On August 27, Patricia Cameron took to Twitter to celebrate an enormous accomplishment: she finished hiking all 485 miles of the Colorado Trail, which runs from Waterton Canyon all the way to Durango.
“I DID IT!!!,” She wrote. “I WALKED FROM DENVER TO DURANGO.”
Cameron is CEO of the Colorado Springs-based nonprofit Blackpackers, which works to provide free or low-cost gear and outdoor excursions to people who don’t have as much access to enjoy Colorado’s great outdoors. The purpose of her hike was to bring awareness to the lack of diversity in outdoor culture, as well as highlight the mission of Blackpackers.
“It’s just been the case in this country that once the outdoors and outdoor recreation was commoditized,” Cameron explained, “the most vulnerable tended to have trouble accessing it in the same way that others can.”