JEssica Go slept just two and a half hours on an overnight bus when she arrived at the Mexico-U.S. border near Lordsburg, New Mexico, in April. From the window she saw a flat, shadowless landscape. The tremors of the first day made Goh wonder what she was doing here.
The former consultant left corporate America to try to do what no woman had ever done: solo, uninterrupted hike of the Continental Divide Trail (CDT) and the Great Divide Trail (GDT) over the course of one calendar year.
The rare combination of two trails crossing New Mexico's Chihuahuan Desert, Colorado's high mountain passes, the Old Faithful Trail in Wyoming's Yellowstone National Park, the alpine landscapes of Montana and Glacier National Parks, and the Banff backcountry in Canada captivated tens of thousands of spectators. online as Goh recorded and edited her daily rides while maintaining a pace of around 48 km (30 miles) each day.
In September, she completed an epic five-month journey, becoming first female traveler to do so — and decided to leave her six-figure job forever to spend more time helping others get on the trail.
“I didn't start out as some crazy endurance athlete, and I really consider myself a normal person,” she said of the 5,698 km (3,541 mile) hike, which only three men have completed since 2005. “I was afraid of sleeping outside in the woods, walking alone or in the dark when I first started backpacking almost ten years ago.”
Her short narrated videos, featuring landscapes from hot deserts to snowy peaks, were originally intended for family, friends and other tourists. But soon the larger community became interested in them; she now has almost 50,000 subscribers on her Instagram check. Goh documented her progress every day, editing as she went along on easier sections of the route, and sent the files to her brother when she had cell service so he could download them on her behalf.
Guo, 30, battled everything from hordes of mosquitoes, thick mud and snow to rocky mountain ranges and dense forests (she encountered bears, caribou and 193 species of birds along the way) as she climbed to 179,450 meters (588,747 feet) – the equivalent of climbing Mount Everest 20 times.
On September 19, the 152nd day, Guo reached the end of her journey by posting an emotional message. video from remote Lake Kakwa in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia, Canada. “If there is something that is calling to you, I hope you will listen,” she said. “Give yourself permission to do this.”
“It’s hard when you don’t see people like you”
Although Guo grew up in the Seattle suburbs, where she regularly connected with nature while hiking and camping with her family, it took her many years to allow herself to do something extraordinary.
On a make-or-break trip to Panama after high school, which she earned by selling Girl Scout cookies, Go learned about the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), which stretches from the U.S. border with Mexico to the Canadian border and was made famous by Cheryl Strayed's 2012 memoir, “Wild.” She liked the idea of hiking in her home state, but she was scared.
“I think a lot of women tend to underestimate our capabilities and think we should be overprepared,” she said. “Later I realized that you don't have to feel like you're 100% ready for it. We women aren't really used to thinking like that.”
The percentage of women involved in hiking and mountaineering has increased over the years. In 2018, women represented third through tourists – people who travel a long route from end to end in one expedition – but by 2024 Appalachian Trail (AT) and PCT surveys have shown that almost half of all long-distance tourists identify as women. Despite this, Guo faced…benevolent sexism” – men underestimated her abilities or acted as protectors – both on the trail and in comments on her posts. Some people on the trail seemed surprised that she was an Asian woman, and other Asian hikers told Goh they had been mistaken for her.
“I hope we will have more and more diversity to the point where you don't have to comment on it,” said Guo, the daughter of Chinese immigrants. “It’s hard when you don’t see people who look like you doing what you want to do.”
In 2023, Guo finally achieved her 10-year dream of hiking the PCT. She earned her nickname “Stitches” after a branch pierced her calf requiring six stitches, as well as another incident involving a sharp rock where her knee required three stitches.
From post-trail depression back to the trail
The joy of her achievement was short-lived as she quickly experienced post-trial depression and later severe clinical depression after returning to everyday life as a design strategist and coordinator at a consulting firm. “You've just been in this place where you get dopamine every day by being outside and tuning into nature and then going back to work, 9 to 5 and being sedentary,” she said. “It's a big shift.”
Her doctor told Goh that she needed to retrace her steps to remember who she was.
Last year she took medical leave and hiked the Colorado Trail in Connecticut in about a month. “It was really encouraging because before, I wasn't eating, I wasn't sleeping, I wasn't going out. I wasn't doing all the things that keep me alive and healthy, but that's also what I have to do when I'm on the road,” she said. “I need to move forward, I need to eat, I need to sleep.”
Seeing the progress she made on the CT scan helped Guo heal from her depression and find a new dream. It was then that she came up with the idea to combine CDT and GDT, but she discovered that there was virtually no information about conducting both trips. She decided that she would create her own path and document it so that future tourists could follow her example.
Guo's treks on the CDT and GDT were mostly solo, giving her time to think and write about her experiences, including witnessing the effects of climate change first-hand.
In one post, Guo wrote: “I didn't start this hike with the intention of talking about climate, but it's untenable, the effect we're having. You may not see it in your homes because you turn on the tap and clean fresh water comes out. And I'm at the source and I see the glaciers melting. I see that there should be a glacier here, but there is nothing. And it scares me.”
She also spoke about current threats public lands And off-road rulewhich protects remote U.S. recreation areas. “The whole point of existence is to be in this isolated space,” she said, “and I think it’s worth preserving.”
When Guo saw the end of the GDT trail, she was overcome with emotion and began to cry.
“I was thinking about walking along the spine of North America, which is the source of water that feeds so many millions of people in two countries, that feeds so many millions of creatures and plants and ecosystems,” she said. “It was humbling, and when I reached the final stop the next day, I felt joy, relief, grief and pride. It was bittersweet to know the end was here.”
