Two Hikers Completing a 1 Year and 10,000+ Mile Thru Hike
This morning Slide and I got up in the room at the Big Pine Key Motel, with only 35 remaining miles before we arrived at the southernmost point in Key West. This is the last day of my calendar year of hiking! The final day in the “10,000-mile year”, if you will. Even though I surpassed the 10,000-mile marker last night, I am continuing on today to hit the terminus in Key West with Slide. There, he will also hit 10,000 miles hiked for the year. Prior to this year, only 2 other male hikers had completed 10,000+ miles in a 12-month period, but neither in a calendar year. Then in 2022 another hiker completed the “border to border” calendar year triple crown, and in doing so he completed 8,500 miles for the year. Then just a couple of weeks ago another hiker, Punisher, who I hiked with earlier on in the year, also surpassed 10,000 miles for the year! Though the last couple thousand miles of that journey were done in a more ultra-marathon-running type fashion, rather than traditional hiking/backpacking. A distinction which varies in relevance and significance depending on who you ask.
It was odd packing up this morning knowing that it was the last day of thru hiking for the year. One year ago, today I was waking up in roughly the exact same place. On January 1st when I set out to begin the B2BCYTC journey I managed a 32-mile day my first day. Which mean I slept roughly the exact same place on my first night this year as I did on my last night this year. I never would have expected to be back down here wrapping up a 10,000-mile year of hiking in the Florida Keys. When I set out to complete the B2BCYTC, there was no part of me that thought I would go this far. I would have been blown away if you had told me that I went on to hit 9,000 miles for the year! Let alone even 1,000 miles further than that. It is a privilege that my body was able to carry me this far and that I was able to set a goal for myself that was so unimaginable, and even still I surpassed that goal and went exponentially further than I would have ever fathomed. I recall joking back in January about what on earth I would do if I actually completed the B2BCYTC, the mission I set out to attempt because of how unlikely it was to be able to complete it. If I had set out to push my boundaries and see what my limit was, what would happen if I didn’t reach my limit? What if rather than reaching any limit at all, instead I learned that such limits actually do not exist.
Now here I am on the other side of that exact question. There was a time earlier in the year when I was laid up and injured that I wasn’t sure if I would be able to complete the B2BCYTC at all. I remember begging the universe to heal me, and that if I could merely be healed, that I would spend the rest of the year suffering in perfect silence. I told the universe that she wouldn’t hear a peep out of me again if she could simply allow me to continue on the trail and give the B2B calendar year triple crown my best go. I truly believed if I was given the chance to try, I could finish those next 4,500 miles. And lucky for me, my wish was granted. My injury didn’t magically disappear, but it healed just enough for me to keep going. Over time I healed significantly and became used to the occasional ache and pain that still seared itself into my hip from my unresolved ailment. Getting injured back in May was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. That experience humbled me more than I would have ever known. And the hiker who emerged on the other side was much more grateful for every obstacle that I was so blessed to have the fortune of having to circumnavigate.
Today as my journey is wrapping up it is hard not to ponder on that same old question, though. What if you set the biggest goal imaginable for yourself in order to test your limits, and you still wind up accomplishing that goal? Then what is next for you after that? Where do you go from there? I spent a lot of the day thinking about those questions and what they mean for me. This year I showed myself that I am truly capable of absolutely anything, so long as I want to achieve it. If I give something everything that I have, then the only actual thing that stands between me and that goal is the potential wild card of bad weather or injury. Nothing else can stop me. There were so many times this year when I was cold, uncomfortable, scared, and just not having a good time. Maybe I had been hiking through the absolute worst weather possible for days or weeks on end. Maybe I was wet, freezing cold, soaked in sweat, or out of water. There were times when I was filled with fear because of animals in Montana and Wyoming. Back then I dreaded the sun going down, knowing that I had to hike for hours in the dark in grizzle country alone, which is truly my biggest fear. Even still, none of those things was enough to send me home. Even when I bit off far more than I could chew, I chewed it up, and spit it out, in the words of Frank Sinatra.
I knew that today was going to be jam packed with good food, friends, family, and everything else that I could hope for. And it started off right off the bat when we left the motel room. There was a gas station just across the street that we walked past on our way out of Big Pine Key and we decided to see if they had coffee or hot food. And we were not disappointed. This place had some of the most delicious pastries and empanadas that I’ve had so far in the keys. They even had the cream cheese pastry that I had the other day at the Pinecrest Bakery, and said it was likely my favorite pastry of all time. That was a killer way to start off our day today. The two of us walked along the sidewalk with coffees and pastries in hand. Happy last morning on the calendar year, 10,000-mile, border to border triple crown. What a mouthful!
