This is my dream Alpine journey, and I’ve been planning it for months. But this time I am doing things a little differently. Unlike every other long-distance trail I’ve done, it won’t be an out-and-out hike; it will also involve running. On an average day I expect to hike around 70–80 per cent of the time and run some of the downhills. Because I’m pretty new as a runner, I am not biting off more than I can chew here – my plan is to average around 35km per day. That’s roughly 8–10km more than I would expect to average walking in such terrain. Given the elevation profile, that will still be a significant challenge and a push well beyond my comfort zone. But (and here’s the crucial thing) it is achievable.

I still struggle to see myself as a runner. That’s because the ghosts of old attitudes are deeply ingrained – I was an unfit, overweight teenager who hated exercise. However, as a 36-year-old man, I love running and I love big days in the mountains. My fitness has dramatically improved over the last six months or so, and I am no longer overweight, but I struggle to see myself as fit enough to do something like this.

The point of the project is to have an extended conversation with myself about it all, and hopefully to come to some kind of a personal consensus regarding my weight and body image. Then open up this discussion to a wider audience through our readers at Sidetracked. One thing I have learned over the last few months is that almost everyone can relate to these topics in some way.

I am grateful to my friends and colleagues at Sidetracked for this opportunity – especially John Summerton, who made the project possible, and Jenny Tough, who has been incredibly supportive of my running since day one, and will be joining me for a section of trail near the end. We have much in common regarding our relationship with body image and weight. Jenny and I have chatted about these things many times – and she has helped me to start accepting the fact that I am a runner and I do deserve to think of myself in this way.¹ I am looking forward to the conversations we’ll have in person after around 800km of my journey. How will my perspective have changed by then? I’m also really looking forward to spending a bit of time in the mountains with my brother James. He is joining me at Arolla to provide photographic support, but more importantly so we can enjoy the last week on the trail together.

Our sponsors, Montane and Leki, deserve special thanks. Without them, this journey would have been far more limited in scope. Finally, I’m looking forward to the opportunity to talk to a live audience about my adventure at the final leg of the Sidetracked Creators Tour in Fort William on November 1st, 2022. Tickets are available here.

For a full introduction to Attitudes and Altitude, check out my prologue about completing Tranter’s Round in winter over on Sidetracked.com.

Gear notes

Now for the fun bit.

Those of you who have been reading my stuff for a while know that I love a good gear list, and this trip is no exception. Montane’s sponsorship is why my gear list has largely been taken over by items from Montane’s VIA range. A gear list optimised for hiking is not necessarily optimised for running. Montane’s range of running gear happens to correspond pretty well to what I need for a trip of this kind, so I approached them as my first choice of sponsor, and fortunately they were enthusiastic.

I have been using most of this gear for several months already on shorter trips, so it’s dialled in and I’m very happy with it. The clothing is particularly excellent; I’ve been a huge fan of the Allez Micro layer for years, and the Spine Jacket is easily the best lightweight waterproof I’ve used.

There remain a few question marks, mostly regarding snow gear (Microspikes or Petzl Leopard crampons? Do I need the ice axe at all?) and power (big power bank, or small power bank and solar panel?), but otherwise the list is settled. I will be sending a supply parcel to Arolla containing my snow gear and fresh shoes and socks. For the bulk of the journey my base weight will be approximately 5.5kg.

How I’m approaching social media on this trip

For a few years now, I’ve followed a simple rule: no social media while out on the hill or the trail, but I don’t hold back once I finish my adventure. This has worked well for me and has helped me find a good balance between experiencing and sharing. It’s even right there in the ‘Manifesto’ of my book The Farthest Shore.²

However, this time will be different. Part of my agreement with Montane and Leki is that I will be sharing weekly updates on Sidetracked’s Instagram and Twitter accounts. There will be tweets, Stories, and Reels.

Because I’m going to be online with my Sidetracked hat on anyway, I see no point in keeping off my personal accounts this time, so I’ll drop in the odd update. I won’t be live-tweeting my progress up a mountain pass or anything like that, but I will check in every few days (most likely once a week when I’m posting my Sidetracked updates).

