by Rebecca Walsh

This story was first featured in the spring 2018 issue of CDT Passages, a magazine published exclusively for CDTC members. To receive Passages in your inbox three times a year, become a member of CDTC today. 

When it comes to outdoor adventure, there are a lot of barriers to entry. You need skills and knowledge of the area, specialized gear, transportation to the trailhead, and for many adventures, companions who also have all of those things. For women, those barriers often feel higher – gear that truly fits is harder to find, for example, and going out with a group of men can feel extremely intimidating. No one wants to be the stereotypical “weak” woman who constantly needs help or can’t keep up.

I founded Hike Like a Woman to break down those barriers by creating a space that was positive, kind and welcoming to women of all shapes, sizes, ethnicities, sexual orientations and outdoor experience levels. I wanted to help women attain the skills and knowledge that they need to get outside and explore with confidence. Since its founding in 2015, we’ve built an incredible community of women, and last year, I got the opportunity to lead some of those women on a backpacking trip on the CDT in Wyoming, my home state.

Wyoming Tourism asked if I could organize a trip for women to spend time on the CDT and experience the beauty of Wyoming together. Naturally, I jumped at an opportunity to show the world that anyone can do this, and invited Hike Like a Woman ambassadors from across the country to join me on the trail.

We were probably quite the spectacle as we left the Battle Pass Trailhead: four women hailing from Colorado to Knoxville, my co-guide, me, and a full camera crew from Wyoming Tourism. We found forests of lodgepole pine, high alpine tundra and lush streams on our 12 mile overnight adventure. That’s one of the things I love about the CDT – the diversity of the trail and the experiences you can have there. For me, this trip was a chance to explore a part of Wyoming that I don’t normally visit – it was my first experience in the Sierra Madre range. For the four women I was leading, it was a chance to find community and gain experience to take home with them.

And while we did indeed find, as first-time backpacker Gretchen Blackmer put it, “empowerment in nature,” it wasn’t all sunshine and lollipops. I think there are times when you see pictures of an outdoor adventure and you just get this perception that everything was all fun and games on the trip. But when you’re out there in the wilderness, especially with a group of such mixed abilities as this one (not to mention a camera crew), that’s almost never the case.

So there we were on the CDT. It was late in the afternoon, our crew was being eaten alive by mosquitoes the size of rats, we were all completely sunburned, and we’d been so busy filming – otherwise known as walking back and forth on the same section of trail – that we hadn’t been eating or drinking enough. Spirits were low, to say the least, and I was focused on everything that was going wrong instead of everything that was going right. I started complaining, and it brought down the morale of the group even further.

And that’s when I saw it: a HUGE patch of snow. A smile spread across my face as I realized it wasn’t an obstacle, but an opportunity. The trail provides, as they say. I snatched a ground tarp out of my pack and ushered everyone over for some impromptu backcountry sledding. And in the ensuing moments of laughter and silliness, I remembered why I’ll always keep coming back to the wilderness. Our lives are not Instagram perfect, and neither are our adventures. But that’s why outdoor women need each other. We need to remind each other to break away from our hectic lives and do something that is really good for us. We need the sisterhood that our crew provided for each other on the CDT – the belly laughs, the deep moments, the support and the mentorship – because that sisterhood is as beautiful and unique as the trail we found it on.