this year when we were trying to find a race during the summer that
was 40 – 50 miles and fit both of our schedules that I mentioned we should just do Mt. Hood. It worked out great, since we could do it during
the week when there is less traffic on the trail and we wouldn’t have to give up a
weekend day with our families.
I really love planning hiking, backpacking, and running routes / trips. I loved being able to pull out all my maps and books, and comb through them for training runs and the circumnavigation, but single
mo…
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