‘The essence of experience cannot be recorded’

As I write this blog post, ‘in the steamy, stuffy Midlands, ‘neath an English summer sky’³, I can’t help but feel a tremendous rush of excitement when I think about the weeks to come.

I completed my last major long-distance trail on August 21st, 2019. I had just finished hiking 832km between the Atlantic and Mediterranean over the crest of the Pyrenees – an experience that changed my life, forever pushing back the limits of what I thought I could do. Then the pandemic came along, and although I’ve done plenty of backpacking since then, I haven’t done any multi-week trips. There is a qualitative difference between a long trip and a short one. For me, things begin to change after about two weeks on trail. A quote from The Farthest Shore:

My mind felt like a different thing – no longer an algorithm or a shard of the machine, more like a river-washed stone. My thoughts felt slower and less frayed, less multithreaded. Was this a permanent change? Was it really a change at all?

Adventure is such a simple word but it contains multitudes. It is the cocktail of that delicious slowness blended with personal challenge, physical exercise, glorious natural beauty, a sense of purpose, and powerful personal narrative. This blend can help us become the best possible versions of ourselves. Trail Alex is fitter, kinder, more sociable but also more comfortable with solitude, more vulnerable and open, more creative, less stressed, less anxious, and less concerned with worldly goods and status. He is braver, wiser, and better able to see the poetry in the gleam of stars and the rush of water in a canyon. Trail Alex does not merely hear the buzzard’s cry; he listens to it, and perhaps takes another step towards understanding it. Maybe this is why mountain friendships are some of the most intense friendships of our lives.

Trail Alex is the person I wish I could be every day. But the poignant truth is that the magic does fade. Its afterglow lingers for a few weeks or months beyond the end of a momentous trail, and some lessons never leave us, but we forget what it is like to be that person. At least, I do. Here is another bit from The Farthest Shore, just because it sums up how I see this so well:

I knew that no matter how many photos I took, how many words I wrote in my journal, I could never capture exactly what I had felt and done and who I had been. The essence of experience cannot be recorded. These moments would be gone. Such is the pathos of being human, but at that moment I felt the echo of that future loss keenly.

Another lesson I have learned is that no adventure is ever quite how you expect it will be. I visualise now what I believe it will feel like to be a week, two weeks, into my journey, but I know that when I am actually there I will feel different. And this is because I will be a different person, living a different life. But we hold the heights we have won.

A note about my online writing from now on

Regular readers will have noticed that I haven’t published much personal writing online this year. In fact, this website has been stagnant for months due to two major server failures. It’s now ridiculously out of date.

In my last newsletter, I mentioned a few of the reasons behind my blogging hiatus, and they haven’t changed – I’m still in the process of building a new website, everyday life is still busy with work and projects and time outdoors, and I have been enjoying the lack of pressure to be constantly publishing personal work.

However, I’m starting to miss that pressure. I’m also between book manuscripts at the moment. Last month I spent a few days in North Wales with a select crew from Sidetracked and Trash Free Trails. On the train home, Emily Woodhouse⁴ and I were chatting about our individual approaches to writing. I said to her something like ‘I’m enjoying the fact that I’m not actively writing a book at the moment, but I’m also wary about finding myself a year from now still not writing anything.’ The same is very much true of blogging. I need to start carving out the time and headspace for personal writing again. My day job goes a long way towards scratching that itch, but it isn’t quite the same thing.

My new website is inching its way towards completion. When it’s done⁵, I will merge my newsletter with my blog – this will be a far simpler and more sustainable option for the long term. This means that I will shut down my Substack newsletter and just post everything on alexroddie.com. I’ll ask people to subscribe there instead. I believe that I’ve learned a great deal from running a separate newsletter over the last few years, but it’s time to simplify things and apply the lessons I’ve learned to my blogging instead. I know I’ve written this before, and other things tend to get in the way, but I hope to get back to a more consistent publishing schedule.

It won’t be long before the next book manuscript comes along, too. The thing about writers is that they’re never happy unless they’re writing – or at least they won’t stay happy for long.

If you’d like to support my writing and photography, you can buy me a coffee. Thank you!

