an interview with thru-hikers Cazz and Dan.

Cazz and Dan on their CDT experience. 

QUESTION ONE: Space and weight in your pack would have been precious - did you allow room for any luxuries?  

We had this vision of enjoying a coffee together each morning while taking in the beautiful sunrise, so we packed mugs, coffee and milk sachets. 

We learnt quickly that sunrises were enjoyed while actually hiking, and coffee was a luxury reserved for towns.  

After five days we went straight to the post office and sent all our coffee paraphernalia home!  

For both of us, our luxuries became food based. In one town I bought pesto (in a glass jar!) and gnocchi, which was both impractical and heavy… but so good!

QUESTION TWO: When putting your bodies through these extreme conditions, comfort must have been so important. What did you do to maximise comfort within the restrictions of the hike?  

We discovered that comfort has two sides, one side is mental and the other side physical. For physical comfort, we really enjoyed taking our shoes off at lunch and airing our feet! 

Not only was it really important for physical hygiene (foot rot is a real thing on trail!) but it was also the best feeling simply putting your feet up – it's the little things.

For mental comfort, we would stop and remind ourselves why we decided to do this, and how it compared to our day to day lives in the UK.

As painful and terrifying as trail life could be, it would always be better than sitting at our desks, only dreaming of adventures. 

QUESTION THREE: With long stretches of trail during the day and limited technology at night, what sort of things would you do to keep yourselves entertained? 
 

Podcasts were a godsend! If you found a good one you could hike for hours and forget you were even hiking. Cazz also turned to audio books – you could finish a whole book in a day and still have hours left to hike! 

Outside of that we had lots of silly games that kept us going. The first was  ‘hide the sausage’! So you can hide a sausage anywhere in space or time, for example Henry the VIII’s bathtub. You then ask questions to try and determine the location of the sausage and the person who hides the sausage can only reply ‘yes' or ‘no' to the questions.

We also watched an episode of Friends every night – this got us through the last miles of each day. 

QUESTION FOUR: 6 months with just the 2 of you - did you put any rules in place to ensure you were still friends at the end? 
 

[Cazz] Yes, a few rules had to be put in place in the end – and a clear division of labour really helped us. 

Dan was often over-enthusiastic with the heat from the stove when cooking,  resulting in burnt food on the bottom of the pan. This made washing up rather tough, and after a long day hiking Dan would just end up shouting profanities at the dishes.

I made the executive decision to reassign Dan to chief tent constructor and water collector, and I did the cooking and washing up. Things went a lot smoother after that.

But more than anything we learnt that communication was extremely important. If something annoyed you, you were better off talking about it! 

QUESTION FIVE: when that last mile was finally completed - how did you treat yourselves? 

We hiked the last hour to the border with our little hiker family, and it was very surreal! We played the Gladiator theme tune and carried mini bottles of champagne with us. As soon as we got there we cracked them open and jumped into the lake. There may have also been a few tears too… 

FIVE QUICK FIRE QUESTIONS 

 1. the one thing that surprised you about the trail. 

the sheer size of the American landscape 

2. would you rather be too hot or too cold? 

cold (though we’d probably change our minds again if it was too cold…)

3. playlist or podcast?

podcasts

4. window or aisle?

window

5. getting to a destination; long and easy, or short but strenuous?

long and easy (the more scenic the better!)

You can find out more about their hike on Dan and Cazz's website, and discover more of their beautiful photography on their Instagram accounts @dbuttifant @cazz_murray.

Dan is a freelance photographer, and Cazz sells her prints on her online shop.