As I posted yesterday, T. Duren Jones and I just released the new 2015 TALES FROM THE TRAILS calendar with some of our best wilderness photos and a monthly story of one of our hiking escapades.

Here’s a sample of the January story and photo:

 Doing the Impossible, as a Matter of Course

 This year I turned 52, and Tim turned 60.  We started our main hiking season up in Steamboat Springs with a gruelling 21-mile loop through the Flattops Wilderness, and we followed that with a 22-mile hike near Durango, where we completed the Colorado Trail.  I climbed 14,286 foot Mount Lincoln via an obscure alternate route just so I could get my annual Fourteener climb in. Tim summited 14,433 foot Mount Elbert, the highest mountain in Colorado.  Even though we had each climbed those peaks before, why not do it again when you have the opportunity?

When we finished the exhausting 21-mile Lost Lakes loop in a day—which the guide book calls a “three-day backpack trip,” Tim pointed out, “I don’t know anyone of all my friends, at any age, who could have done that with me.”  I thought long and hard through my circle of acquaintances and couldn’t come up with another name either.

Several years ago Tim and I hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and back up again in a day, despite signs warning hikers that this is not at all recommended.  I remember passing a particularly buff and tan German hiker on the trail who was huffing and puffing trying to keep up with us. The fact is, both of us dislikes backpacking and hauling our camp on our backs; if we can be “there and back again” in a day, we will do so, even if it means an extra push.

We keep ourselves in shape and we maintain our endurance, but neither of us are “fitness gods” by any stretch of the imagination.  I couldn’t jog for more than five minutes without collapsing, and a long-distance bike ride is completely out of the question. But we have figured out how to hike, how to navigate trails, how to understand terrain—and to have the endurance necessary to walk, and keep walking, and keep walking.  It’s worth the effort.  That is how we can keep doing what we most want to do—and we hope to continue to do so for many years to come. —KJA

Click here to order your copy of the limited TALES FROM THE TRAILS calendar for $20 plus postage

Or click here to order the special bundle of the calendar plus Tim’s trade paperback (autographed) for only $5 more (a $15 value)  

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