Pain: Embrace the Suck (Part 3)
Embrace the Suck It’s mid-October, I am hiking my last trail. I have set a goal: 20 trails in 2020 -- it was my middle finger extension to the pandemic -- and it was my last hike. Not because it was #20, not because Ice Lake Trail was closed a few days later due to idiot-car-campers walking away from a campfire (burning 600 acres and countless animals' winter nests); not because the season would soon transition to snowshoeing (thankfully, the fire was extinguished by an early snowstorm); but, it was my last hike because it was the final straw to my own back. The hike was similar to most hikes in Colorado -- to climb a mountain you must go up. Doesn’t matter if it’s hiking, snowshoeing, or backcountry skiing: to get to the top, to experience the glory, to relish the downhill -- you must embrace the suck. Isn’t that why people pay the big bucks on lift tickets, ATVs and snorkled-monster-tire-bullbar-slider-4X4s? So they don’t have to embrace the suck. Most trails in the San Juan M