Why You Shouldn’t Hike the Triple Crown (Instead, Hike These Three Trails)

tThe appeal of the Triple Crown (the Appalachian Trails, Pacific Crest, and Continental Divide) is undeniable. But while the 8,000-mile feat offers lifelong bragging rights, it also requires immense logistical support, a huge financial investment, and life disruption that can last years or longer.

For the vast majority of hikers, the goal is not to leave their job forever. Instead, people hope to find that perfect combination of challenge and escape. That’s where the Triple Tiara comes into play, consisting of the Long Trail, John Muir Trail, and Colorado Trail. This collection of mid-length wilderness trails offers advantages that the Triple Crown simply can’t match.

Why you should wear the triple tiara instead of the triple crown

The Triple Tiara Makes Hiking Look Less Like Work

The logistical difficulty of Triple Crown trails (particularly the CDT) feels like a full-time job above full-time job of more than 12 hours of daily walking. You spend countless hours preparing elaborate mail shipments, planning water transports across deserts, and coordinating expensive transportation and specialized permits, particularly in national parks.

Logistical Simplicity

The Triple Tiara, on the other hand, is much simpler. With the exception of the John Muir Trail, which has its own nightmare permitting process, the Colorado and Long Trails require no permits and possibly zero advance logistical planning. Each of the three trails is short enough (between 200 and 500 miles) to make resupply easier, often allowing you to walk directly into a town. (again, with the exception of the JMT, which is a bit more complicated).

The perfect duration

The trails are long enough to feel like a complete, life-changing journey, but short enough that they don’t feel like permanent, exhausting work. You still get that deep physical satisfaction and mental reset without losing half a year of your life on a single hike. When it comes to saving financially before a hike and recovering after one, Triple Tiara trails are a lot less try.

Even if the cost per day of trails remains the same, just walking one-fifth of the time saves a lot of money. Photo via @k80.trail

Distance also benefits you mentally. When a hike extends beyond three months, the honeymoon phase often slowly dies. On a Triple Crown trail, you’ll likely eventually hit a wall where the awe of nature is replaced by the routine of having to get up and walk every day. Triple Tiara trails effectively avoid this burnout because these trails are completed over a period of three to six weeks.

When I think about my time on the Triple Tiara trails compared to the Continental Divide Trail, the percentage of my time spent in pure wonder and awe is much higher on the shorter trails.

The triple tiara allows you to gain significant experience with lower stakes

The shorter time frame of the Triple Tiara trails gives you much more flexibility in terms of how you approach your gear and your body.

Freedom to experiment with equipment

When you’re just away from home and hiking for 2 to 6 weeks (yes I know it’s a massive spread)there’s a little more room for error in terms of equipment. You can get away with “good enough” gear because the finish line is never that far. On my first hike, which was the Colorado Trail, I used a Gossamer Gear The Two tent which ended up not being the right fit for me. But for 28 days, it didn’t matter if I was 100% satisfied with my sleep each night.

Compare this to the 147 days I spent on the Continental Divide Trail, where I was willing to spend a lot more money to make sure I optimized my sleep, and you can see how the off-trail costs of the Triple Crown Trails add up compared to the Triple Tiara Trails. I joke that the tent I bought for the CDT was the first time I owned it. In fact, I spent about a month’s rent on a tent, which became a little easier to justify when I realized I wouldn’t be paying rent for the next five months.

Shorter trails also allow you to try out gear you’re unsure of. I was able to test this tarp without committing to living in it for five months straight! Photo via @k80.trail

Decreased health anxiety

In a Triple Crown run, you’re playing a five-month game of «don’t break.» You have to be incredibly disciplined with your pace at the beginning because a single overuse injury in the first few weeks can end a journey you’ve been planning for years. The pressure to “listen to your body” is constant and quite stressful. At the CDT, I spent a lot of time wondering if the twinge in my Achilles tendon was just irritation from my shoe or something that would suddenly decide to end my hike.

On a Triple Tiara trail, the stakes are low enough that you can try a little harder. If you decide to do a 25-mile day on the Long Trail because you feel good and the weather is perfect, the worst-case scenario is that you will be sore for the last three days of your trip. I wasn’t constantly worried that one great day would hurt me for the next 1,500 miles.

Breaking a quad with the CDT would have sent me into a mental spiral. On the Long Trail, I was able to push myself just seven more days because I knew that weeks of rest and soft maple service were in my near-term future. Photo via @k80.trail

This also helped mentally. When I was feeling little aches, knowing that a relaxing couch at the end of the road was just days away instead of months was a great feeling.

The Triple Tiara prepares you to climb the Triple Crown

If you ultimately decide to pursue the full Triple Crown, climbing the Tiara first only serves to enrich that experience.

Enjoying the overlap

The beauty of the Triple Tiara trails is that they all overlap heavily with their Triple Crown counterparts: the LT shares mileage with the AT, the JMT overlaps with the PCT, and much of the CT runs concurrently with the CDT. When you finally set foot on the full Triple Crown, you get the satisfaction of retracing familiar terrain and instantly recognizing sections of trail where you’ve already made such wonderful memories.

Did I cry at the CT/CDT trail crossing? Yeah. Photo via @k80.trail

The three Triple Tiara trails are beginning to overlap hundreds (if not thousands) of miles on the Triple Crown trails, so this little mental boost of familiarity comes at a time when many hikers are going through a mid-trail slump.

Trust well earned

Particularly for the PCT and CDT, the areas where those trails overlap with their Triple Tiara counterparts are high mountain sections that serve as a source of significant anxiety for hikers and require additional preparation. The Sierra on the PCT and the San Juan on the CDT are considered some of the most physically and logistically challenging parts of those trails, but if you’ve done the JMT or CT before, you have the reassuring confidence of experience.

Sure, CDT hikers arrive in San Juan in a different season and see very different snow conditions than a typical Colorado Trail hiker would encounter. But while everyone else was worried about snowpack in addition to other things like “how my body will handle the altitude” and “did I bring the right gear for southern Colorado,” I was already confident that I knew what I was doing.

The San Juans are too beautiful to spend stressing. Photo via @k80.trail

I knew exactly how my body would react while hiking a 12,000-foot pass, and I didn’t have to guess whether my sleep system could handle a morning literally covered in frost. Having those variables already figured out meant I could fully focus on the unique challenges of the season (the snow) instead of feeling overwhelmed by a dozen new stressors at once.

To sum up

I don’t mean for any of this to be a knock on the Triple Crown. All of those trails are so spectacular in their own way, and everyone should feel happy to get out there and pursue whatever dreams they want.

Still, the joy of hiking doesn’t always increase linearly with mileage, and if you’re looking for a great adventure without the impact on your career, bank account, and personal relationships, I’d love to introduce the Triple Tiara as an option equally (if not sometimes). further) wonderful option.

Cover image: Photo via @k80.trail. Graphic design by Zack Goldman.