Triple Tiara?

Although I romanticize the idea of hiking the really big long trails, I know that realistically I won't ever do it, nor do I really want to.  For multiple reasons, including, although not necessarily limited to:

• How in the world do people get 5-6 months off, anyway?  I suspect that most hikers have managed to retire early, or more likely, they're younger people who have put off becoming real adults, in many respects.  (As an aside, this doesn't make "the social trails" like the AT and the way the PCT is starting to become in many respects, more attractive, does it?)  I have, in addition to paid holiday, which only adds a day or two in the window that I'd be able to hike (the Easter holiday... maybe.  Memorial Day.  Independence Day.  Labor Day.) four weeks of paid vacation.  In the next year or two that will bump up to five.  I can also "buy" up to two additional weeks, although then that becomes essentially unpaid vacation, because I don't get paid for it anymore.  That's nowhere near enough to hike one of these long trails.  And I'm not likely to be able to afford taking an unpaid sabbatical anytime soon; I still have two teenagers at home, a college student-aged kid who's temporarily back at home while she figures out what she actually wants to do, and a married son who'll probably start providing grandkids sometime in the next few years that I'll need to visit.  Plus, my wife won't be really thrilled with me deciding that I'm not going to dedicate any of my time off to actual family vacations, I don't think.  While that doesn't have to be a complete show-stopper, it's usually not wise to tell your wife that you don't care about any of her concerns and you're going to do what you want to do anyway.  Realistically, even in the next few years when my vacation bumps up, the idea of taking more than three weeks or so isn't very realistic.  
• Of course, I could wait until I retire.  But quite honestly, I'm already getting old enough, stiff enough, tired enough, overweight enough, etc. that even the small hikes that I do do are physically challenging.  Not over-challenging, but challenging.Given that I'm unlikely to retire for at least another 12-13 years, and even then, I'll probably go get another job when I do, that's only going to get worse, of course.
• To be perfectly fair, I don't know that I even want to do it as much as I think sometimes that I do.  I tend to get tired of camping after a while, and being dirty, and eating crappy camp food, and sleeping on the ground.  5-6 months of that is 4-5 months more than I want, at least all stuck together like it is.  Now; let's imagine for the sake of argument that somebody with a bunch of money came to me and told me that they'd created a trust fund to pay for me to go hiking as my job.  Realistically, what I'd probably prefer to do is take 4-5 smaller week-long trips spread throughout the year, plus maybe a bigger epic trip of, oh, three weeks or so.  And probably 1-2 of those 4-5 trips might be ones where I spend as much time in a lodge or hotel as I do in a tent, but I'm hiking and sightseeing the great outdoors of America during the day.  (Plus, that way I'm much more likely to talk my wife into coming along.)  That would probably really be my ideal wishful thinking way of doing this hobby.

So, that said, are there smaller chunks of trail that can offer the Triple Crown experience, but in a more manageable format that's smaller?  Other than section hiking the trails over the course of many years, of course (which is another viable way to do it.)?

I think so.  Here's a link to the "junior" Triple Crown, sometimes called tongue-in-cheek, the Triple Tiara.  From that link: "My name is Jim, though on the trail I'm occasionally known as Simba. When I retired a few years ago I returned to backpacking and found, for me, the sweet spot is long trails, but not that long. In the past few years I've thru-hiked the Colorado Trail, Long Trail, JMT, Tahoe Rim Trail and Sheltowee Trace. To me, these 200-500 mile trails can be life changing, without taking so long that I have to change my life to accomplish them. I think they're a great alternative for those that don't have the time, ability, circumstances, or need to hike one of the Triple Crown. I hope to share that point of view on these pages."

He offers as smaller alternatives to the big three, Vermont's The Long Trail to replace the Appalachian Trail, Colorado's Colorado Trail to replace the Continental Divide Trail and California's The John Muir Trail to replace the Pacific Crest Trail.  All three of these actually share right of way at least for some of their length with the trails that they're replacing.

Of course, they also miss one of the most important aspects of the CDT and the PCT in particular, namely that there's no "desert" section, when the near desert of southern California, most of New Mexico and a good half of Wyoming make up at least a third of the lengths of those two trails.  So, if I were doing one of these every year for the next, oh, I dunno—half a dozen or so years or so—I wouldn't worry about it being "triple" anything, I'd just do something that I'd really like to go see.  My choices would be to put off the Long Trail until probably near the end, where I'd (admittedly, somewhat grudgingly) do it and the Presidential Traverse after I'd already done the other parts.