Just like yesterday, we got to begin our day by crossing over some of the shorter bridges here in the keys. Which meant we were walking alongside the ocean as the sun came up. It was a beautiful last day of hiking for the calendar year. What more could we ask for? We would be on sidewalk and bike path for the entire day. And in the late morning we got off of the traditional bike path and were on this wooden boardwalk bike path that went on for ages as we crossed over Summerland Key. I love the brief segments of boardwalk that we get to enjoy out here! Next up after that was Cudjoe Key, and then Upper sugarloaf key. We were island hopping all day long! Which meant that the ocean views never had to end.
All day long I had this ever-present feeling that I should try to be in the moment as much as possible and really take in every ounce of this last day. I know from experience that these final moments on a thru hike come to pass so quickly, that it often feels as though they slip right through your fingers. The last couple of days I’ve been trying to be thoughtful and in my head about the whole year. I wanted to walk through the year in my mind and really feel as though I came to terms with this whole hike wrapping up before it did. But even though you can set an intention like that, it doesn’t make it any easier to do it. One of the key contradictions of a hike like this is that you try to introspective, spiritual, or whatever you would like to call it. But you also try to “zone out” or “get in the zone” to allow the monotonous time to pass you by. Even though today is the last day on trail, we still had to mentally make it through another long 35 mile day of road walking. That is going to take around 12 hours even on the best of days.
The day did pass quickly though. It absolutely flew by. Plus, I was in communication with my friend Sparkle who is making her way to us right now! She is going to be starting her own 10,000 mile year tomorrow morning. But first, tonight she is coming down to watch Slide and I finish our 10,000-mile year. Then we will pass the torch to her tomorrow morning and send her off on her journey. I am so excited to see her for the first time since I passed through Denver after finishing the border-to-border calendar year triple crown. Sparkle is one of the best friends that I’ve made in the thru hiking community, and someone I have suffered with immensely while thru hiking. Prior to this year, I had experienced some of my hardest days on trail with that girl. If there is anyone that I truly believe can pull off a 10k mile year next year, it’s her. And if you want to follow along on her updates in 2026, her handle on social media is @sparklesummits.
There weren’t too many gas stations or places for us to stop off in the late morning and early afternoon. But I wasn’t mad about it. That allowed us to keep our heads down and get the miles in for a while. It would be nice to have a relatively early finish this evening, at least to spend some time with everyone before we inevitably retreat back to the room to crash. Then sometime in the late afternoon we walked past a shopping plaza type place which had a name like “the food court”. There were a handful of food trucks set up and the timing was perfect. I was starving, and there wasn’t too much ahead of us until we arrived in Key West. Unfortunately, most of the food trucks were closed, but one was open! We sat there out front at a picnic table, and each ordered a steak burrito. Then enjoyed the first break that we’d taken in a while. And after we ate our food we continued along the road, with about 12 more miles to go for the day. Only a handful more hours of hiking remain!
When we got onto Cow Key the sidewalk did this fun thing where it popped us out on one side of the road, then brought us on a sidewalk under the road, and wrapped us around to a sidewalk on the other side. All to avoid us crossing the street! But I didn’t mind, we got to get down really close to the ocean along the way. Within the next hour after that we were walking by the 5-mile remaining to Key West sign. Slide’s brother, Eric, wound up catching up to us and biking alongside us for a little while. That was a fun surprise. Plus, he was there when we walked up on the iconic sign for Key West. We still had some miles to go to get to the southernmost point, but we were in Key West now. Eric was with us when we walked by the hotel that I stayed at back in January as well. Myself and the 8 or so other hikers who I was with on New Years Eve all split that massive suite in Key West almost a year ago to the day. I remember getting up in the morning bright and early to go “officially” tag the monument, even though I had tagged it the night before as well. But this is the “calendar year triple crown”, so I had to start on January 1st.
The sun was just starting to set as we arrived on Key West and continued walking through the city and back out to the sidewalk by the ocean. We even ran into another hiker along the way! And the best part was, I knew that hiker. His name is Gram’s and he hiked the AT back in 2023 when I hiked it for the first time. He was also down in the keys back in January with another hiker Lemon that I know. And I ran into her on the CDT this year and hung out with her and that big group of southbound hikers in New Mexico. She had told me that Gram’s was going to be hiking the ECT in 2026, so I was hoping that I would run into him at some point. Hopefully I wind up running into a handful of hikers between today and tomorrow who are beginning their ECT journeys.
