It was somewhere near the end of hiking the Colorado Trail (CT), with hundreds of miles of trekking behind her, that Patricia Cameron, finally felt like a thru-hiker, one of those hardy backpackers who undertakes a long trail from end to end for weeks or even months straight. Blackpacker, her trail name, had camped at a water source with a group of other thru-hikers. She hadn’t spent a lot of time with other people during her 486-mile journey from Denver to Durango. She was usually lagging behind. “I was one of the slowest people on the trail,” Cameron says.
So she enjoyed the company of this trail family, aka tramily in thru-hiking lingo, but figured it was short lived. The group was on a 22-mile stretch without water, so the backpackers had to carry even more water—and its weight—than usual. As they hit the trail in the morning, the hikers said their goodbyes and “hope to see you at the next water source’s.” Cameron didn’t expect to see them again. It would take a 16-mile day to reach water—unheard of for her. But by 10 a.m., she had covered 4.5 miles. “I remember saying to myself, ‘This is the day; this is it,’” she says.
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