Two weeks from Saturday I will stand in front of about 50 people at Umstead State Park and tell them that their lives are about to change in ways they can’t imagine.
Those 50 folks will be about to take their first steps on an epic adventure called the Ultimate Hike. You could be one of them.
“Is this for Diane?”
I drove to Greensboro last night to hear Diane Van Deren speak at the local Great Outdoor Provision Co., had arrived an hour early, but discovered the folding chairs supposedly set up for her presentation were nearly full.
“This is for the Trailblaze Challenge,” a GOPC employee told me. “Diane is speaking after their meeting.”
Trailblaze Challenge? That’s interesting, I thought.
The Trailblaze Challenge is a new fundraiser sponsored by the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Pledge to raise $2,500, go through a 12-week training program, then do a 24.1-mile hike on June 1 on the Bartram Trail in western North Carolina. The Challenge is patterned after CureSearch for Children’s Cancer’s Ultimate Hike, which is patterned after the Cyctic Fibrosis Foundation’s Extreme Hike. The hikes, as I was soon to learn, are all extremely alike, and for good reason: they were all launched by Amy Brindley, who is now president and chief executive officer of Make-A-Wish’s Central & Western North Carolina Chapter. It was especially interesting to me because for the past two year’s I’ve been a hiking coach for Ultimate Hike.
I stepped up to the registration table. “Do you mind if I sit in on the presentation?” I asked, then explained that I was associated with what could be perceived as a competitor.
The woman on the other side of the table smiled. “Of course you can sit in,” she said. “I’m Amy, by the way.”
About 15 prospective Trailblaze Challengers listened intently as Amy explained Make-A-Wish and the Trailblaze Challenge.
Make-A-Wish was founded in 1980, initially to grant children with terminal medical conditions any wish they wanted. (The foundation has since expanded to grant the wishes of children with life-threatening medical conditions.) Amy said the Central & Western North Carolina Chapter was formed in 1985. Since then, it has granted more than 3,000 wishes; this year, they expect to grant 230 wishes. She shared the most recent wish granted, for three girls to attend a concert last week in Greensboro.
One of the girls was local, one was from Vermont, one was a 13-year-old cancer victim from Georgia, who was a “rush wish,” meaning she only had a short time to live. The artist entertained the girls for 45 minutes before the concert. Then the girls went to their seats to watch the show.
“The 13-year-old was wearing a wig because she’d lost all her hair to treatments and was in a wheelchair,” Amy told the gathering. “They were all having a great time, and at one point the 13-year-old ripped off her wig, got out of her chair and starting dancing.
“That,” Amy added, “is the memory her parents will have of her.”
Granting the average wish costs about $6,000. That’s where the Trailblaze Challenge comes in.
Sign up, agree to raise $2,500 and you get a 12-week training program culminating in the June 1, 24.1-mile hike on the Bartram Trail. The training program includes weekly hikes led by a hike leader and a suggested mid-week training program. Participation includes all costs associated with hike weekend, including two nights at the Hampton Inn in Franklin, transportation and food.
The frustration of six miles on the trail, most of it in the dark, was beginning to show.
“Why does this trail have to be so hard?” Kathy yelled. “Why does it have to be such a struggle?” The rage I could handle. Then came the tears. Time to kick into “trail ambassador” mode.
“Hey, tell me again about that 12-hour training hike, the one that almost killed every one,” I said. This may be frustrating, but from what I’d heard of the aforementioned training hike, the one in these same mountains that ended three hours later than expected, in the dark, with one hiker having to be evacuated by an elderly couple that couldn’t hear and chewed tobacco, I knew it wasn’t that bad. And it wasn’t. The diversion gave Kathy, who had quickly proven herself adept at telling stories, one after the other, something worse to focus on. Just like that, the frustration of this hard trail evaporated as she retold the story of a really hard day on the trail.
What a great way to spend a day in the woods.
Saturday was my second Ultimate Hike. I signed on last year to help coach the Triangle contingent of hikers. I was so taken by the experience, by the hikers and their commitment to the UH cause, that I couldn’t wait to re-up for this year.
The Ultimate Hike was dreamed up over two years ago by CureSearch for Children’s Cancer. Initially, CureSearch relied on grants and philanthropic donations to do its work, which includes connecting parents of kids with cancer into a vast network of children’s cancer specialists worldwide. Three years ago it started doing fundraising walks. Two years ago it hit on the idea of the Ultimate Hike: train for 12 weeks, do a monster hike, in the case of the Triangle hikers and other UHers throughout the Southeast, the westernmost 28.3 miles of the 77-mile Foothills Trail straddling the North Carolina/South Carolina line. In exchange for training and the fully supported Ultimate Hike, hikers pledge to raise $2,500 each.
Our group began training with a steamy 6-mile hike in August at Umstead. Every two weeks thereafter we did successively longer and more challenging hikes, along the Eno River, at Falls Lake, back at Umstead, at Hanging Rock and in the Uwharrie Mountains. We hit the trail well-prepared at exactly 4:30 Saturday morning under … well, under what kind of skies I do not know because for the first two-plus hours it was dark. (A good thing, actually, because the most severe climbing occurs at the beginning, and it’s harder to tell just how much you’ve climbed and how much more you have to go when your world is confined to the glow of a headlamp.)
Ultimate Hikers fall into three main categories: the uberfit looking for an extreme challenge, people with a direct connection to childhood cancer, and not-so-uberfit folks looking to truly test themselves. As their coach, as the person responsible for making it possible for everyone to hike 28.3 miles in one day, I wind up spending the bulk of my time with the folks at the back of the pack. Next to the hike’s ultimate goal, it’s why I coach.
