Peak to Peak Taos Hike 2026
This weekend, somewhere high above Taos Ski Valley, my legs started shaking.
But they weren’t tired.
They were shaking from nerves.
This wasn’t a normal hike.
Our first objective was to summit Wheeler Peak, the highest point in New Mexico at 13,161 feet. For most people, reaching the top of Wheeler would have been the accomplishment for the day.
For us, that was just the beginning.
Hiking route
From Wheeler, we continued across the high alpine ridgeline, traversing seven more peaks over increasingly technical terrain. There were steep climbs, exposed ridges, Class 3 scrambling and sections where we were using our hands as much as our feet to move safely across the mountain.
Eventually we reached Kachina Peak, but even then we weren’t quite finished. We still had to make our way down some pretty gnarly, steep terrain, where my right quad decided to give out, before finally reaching the chairlift that would carry us back down into Taos Ski Valley.
And waiting for us at the bottom was possibly the best reward imaginable: The Bavarian with four large cold beers, somewhere to sit, and the camaraderie that comes from being with the people who just did something a little crazy with you.
Just before that we were high on the mountain, scrambling over rock, with enough exposure around me that my body clearly understood the consequences of making a mistake. There were places where I needed both hands to climb and others where I had to carefully lower myself down rock, trusting my footing without always being able to see exactly where I was going.
crazy hiking
My adrenaline was pumping.
And I remember thinking:
Holy crap. I’m actually doing this.
Eleven miles.
More than 5,200 feet of elevation gain.
Over eight hours of moving time.
High altitude. Steep climbs and descents. Class 3 rock scrambling.
I was hiking with my husband and two other seriously bas-ass hikers.
And I kept up. Slog ON!
That might sound like a simple statement.
For me, it wasn’t.
bad-ass hikers
Because there was a period when I couldn’t keep up.
When my husband and I met, I was much more physically active.
Being active and adventurous was part of who I was—and part of what we enjoyed together.
Then my health changed.
Hormonal and perimenopausal changes started affecting my body in ways I didn’t fully understand at first. My energy, recovery, metabolism and physical capacity weren’t behaving the way they used to.
And gradually, there were things my husband could physically do that I simply couldn’t.
That’s difficult for reasons that go far beyond fitness.
When you love someone who is highly active, you don’t want their adventures to become a separate life that happens without you.
Of course, he would always love me.
But being able to share these experiences matters to me.
scouting route
I know we will continue to grow together as we age in ways I probably can’t even imagine yet. But being able to physically participate in the things he loves matters deeply to me.
I don’t just want to hear about his adventures—I want to experience some of them beside him.
I want us to push through something hard, stand at the top together, and share that look that says, “Can you believe we just did that?” Those experiences become part of our story, not just his or mine, but ours.
We did this together.
We climbed the mountain together. We navigated the hard sections together. We experienced the views, the adrenaline, the exhaustion and the ridiculousness of what we had just accomplished together.
And there was something else I noticed.
He was proud of me.
Maybe even a little in awe of me.
And I’m not going to pretend I didn’t absolutely love that.
half way point
This didn’t happen because I trained like crazy.
This is one of the most important parts of the story.
If you looked at what I did this weekend, you might assume I’ve spent the last year training relentlessly for it.
I haven’t.
I run a few times a week. I lift weights. I hike maybe once or twice a month. I stay active.
But I am not spending hours every day training.
I have a business. A family. A marriage. A life.
And I don’t want maintaining my health to become another full-time job.
What I’ve done over the past two years has been much more about understanding my body.
I’ve used functional medicine, testing, hormone optimization, nutrition, strength work, recovery strategies and biohacking to figure out what my body actually needs.
Instead of continually demanding more from a body that was struggling, I started asking a different question:
Why is my body struggling in the first place?
top of Kachina
That distinction matters enormously for women in perimenopause and menopause.
Because so many women respond to a changing body by thinking:
I need to eat less.
I need to exercise more.
I need more cardio.
I need to push harder.
And when that doesn’t work?
They push harder again.
Sometimes the answer isn’t work harder.
It’s work smarter.
Understand your hormones. Understand your metabolism. Build muscle. Eat enough protein. Recover. Sleep. Address inflammation. Look at your labs. Understand what’s changing physiologically instead of treating your body like it’s failing you.
For me, getting healthier wasn’t about beating my body into submission.
It was about finally learning how to support it.
And then letting that body show me what it could do.
There were moments when I was scared.
And I’m glad there were.
