Road walking for the 2026 SF2T route cut in half | 1,000 guidebooks sold

TL;DR version

• I have finalized the new versions of Section 5 and Section 6.

• The new versions of these sections bring the amount of roadwalking (including forest road walking) down to 11.4% of the route. It had been 24%. The 2026 route will have a total of 15.5 miles of road walking (including forest roads where you’re unlikely to see anyone).

• The guidebook passed 1,000 copies sold last week. Next week will be six months since the guidebook launched.

• The Trek’s YouTube video series about the SF2T-thru hike have gotten 62,000 views. The reels the Trek made to promote the videos have now exceeded one million views.

• I am shifting into winter mode. Will be doing more writing and content creation (including updating the guidebook), much more relationship/partnerships building, photo and video management, maybe some grant writing, and a few events.

• An extensive FAQ is in progress. It will have both text, infographic, and video versions.

New versions of Section 5 and Section 6 are finalized

I got out and walked the last bit I had to resolve last week. The final refinements to new Section 5 were mainly on Trail 124 and Trail 442. The parts of Section 6 I fixed were in Paradise Canyon and on South Boundary Trail, then in Taos on Los Pandos Road and Burch Street.

These new routes also mean the longest stretch without water is 8.5 miles, rather than the 10 mile stretch for the prior routes.

Why did I do this? Because a few people complained about the time spent walking on forest roads. Several people also mentioned they liked the forest roads, so there’s that. But now people have an option.

There are a few parts of New Section 5 - one mile in particular - that have some blowdown. That “one mile in particular” has blowdown about every 30 feet if you averaged it out. I have gotten a lot of interest from trail maintenance crews lately; hopefully that interest will become some cleared trees. Unfortunately, we can’t get all the trees cleared - they keep the ATVs out.

The changes to Section 5 and 6 also mean the thru-hike will be 136 miles long. That’s four miles longer than it had been before.

I see a lot of these route changes as alternate routes. There’s no reason people can’t still take the old routes of these sections. This should help with some of the overcrowding. It occurred to me, if there are “at least 50 ways to get from Santa Fe to Taos”, as I’ve been saying for years, that all those possible routes and alternate routes mean the traffic can be spread out a bit. I hope.

Here is one area of new Section 5. The lines of photos are me walking pretty much every single forest track in the area to determine which one is best for hiker traffic. Carson National Forest was logged “long ago”. It’s still being logged, legally or not - I have many photos of many cut trees, and quite a few of marked trees. The loggers build endless tracks in the forest. Some make for workable trails.

Sidebar: The difference between Carson National Forest, Santa Fe National Forest, and the Pecos Wilderness (which overlaps both forests) is striking. Poor Carson NF has been beat up pretty badly. There are so many forest tracks - it’s carved up by them. It’s an interesting opportunity to think about “The Roadless Rule” and its impacts. Carson NF versus the Pecos Wilderness in Carson would make an excellent comparison of forests with and without roads.

1,000 copies of the guidebook have sold in the first six months since it was published

The guidebook has been sitting in the #1 bestseller spot for Santa Fe, NM travel guides on Amazon for several weeks now. That’s nice, right? Stay tuned for a Black Friday deal that will include the guidebook.

If you have already bought the guidebook, huge thanks. Please consider leaving a review. It helps a lot. Not many people realize I am basically unpaid in my work for the thru-hike. The guidebook, the enhanced gpx, and the memberships are my sole income.

I did a calculation recently: I’ve earned $4.88 per hour in my work on the guidebook this year. That includes writing it, managing the printing and fulfillment, the bookstore inventory, and the press/promotion. The hourly earnings for my work on the thru-hike are about half that. That includes hiker support (emails with members and non-members, member boxes, managing the resupply), trail exploration and documentation, meeting potential partners and building relationships with people in the area, social media, financial tracking, events, and more.

The Trek’s video series continues to get views

Things have calmed down a lot, but the views still accrue. The reels they published have more than a million views.

Thoughts about overcrowding on the trail

I have way more to say about this than fits into an email, but here are the highlights:

• The point of the thru-hike was to give people a positive experience of the wild. The point of that positive experience was to create champions for the wild - people who will protect it and fight for it. Questions to ponder:

  • Is not having more champions a good thing? Would I want to be turning potential champions away? (Answer: Hell, no.)

  • How can I shape the messaging for the thru-hike so it attracts people who are more likely to be champions?

  • How can I shape the experience on trail so it prompts people to think of stewardship and how they can care for the woods - not just how fast they can finish the route and zip on to the next thing?

• Huge thanks to Kevin K. for sending me the link to this podcast. It’s been incredibly helpful. I’ve listened to it three times all the way through.

• I made a little spreadsheet showing the number of possible hikers, the number of days in the SF2T season, and how many people that translates to on trail.

• I am most concerned about the impacts to the high alpine lakes, and to the little trail that runs along the Santa Fe River between Camino Pequeno and Adam Gabriel Armijo Park.

• Having more alt routes might help preserve the feeling of solitude.

• I would like to shift the branding of the thru-hike away from thru-hike and more toward pilgrimage. I disliked the Trek renaming the Santa Fe to Taos Thru-Hike into “The Santa Fe to Taos Trail”, but that removes the thru-hike label, so maybe they’ve done me a favor.

• For anyone that’s ever asked: No, I absolutely do not want FarOut to create a guide of the thru-hike. Please advise if you have ideas how I could divert them from doing that.

• Permits, apparently, are a great opportunity for education about Leave No Trace principles. I could also add Leave No Trace principles to the enhanced gpx file, to membership materials, maybe even to signage. (When we get to signage. That’s a whole other can of worms.)

You read to the end. Amazing.

Warm Regards,

Pam Neely

Founder and Creator of the Route, The Santa Fe to Taos Thru-Hike (for now - the name, not the title)