A Colorado Springs man's 5,700-mile hike of a lifetime

Oct. 24—David Mizer isn't much for talking. He'd rather his writing talk for him.

"I actually wrote this before I left," he says, pulling up three pages at his Colorado Springs home.

He wrote this before the adventure of a lifetime.

Projecting the question everyone would ask — Why leave everything behind for nine-and-a-half months of hiking? — he wrote this vision statement.

He recognized the Eastern Continental Trail's 5,700-plus miles were "unconventional, impractical, expensive" and "a logistical nightmare." It was one thing to combine the Florida Trail (about 1,500 miles) and the Appalachian Trail (almost 2,200 miles), as he initially had in mind. It would be another, he recognized, to continue up through Canada to the northmost tip of Newfoundland.

"From the archipelago of the Florida Keys to a distant provincial land once settled by ancient Vikings," Mizer wrote, calling it "an expedition of fairy tale proportions."

He went on: "As with other past hikes, the idea snuck into my head and refused to exit."

His first idea was Australia's 600-mile Bibbulmun Track in 2018, followed directly by the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail. Surprised by his obscure choice to break into thru-hiking, fellows on the Pacific Coast christened him Outback. Outback continued on to the 485-mile Colorado Trail in 2019, then the 800-mile Arizona Trail last year.

And like all of the others, his mother, Rose, had the same question about the Eastern Continental Trail.

Why?

"When he makes up his mind to do something, there is no stopping him," she says.

Mission accomplished.

Last month, after 5,749.4 miles and 287 days, Mizer returned to his structural engineering job in the Springs and his home stocked with dictionaries and encyclopedias. He returned with meticulous data and a voluminous collection of notes and photographs; he regularly blogged on his website, continuing a passion he calls "docu-hiking."

It might just be the most detailed account of this particular route, which is about as obscure as Mizer's first thru-hike in Australia.

"I had to do a whole year of research to figure out exactly what (the Eastern Continental Trail) was," Mizer says. "Everyone I came up with who in some way, shape or form documented the hike, I could count on one hand."

With his 2002 book, "Ten Million Steps," the legendary M.J. Eberhart, aka Nimblewill Nomad — he recently became the oldest man to finish the Appalachian Trail at 83 — chronicled a journey spanning the Florida Keys to Quebec. Mizer identified a route stretching farther north for nearly 1,000 miles more, covering Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia before the lighthouses of Newfoundland.

Early into the trek in Georgia, Mizer ran this by Eberhart at the bearded nomad's cabin. Eberhart was familiar. He only sounded surprised when Mizer said he planned to do the extended trip in the same time it took Eberhart to cover Key West to Quebec.

"He kinda snickered at me a little bit," Mizer says. "Like, 'Are you kidding me?'"

Mizer isn't much for kidding. He's a serious, soft-spoken man who at 41 looks much younger for the boyish face he keeps clean.

"People are astonished I don't grow a huge beard. Like, 'You can't be a thru-hiker,'" he says. "I don't know. It's a morale booster for me."

And nothing, he has found, boosts his morale like long excursions in the woods. That's despite the sacrifices.

Without a family of his own, the costs are less. Still, there are costs.

"Pretty much every time on these long-distance trips, he becomes broke," says good friend Dave Sample.

Sample came to be called Pitstop by Mizer; for several months along the Eastern Continental Trail, the retired friend wasn't far behind in his camper. Over his 41 weeks on the trail, Mizer reported 42 "zero days," otherwise averaging 22.6 miles a day.

Those down days were for reading and writing, Mizer's other hobbies. He was coming off a master's degree in biblical studies, following a bachelor's degree in architectural design.

"His next degree is probably gonna have nothing to do with one of those other two degrees," Sample says. "That's David right there. Always a thirst for knowledge."

And that, the friend says, is what keeps him hiking. That and sheer determination might be to credit more than physical ability; Mizer does not consider himself athletic.

"A lot of it was the timing that I thought was crazy," says his mother. "He had just been sitting pretty much for two years at his job and reading and writing for his master's degree. Are you even in shape to do this?"

There was no stopping Mizer.

He wrote of dodging alligators and snakes in chest-high swamps of Florida. Wrote of dodging "dog packs" and drifting semis in Alabama.

The Appalachian Trail's notorious, rocky Mahoosuc Notch should not be crawled with a 54-pound pack, but he did. He self-imposed other challenges: 60 miles in less than 24 hours through the Shenandoahs; less than 24 hours from the Virginia-West Virginia state line to the Mason Dixon line in Pennsylvania through a snowstorm.

At times in the wilderness of Maine, he spotted more moose than people. One charged at him. Twice, he evaded northern goshawks that seemed intent on decapitating him with big, sharp talons.

At a fishing village in Newfoundland, he was invited into a cabin for moose and rabbit stew — a taste of victory.

Now he's thinking about what's next. Maybe the Israel National Trail. Maybe Sweden's Kungsleden, aka "King's Trail." Maybe the hiking and cycling and paddling challenge that is the 15,000-mile Trans-Canada Trail, aka the "Great Trail."

Why?

Back to something he wrote:

"We are seekers. ... The happy-go-lucky and quixotic adventurers will one day recline back on their rockers when their bones are arthritic and hair is white and exclaim, 'I was undeterred and lived like there was no tomorrow!'"