When we were preparing for our first wilderness backpacking thru-hike, we were initially a little worried about finding and preparing trail food – we had never gone on such a long hike before and didn’t know what to expect. In the end, we learned that while vegan thru-hiking might take a little advanced planning (like any good thru-hike should), it’s not nearly as difficult as everyone thinks. While hiking, we did meet a few different people who were vegan off trail but incorporated animal products into their on-trail diets. For us, this was 1) out of the question and 2) completely and easily avoidable.
Now we’d like to pass on this knowledge to you so you can be confident in knowing that not only will you be able to survive in the wilderness for a month as a vegan on the Colorado Trail or other thru hikes, but you will THRIVE and have the time of your life! Hiking the Colorado Trail was one of the best things we have ever done, and it made us realize that we both have a passion for wilderness backpacking – new adventures coming soon!
General Colorado Trail Info
Overview
The Colorado Trail is a long distance trail that has been called “mile for mile the most beautiful trail in America.” We would have to agree. We saw rushing rivers, trickling creeks full of the clearest spring water, breathtakingly stunning mountain views, a huge variety of animals, fields full of multicolored wildflowers, forests of aspen leaves trembling in the breeze… sometimes all in one day. Make no mistake, you’ll have to work for your views. However, you’ll be rewarded for panting through a scramble up a steep mountain with expansive mountain landscapes and magical views.
While various sources, side quests, and paths might make your total mileage vary slightly, you can expect to hike about 485 miles (780 km). This took us a little under 5 weeks – we started slowly, took our time, and took three zeros and a few nearos in town. Our pace varied widely: our shortest day was about seven miles while our longest was 23. We met plenty of people going faster than us and several going slower – of course, hike your own hike – but to be comfortable, give yourself at least a month to tackle this trail because the altitude is high and the elevation gain is killer.
The Colorado Trail starts close to Denver, and finishes in Durango in the southwest of Colorado. The trail is wonderfully maintained and usually pretty easy to follow, however, we recommend getting the Colorado Trail Databook to help you plan your hike and the application FarOut (Formerly Guthook) to get live information about water sources, see the GPS route of your hike, and read comments and tips from other hikers about everything on and off the trail. For 300 miles, the Colorado Trail also joins with the Continental Divide Trail, so you might meet some hikers on a different journey.
While we genuinely thought that every single day of this hike was beautiful, our favorite part of the entire trip was hiking through the San Juan mountains near the end of our trip. The mountains there are indescribable. If you find yourself with waning motivation, let that be your consolation: the best is yet to come.
Side-quests and route options
The biggest route choice you’ll have to make is in the Collegiate Range, whether to opt for “Collegiate East” or “Collegiate West.” Collegiate East has a lower elevation and is below tree line for a lot of the journey. Collegiate West is higher, more rugged, has some brutal passes, and spends more time above treeline. We chose to hike Collegiate West and were really happy with our decision. Collegiate West is supposed to be “harder,” but Collegiate East has a lot of elevation gain as well – but often without the rewarding views, according to those we spoke to who chose that route.
The biggest thing to be aware of when making your decision is the weather – because Collegiate West spends so much time above treeline, if the forecast looks bad for the upcoming days, you might want to go low.
Another thing to consider when planning your hike is if you want to set aside some time to try and tackle some 14ers (side quests!). Colorado has fifty eight 14ers (mountains over 14,000 feet) and you can access three of them right off the trail (there are more that you can access with a slight deviation, and a few more on the Collegiate East route that we did not have access to). The peaks you can access easily are Mount Massive, Mount Elbert (the highest 14er in Colorado, although it only beats Massive by a few feet), and San Luis.
We climbed Mount Massive and it was a pretty hard hike, especially towards the top where the air was thin and the trail was a little ambiguous. You can access the trail to the peak right from the CT and it’s about 3.5 miles to the summit (stash your extra stuff or camp nearby so you’re not going up with your full backpack).
On the other hand, San Luis is further on in the hike, when you have your hiking legs and lungs, and was incredibly easy (it took us less than 45 minutes to summit from the trail and we just left our bags at the saddle).
When is the best time to hike?
The earliest you can start depends on the snowpack of the previous winter, but most people hike the trail in July and August. You can monitor the snowpack situation if you are trying to start in June – The Colorado Trail Facebook group is extremely helpful for these kinds of queries as well as any other doubts you might have before your hike.
