What are the big concerns on an endurance trek like this?
There are a bunch. For a lot of people, routefinding is a biggie, as getting lost uses up a lot of time, at best, and there are plenty of scenarios worse than that. I was pretty confident about that, and also about technical aspects of the route’s various passes, which I figured would be pretty straightforward. Snow quality was more of a wildcard, and in fact the surprisingly wet rotten snow in the second half made travel considerably more difficult, while also introducing some potential for wet slides (which, being solo, I was obviously not well prepared to deal with). On an effort like this, muscle fatigue (and general aerobic fatigue) can be a big problem; people who haven’t done marathons or other endurance events may not be able to comprehend the disturbing experience of having one’s leg muscles pretty much stop working, but it can happen. Finally, there’s the general category of the unexpected, say an injury or busted ski gear. I dealt with that mostly by keeping my skiing style
