IMG_20220821_135453254_HDR~2
This website contains affiliate links, which means The Trek may receive a percentage of any product or service you purchase using the links in the articles or advertisements. The buyer pays the same price as they would otherwise, and your purchase helps to support The Trek's ongoing goal to serve you quality backpacking advice and information. Thanks for your support!
To learn more, please visit the About This Site page.
Hello! My name is Jenna, and I'm hiking the Long Trail in Vermont with my significant other. I know, despite the name it isn't a very long trail, but it's a start. I tore my ACL clean in half as well as re-tearing some meniscus in spring of 2019 (apparently longboarding is an extreme sport). After learning the recovery time for surgery was nine months and they didn't bother to fix ACL injuries in anyone short of professional athletes in the 90s, I thought why am I any better? Can't further injure something that isn't there anymore! I'll fix it when I'm older! I had planned to finish the NH 48 that year in 2019 and hike the AT the following year, and all of those plans came to a screeching halt. After three years of regaining strength, stamina, and healing enough to feel stable, as well as some serious mental hurdles from such a drastic lifestyle change (there are hobbies you can sit down for? No thanks), it's time to finally get out there and start knocking off these thru hikes. I want to bring the sort of inspiration and hope that I desperately needed three years ago to people with a similar injury who also find that their goals seem so far away now. I'm also hoping to shine some light on the part of the Long Trail that doesn't coincide with the AT, so many people I've talked to don't even realize it's its own trail. We're starting at the Canadian boarder and going south, with three weeks off work. Hopefully we can make this happen!