1. Jenny’s superpower is helping people to realise that they are stronger than they think. It has 100 per cent worked for me. ︎

2. Under Seek Silence: ‘I’ve found it beneficial to impose a personal rule when I go hiking or backpacking: no social media while I’m actually out there.’ ︎

3. A.D. Godley, from Second Strings – a poem about wistfully looking back on past seasons in the Swiss Alps. ︎

4. Our sub-editor at Sidetracked, and someone whose perspective and sharp eye I have quickly come to rely on. ︎

5. This almost certainly won’t be until well after I get back from the Alps now. ︎

This is my second traditionally published book, my fifth published book overall, and probably something like the fifteenth or sixteenth written (honestly I lost track years ago), but in many ways it feels like the first.

After so long dreaming, thinking, writing and of course walking, it feels good to see the book in its final form. And it looks fantastic – the editorial, design and production teams at Vertebrate have done a genuinely wonderful job. Right from the start of this process, when I popped by the Vertebrate office to chat about my idea with Jon Barton in late 2019, I have felt in safe hands. Vertebrate are of course a commercial operation. An idea has to be commercial enough to sell, but at no point did I feel that I was being asked to make unacceptable artistic compromises in order to make a more commercial product. Partly I think that’s because I know how the publishing industry works and was quite happy to be flexible where needed. However, Vertebrate also treat the artistic visions of their writers with respect. I was frequently consulted throughout the process on everything from page layout to cover design, and my input was taken on board. The final result is a book that I’m proud to put my name to.

I take the time to mention this because one concern that writers sometimes have with traditional publishing is that their wishes might be ignored, steamrollered by the crass demands of commerce. This is one benefit of self-publishing: you have the freedom to do anything you want (although you have to accept the consequences of that too). Of course, all publishers are different – and if your ideas are rubbish then a steering hand can be valuable.

Early in this journey, almost twenty years ago, I remember reading a piece of advice that stuck in my head: ‘If you think that your writing has been dictated to you by God then only you and God are going to read it.’ In other words, no idea is too precious to be improved, and no writing is too precious to be edited. But there’s a balance to be struck too. The path to finding your voice is different for us all.

I’ve been looking through old photos lately and feeling a bit nostalgic. In August 2011, I was deep in the red-pen edits of The Only Genuine Jones, the mountaineering novel that would eventually become my first self-published book¹. This was a breakthrough time for me. I’d been writing fiction for about a decade already; I began writing my very first novel manuscript, an awful and derivative fantasy tome called The Chronicles, in about 2001 at the age of fifteen. For ten years I had been working on my style and voice, writing books that would never be published because I believed in the apprenticeship process, in honing my craft in private before showing my mistakes in public. Before I sought publication, I wanted to be a Good Writer.

Of course, the tools for self-publishing simply didn’t exist in the first few years of the 21st century. Things were changing though and by 2011 I felt ready. The tools finally existed to easily self-publish both electronically and via print on demand. The Only Genuine Jones was my statement to the world that I was done with the apprenticeship – that I was ready for my work to be read. The result was modest success. The book sold reasonably well for a couple of years and made a decent-ish profit, and the two books that followed, Crowley’s Rival and The Atholl Expedition, had their fans too². However, as I began to grow as a non-fiction writer, I increasingly saw the flaws in my mountaineering fiction. I started to realise that maybe I’d been premature in putting those books out there after all. Yes, self-publishing means that anyone can publish anything, and that is an empowering thing, but despite my years of development I think it emboldened me to publish before I knew what I really wanted to say.

The truth – and this is a truth I’d failed to grasp ten years ago, puffed up by the idea that I had served my apprenticeship and deserved to be considered a Good Writer – is that the learning process never ends. I know that I am a better writer now than I was ten years ago, and ten years before that. In another ten years I may look back at my work from the early 2020s as clumsy and naive. Cleave to that philosophy too literally, though, and you’ll never publish anything. More important is the fact that I was still flailing around for my voice in 2011, and opportunity had made me blind to my own shortcomings. I could have benefited from a gatekeeper or two giving me some harsh truths³.

