View Full Version : $20,000 Cargo Challenge
$20,000 CARGO CHALLENGE
“THE WORLDS GREATEST THRU-HIKE”
Hello fellow hiker/adventurers!
My name is Cargo. I am here to share a unique and amazing opportunity for those few among us bold enough to take life to the extreme. I will be brief in my description but, when you are finished reading this, those of you whose interest I have piqued or passion I have stirred will have the means to contact me for more information.
A little more than a year ago I came upon the crazy idea to do a thru-hike of the entire Western Hemisphere, from the very bottom of South America to the very top of North America. After some research, I found absolutely no documented evidence that anyone had ever even attempted such a feat, much less completed it. The more I researched and thought about it the more excited and convinced I became that this was a very possible achievement. And not only that, but it was high time someone actually accomplished it! As most of you well know, in today’s world it becomes ever increasingly difficult to lay claim to having been the very first to genuinely achieve a certain feat. But this, by God, was just such an opportunity!
And so, last December I flew down to Ushuaia, Argentina, the southernmost city in the world, and I began my quest to be the first to complete the greatest thru-hike in the world. Unfortunately for me, 2 ½ months and 1700 miles later I rolled my ankle and severely injured the peroneal tendon of my left foot. It has taken way too many months to recover from my injury but I am finally ready to make another attempt at what I now consider my ultimate goal in life. During my time off healing though I came to the realization that although I would love to lay claim to being the only person to ever thru-hike the entire western continent, it would make the challenge even sweeter if there were other talented hiker adventure types that I could match my skills against. Not only that, but, the more trailblazers involved, the more attention drawn and the more newsworthy the feat. Therefore, a spirit of competition was definitely in order.
So here is my $20,000 Cargo Challenge…..
I am willing to lay out $20,000 to any man, woman or child hiker/adventurer bold enough to begin this thru-hike with me on December 19, 2016 and to award that $20,000 to the very first one to legitimately complete an unsupported continuous northbound thru-hike of the entire Western Hemisphere from Ushuaia, Argentina all the way to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska within 2 years. This thru-hike is by foot alone. No other mode of transportation is allowed.
Any one interested in my proposition or that would like more information and details concerning this challenge can contact me by email at
[email protected].
It is my opinion that the individual that can lay claim to being the very first to complete this most amazing thru-hike can also lay claim to being one of the greatest thru-hikers of all time……… if not the greatest! This is your opportunity!
* Please help me in reposting this information to all hiking/backpacking related venues, forums and publications
Traveler
10-04-2016, 16:08
Sorry to say, but George Meegan did that, or a similar journey depending where the Northern destination is in 1977-1983. It got a lot of attention at the time, though it took longer than the two years you are suggesting. At 15 miles per day, every single day, it would take about 3.7 years. Zero days would probably push it out to 4 years :-?
He walked from the southern tip of South America in an unbroken walk all the way to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. He wrote a book about the epic journey called, "The Longest Walk". The walk was nearly 20,000 miles, a pretty fair bit of walking there.
rocketsocks
10-04-2016, 16:17
Sorry to say, but George Meegan did that, or a similar journey depending where the Northern destination is in 1977-1983. It got a lot of attention at the time, though it took longer than the two years you are suggesting. At 15 miles per day, every single day, it would take about 3.7 years. Zero days would probably push it out to 4 years :-?
He walked from the southern tip of South America in an unbroken walk all the way to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. He wrote a book about the epic journey called, "The Longest Walk". The walk was nearly 20,000 miles, a pretty fair bit of walking there.also National Geographic did a piece on it.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/12/out-of-eden/longest-walk-map
Tipi Walter
10-04-2016, 16:23
Good luck on your attempts. Watch out for the Darien Gap in Panama, a very tough section to hike thru.
And IT HAS BEEN DONE BEFORE.
