Colorado Mini “Death Hike”?

[Jake.]

Can you guys go already so we can get a cool updated story on this?!

I think we narrowed it to two potential weekends in July lol

 

[DouglasR]

But as a ruck

 

[Jake.]

But as a ruck
View attachment 225332

 

[dmarsh2]

Hey guys, did this end up happening? I was looking to try and plan something like this but i saw this post just a bit too late.

I'm hunting first rifle elk, so will be death-hiking through the first week of october, if people are still interested / you'll be planning another one. I'm in the golden area and would entertain travelling about 2 hrs for this. At this point, my longest scouting day has been 15 miles so depending on terrain I could maybe push 20, if the last mile or two can be crawled.

 

[Deckerp]

We had a date picked but then it fell through in the end with our various schedules. Now I have kinda shifted gears to hiking for scouting exclusively.

 

[dmarsh2]

Bummer! Thanks for the update though

 

[Thegreatwapiti]

This idea sounds positively awful.

I guess I nailed that one!

 

[Deckerp]

Made it down to the Manitou Springs incline yesterday and the cpw archery course. That was a great little training outing I would recommend to anyone in the area.

 

[Deckerp]

I ended up doing a sorta death hike this past summer. Here is a video a buddy made of the hike:

 

[dmarsh2]

I ended up doing a sorta death hike this past summer. Here is a video a buddy made of the hike:

Absolutely epic journey, the paradise valley / hells canyon segment looked incredible. Thanks for sharing!

With such big days, are you planning for different caloric loads on different days of the trip? How do you handle the food planning when it seems unreasonable to pack enough to compensate how much you're burning?

 

[Deckerp]

I packed more or less the same amount of food for each day - and I hiked in a food/ ice axe cache for us the week before so we didn’t have to carry it all the whole way (one of us - the filmer did carry everything from the start). On all my hunts prior I never brought more than about 3k calories and that always worked out. On this I thought since the effort was so great I would bring more and totaled about 4K per day but I didn’t eat everything and should have stuck with the 3k or so. The other guys we similar. Either way you’re gonna be in calorie deficit but I think but that seems not to bother me too much. I think as long as the intensity is low enough that you can burn mostly fat then it works out. I lost about 5lbs on the hike though.

 

[dmarsh2]

I was curious why I noticed ice axes on packs halfway through..

3k a day seems reasonable - I always have to force myself to eat enough though when I'm constantly exerting. the days where I force myself to sit down and eat more I usually feel much better by the end of the day. 5lbs lost seems like a lower number than I would've guessed for 81 miles and 26k vert

 

[perma]

I ended up doing a sorta death hike this past summer. Here is a video a buddy made of the hike:

That looks like a lot of fun.