I’m not saying that The Farthest Shore is a literary masterpiece, or that I’m going to sit back and wait for the book prizes to start rolling in. Nobody ever ‘arrives’ because there is always another staircase to climb. Truthfully, I’m more full of doubts about this book than about anything else I’ve written. I know that I’m happy with it as an expression of my own soul and my own experience, and perhaps that should be enough for any writer, but I’m also aware that I’m still a young man and have much to learn. The more experienced a writer I become, the more I realise that the road ahead of me is long.

Where am I driving with this? Am I telling writers to forget about self-publishing that first book, hit pause on their dreams for a decade while they build up experience? Certainly not – I think it’s fantastic that writers have so many options and tools these days. For some, publishing early and often is the right choice. You don’t have to get your work past the gatekeepers if that is not the best road for you. It’s easy, too, for me to look back on the path I have travelled and retrospectively say it’s the best one, blind perhaps to the hidden forks along the way.

What I have learned is this: finding your voice, and taking the time to work out what you truly have to say, are the important things. My path to get here has taken two decades, and stretches out ahead of me; for you the path may be very different, but it is a path worth treading no matter how long it may seem.

The Farthest Shore comes out on 2 September 2021, and is available to order now from Vertebrate Publishing.

1. You can’t buy this book online any more, because I pulled all my early work from Amazon a few years ago, although there are always a few copies kicking around on eBay and in second-hand bookshops.︎
2. Crowley’s Rival was always my personal favourite of the three. It’s a much stronger story and far more rooted in historical fact.︎
3. Not too harsh, though, because writers are easily discouraged and confidence is fragile. It’s very important to give constructive criticism delicately to a writer who has poured their soul into a manuscript.︎

Here is the online booking link.

I’ve already heard from several readers and online friends and colleagues who are keen to come. It would be lovely to see some of you there.

There is still time left to pre-order signed copies of the book online, too. I’m heading to Vertebrate Publishing in Sheffield tomorrow for a marathon book-signing session, and pre-orders will be sent out the day after that, so if you’d like to sneak in then I advise putting your orders in right away! Here’s the link.

Many thanks, and I’m hoping to see some of you in a couple of weeks. I shall expect interesting and thought-provoking questions after my talk.

There’s a numb feeling in the back of my mind when I’ve spent a bit too long on Instagram, scrolling through a never- ending slideshow of gorgeous mountain views. I contribute to Instagram myself – as I do with several social media sites. But recently I’d started to wonder what the point of it all was. And I’d begun to resent the time and attention that these websites were stealing from me. Was it contributing to the anxiety that had crept up on me over the last few years? Something was wrong, but I didn’t know what. So I did what any #adventurer would do: I set myself a challenge.

Regular readers of this magazine may remember that a few years ago, The Great Outdoors published a feature I wrote about walking the Cape Wrath Trail. Back then, I described this journey up the west coast of Scotland as the “best, toughest, wildest, and most moving thing I’ve ever done”. Now I would be going back. But this time I wanted to complete the Cape Wrath Trail in winter – and, to help me make sense of my unease and anxiety, I’d do it without accessing the internet along the way.

The lack of a web connection might not seem a big deal to dyed-in-the-wool long-distance walkers; until recently, no one even had the option to take the internet backpacking. But there’s little phone signal along the Cape Wrath Trail, and the last time I’d been offline for more than a few days I was about 17 years old.

I would carry a SPOT X satellite communicator – which would enable me to send messages home to confirm I was ok, and also to call for emergency help in case of a crisis – but my mobile phone would remain at the bottom of my pack. I was looking forward to finding some real silence – whatever that means in 2019.

A false start

The plan had been to hike through Ardnamurchan before joining the Cape Wrath Trail at Glenfinnan. When I reached the Ardnamurchan lighthouse on a storm-lashed day in early February, and stood on the slick rock of the foreshore while shielding myself from the full force of the Atlantic blast, it felt far from the journey I’d imagined. I wanted snow and mountains. The forecast (which my brother James was texting to my SPOT X daily) promised nothing but storms.

The Ardnamurchan stage was tough. Insane winds drove me down from the high ground. As I staggered along paths turned to rivers by 32 hours of rain and sleet, cursing every kilo in my abominably heavy pack, I thought I’d give myself a break by doing a bit of road walking. Then, on a flat road at sea level, a gust blew me off my feet. I ended up in a B&B in Salen wondering what the hell I was doing. I had a faulty tent, all my gear was soaked, and I regretted every choice that had led me to that moment.

