Adventure of a lifetime

By DEVIN HEILMAN

Staff Writer

She hears the roar of rushing rivers in her ears, the calls of wild birds and the hushed mingling of voices and ukulele music around the firelight.

She feels the stillness of solitude, the mountain air flowing over her face and the weight of her hiking pack pressing into her shoulders.

"I’m still spinning," Shelley "Wonder Woman" Hurtado said, the memories of the wilderness clear in her wide, gray-blue eyes. "I still feel like I’m on the top of that mountain."

Hurtado, of Coeur d'Alene, recently returned from the adventure of a lifetime. She spent five months thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail; from Georgia to Maine, she traversed 2,190.3 miles and 14 states.

"To thru-hike is the equivalent of hiking 2 miles every day, seven days a week, for the next three years," she said. "That's the distance."

She meant it when she said she'd do something epic for her 50th birthday.

"I really wanted to create a legacy for my family," she said. "It was the hardest thing in my life but it was the most gratifying. It’s so hard to put into words what it was."

Hurtado began planning for this journey in January of 2016. She conducted research, attended preparedness classes, found bargains on gear at different sales, cut 6 inches off her hair for easy maintenance and even earned her "trail name" before she left Idaho.

"You're not supposed to give yourself your trail name. It's supposed to come from others," she said, grinning. "When I started sharing with my family and friends that I was going to do the Appalachian Trail, they basically said, ‘Well, you are either crazy or you have to be Wonder Woman.' So ‘Wonder Woman’ stuck."

This Appalachian adventure began March 1. With her Wonder Woman gear, Shelley and her husband, Armando, set out from Springer Mountain, Ga., and hiked together for 10 days until he departed for home.

Shelley, now on her own, was immediately reminded that it was still winter.

“The day he leaves, I only had to hike 5.5 miles to the nearest shelter," she said. "I got to the shelter and it started to snow...and then the next morning we woke up to 8 inches. I love snow — we’re from Idaho, I’m used to snow — but when you have to live in it 24/7 outdoors, not fun. It was freezing cold."

More than 250 backcountry shelters line the trail to give hikers places to stay dry, get warm and make less impact on the environment. During those first few wintry weeks, Shelley bunked with other hikers in these three-walled structures to get out of the elements, especially on nights when her air mattress "was like sleeping on a sheet of ice."

“All the mice, the rats, the skunks, the porcupines, they come in too. Lots of critters in the shelters," she said. "I actually opted not to sleep in the shelters if I could. Even if it was pouring rain, I would rather sleep in my tent.”

As she marched north, she witnessed spring blooming around her. She was always on the lookout for water sources, which frequently popped up thanks to it being an incredibly rainy year in the Appalachians.

“Because it was so wet, there was a huge hatch of bugs. I mean, the mosquitoes were the size of pterodactyls,” Shelley said. "I had bug bites like you would not believe.”

Thanks to her careful planning and friendly disposition, Shelley had opportunities to get off the trail and stay in hostels or visit friends and friends of new friends she met on the trail (she calls these folks her trail family, or "tramily").

“We would go and they’d feed us and I’d get to sleep in a nice bed and have a real shower, use a flushing toilet,” she said. “Then they’d get us right back to trail when we were ready. Those were welcomed nights.”

Shelley slept in historic places like the Mountain Home Bed and Breakfast in Virginia, which was built in 1847. She met another "Wonder Woman" in Harpers Ferry, W.Va., and she celebrated her 50th birthday eating pizza with an old friend in Connecticut.

The sense of community this Wonder Woman felt with her "tramily" is something she will never forget. She spoke of the serendipitous "trail magic," when things just came together, and "trail angels," people who provided something just when that something was most needed — a cold beer, beef jerky, a ride to the nearest town.

"Typically they’re people that have already hiked the trail at some point in time and they just want to give back,” Shelley said. "It's amazing."

Despite almost stepping on rattlesnakes, hanging food to keep it from the bears, sleeping among strangers and spending many days alone, Shelley said she never once feared for her safety. She suffered no major injuries, didn't fall ill and didn't give up when giving up would have been easy to do.

No, this Wonder Woman was determined to make it to Mount Katahdin, the northern terminus of the trail in Maine. At the 1,000-mile mark, tears of joy streamed down her face.

"When I started this journey I didn't know if I could do 100 miles. Then I made it 500, and now I've made it to 1,000," she said in a video she captured of that emotional moment. "Who would have thought?"

On July 30, Wonder Woman summited Mount Katahdin. She was the 117th thru-hiker and the 17th female in 2017 to register in the Appalachian Trail Conservancy.

The aches, the tears, the sweat, the resiliency, the joy and the wonder of this adventure will stay with her forever. She now bears the mark of the trail on her wrist, a tattoo of an "A" nestled on top of a "T."

She wasn't out to find anything in particular. She just needed to know she could finish what she started.

"They say the first third (of the Appalachian Trail) is very physically demanding, the second third is more mentally draining or emotional, and the last third they call ‘spiritual,’ and not necessarily a religious spiritual because it could be a spiritual thing for anyone however they’re feeling,” she said. “That was so true for me. The thing I couldn’t believe is that only one out of every four people that attempt it actually do it.

“I feel very proud that I actually did it.”