About an hour into Saturday’s hike I came upon Nicole, who was struggling not because of a lack of preparation, but because her headlamp was woefully underpowered. I gave her mine, got out my spare and followed her. “This isn’t my cup of tea,” she observed at one point, referring both to night hiking and the fact that the occasional rock and tree root on the trail were buried in freshly fallen leaves.
An hour and a half later, with first light breaking through, we came upon Emily and Kathy. I’d hiked an 18-mile stretch of the Uwharrie National Recreation Trail with Emily two weeks earlier. Early on, I learned one especially interesting thing — that the soft-spoken Emily was a retired Carolina Rollergirl — and one thing that said a lot about her character: right before training started she took a nasty fall down the stairs at home, gathered up her little boy and drove to the ER. Luckily, she hadn’t broken anything but she was pretty bruised up. Suddenly I understood her hesitancy to descend steep, rocky stretches.
“I’m really slow,” she apologized more than once. Only on the dangerous stuff.
We picked up Kathy at the same time, and after her minor meltdown she stayed focused — or distracted — by telling me about her life as a mom, as an online English instructor for a college in Indiana, as a one-time PW (preacher’s wife).
Going into the hardest stretch of the trail, an 11-mile run along the Chattooga River, my fellow coach Brian and I picked up Heather. Heather was wearing Merrill Barefoot shoes. “Did you change into those at the last rest stop?” I asked. I was stunned that someone not 20 years old and who calls everyone “Dude” would attempt such a long and technically challenging trail in minimalist shoes.
“No, I’ve been wearing them all day. I’m hoping to get Merrill to sponsor me.”
She didn’t mean personally, as in scoring a bunch of cool outdoors swag. She meant a donation for the kids with cancer.
Tired and ready for the end, we were all pretty quiet for the last six miles. I thought about Christie, who nearly had to be evacuated from the Chattooga canyon last year because of severe knee pain. She somehow managed to finish, was on crutches for several days afterward — and was the first person from the Triangle to sign up for this year’s hike. I thought about Candi, who upon finishing the hike last year vowed never to even look at a pair of hiking boots again. I think she was the second person to sign up for this year. I thought of Kay, Monica and Rachel, who were the rocks of our back-of-the-pack 2011 group. Uncertain about whether they could raise $2,500 two years in a row, they instead volunteered their services for this year’s hike. They chauffeured us from Raleigh to the trailhead and back and they attended to our every need at the rest stops. It was killing them not to be on the trail, but they never let on.
The last hiker crossed the finish line right at 7 p.m., about 20 minutes after official sunset. By the time we got back to basecamp (a Holiday Inn Express, actually) for the victory celebration, all the good beer was gone.
Still, Coors Light never tasted so good.
Monday — never an easy time for the outdoors enthusiast. After a weekend of adventure, returning to the humdrum work-a-day world can make one melancholy. To help ease the transition, every Monday we feature a 90 Second Escape — essentially, a 90-second video of a place you’d probably rather be: a trail, a park, a greenway, a lake … anywhere as long as it’s not under a fluorescent bulb.
As I was poring over the results of Sunday’s Off Road Assault on Mount Mitchell, I was surprised to see that of the nearly 400 riders who finished the 63-mile race, only five were older than me. (I was less surprised that all five finished ahead of me.)
Perhaps I shouldn’t have been; at 56 years of age, you might think that wisdom would finally overpower the need to punish one’s self, thus keeping contemporaries away.
Apparently not.
I became curious about my fellow silver cyclists and discovered that, indeed, we are not becoming sedate and reflective in our golden years. According to the National Sporting Goods Association, the number of mountain bikers age 55 or older grew by more than 41 percent in the past decade. In 2011, there were 383,000 mountain bikers who were eligible for 10 percent off their curly fries at Arby’s, up from 271,000 10 years earlier. (Curiously, the overall number of mountain bikers dropped 5.5 percent during the same 10-year span.)
Mountain biking was no anomaly. The number of 55ers working out at gyms climbed 614 percent during the period, the number of 55+ kayakers rose by 350 percent, the number who did aerobic exercise increased by 226 percent. Growing interest in these more active pursuits outpaced growth in activities typically associated with a graying population: golf, darts, fishing and bowling, to name a few.
This week, Ultimate Hike Raleigh began its recruiting sessions in the Triangle and, again, I shouldn’t have been surprised by the number of people in the audience who also looked like they remembered “Fernwood Tonight.” At the end of Tuesday evening’s info session Tuesday at the North Hills REI I struck up a conversation with a 50-year-old woman who had signed on for the 28.5-mile hike to benefit pediatric cancer. She spoke about taking challenging hikes in the Smokies with her 20something daughters — and about how both loathed the experience. Neither were out of shape, she said. They just didn’t like hiking for that long.
We speculated as to why mom enjoyed the hike, her young, fit daughters not so much. Are you more accustomed to suffering the older you get? Do your performance expectations diminish to the point where you don’t care if it takes all day to do something? Or does it take so long for your body to get warmed up that when you finally get there you simply don’t want to stop? Does it really matter, since we’re the ones happiest with epic adventures?
Again, apparently not. Perhaps reflective of another benefit of aging we concluded that time was short and dropped the topic in favor of one more appealing.
Our one day, 28.3-mile Ultimate Hike.