Welcome To My Site!
Justin Lichter
I grew up about an hour north of NewYork City and have since lived in Santa Barbara, CA, southern VT, Dillon, CO, and I am currently living in Truckee, CA. When not hiking, I am a ski patroller and enjoy backcountry skiing, nordic skiing, snowshoeing, mountain biking, and pretty much anything else relaxing. Since 2002, I have hiked over 20,000 miles. In 2002 doing a cross-country map and compass trip through the canyon country of southern utah, in 2003 hiking from Georgia to Cap Gaspe, Quebec following the Appalachian Trail and International AT, 2004 hiking the Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada and then the Pacific Northwest Trail to the Washington coast, 2005 the Continental Divide Trail from Mexico to Canada then continuing on the Great Divide Trail from the Canadian border up into northern Alberta, 11/1/05 to 10/23/06 completing the Eastern Continental Trail (cap gaspe, qc to key west, florida, incorporating the AT), Pacific Crest Trail, and Continental Divide Trail in under a year, a total of over 10,000 miles, and in 2007 a traverse of the Southern Alps and the south island of New Zealand.
I got the trailname Trauma on the first hike in Utah. I was sort of resisting a trail name, but was dubbed Trauma because of a few traumatic experiences that I had near the beginning of the trip. The first one was only a few days into the trip. I was hiking up a side canyon and four or five ravens started dive bombing me and swooping down on me. I tried to run forward and they started almost attacking me, so I tried to runback and they wouldn’t let me go back either. Instead, I decided to hide behind a boulder until maybe they got tired of me and I could make a run for it. It sort of worked because about five minutes later my friends came up the canyon and said, “what the hell are you doing behind that rock?”. I said, “There were all of these ravens dive bombing me and almost attacking me so I hid back here”. Naturally, they didn’t even see one raven in the canyon. So, that was the first traumatic experience. A few days later towards the end of the first section (a 12 or 15 day section without resupply), I was running a bit short of food and we found these old MREs in can in the wash. I am pretty sure that MREs have not been packaged in cans for quite a while, at least since the 1970’s. They were a bit beat up, corroded, and pretty much rusted through. So I popped open the fortified crackers and fortified cheese spread and ate a can of that. It didn’t taste much worse than cheese whiz, sothen I popped open the fortified cheese spread with jalapenos. The cheese was a lime green color, so I stayed away from that one and ate the fortified chocolate instead. My friends thought that I wasgoing to get super sick and they would have to carry me out (that never happened though). So, two traumatic experiences in a few days and I was dubbed Trauma.