When islander Lizzy Corliss set out on the Pacific Crest Trail in April of 2014, she never dreamed that two and a half years later she’d join an elite group of those who have completed the so-called Triple Crown of Hiking.

The buoyant island native, whose infectious laugh easily won her the nickname “Laugh Track” on the trail, blew through 13 pairs of shoes walking nearly 8,000 miles and gaining more than 1 million feet of vertical elevation as she completed the three major U.S. long-distance trails — the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), the Appalachian Trail (AT) and the Continental Divide Trail (CDT) — that make up the Triple Crown.

And let’s not forget the 22 states she traversed along the way.

Corliss may have had the adventure of a lifetime, except she is just 24 years old, full of spunk and toying with the idea of hiking New Zealand’s 1,864-mile Te Araroa trail. But, the third jewel in her crown — finishing the arduous CDT last November — may have brought a temporary halt to her long-distance treks. Unlike the well-marked path of the PCT or the white line on the road of the AT, the CDT is often dubbed the last frontier.

“The CDT was an experience I wanted to be part of, and I wanted to get good at navigation (using maps and GPS), but at the end, I thought I am ready to walk on a trail for the rest of my life. I am not Lewis and Clark,” Corliss said with her signature laugh. “I had grand expectations that were either going to be met or I’d be completely surprised, and I was surprised even more than I was mentally prepared for. It was so different.”

For starters, there are multiple paths to choose from on the CDT, which runs 3,000 miles from the Canadian border in Montana’s Glacier National Park to Mexico, and that means making daily decisions of which one to take and how to navigate when none exists. The route includes fewer towns for supplies, and there is the ever-present backdrop of intense wilderness.

“The trail is virile,” Corliss said. “There’s the intensity of wild nature that you are in awe of all the time. You are surviving, because with this trail, every day was hard. It was fun, beautiful, amazing, but never could we tune out. On the PCT, you could put headphones in and be in a Zen state listening to music and flying through the landscape. That didn’t happen.”

Racking up big mileage might have been another factor on the rugged CDT, especially toward the end when Corliss and her pals — Anchor, Top Shelf and Bard — were logging 35 miles a day to meet a looming deadline dictated by previously booked airline tickets home.

“Our bodies were all breaking down,” Corliss said. “It was insanity.”

The zest for the untamed trail also broke down nearing the finish line when the hikers crossed large, unmarked swaths of flat lands, ranches, rutted Jeep tracks and fields of cacti in New Mexico.

“All those different layers led to the last few weeks of us thinking ‘get us out of here,’” Corliss said with a chuckle. “Unlike the other two trails, it was such a relief when I got home — not having to walk, not having to worry if you have enough food to finish the section, not having the stress of life-and-death decisions.”

For Corliss and her band of PCT-seasoned hikers, the first encounter with a death-defying experience came early on when the group crossed the Highline Trail in Glacier National Park. Though it was late June and the trail was not officially open, the intrepid foursome received a permit anyway. They soon found themselves hiking past grizzly bears and carving steps in the snow. Then came the notorious Ahern Drift.

“We’d been warned about it,” Corliss recalled. “It never melts, is on a 60-degree angle, and below it is a massive washout. You have complete vertigo. If you go, you are gone.”

All but one of the hikers had crampons and ice axes to arrest a potential fall; the fourth only had hiking boots and trekking poles.

“I will never forget, about three-quarters of the way across, my buddy took a step and gasped,” Corliss said. “He caught himself with his trekking poles. We were dead silent until we reached the end and then exploded. We were coils tightly sprung with our lives hanging in the balance.”

Two days later, they met a trail crew heading to clear the Highline Trail and learned that the crew clip into permanent anchor points on the drift before using dynamite to create a solid path across.

“After that, we thought we could do anything,” Corliss said.

Anything for Corliss included hiking solo for a month and a half. The first two weeks were “awesome,” she said, but it was also lonely and scary at times. She knew that if she got lost, it would be a week before someone might find her. Although only about 200 people hike the CDT in a given year, Corliss said she did meet someone almost every day and that talking with them became a special experience.

“We all have a story to tell,” she said, “but we don’t always take the time to listen, whereas when it came at you on the trail, you had to take it in right then.”

Asked to tell a story about a peak positive experience, Corliss recalled a stunning moment when she walked over a ridge in Wyoming and into a herd of 80 wild horses.

“Me being a horse guy, this was heaven,” she said. “The dark stallion hung around to make sure the herd was safe, pawing the ground, snorting and puffing at me. There were babies, the whole family. It was amazing to be that close to rugged desert horses with long flowing manes and every color under the sun. I was alone. That made it more mystical in a way.”

Yet meeting the challenge of putting one foot in front of the other every day, even when she wanted to stop, also grounded Corliss. Her confidence deepened as she learned there is always a way to solve a problem and that contentment comes from staying connected to your center regardless of circumstance, be it the heat or cold, sleeping in a different spot every night, dealing with bugs or cacti, existing on granola bars and Little Debbie’s snacks or making your way alone in the wilderness.

“You could say there is a lack of contentment with consumerism, thinking you need things, whereas I’ve never been more content than when I had nothing out there. You are not distracted. You have to be content with just being in your body because that’s all you have. It’s a major life skill,” she said. “It’s being open to whatever the world might put on the table.”

Coming full circle — from when she began her first hike in April 2014 to her last ending in November 2016 — Corliss reflected on what it now means to be one of about 170 people in the country who have completed the Triple Crown of Hiking.

“The other times it was so easy to go on to the next trail and not grasp the extent of the last,” she said. “Coming back (after the CDT), as tired as I was, put it in perspective. This was a big thing.”