Preparing to Solo Thru-Hike the Santa Fe to Taos Trail...

Hi, my name is Lauren and I'm hiking the Santa Fe to Taos Trail with the Trek. The Santa Fe to Taos through hike goes from the Santa Fe Plaza all the way to Taos Plaza over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of northern New Mexico. It's 132 miles long, spans four counties, and crosses the Santa Fe National Forest, the Picos Wilderness, and Carson National Forest. The full route has 35,000 feet of cumulative ascent and descent. You can see my setup here behind me. I am currently on the trail, but I wanted to introduce myself and tell you guys a little bit about me before you dive right into the vlog series. I am a Canadian hiker. I'm based out of Vancouver, Canada. I started backpacking in 2020 when I started with the Pacific Crest Trail going northbound. I actually was vlogging for the Trek for a little while before I had to get off trail because of the things that happened in 2020. Since then, I returned to the PCT southbound the very next year and then hiked the Colorado Trail, the Hexa Trek across France, the Te Arawa across New Zealand. This year I've been hiking and vlogging full time, so I have all of that over on my YouTube channel. I started the year with the 88 Temple pilgrimage around Shikoku, Japan, followed up by the Via Denarca through the Balkans, and most recently was hiking the Transcaucasian Trail through Georgia. And now I'm here with the Trek hiking the Santa Fe to Taos Trail. I'd actually never been to New Mexico before, so I was pretty intrigued to see what the landscape would look like. So far, I'm about 20 miles in. It's really beautiful. It's been a lot of like tree cover and interesting plants. I've seen lots of animals so far, but I really wanted to check out the landscape of New Mexico. I'd never been here before. Santa Fe is a beautiful city with really unique architecture and culture, and I'm excited to explore that a little bit more when I finish the trail. I don't have really any sort of grand inspirational reason for wanting to hike this trail. I just really like hiking, and I will jump at the opportunity to hike any trail that kind of comes into my view. I think it's a really interesting project. The people who are putting it together are super nice and helpful. So far, like the conditions have been great. The trail maintenance is top notch. We've even got trail crews over here working on stuff from the Forest Service, and yeah, I'm really looking forward to seeing the rest of it. It is a high elevation trail, so I'm currently sitting at about 10,000 something feet or 3,100 meters if you're talking to my fellow Canadians. For gear, I am going like pretty lightweight on this trail. You can see my tent set up behind me. That's the Nemo Hornet Elite. It's an ultralight semi freestanding tent that I've been using since the beginning of this year, and I really like it so far. As for my backpack, I have the Hyperlite Southwest 2400. I've been using that backpack for the last three years, maybe two years. It's gone on probably five through hikes now, and it is still in very good shape, so I really like that one. I carry a Garmin inReach, which has been really handy. I was in a thunderstorm last night, so it was nice to sort of know when that was supposed to end. My sleeping quilt is from Neve Gear. This one I also got at the beginning of the year, and I'm really liking it so far. It's a 32 degree bag or a zero degree Celsius bag, and so far it's been perfectly warm in all the conditions I've hiked in so far this year. It's very comfortable. It's lightweight, and I also have my clothes stuffed in this bag, so it would be quite a bit smaller. I've got a rain jacket, which is surprisingly coming in handy. I didn't think it was going to rain all week, and then the weather changed, and so now it's going to be quite cold and cloudy and a little bit wet this week, so we'll see how that goes. Then I've still got the Therm-a-Rest Neo Air X-Lite that I've been using since my very first backpacking trip, you know, five years ago. I've got a couple of electronics. I've got a headlamp from Nitecore, an Anker battery pack, and a Kindle. That is my luxury item, especially when I'm traveling solo. It's really nice to be able to sit at camp and read a book. Besides that, you know, the appropriate charging cables and a power plug, and bottles of water, some toiletries, water filter, the classic C-Knock bag, and the Plata Plus Quick-Draw water filter. And I think that's sort of the basics of it. The rest of it is just like a hairbrush and a toothbrush and some toothpaste, got a spoon, got a pot in my food bag over here, got three days of food in there, and that's about it. You guys want to see my tent? Here, I'll show you. It's a one-person. I used to use a two-person, and then decided I wanted something smaller, and this one is great. Da-da-da-da. There we go. It looks like that. That's it. That's all you get. Yeah, basically, I'm just really excited to hike this trail. I think it's going to be beautiful. There are lots of lakes along the way. So far, water has been really plentiful and easy to come by. It's just beautiful. And I think the trail maintenance all the way along has been really good, and there's a resupply point halfway through. The woman, Pam, that puts this trail together, she has a storage locker, basically, that you can ship a package to, and she will put the package in the storage locker for you so that you can pick it up section four of the hike. So that means you only have to carry like four days of food to start, and then ship yourself three days, and then you're in Taos for four days. Yeah, it depends how fast you're going, but it's nice to have that resupply point kind of in the halfway mark, and I think that will be very helpful. My mom shipped me a box from California, so it should be there by the time I get there. I think it's going to be good. I'm expecting about eight days on trail. This is day two. It's really like yesterday was sort of a half day. I started at like 4 p.m., and then I hiked, you know, like eight miles or something, and then this morning I hiked another like 12, 13 miles, and yeah, so we're 20 miles into this trail, and I can't wait to see the next, you know, 115. Thank you so much for watching. I am Lauren. I'm hiking the Santa Fe to Taos Trail with the Trek, and I can't wait to show you the rest of what this looks like. See you later.