At times my legs were literally trembling from adrenaline—not muscular exhaustion.
That distinction fascinated me.
Physically, I still had more to give.
Mentally, I had to convince my nervous system that we could keep moving.
That’s where another part of my training kicked in.
I’ve been doing mindfulness and performance training through mPEAK at UC San Diego, and suddenly those skills weren’t something I was practicing in a safe, comfortable environment.
I needed them.
Beauty in the Moment
Breathe.
Come back to this moment.
Don’t climb the entire mountain in your head.
Find the next handhold.
Take the next step.
Then the next one.
Keep moving.
There is something incredibly powerful about discovering that you can remain present while you’re afraid.
Because mountains aren’t the only places where we need that skill.
Life gives us plenty of moments when looking at the entire problem feels overwhelming.
Sometimes the answer really is:
Breathe. Stay here. One foot in front of the other.
I’ve already tucked this experience away for the next hard season of my life.
Someday, when something feels impossible, I’m going to remember the woman in these pictures climbing over those rocks.
You’ve done hard things before.
Keep going.
Mid Ridge
And yes—I love how I look in these pictures.
I’m going to say something women sometimes feel like we’re not supposed to say:
I feel sexy.
I feel strong.
I feel healthy.
I feel feminine.
I feel confident in my body.
And I love seeing that woman in these photographs.
Not because I think our worth comes from how we look. And certainly not because every woman needs to look a certain way.
But because what I see on the outside finally reflects something I’ve spent years rebuilding on the inside.
And maybe part of feeling sexy at this stage of my life isn’t just looking in the mirror and liking what I see. It’s having my husband look at me with admiration.
It’s being able to say, “Yes, I’ll go with you.”
Peak of my life
It’s standing beside him on top of a mountain instead of hearing about the adventure afterward.
It’s knowing that after years when my body couldn’t always keep up with the life I wanted to live, I’m back.
When I look at these pictures, I don’t see someone desperately trying to look younger.
I see a woman becoming stronger as she gets older.
I see muscles that carried me up more than 5,000 vertical feet.
I see legs that kept moving for almost eight hours—and still had enough left to shake because I was scared.
I see a body that did exactly what I asked it to do.
And I see a huge, ridiculous smile because I was having the time of my life.
At this point in my life, I finally feel healthier than I did in my 20s.
That means far more to me than looking 20 again ever could. And I appreciate it much more than I every could have in my 20s.
Your health isn’t just about avoiding disease.
This may be the biggest lesson I’ve learned.
We tend to think about healthcare as something we need when something goes wrong.
But I want more than the absence of disease.
I want healthspan.
I want strength.
Energy.
Mobility.
Confidence.
Resilience.
A clear mind.
A great marriage.
Energy for my family.
Adventure.
And a body capable of participating fully in all of it.
I also don’t believe achieving that should require spending your entire life training, dieting and obsessing about your health.
I’m going to need a few days to recover from this hike.
Of course I am.
Who wouldn’t?
But then I get to go back to my life.
That’s the point.
I don’t train so I can spend my life training.
I take care of my health so I can spend my life living.
I want to be able to look at a mountain and wonder, Can I do that?
And then go find out.
That’s why I believe so deeply in investing in your health before you desperately need it.
It may be expensive.
It may take longer than you hoped.
You may spend months doing things without being able to see exactly where they’re leading.
And sometimes you may wonder whether all that testing, treatment, nutrition, strength work, recovery and attention to your health is really making a difference.
Keep going.
Because someday the return on that investment may not show up on a laboratory report or a scale.
It may show up at 12,000 to 13,000 feet, when you’re scrambling across a ridge in the mountains of northern New Mexico and suddenly realize:
My body can do this.
Reward
And then you reach the top beside the person you love, look out across miles of mountains, and understand that all those seemingly small decisions weren’t small at all.
They built this version of you.
I don’t know exactly what my next mountain will be.
But after this weekend, I know something I didn’t know quite as deeply before:
I’m ready for it.
And to every woman wondering whether it’s too late to become stronger, healthier, more confident, sexier, more adventurous—or simply more at home in her own body:
Please invest in yourself.
Not because you need to become someone else.
Because there may be a version of you waiting on the other side of that investment who can do things you haven’t even imagined yet.
For me, she was waiting on a mountain above Taos.
And I’m really, really glad I went looking for her.
Be Well. Live Well. Feel Well.
— Dr. Ellenita Salko Reynolds 🪷
kiss at the top