The best time to hike also depends on if you want a social experience or more solitude. We started on July 28th and while we met lots of people along the way, many days we were hiking and camping alone. A hiker we met who did their thru-hike in July said that there were regularly dozens of people camping together and they were easily able to find a trail family. Of course, your exact start date, pace, and what the people around you are doing will also have a big impact on how many people you meet along the way.
Weather-wise, we absolutely loved hiking through August and into September. We saw plenty of wildflowers at the beginning of our hike, but by the end were starting to see some fall foliage, and the contrast was really nice. We also only had to deal with four or five days of rain throughout the whole hike and the bug situation was manageable.
On the other hand, the closer you get into the fall, the more you’ll have to pay attention to water sources, because many will be drying up. You will also have to consider that as summer wanes, you’ll have less daylight for hiking.
Safety Concerns
While you can absolutely tackle this trail as beginners (our longest wilderness backpacking trip prior to the CT was 3 days), there are some things to remember in order to have a safe trip.
Firstly, the trail has several areas above treeline, and the hiking season coincides with monsoon season in Colorado. That’s why it’s absolutely imperative to monitor the weather and try to tackle any passes before noon. You do NOT want to be caught above treeline in a thunderstorm. We had a close call one evening in Collegiate West with racing a thunderstorm down to treeline – sometimes despite the best planning you might get into a gnarly situation, so make sure you also brush up on lightning safety so you’ll know what to do if caught in a similar position.
Secondly, don’t think that because this is summer you’ll be nice and warm – remember that you’ll be over 10,000 feet for most of the hike – we even had snow one night on the trail in August. Make sure your tent is warm, your sleeping bag is warm, and you have enough layers to be comfortable both sleeping and hiking.
How to plan a vegan thru hike
Step 1: Cruelty Free Hiking Gear
Preparing for a thru-hike requires a lot of preparation, vegan or not. The first thing to consider when preparing for the Colorado Trail will be your gear. If you already have gear, you can go straight to step 2! This was also our first thru-hike, so there was a lot of gear we needed to buy. We knew we wanted to do our best to avoid the animal products one might typically find in camping gear: wool, down, and leather. Here’s what we got for this trip:
The Big Three:
- Tent: Our tent is the Big Agnes Copper Spur HV UL3. We got this tent on sale for $374 on Black Friday. This tent is seriously spacious, and was even described by a fellow thru-hiker as palatial. If you love being able to stretch out in your tent and still have room for all your gear, we really recommend this tent! The inside pockets are abundant and convenient. This tent weighs less than four pounds but was able to easily withstand several storms at altitude. I’m sure you could get a smaller and lighter tent, but for us, this tent was worth the weight. If you’re trying to go lighter, consider the one or two person version.
- Sleeping Bags: No way to get around this, synthetic sleeping bags will be heavier than their down counterparts. The big plus of synthetic, however, (besides avoiding animal cruelty of course), is that it will still insulate even if you accidentally get it wet. We bought The North Face Cat’s Meow 20 degree bag. These bags are bulky but we easily stuffed them into the sleeping bag compartment of our backpacks. They were comfortable and kept us warm every night on the trail, including one night we woke up to snow on the ground! I (Zoey) am a very cold sleeper and these bags get a thumbs up from me. Big Agnes, NEMO, Sea to Summit, Enlightened Equipment, and REI also make synthetic bags and quilts.
- Backpacks: I have a Deuter 60L backpack that is almost 10 years old at this point, so that’s what I used. Jordan got the Osprey Atmos AG 65L, which he loved for the trail as it was very comfortable, breathable, and had extremely convenient pockets. All Osprey bags are vegan! Our bags are not ultra-light, so if that’s a priority for you, I’d do some further investigating.
Clothing
- Socks: We started with Darn Tough CoolMax Micro Crew Cushion Socks. Be careful, as most of their other socks are made with wool. We liked these for hiking, although I would say they aren’t quite as durable as their lifetime warranty leads you to believe. When I lost one of my socks, I also ended up getting a pair of Injinji socks in Salida as those were the only wool-free socks I could find there. While the toe separation takes some getting used to, I ended up really liking these socks as well. Again, read the labels, as Injinji also has several models with wool.
- Shoes: We both wore trail runners on this hike, which are much easier to find leather-free than hiking boots or hiking shoes. I wore the Saucony Peregrine 11 trail runners, which REI lists as vegan on their website. Jordan wore the Altra Lone Peak 5, which are also vegan. There are several other brands that make vegan trail runners including Merrell, La Sportiva, and Hoka, so you will definitely have some choice here.