George Meegan did it in 1981 and it took him 7 years and about 19,000 miles. How do I know? I read his book 20 years ago. (Sorry, just saw the other posts from Traveler and Rocketsocks)---
https://www.google.com/#q=george+meegan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Meegan
A woman named Bethany Hughes is also doing this I think---
https://www.google.com/#q=bethany+hughes+backpacker
MuddyWaters
10-04-2016, 16:33
Duplicate post
MuddyWaters
10-04-2016, 16:36
Didnt put in too much research apparently.
Karl Bushby also walked Chile to Alaska, across Bering straight with intention of walking home to England before detained by Russians. He had set out to walk 36,000 miles....around the world . Book is Giant Steps.
rocketsocks
10-04-2016, 16:50
He left...
dude, still one hell of an accomplishment, go for it!
And if ya need to be the first, I'll bet no one done it walkin' backwards yeah.
Just Bill
10-04-2016, 16:53
Isn't there a gal out doing this right now? I though an article popped up here or on FB about her hike (5 year schedule?)
gpburdelljr
10-04-2016, 17:15
Troll??????????
gpburdelljr
10-04-2016, 17:30
Isn't there a gal out doing this right now? I though an article popped up here or on FB about her hike (5 year schedule?)
http://www.backpacker.com/trips/adventure-travel/bethany-hughes-to-trek-from-argentina-to-alaska/
https://her-odyssey.org/about/
Hangfire
10-04-2016, 19:21
I'm pretty sure Magellan made that trek in full body armor...
Hikingjim
10-04-2016, 21:53
Do we have to send a $1,000 deposit to nigeria to guarantee our spot?
Do we have to send a $1,000 deposit to nigeria to guarantee our spot?
no....
you send it to me..........
Traveler
10-05-2016, 07:18
.... dang, I guess that means the $20,000 offer was bogus....
AfterParty
10-05-2016, 07:38
I was gonna say if buy me a couple EE quilts and a cf tarp I'm good to go let's do it.
chknfngrs
10-05-2016, 08:59
Wham bam thank you ma'am. Ol' Cargo looks to be a one'N' done poster here.also it's October and he's asking for participants now?!?
Tipi Walter
10-05-2016, 09:16
He also posted his challenge here---
http://www.trailspace.com/forums/backcountry/topics/180581.html
chknfngrs
10-05-2016, 10:01
He wants complete it in less than 2 years; I'm calling that bogus
rocketsocks
10-05-2016, 11:17
I'm pretty sure Magellan made that trek in full body armor...now that's funny!
Where's Ben when you need him?
rocketsocks
10-05-2016, 15:56
Where's Ben when you need him?I
thought this was Ben.
I
thought this was Ben.
he is still on his adventure.......
I think we kinda burst his bubble.
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
gpburdelljr
10-05-2016, 17:31
I'm pretty sure Magellan made that trek in full body armor...
Nah, he was an aqua blazer (first to circumnavigate the earth in a boat), not a hiker.
Elaikases
10-05-2016, 18:36
.... dang, I guess that means the $20,000 offer was bogus....
Not sure, just that doing the entire thing in two years, unsupported, is impossible.
Everyone is either a scholar or a comedian. But I am looking for hikers. I know the trek has been done before, but in those cases it took 7+ years. I'm talking about completing it in less than 2 years. This isn't bogus, it's the real deal. Any serious
[email protected]
Hikingjim
10-07-2016, 08:04
Everyone is either a scholar or a comedian. But I am looking for hikers. I know the trek has been done before, but in those cases it took 7+ years. I'm talking about completing it in less than 2 years. This isn't bogus, it's the real deal. Any serious
[email protected]
Everyone is a comedian or scholar because it makes no sense.
You said in your first post that it had never been done after your great research, and now you revise that.
Now you say it's happening in less than 2 years, and yet you started last december and are 1700 miles in...
