Thursday, August 23, 2018

so how much did it all cost?

First off, I want to point out that this is what we spent and it is not at all a guide to what it costs to do the Colorado Trail, or any thru-hike.  I counted the price of gear as brand new, even though I had most of the stuff already and continue to use almost everything.  The high costs of zero days were often two or three nights in a nice hotel, eating at restaurants three or four times a day, often footing the bill for friends who had helped us out.  And the bars, well, we drank a lot at times.

The approximate breakdown:

big four - $756
base weight - $287.99
mail - $117.05 + $28.85 (Salida box) = $145.90
trail food - $1036.91.  About six thousand calories per day for the two of us.

Total for that, which is all you'd need to do the hike, is $2226.80.  $4.45 per mile.  Probably not a whole lot a normal hiker could do to get this cost significantly lower.  Big four and base weight was for me, mail and trail food was for the two of us.

Of course there were the zero days.

Breck - $818.18. 

Leadville - $760.98

Salida - $1165.01

Creede - $169.83 (no hotel costs as we stayed with a friend)

Silverton - $406.26

Durango - $664.62

And $119 for a rental car to get back to COS.

The zero day total comes to $4103.88.  Obviously there might be some ways to trim this part of the budget down a bit.  Not going to every town, not spending multiple nights at every town, not trying to drink all the beers and eat all the pizzas and cheeseburgers at every town, I could see this number drop to under $500 pretty easily.  I'm sure some spend much less that that.

The grand total comes to $6330.68.  $186.19 per day.  Approximately $12.66 per mile.  Livin' large, even though most of it was living in a tent and reeking of BO. 

No comments: