Hike the entire Appalachian Trail.

“I don’t like heights and I don’t like falling. Put them together and some parts of the trail are real challenges for me. I was climbing out of Lehigh Gap and there was a section of bouldering before the ridge and the rock tumbling scree. This bouldering was almost cliff climbing. I felt like I should have been wearing a crash helmet. And had a chalk bag. And a harness and ropes. It was quite terrifying for me. I couldn’t look down, but I aimed my phone over my shoulder to take a pic of the view. It was nearly straight down to the bridge over the river. I got vertigo when I looked at that pic. One boulder was probably 8-10 feet tall (but felt like 15-20 feet). I got my feet on the tiny ledge a few feet up the side and was hanging on by my fingertips. I was leaning towards my right hip but couldn’t get my left foot up to the next toe-hold. I had to verbally, out loud, talk myself out of panicking. “You can’t stay here. You don’t want to look to go down. You have to go up. Figure it out, Kristine. You can do this.”

“One day last week was challenging all day. It wasn’t that the hike was particularly difficult, although I did climb three mountains, two of which were fairly steep. No. It was a challenging day because it was rainy and dreary, I slipped and fell on a sloping boulder and had to climb 10 feet back up to the trail. And I started getting discouraged because I hadn’t made my distance goals for the last few days. I called and made a motel reservation from the top of the last mountain. (Paid through the nose.) When I was warm, showered, and fed, I reflected on why the day was so difficult for me. I think I bonked. I wasn’t getting enough calories most of the week for how many I was using. My calorie deficit was too great to sustain my exertions for the week.”