With calmer weather and a bothy roof over my head, Glenfinnan offered the chance to reset. At last I found a little real winter on the mountains edging Knoydart, which I explored while I waited for James to join up with me. My enthusiasm recovered.

Unusually, I was the oldest person in the bothy that night. I’d just settled down in front of the fire with new friends Mike and Louis, each of us enjoying a dram, when the door opened and a lean figure stepped through. He switched off his headlamp and stood there for a moment looking a little dazed, as if only just realising his fatigue.

“I might hike on to the next bothy,” he said when I asked him if he’d be staying, but in the end the temptation of fire and rest was too great. The young man called himself Skye. He was 16 years old and hiking Land’s End to John O’Groats via the CWT. Later, after he’d picked my brains about the trail, Skye mentioned that he was filming his trip but didn’t know what to do with the footage: “I’ve never had a social media account.” Half joking, I told him he wasn’t missing much.

On a dull, mild morning I met up with my brother and we trekked together into Knoydart – but not before I swapped my faulty tent for the spare he’d brought with him. At last I’d be able to camp without risking getting all my kit drenched again. “You could probably give me your snowshoes too,” James said, eyeing my colossal pack. “Winter’s gone for the time being.”

I’d needed crampons and axe the previous day, but now the mountains were alive with meltwater cascades. I started to worry about the Knoydart river crossings. Even in summer, this section of the Cape Wrath Trail is an early test of competence. The Carnoch River had a missing bridge, and I’d planned a high-level detour over the Bealach Coire nan Gall to avoid it, but when we discussed our options James pointed out that the steep north side of the bealach probably concealed a thawing snow slope. Which did I fancy: a potentially dangerous bealach followed by two river crossings, or two different river crossings but no high ground?

Only the first crossing on the way to Glen Pean was serious enough to make us wary. I didn’t know whether the usual crossing further down would be safe. James pointed – he’d seen camo-clad estate workers on the far bank gesturing for us to cross immediately. It took us a couple of attempts to find a safe place, and after we made it to the other side I felt a weight lift from my mind.

James could only join me for a couple of days. He turned back a few miles after we left A’ Chuil bothy. This was the fork in the road, the place to make the call: up and over the bealach to avoid the missing bridge, or towards the Carnoch to avoid dodgy snow up high? I chose the Carnoch route. “Good decision,” James said before retracing his steps back towards Glenfinnan. And my luck held. When I reached the Carnoch, it was an easy crossing in the conditions. It could have been a lot worse.

An early spring

Winter had long gone by the time I met up with TGO’s Chris Townsend in Torridon. Chris led the way around the back of Liathach, where we resumed the Cape Wrath Trail on the path up to Coire Mhic Fhearchair. This is one of the best sections of the trail, where pathless and rough miles follow a contour over heather and moraine through some of Scotland’s finest wild land.

As we hiked, Chris and I chatted about my no-internet experiment. We explored the idea that commentators who take a hardline stance on the mental health impact of social media fail to acknowledge the good it can do. I’d been offline for two weeks and readily accepted this viewpoint. I could feel my own cynicism evaporating with every mile I walked, every stranger I spoke to in person instead of through Twitter. But the truth is that I thought about my online life seldom. When Chris and I set up camp at a sheltered spot beneath Beinn Eighe, the notion of looking for an Instagrammable pitch couldn’t have been further from my mind.

The Farthest Shore available to order

My book about hiking the Cape Wrath Trail in winter, The Farthest Shore, is available to order through Vertebrate Publishing. Publication date 2nd of September 2021.

Order now

After I left Chris and continued north, the calendar said it was winter, as did my heavy pack and big boots, but everything else screamed summer. The winds dropped, rain became a distant memory, and I found myself hiking in shirtsleeves. I started to see frogs spawning in puddles and even the odd lizard. My mileage increased too.