Traveler
10-07-2016, 08:22
Everyone is either a scholar or a comedian. But I am looking for hikers. I know the trek has been done before, but in those cases it took 7+ years. I'm talking about completing it in less than 2 years. This isn't bogus, it's the real deal. Any serious
[email protected]
I don't find being a "scholar" is a bad thing here, though I understand how annoying it is to be told something claimed is not true. Now you claim it has been done before but it took longer than 2 years. OK, I can buy the correction. However if you are serious, you are claiming you can perform an unsupported hike of 27.4 miles per day, every single day, for 730 days straight, not including miles to/from supply points to accomplish the goal. Thats no zero days, no days lost to weather, no days for resupply, no days lost to minor injury, no time lost in getting lost.
Thats quite a feat, especially considering you'd have to figure out how to maintain that pace over some pretty serious terrain along the way that typically grinds speed down to less than half that distance per day.
I would like to see the itinerary planned for this, given its unsupported and obtaining supplies alone would add many miles to the the overall journey. Are you planning using bicycles, beasts of burden, or hitching rides on parts of this? I don't see how else this can be done in the timeframe you claim is possible.
chknfngrs
10-07-2016, 09:26
#yawningbig
fiddlehead
10-07-2016, 09:49
Careful in Bolivia and Peru.
Lots of armed robberies and even shootings of hikers when I was down there in '95 hiking.
And yeah, that Darian Gap stopped me from an attempt on this around that time (along with the crime)
Met a bicyclist who attempted it, got shot and left for dead in either Ecuador or Columbia, but survived it and gave it up.
Not trying to burst your bubble OP, just a bit of warning for travel in that part of the world.
Can be done I believe.
But at 56 years old, gonna be tough.
Where did you hike in Bolivia? I haven't had a chance to do any down there, but love the country. Hoping to do some of the mountains one of these days.
chknfngrs
10-07-2016, 11:10
God bless the interweb.
https://m.facebook.com/Cargo-hiking-from-Ushuaia-to-Barrow-1054101084647244/
chknfngrs
10-07-2016, 11:22
And a little more: https://www.instagram.com/_herodyssey_/
MuddyWaters
10-07-2016, 13:07
1. It's not a "thru hike" as there is no defined route
2. I expect a totally repulsive amount of road walking is involved, like majority
AfterParty
10-07-2016, 14:29
Seems like December is kinda late in the season fall, winter will be hitting you in only a few months. I can imagine hitting the meat of the Andes in winter. You better be carrying some serious gear.
chknfngrs
10-07-2016, 14:37
What do you carry in those baseball bat trekking poles?
Traveler
10-07-2016, 14:46
Seems like December is kinda late in the season fall, winter will be hitting you in only a few months. I can imagine hitting the meat of the Andes in winter. You better be carrying some serious gear.
December would be Spring/summer in South America. The equivalent of starting the PCT trail north in June.
AfterParty
10-07-2016, 14:57
Right and a few months later it will be winter in one of the biggest mountain ranges in the world. It will take longer then a few months to traverse.
colorado_rob
10-07-2016, 16:26
Right and a few months later it will be winter in one of the biggest mountain ranges in the world. It will take longer then a few months to traverse.Does anyone have a link to the route this lady will be following? I would assume said route avoids the Andes.
Interesting challenge, pooh-poo it all you want ye negative nillies, that being said I agree doing this in 2 years is borderline impossible.
Even upon a successful completion under the terms of the offer $20k would only partially offset the total costs. That's a $50K or more hike. MAYBE, $20 k would get some into northern Central America or Mexico... if all went well.
BTW, I know of a German who bicycled from Terra del Fuego in Argentina to Skagway Alaska on a touring bike basically in one continuous shot only taking off for two wks at one point to avoid a snowstorm. I met him in Yellowstone NP at Old Faithful Lodge on a SOBO CDT thru-hike. He was more than 2/3 of the way. I verified it by his stamped passport, pics, and other documentation that he had indeed come that far. I followed him through emails into Alaska. He had already bicycled across Australia and New Zealand.
