On December 5th, 2020 my husband and I set out on a journey to do 52 hikes in 52 weeks. On November 28, 2021 we completed our last hike to meet this goal, wrapping up one week early. Last year I shared in my original post that I am motivated by setting goals. An important part of goal setting is evaluating the journey, so I have been reflecting on this past year of hiking even before we finished up.
Why Get Outside?
If you remember from my post “Are You Up for a Hiking Challenge?”, I shared many reasons to get outside and hike:
- Relieve Stress
- Strengthen the Immune System
- Sharpen Focus
- Calm the Mind
- Aids in Weight Management
- Improves Short-term Memory
- Increase Happiness and Longevity
Of these, two stand out for me: relieve stress and calm the mind. My mind runs on overdrive most of the time which my husband will attest to! The last two years have been very challenging to say the least as I think all of us can agree. There has been so much lost. Therefore, getting out and hiking has been a huge blessing in my life. It has gotten us out to new places both near and far. My hubby has done a great job of finding places to hike, and we have learned a lot about the history of various areas. Most of our hikes were within about an hour or so from our home. The rest we did on a road trip out to Utah.
The Road Trip
It was in Wyoming that we experienced our favorite hike of the year. This was in the Grand Teton National Park. We hiked the Lupine Meadows Trail. We ended up at a beautiful mountain lake, we enjoyed the views before we headed back down. This was actually our longest hike at 6.2 miles. Even though it was a mountain hike and had some tough sections, it was not our most difficult hike.
That one would be the Peruvian Trail at Snowbird. This one kind of kicked our butts. We started out a bit too late in the day because we had already done a morning hike. It was 3.5 miles to the peak with an elevation gain of 2,900 vertical feet and ending at 11,000 feet. This proved to be a bit too much for these two Minnesotans, so we only made it up about 1,000 vertical feet. Wisdom set in that we would not make it to the top by sunset. Maybe another time we will get back there to try again.
Winter Hiking
As I mentioned, we are in Minnesota and winter hiking pushed us out of our comfort zone, especially me. This is because I deal with an autoimmune condition called Raynaud’s disease. This is when your fingers and toes feel numb and cold in response to cold temperatures. For me, it is my fingers – they go numb, turn white, and sometimes even purple. Eventually they return to normal. It can be painful especially if they go to the purple stage. Now you can understand why hiking in cold winter conditions can be a challenge. Yet, we managed to get out pretty much every week except one weekend in early February when the cold and wind chill would have been too much. We did go for a short walk in the neighborhood that week – very bundled up.
Where do we go from here?
We are planning on continuing to do another 52 hikes. Minnesota State Parks has a hiking club, and it is something that we have started doing. Each of the state parks has a designated Hiking Club trail that is marked with signs at the trailhead. There is a unique password for each trail that can be found about halfway through the hike. Collect the passwords and earn patches for various milestones as you complete the trails. You can learn more here.
Our hiking challenge took us to many different parks and trails, logging a total of 178 miles throughout this journey. If you would like to check out each hike we did, you can join our Facebook hiking page called Chronicles 52-Hike Challenge. And better yet, join in the fun and start your own 52-hike Challenge.
Be blessed and be a blessing,
Heather
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