I kept bumping into Skye, the 16-year- old LEJOGer I’d first met at Glenfinnan. We walked together for a few hours in Assynt. As we chatted, I found myself awed by his drive and determination, and impressed by his knowledge of environmental issues and interest in rewilding. He was self-funding his big walk with online businesses and had a big wish- list of international long-distance hikes. After seeing how well he was doing on the Cape Wrath Trail, I had no doubt he could achieve his goals. Walking with Skye made me feel positive about the future – here was a 16-year-old who knew and cared about the environment of the Highlands, and wanted to find a way to use his big walk to make a difference.

However, my optimism was soon tested – three days before the end of my Cape Wrath Trail, on the evening that hundreds of ticks invaded my tent. I’d camped in a field with evidence of heavy deer presence nearby. By the time I realised my error, after seeing ticks on my clothing, stuffsacks, and flysheet, I couldn’t be bothered to move camp so made ready to repel boarders. At this point on the trail, I was using a lightweight Mountain Laurel Designs Duomid tarp with a basic groundsheet and bivvy bag, but no inner. The only way I could put something between me and the ticks was to seal myself in the bivvy bag and worry about the rest of my gear later. I stopped counting at 50 ticks, but there must have been hundreds, and the next morning I evicted many more from my rucksack and boots.

As I set out again, I realised that the presence of so many ticks in February – usually the peak of winter – was yet one more sign of something deeply and fundamentally broken.

A shifting baseline

Sandwood Bay guards a remote and beautiful beach about 12 miles from the Cape Wrath lighthouse and the end of the trail. I walked across the dunes in late afternoon as the light was starting to soften. Behind me, the sea stack of Am Buachaille drew the eye, tempting me to anthropomorphise it as a sentinel welcoming pilgrims. The silence and solitude were magnificent. I wondered if I’d remember what this felt like after I’d returned home and plugged myself back in to the noise of the web.

Then I saw something I couldn’t identify a mile along the beach. A standing stone? Junk left by the tide? As I approached, the shape revealed itself as a colossal skull, rooted there in the sand like a relic of some primordial creature. I stood before it electrified with awe. The skull was well over a metre long and my mind grappled with words like ‘dinosaur’ and ‘dragon’ before settling on ‘whale’. And that’s when it really hit me. As I stood there on that farthest shore, confronted by a jarring example of ecological breakdown, I realised that my worries about the internet were laughably trivial.

While I had been fretting about whether social media was ruining my ability to concentrate, dozens of creatures like this one – which I later identified as an endangered Northern Bottlenose Whale – were being beached on Scottish shores. Nobody knows for sure what is causing this tragedy, but most theories point at us. This is just one story in a vast ecological crisis.

I’m not the first person to be shocked by immediate and tangible evidence of climate change and biodiversity loss, and I certainly won’t be the last. But as I leafed through the bothy book at Strathchailleach and saw a sketch of the rotting whale carcass on the beach, as I squinted through the window at the silent and treeless landscape outside, I couldn’t shake my discomfort. Baselines shift but our perception of these changes is important.

What about my offline experiment? By the end of the trail it hardly seemed to matter. I didn’t miss the internet, but I’d made my peace with it, and I’d come to realise that my anxiety couldn’t be entirely blamed upon the web.

Going offline for a month cured me of my cynicism regarding social media and made me more appreciative for the good it can do, especially in environmental campaigning. Real changes can be made this way. So share petitions, raise awareness, and don’t feel too bad about Instagramming your wild camps – but it’s also worth disconnecting completely from time to time, and not just for a couple of days. Genuine silence is rare and special in our hyper-connected era. You might discover something about yourself and the world around you if you take the time to listen.

My book about this very special trip, The Farthest Shore, is now available to order from Vertebrate Publishing.

Images © Alex Roddie and James Roddie Photography. All Rights Reserved. Please don’t reproduce these images without permission.

• 20 July: BBC Radio Lincolnshire, in conversation with Carla Green (from about 1:07 hours, BBC login required)
• 23 July: Siren Radio, in conversation with Andrew David

Route of the Month: Tryfan via the North Ridge

This is a new monthly slot, featuring an illustrated map by Jeremy Ashcroft and a detailed route description. It’s a bit like an expanded version of the classic Wild Walk format, but with a bit more focus on the route description and without the author’s narrative. I like this format – I think it will prove popular.