Two other Germans on BMW motorcycles from Berlin I met in Hite Utah as I was thru-hiking the Hayduke Tr. They had shipped their bikes from Germany to Rio de Janero. They rode from there south southwest to Terra del Fuego. They then rode continuously north through South and Central America through the U.S. There projected finish was in Juneau Alaska. Last I tracked them they were in southern Alaska. There were decals from all the countries they passed through and some entrance documentation papers attached to all parts of their bikes. There were so many bags hanging off their motorcycles they looked like big piles of garbage with wheels. They were a doing a sponsored ride to address homelessness. I visited their website but don't recall the address.
Flip flop thru-hikes of eastern S. America that include the Andes has been done mostly not on trail. I know of three that have done it. One is an American TCer who incidentally traveled through winter. He's a tough SOB but a damn nice guy.
fiddlehead
10-07-2016, 23:33
Where did you hike in Bolivia? I haven't had a chance to do any down there, but love the country. Hoping to do some of the mountains one of these days.
We were in La Paz, getting ready to hike a week long trek somewhere nearby in the Andes when a guy came in from the exact same trek and had been robbed of everything he owned, so, instead we took a raft trip down one of the headwaters of the Amazon starting at a town called Rurranabaque (from my memory). Had to get there on the Camino del Muerto (road of death)
THAT was an amazing experience in itself: shooting fish out of the dugout canoe with homeade bow and arrow, crawling under vehicles to scoop mud out from underneath on the way down the road, cooking above fish wrapped in banana leaves and burying under the campfire, as well as playing soccer (and getting badly beaten) by these kids in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, Bolivia.
Too much crime in that part of the world.
I moved to Asia afterward.
Very little crime here.
Anyway, had dreams of doing this same trip the OP wants to do back in the 90's but changed my mind after meeting those 2 people and hearing horror stories out of Columbia also.
Such a shame as most of the people we met were great.
So, good luck to anyone attempting this journey.
Gregor Sieböck is another guy who had done the better part of this trip.
He started right out of his hometown (which happens to be the same I'm living) following El Camino to Spain, switched over to South America, walked from Patagonia (doing the Inca Highway along the Andes, a task only one Englishman had done before) up to the USA, but finally in California was so unnerved by the rush of civilisation that he switched to Japan and New Zealand.
But his goal was not to walk every single step of a given route, but to walk and meet people and live a life himself.
The World's Greatest Thru-hike:
What defines that?
Uhh, a runaway slave from the then Mississippi area who walks and runs while being hunted with threat of being hung to New England in 1820.
Uhh, a blind, homeless, or destitute religiously or culturally persecuted person that escapes from Poland and walks to freedom in western Europe during World War.
Uhh, one who escapes Communism by walking across Asia including Siberia.
Uhh, the forced removal of Cherokee from ancestral homelands in Georgia, North Carolina, and elsewhere in the southeast after having been promised otherwise made to largely walk to Oklahoma a land they did not know...children, elderly, infirm, and woman included.
Uhh, the AT thru-hiker who shared his story with me with tears in his eyes at Baxter SP who completed his NOBO thru-hike starting the trail as a homeless cash strapped crackhead. He submitted Mt K the day before I did. He told me he had smoked crack non stop for 4 days right before he started his hitch to Mt Springer from Illinois.
Uhh, length of duration or distance surely is not the only way to define "greatest."
Sobering isn't it as we so often conveniently attempt to define our "the greatest thru-hike?"
Tipi Walter
10-08-2016, 13:51
As I always say, it's about whether you're Indoors or Outdoors. If you're indoors you're a failure, if outdoors you're a success. Once outdoors, who cares how far you hike or how much you camp or whatever else???
Somebody was attempting a southbound journey similar to this, bouncing a soccer ball the whole way to raise awareness for I don't remember what...his hike ended when he was hit by a car before he made it out of the US.
at least (at this time} Columbia is fairly calm - years back that was the main barrier