- Clothes: There’s a lot of synthetic options for hiking shirts, shorts, underwear, etc. We really loved our Colombia hiking shirts and ExOfficio underwear/sports bra. Our rain gear was Frogg Togg which was fine for the small amount of rain we got on trail. We also had an ultralight umbrella which we loved for both sun and rain. Don’t forget a beanie and gloves for cold nights!
- Warm layers/puffy: I usually run cold, so I brought my North Face quarter-zip fleece as a mid-layer. Our puffies, unfortunately, are made with “ethical” down filling. They were a gift from a well-meaning family member and could not be returned. Our philosophy in these circumstances is usually that buying another item would lead to additional waste, and so we decided to use these jackets on our hike. Full transparency here! I’m obviously not going to recommend our puffies, however, there are many options for synthetic puffies from Patagonia, The North Face, Marmot, Arc’teryx, Colombia, and more.
Step 2: Vegan Thru-Hiking Food
After we had dialed in our gear, the next step was to prepare a food plan that ensured we wouldn’t go hungry on trail. There are many options for food stops on the Colorado Trail, and we decided to go for a combination of sending ourselves boxes in some places, and letting ourselves go wild at the supermarket in others. For more information about where specifically we sent boxes, check out Step 3.
We ended up sending ourselves resupplies in three different places, which was about four boxes of food total for two people. We also had enough leftover supplies to bring with us to Denver for the first few days of the trail (supplemented from Sprouts in Denver), and even more dehydrated goods that we are saving for future hikes.
Our goal was to bring food that was lightweight and healthy, without having to rely exclusively on expensive dehydrated hiker meals. Here is what we bought ahead of time to put in our resupply boxes:
Bought Online for Resupply Boxes:
- Harmony House Foods Deluxe Sampler: We LOVED this assortment of dehydrated vegetables, beans, and TVP from Harmony House Foods. The cost-value ratio is really good, and we were able to add a lot of variety to our meals just by switching up the veggie and protein combinations. Check out their website here, they also have prepared dehydrated soups and chilis. (Not an affiliate link, we just really loved this food!)
- Although we usually try to avoid using Amazon, we did end up buying a few products on Amazon that would have been hard to find elsewhere:
- Nissin Chili Ramen 24 pack
- 24 Pack Primal Strips Vegan Jerky
- The Hummus Co Powdered Hummus
- Amazing Grass Powdered Greens, Single Serve Packs
- Tapatio single serve (Very extra of us but we loved having this on trail)
- Single Serve Olive Oil Packets**
We bought a few extra things from iherb.com as well. We’ve noticed that for some products, iherb has vastly lower prices. We also used iherb while living in Russia to get hard-to-find items such as nutritional yeast, vegan lip balm, and various vitamins. If you haven’t bought anything from iherb yet, use this code for $5 off, which will throw a few dollars our way as well. For our hike, we used:
- Powdered Soy Milk for cereal, granola, coffee, etc (p.s. This milk was NOT our favorite, but it is the cheapest and easiest to find). If we could do it again, we’d stock up on Laird’s Superfoods for our resupply boxes. We bought their Original Superfood Creamer in Salida and liked it so much we wished we had been using it the whole time! It’s delicious in coffee, oatmeal, and with granola.
- Hemp hearts for oatmeal, sweet burritos, and more.
- Chia seeds also added calories and a healthy fat boost to pretty much anything!
- This vegan brand has magnesium, iron, vitamin b and more. We brought some vitamins on trail, not enough for every day, but enough to feel like all of our bases were covered. On trail, we occasionally took supplemental iron, a B vitamin complex, and magnesium.
We also did end up getting a few dehydrated meals from Outdoor Herbivore as a splurge. We thought everything we bought from them was delicious, and if budget is not a concern we highly recommend stocking up on their products! Our favorite meals (aka pretty much everything we bought from them) were the Pacific Crest Vinaigrette, Sunrise Tofu Scramble, the Lemongrass Thai Curry, and the Pesto Herbilicous Spread.
**While we bought single-serve olive oil packets originally, if we were to do this hike again, we’d just get a small bottle of olive oil to refill as needed. We ended up wanting more olive oil and doing this anyway. We’d often get bigger bottles in town to refill ours, using the extra for cooking in hostels and leaving the rest in a hiker box for others to use. Less waste and more olive oil**
Bought at Supermarkets for Resupply Boxes
From supermarkets to supplement our resupply, we stocked up on:
- Breakfast items: Granola, peanut butter, oatmeal, Pro Bars (Meal bars), instant coffee
- Lunch/snacks/dessert: NUUN electrolyte tablets, so many tortillas, crackers, Lenny & Larry’s Cookies, trail mix, sour patch kids, nutrition bars (Clif, Lara, Luna, Pro Bars, etc).