Comment: Damage to the countryside – why social media gives a misleading impression

First published online, this column takes a look at the gap between online perception of how bad things seem to be and what things are really like on the hill.

Hill Skills: Map-reading fundamentals

This skills guide, aimed at newbies to hillwalking and assisted by Plas y Brenin senior instructor Helen Teasdale, takes a look at the basics of map reading.

Comparative review: GPS watches

Eight GPS watches tested, from Garmin, Amazfit, Casio, Coros, and Suunto. There have been some real strides in this tech over the last couple of years, but there are still big flaws and compromises everywhere. Still, the Garmin Instinct Solar is a fantastic device for walkers and gets my Best Buy. Garmin in general are doing well at the moment; Suunto, however, are slipping behind. Review also available online.

The question floated to the surface of my thoughts as I concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other and avoiding the enormous drop a few inches to my right. Time to admit it: I’d been on the trail for 10 days, long enough for the initial enthusiasm and novelty to wear off, and I was having a low moment. The backs of my calves hurt with every step. At first I’d tried to convince myself that the irritation was being caused by horsefly bites, maybe aggravated by the grit that seemed to get everywhere, but I could no longer deny that my legs were badly sunburnt. The sun felt like a tangible force – a huge fiery weight pressing down on me, draining my energy, making me obsess over precious water supplies. Even through my sunglasses, the blue-white mountain glare of scree, snowfields, and sky made my head hurt. And I was hungry too. I had nothing but a little stale bread and cheese in my pack to see me through to Gavarnie in another two days.

So, my subconscious demanded, why are you doing this? Why do you want to hike from Atlantic to Mediterranean over the crest of the Pyrenees? And would you really keep going if you could never share the experience?

I’d always assumed that the answer would be an immediate ‘yes’. I thought I knew why I went backpacking in big mountains – because I loved the experience of being alone in nature, loved the challenge. But, to my surprise, at that moment an answer would not come. Was I just doing this because I wanted something interesting to write about? Did I secretly crave the adoration of followers on social media? Who was I trying to impress – and who was I trying to imitate?

I looked up into the white heat. Ahead, the first 3,000m peak I’d seen so far on this hike, Balaïtous, soared into the sky from a wilderness of rocks and the dying stumps of old glaciers. I’d spent the first few days of my Haute Route revelling in the beauty of my surroundings, but by this point my perspective seemed to have moved beyond beauty to a point where I saw the chaos and ugliness too.

Before the trip, I’d read accounts of Pacific Crest Trail thru-hikers who, after the first couple of months on their marathon pan-USA hikes, had become so accustomed to natural beauty that they felt numbed to it. Oblivious. Was I already that jaded? No, I reminded myself, you’re just having a low moment. But it did make me think about the backpacking blogs and Instagram accounts I’d studied in the months before my hike. Online, chat about ultralight backpacking often revolves around the PCT, the quintessential long-distance hike against which all others are measured. As PCT comparisons go, I was living the dream: hiking 35km a day through a rugged alpine landscape, a light pack on my back, running shoes on my feet. Check, check and check. For the first time, I wondered how my expectations of this trail had been shaped by ultralight trends I’d read about online. Was I just contributing to the content churn, deriving meaning from it, or was there anything more to my experience than that? At that moment, sunburnt and tired and demoralised, I had no idea.

After 295km on the Haute Route, I made it to Gavarnie. It had been a tough section. Extreme heat had ended the way it usually did in big mountains: with thunderstorms and rain. I’d struggled over high passes under threatening skies, lashed with hailstones and driven onwards by a fear of getting struck by lightning. Well, I told myself, what did you expect if you whinge about it being too hot? The trail provides, even if it doesn’t always provide exactly what you want. My sunburnt legs had at least been given a chance to recover, and running out of water was no longer a concern.

Like many trail towns that are also tourist destinations, Gavarnie had a strange feeling, like a liminal zone between two worlds. Shops along the main street stocked cuddly marmots and more postcards than I’d ever seen in one place before. The food shop was small and not particularly well stocked for long-distance hikers – especially foolish ultralighters who leave their stoves at home to save weight. I spent a day off lounging around in the campsite, gazing up at the waterfalls cascading through the Cirque de Gavarnie, an improbably high horseshoe of cliffs lit up by alpenglow morning and evening.

