Remembering Will Standish

One of the most beautiful parts of a thru-hike comes from the ebb and flow of the hikers around you. You’ll spend two days with someone, lose them in a town, and round a corner two thousand miles later to see them eating a Spam Single in the middle of the trail as if waiting just for you.

Whenever I separate from a friend on a long trail, I find reassurance in the certainty that I’ll always be able to run into them again down the line.

Meeting Will Standish

I met Will Standish for the first time in Lordsburg, New Mexico while we both waited for the shuttle to take us to the Mexican border. He’d shouldered the early wake up call better than most of the crowd and was one of the few who seemed wide awake and visibly excited for the next five days of blistering hot sun.

Terrible at staying still, he barely lingered long enough for a photo at the Southern Terminus before shooting off on the trail.

I caught up with him at the first water cache about ten miles in, and remember confiding in my hiking partner at the time that I could see the two of us hiking all the way to Canada with this quirky, outgoing Australian guy with the funky leg tattoos and colorful clothing. She agreed. And I did, in fact, end up hiking with him for close to the next thousand miles.

Will and me in the San Juans. Photo via Katie Jackson

Will Standish Becomes Rova

For so long, Will stubbornly refused a trail name. He didn’t want anything low effort (which he defined as anything relating to him being Australian) and he certainly didn’t want a name that mentioned Koalas in any way (he vocally hated them).

At a particularly algae-filled water tank between Pie Town and Grants, a small, anxious dog took a liking to Will and ended up hiking with our group for the next fifty or so miles. Whenever Will would stop, the dog would stay with him. He tolerated the rest of our group, but he’d clearly picked his favorite. 

From this experience, Will finally accepted his trail name of “Rova,” which was “Rover” pronounced in the thickest Australian accent you could muster. Some mornings, when I could just see his silhouette on the trail ahead of me, he would turn around and yell back “R-r-r-r-r-ooooooo-vahhhhh,” just to get a laugh.

Our first sighting of Colorado. Photo via Katie Jackson

Our tramily has spent the last week reflecting on our stories of Will, and every one seems to circle back to his three defining on-trail traits: humor, kindness, and intense stubbornness.  

Near Montezuma Peak in the San Juans, Will tried to follow me down a steep, icy pitch but walked a little too far to the right where the grade was even steeper. I looked up from my concentrated steps to see him flying past me, barreling down to the terrifying spot where a partially-melted river disappeared under a snow bridge. Will dug his fingers into the ice, stopping himself at the cost of much of the skin on his hands.

Not only did he find this hilarious (once cleaned up and calmed down), but he would later refuse any help with getting his socks on or shoes tied.

He insisted on taking this picture before I cleaned up his hands, saying that he’d want to be able to remember it correctly. Photo via Katie Jackson

Anyone who hiked with him quickly learned about his passion for music, though not many shared his music taste. While hiking, Will would create raps and diss tracks, and we spent much of New Mexico going back and forth in a perpetual rap battle between towns. 

My first mention of his foot pain in my trail journal happened the day of his first rap: sometime along the highway walk into Grants. This foot pain would later turn out to be a stress fracture that he had — stubbornly! — hiked on for hundreds of miles until he couldn’t ignore it any more.

Unlike most who find themselves leaving trail unexpectedly, Will said he gave himself exactly one day to wallow in self pity before doing everything in his power to continue supporting his friends still on trail.

He did this, of course, in the form of a five minute rap about each person in the tramily that he recorded and sent to us. It was perfect. And since I never got the chance to respond, I’m forced to declare him the winner of our back-and-forth battle. He’d be gloating about that, for sure.

Will crosses his first state and enters Colorado. Photo via Katie Jackson

Will Standish did not seem like someone who could ever die young.

It’s impossible to imagine anyone that full of life doing anything other than constantly stringing together one adventure after the next. He already had his next plans lined up for after the CDT: a road trip in South America with his brother and sister before moving to Chile.

In my time as a writer for The Trek, I’ve written dozens of articles about search and rescue operations in the mountains, with many ending in the worst outcome. Those articles are always terribly hard to write.

It was unimaginably worse when the story would’ve been about Will, and I realized I couldn’t be the one to write it. How could I possibly write a clinical, factual timeline of the end of his life without mentioning the vein in his forehead that bulged when he laughed too hard? Or his insistence on wiping his feet down with Wet Wipes every single night without fail?

Will and his Spam Single. Photo via Syd Sayward

There are no stories I can share in this article that will do him enough justice or capture the depth of his quick wit and kindness. Will Standish was a fundamentally good person who loved deeply and received that love tenfold in return. My brain cannot make sense of the idea that I will never again round a corner to see Will sitting in the middle of the trail, snacking on a Spam Single.

His memory will stay with me for the rest of my life, and I am grateful for that. Above all else, Will would want everyone reading this to live boldly, adventure well, and keep a careful eye out for drop bears.

Will came and met me on trail to say goodbye after his injury before flying back to Australia in 2024. I asked him if he was worried we wouldn’t see each other again, and he told me he didn’t think that would ever be a possibility. This would be the last time we would see each other in person, though we were both excited to meet this August when he hiked back through Colorado in his quest to finish out the CDT. Photo via Katie Jackson

If you are interested in donating to his family to help ease the financial burden while they navigate a devastating, sudden loss, a GoFundMe can be found here.

Additional stories and memories of Will contributed by his tramily, including Syd “Bug” Sayward and Raymond “Purple” Mayo