I actually am not sure that the Colorado Trail is within scope.  At nearly twice the length of the other longer trails, it's really probably a 5-6 week affair, even if I were in better shape than I am now.  The Arizona Trail would be a great substitute for the desert sections of the CDT and PCT, plus a great trail in its own right, but it's over half again as long as the Colorado Trail.  Most likely, those would have to be broken up into two and three or even four respectively sections and hiked separately.  

But if I had that wishful thinking job and had to come up with half a dozen significant hikes every year, one of which was multi-week and required resupplies, I think I'd target the following trails. 

• John Muir Trail
• Colorado Trail, parts 1 and 2
• Arizona Trail in three parts (maybe four?)
• Wonderland Trail
• Tahoe Rim Trail
• Wyoming Wind Rivers Traverse (probably using the CDT Knapsack Col alternate), connected to the Gros Ventre Wilderness, connected to a full Teton Crest Trail.
• The Grand Enchantment Trail, or at least the part that isn't already on the Arizona Trail which is already covered above.
• The Presidential Traverse
• The Long Trail

That's not half a dozen.  That's over a dozen.  Oh, well.

Options for 2019

I've got a few trips already scheduled around which I need to plan my hiking.  But, one (maybe two) of those other trips are actually hiking trips!

Let's have a look, shall we?  I get about four weeks of vacation annually (plus a good two to three weeks of paid holiday; I do fairly well, although I'm excited for about two more years when I get bumped up another week of paid vacation) and I tend to try and chunk my stuff into weeks, as much as possible.

Already planned

1. Week for Caribbean cruise in late August, ending right around Labor Day.
2. Week for Isle Royale hike with some friends of ours, and my wife even is talking about going(!) around July 4th
3. Week for High Adventure; possibly a Pictured Rocks National Shoreline hike/kayaking hybrid, although assuming I do go, my son and I will decide together what we're doing.  This would also be in late June; the week before my Isle Royale hike.  There's a lot of options, because it's the whole state of Michigan "All LDS Encampment High Adventure."

Now, the High Adventure trip may fall through or we may end up not doing it, and the Isle Royale trip might have unexpected complications.  But that's the plan now, anyway.

This leaves me with one week for my trip somewhere.  Here's some stuff I'm considering:

• Maybe an early trip, to make up for the fact that the schedule is already pretty slammed during the summer.  Maybe even as early as January/February to some place like Big Bend or Guadalupe Mountains National Parks, which is usually a good season to visit those places, actually.  I went to Big Bend ten years ago in Feburary, and half the time, I'm wearing a t-shirt (admittedly, the other half of the time I have a sweatshirt on.  And I slept in the lodge, not a tent.)  I could also fly out to Phoenix, visit my brother and his family, and do some stuff in the Supes or elsewhere in Arizona, for that matter.  By mid March, the crowds (such as they are) have already descended on these destinations, and by late March, they're already hot.
• A later spring (mid March to early May) trip to somewhere on the Colorado Plateau.  The Needles District of Canyonlands, maybe, plus some Moab and/or Grand Junction exploration.  There's actually so much to see here, and much of it can be broken up into several smaller trips rather than one big backpacking extravaganza, that I could really get a ton of interesting things done and really enjoy this (although spend more money on gas, and maybe a few extra hotel nights, compared to the way I normally do things.)
• Go back to the mountains in mid to late September like I did in 2017.  Maybe even hit the West Elks again and see Mill Creek, or Maroon Bells.  Although Sneffels and the Blue Lakes hike beckon, and the fall colors in the Sneffels area is notoriously beautiful.  Lots of options, but the slightly more southerly Colorado ranges are preferred because there's a better chance of better weather because of the latitude.  I'm actually going on the cruise the last weekend in August, so I have a relatively big window between the 4th of July weekend and the last week of August.  If I don't mind further breaking up my work schedule for the summer, I could also go in late July or early August to just about any Rockies destination I choose, come to think of it.  The Uintas or the Wind Rivers or the Beartooths or some of the other ones that I've noodled around with in the past and not ended up doing probably shoot to the top of the list in this scenario.