Hikers came and went. One of them was an American called Larry I’d bumped into several times – lanky, tanned, and invariably shirtless, whose 4kg pack weight seemed to consist entirely of camera and drone gear. Larry claimed to be an influencer. His hiking gear was ultralight, custom made, and somehow managed to look at once cutting edge and worn out.

After sharing a little of the red wine he’d decanted into his hydration reservoir, we got talking about our adventures on the previous section. ‘I’ve got thousands more followers since I started this trail,’ he told me when I asked him about his best moments since we’d last met. ‘It’s paying off, dude.’

‘That isn’t what I meant. What experiences moved you as a human being? Any moments of wonder out there in the wild?’

‘Four thousand new followers sure moved me as a human being.’

‘Bloody hell,’ I said, and he laughed.

‘I’m shitting you. This trail’s not all about growing my platform. I’ve learned a ton about hiking in Europe too. Spread the gospel according to Jardine a little, if you know what I mean.’

Ray Jardine, the grandfather of modern ultralight backpacking, is a god amongst PCT hikers. I’d seen Larry giving hikers with bigger packs unsolicited advice about pack weight. Some had been grateful. Others had told him to sod off. He’d even criticised my own pack when we’d first met, and I considered myself a lightweight backpacker.

We drank more wine and the conversation moved to other topics, but I kept thinking about what he’d said. Larry knew exactly why he was hiking the HRP. His motivations might not gel with my own preconceived ideas about why people should hike these big trails, but at least he was being honest with himself. And was I any different? I chose to write about my experiences in the mountains. Larry chose to be an Instagram influencer. While he spent hours every day uploading photos and crafting posts, I spent hours scribbling in my journal. Both of us, ultimately, would be trading our hard-won experience for attention and cash.

I never saw Larry again after that day. Two weeks later, I heard on the HRP grapevine that he had lost interest and gone home. I thought I’d pinned him down – the pragmatic online personality who knew exactly what he wanted from this trail – but later I wondered if I’d been right all along. Had Larry denied himself some essential level of unmediated experience, some purity that’s lost when your mind’s on the next Instagram post and the next bunch of likes? I didn’t know, but I did know that I had decided at the start of the trail not to use social media until the end, and I felt different for it. Better? Who’s to say – but I did feel different.

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Those two fundamental questions kept coming back to me: why are you hiking the HRP, and if you could never tell anyone about it, would you still do it? It was not until weeks later, and 692km from my starting point, that I could answer with an open heart.

It had been a good leg, one of the best. A short 22km day of ‘supertrail’ led through alpine forest and up onto a big, flat ridge that would lead all the way to Canigou, the last major peak on the HRP above 2,500m. In less than a week I’d be paddling in the Mediterranean. I had been walking for a full month. Time had slowed back to its proper pace – walking pace – and every day I filled my journal with wondrous things seen and heard and felt, observations I never could have made in everyday life. Only on the trail can one sit on a rock and look at a tree for 15 minutes and it not be considered wasted time.

My camp that night on the ridge was the best of the whole trip. I woke to a deep silence. The purple Belt of Venus spread over the sky, pushing back the moon and the stars, lighting up the grassland around me in ethereal colours. I was completely alone. The gift of solitude in that moment was precious, and yet it felt like a poignant gift, for my self-imposed social media moratorium meant that I would carry this treasure in my own memory alone. There is value in silence, but there is also value in connection. After a month away from social media I craved a little more balance.

That’s when the answers came to me. I could be honest with myself at last. Yes, I was hiking this trail for myself, but the inspiration had come from others – hikers who had gone before me, and in some cases shared their experience on social media. I wanted to do it for the solitary experience, but I also wanted to share my experience with others, because that was part of it. Would I still hike if nobody ever found out? Yes, but my experience would be an impoverished one.

In Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer told the story of Christopher McCandless, a young man who sought ultimate solitude in the wild. He died alone. A few weeks before his death, he wrote ‘Happiness only real when shared.’

All images © Alex Roddie. All Rights Reserved. Please don’t reproduce these images without permission.