- Dinner: Instant rice, vegan mac, couscous
From there, it was just about putting it all together. We figured we would need enough food for all 3 meals, plus about 3-4 snacks per person, per day. We kept that in mind when building our resupply boxes – we’d put together the meals possibilities first, and then count our snacks as we threw them in the box afterwards.
Vegan Thru-Hiking Meal ideas and tips
If you need inspiration for how to combine all of this food you got into some delicious vegan meals, look no further. One reason we loved our Harmony House sampler is that it gave us the ability to have the same base meal, but switch it up with different add-ins so we never got bored.
Breakfast:
- A ProBar Meal bar was the fastest option for when we didn’t feel like spending time at camp in the morning.
- Breakfast burritos: We also loved these for lunch – a tortilla with nut butter, granola for crunch, and some freeze-dried fruit, chia or hemp seeds. Super delicious and calorie dense.
- Oatmeal with powdered milk/creamer, nut butter, and seeds.
Lunch and Snacks:
- Lunch burrito – same as breakfast burritos, just for lunch
- Crackers with dried hummus or pesto
- Snack time for lunch! We’d often just pack extra snacks and stop for a few snack breaks vs having a set lunch.
- Chips are a fantastic snack with a great weight to calorie ration, but eat them quickly as they take up a lot of room in your bear canister/ursack/bear bag.
- Vegan cheese and meat will last at least a few days without refrigeration if you want to pack them out after a town stop. Cheese and crackers/meat (or a wrap) is a delicious and easy lunch.
- Oreos and Sour Patch Kids were consumed in extremely high quantities.
Dinner:
- Ramen with any combination of dehydrated vegetables and TVP, often adding peanut butter to the spice packet to make a pretty dank sauce.
- Couscous (hot or cold) with any combination of dehydrated vegetables and beans or TVP, with plenty of olive oil added
- Boxed Mac – Annie’s and Daiya Mac n Cheese were easy to find along the trail.
- Beans and instant rice with – you guessed it – any combination of dehydrated vegetables. We LOVED having the dehydrated jalapeño for this. Knorr Fiesta Sides are also easy and already seasoned, the Mexican Rice and Spanish Rice are vegan.
- The above beans and rice, but stuffed into a tortilla.
- We also loved Banza chickpea pasta/mac and red lentil pasta for extra protein, just be aware the cook time is longer and therefore will use more fuel. This goes for any other grain you might want to buy – we had pearl couscous and quinoa once each, but these options took longer to cook and consumed way more fuel.
Miscellaneous Tips
- Whenever and wherever you can get fried onions, get them. They boost the flavor of pretty much any meal while adding crunch and calories.
- In our normal life, we both really like sweet snacks, but on the trail we often wished we had packed more salty ones. Keep in mind that your tastes may change and you might crave different things on trail that you normally wouldn’t.
- Always bring more zip-loc bags than you think will be necessary.
- One mistake we made in the beginning was having too many meal components but not enough snacks. Go heavy on the snacks, they’re easy to eat and carry.
- We discovered Jif Squeezable peanut butter on this hike, which is less messy and packs smaller than rigid jars of peanut butter.
- We loved making our own trail mixes at each town stop – we’d usually have a savory and a sweet mix. Let your creativity run wild, but some ideas for trail mix include:
- Sweet: Banana chips, nuts, dates/dried fruit, pretzels, cereal, chocolate chips or Unreal chocolate m&m’s (a weird craving for crunchy chocolate that was satisfied at Natural Grocers in Salida).
- Savory: Sesame sticks, Asian style snack mix, nuts, pretzels, bagel chips, roasted chickpeas.
Step 3: Colorado Trail Resupply plan
Here was our resupply plan, including where we stopped for zeros, where we sent boxes, and where we were able to find good vegan food in trail towns. To figure out how much food we would need, we looked at the Colorado Trail Data book and tried to estimate roughly how many days we would spend on each segment.
For the first half of the trail, our average mileage was about 15 miles per day. For the second half, it was probably closer to 18-19 miles per day. We did buy extra snacks while in town picking up our resupplies, but overall we thought we had a good amount of food. If you plan to go significantly slower or faster, you might want to consider other options for a resupply: we met people who stopped in Bailey, Leadville, Creede, and Silverton as well.
