They were trying to become the first people ever to backpack from Canada to Mexico on the Pacific Crest Trail in the dead of winter. Once before, in 1983, two people set out to traverse the trail in winter. They never made it. Their bodies were found a month after they fell off an icy cliff.

A winter thru-hike of the Pacific Crest Trail seemed impossible. The trail is covered by many feet of snow that time of year, and, even if the two explorers managed to find their way, they risked triggering avalanches, plunging through ice into rivers, or simply running out of food while trapped in blizzards.

“People said it was a death sentence,” Shawn Forry, one of the hikers, told Nicholas Kristof. He had estimated half-jokingly at the start that they had a 17 percent chance of succeeding.

But he spoke shortly after he and Justin Lichter reached the Mexican border, completing their 2,650-mile odyssey — and surviving frostbite, blizzards, tumbles into frozen rivers and 1,750 consecutive trail miles without encountering a single other hiker.

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The two men had just completed what’s thought to be the first documented, wintertime through-hike of the iconic, 2,650-mile footpath from Canada to Mexico. “My heart is still racing,” said Forry, 33, moments after touching the trailhead marker. “It is a pretty joyous moment.”

Before their start date October 21 Forry told friends he calculated their odds of succeeding at 17 percent. But those odds took a sharp jump for the better a few weeks ago when the duo descended from the High Sierra tired, hungry but otherwise unscathed.

For people in the hiking community who track accomplishments on the Pacific Crest Trail the successful culmination of a wintertime hike is considered a monumental accomplishment.

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