For the next hour or so we walked directly next to the ocean as the sun went down. Then we checked my watch and realized that we had to add on another bonus mile or two, just to be safe. Slide wants to be 1000% sure that he surpasses 10,000 miles for the year. So, once we got to our next turn to get off the oceanfront sidewalk, we briefly turned around and hiked a mile or so backwards. It is only fitting considering we added on over 400 bonus miles down here in Florida over the last 44 days. While we were walking backwards, we got another surprise too, as Sparkle drove by us! She was in a car with Snacks, who I met back on the CDT in 2024. He picked our group up at the warming hut near Winter Park and brought us all to Leadville Trail Days. Now here he was, driving Sparkle down to the Keys to start her 10,000 mile year. She was also with another hiker Jocelyn who I’ve met a couple different times on various thru hikes, and she is also going to attempt to hit 10k miles in 2026.
They turned the car around and came out to meet Slide and myself. Then all of us walked for a mile or two together before they got back into the car to drive down to the monument. They wanted to wait and hang out, and I appreciated that Slide and I could hike those last 3 miles of the day together to the southernmost point. I think it’s safe to say that over the last 44 days I hiked further and faster with Slide than I ever have with anyone else. I’ve done consistent 30 mile days with a few hikers, but I’ve never done nearly FKT mileage pace with anyone else. And honestly, I can’t think of anyone else that I would rather rip such big miles with other than Slide. Having never hiked together prior to meeting up in Pensacola, we were both putting a lot of faith into the fact that I could come down here and join him for these last 44 days of averaging 38 miles a day. Hiking with other people can be really hard, even hiking with people whose company you really enjoy. Hiking 38~ miles a day is taxing physically and mentally, and in many ways, it can be easier and harder hiking with someone else. I’m really grateful that the two of us were able to finish off this journey together. I don’t think I’ve ever hiked with someone before where we both fell into pace and jived so naturally.
The sun dipped down as we walked those last couple of miles to the southernmost point. Along the way Sparkle texted me to let me know that the monument had actually been moved! We wouldn’t be tagging the monument in the exact same place that I did in 2023 or back in January of this year, and instead it was moved one block away. Slide and I decided to walk down to the old monument to have our own mini celebration. We had to be sure that we hit 35 miles for the day today so that Slide could be over 10,000 miles himself. And my watch struck 35-miles as we were walking from the old monument, one block down the road, to the new monument. How fitting. When we arrived the monument, I could see a brightly colored sign off in the distance, held up by none other than Sparkle. That’s my girl, and she couldn’t resist making me a sign all of my own because she is my cheerleader. I felt bad that she just put my name on it, because Slide and I are obviously finishing this thing together and are on basically the same journey. But I can’t stop Sparkle from being my Sparkle! Her sign said, “Peg Leg Makes HERstory – 1st Woman to B2BCYTC + 10K Miles”. The sign was adorable and I love that girl to death. And she brought a big ole chocolate cake for Slide, so you couldn’t say she came empty handed for either of us.
It was an odd feeling reaching the monument, and honestly the strongest emotion that I felt was perhaps a bit of anxiety. There were tons of people around and some of them were trying to read the sign and figure out what was going on. One intoxicated woman began asking questions which didn’t have simple answers like, “Where are you coming from?” and “How did you hike 10,000 miles if you are walking down the East coast?” Those are completely valid questions, but I didn’t feel like sharing the whole big spiel right then and there. It would have been really nice if we could have finished with just Sparkle, Snacks, Eric, and Jocelyn there. I think that would have been a whole lot calmer! But this is the southernmost point of the continental US, not a private party.
I think that most of the hikes I’ve ever done have ended in a fairly anticlimactic way, and while this was different and delightful in its own way, it had a time of that anticlimactic feeling as well. After spending an entire year hiking, you cannot simply finish and feel all of those emotions and thoughts in one split moment. I think I spent the last month trying to come to terms with the end of this journey, and the last week especially. But most than anything I think I will spend the next month trying to understand what I just completed and everything that it took to get here, to this exact moment. Slide and I both hiked over 10,000 miles this year. Here we were around 7PM on December 31st, 2025, wrapping up the wildest hike either of us could imagine. Only 3 other men had hiked 10,000 miles in a 12-month period prior to today. Now 4 men have done that, and 1 woman. I can’t believe I’m the first woman to ever hike/backpack 10,000+ miles in a single year. People tell me all the time how much it blows their minds, and quite frankly it blows mine too. And I was privy to every last second of it. Every ounce of literal blood, sweat, and tears, that it took to be standing here right now. It isn’t lost on me