We started in Denver with about 5 days of food. Here is where we stopped to resupply:
- Jefferson – We sent ourselves a small resupply box. We knew we would start slow and didn’t want to have to carry 7-8 days of food to make it all the way to Breckenridge. Our resupply had roughly 2 days of food in it. Bonus: It was a very easy and fast hitch in and out of Jefferson.
- Breckenridge – we shopped here for our resupply. If budget is a concern, I consider shopping in Frisco instead of Breckenridge. Both towns are connected by the free Summit Stage Bus, but all of the big grocery stores are in Frisco and we ended up having to take the bus there for resupply. Frisco is also a really cute mountain town and seems to be less overrun with tourists than Breckenridge.
Everyone talks about the Frisco Walmart for resupply, but we thought the Walmart was a little disappointing for a vegan resupply. They did have some dehydrated refried beans, nutrition bars, and snacks, but we ended up walking to Whole Foods from Walmart to supplement. Of course, Whole Foods is more expensive, but they had a ton of good vegan options. There is also a Safeway in Frisco if you think you’ll have better luck there. We bought about 5.5 days of food in Breckenridge, which was enough to get us to Twin Lakes with a side trip to climb Mt. Massive. Bonus: you can take the free Summit bus to and from the trailhead.
P.S. If you are in Breckenridge and feel like splurging on a restaurant meal, Piante Pizzeria is a delicious fully vegan pizza restaurant.
P.P.S We stayed at the Bivvi Hostel in Breckenridge, which was nice enough, but it did NOT have laundry on site (as of August 2021) and we had to walk about a mile to the laundromat. If you care about washing your clothes in town, we wouldn’t recommend this hostel.
- Twin Lakes– This is where we sent ourselves a big resupply, about 6 days worth of food for two people. We sent two boxes to the Twin Lakes General Store, one for each of us. The General Store also has a hiker box, fuel canisters, a hiker discount, and very friendly staff. The general store will have enough vegan snack food to supplement your boxes (although at small town prices). We also saw one vegan backpacking meal available there. In Twin Lakes, there is also a food truck with vegan veggie burgers and fries (don’t expect to be blown away by them, but it is nice to get a meal you don’t have to cook yourself). You can walk into Twin Lakes without having to hitch.
- Salida– We did the Collegiate West route and went into Salida for a resupply and a zero. Salida was our favorite trail town and also had the best options for resupply: check out Natural Grocers for tons of vegan products, and Safeway for everything else you might need. Both are very well stocked. We bought about 6 days worth of food in Salida and had more than we needed to get to Lake City, though this is also where we started hiking a bit faster. YMMV, literally.
Salida also has its own vegan cafe – Manipura Juice Company. We got sandwiches here and thought they were delicious. Bonus- the owner is super friendly. He even helped us get a ride to the edge of town the next morning when he saw us walking by! We stayed at Simple Lodge Hostel in Salida and loved the vibe – super laid back, with loaner clothes and plenty of other hikers to hang out with for communal meals, board games, or movies. The hitch out of town is harder than the hitch into town, but we still managed it, even with three people.
- Lake City – Our last zero was in Lake City. Lake City also has its own hiker hostel, Raven’s Rest, and a group of volunteers organizes a ride to and from Spring Creek Pass for hikers. However, this is the worst town for resupply that we hit on the trail. It’s technically possible (we did it), but the town only has one grocery store with limited, super expensive options. We were glad to have gotten some dehydrated refried beans from the Hiker Box at the hostel to supplement. Luckily, we only needed to buy about three days of food at this resupply. If you aren’t planning on stopping at Molas Pass, or if you’d rather not chance it at the grocery store, Lake City also has a post office where you can send a resupply box.
- Molas Creek Campground – We sent our last resupply box to Molas Creek Campground with enough food for the final four or so days of trail. If you send a box here, MAKE SURE it goes through UPS. This campground is about a 10 minute detour from the trail and has a small store with a few vegan snacks and a hiker box, the possibility of a (paid) shower, and an electronics charging area for hikers.
Durango also has a few restaurants with vegan options and a Natural Grocers for snacks
We hope this information has inspired you and shown you that it’s completely possible to do a vegan Colorado Trail thru-hike. We had an incredible experience and absolutely recommend this trail to everyone. We had a lot of fun and felt like we had enough to eat, were getting stronger rather than weaker, and genuinely enjoyed all of the food we had brought. If you have any other questions about this hike, its vegan options, or vegan thru-hiking in general, feel free to contact us. Happy trails!