Traveling to trek is nothing new. Called to the mountains by the chance to push themselves physically or expand themselves spiritually, people have been doing it for centuries. But a lot has changed since mountain men of yesteryear like John Muir roamed the American wilderness with nothing more than the bare necessities. With every passing decade, how we experience the mountains has become increasingly luxurious.
In the recent past, there’s been no shortage of trekking vacations on offer, ones that offer various degrees of comfort. With most, you’ll take on a single trek over multiple days with nightly accommodations ranging from tents to huts to guest houses. To make things easier, maybe you’ll have a guide and a cook along for the journey too. Then there are the luxury offerings, the ones where daily treks begin and end at a single location gussied up with gourmet food, spa treatments and plush beds. Here, the options are few, but include classics like Mountain Trek‘s seven-night hiking retreats based out of their lodge in the Canadian Rockies and The Ranch’s hike-centric fitness retreats in Malibu and, as of this month, Italy.
Now, in 2022, we’ve reached the ultra-luxury peak with the debut of Reset. Launched at the beginning of May, this six-night, $10,000 per person retreat in Telluride, Colorado, has been expertly designed to make you sweat (think: daily high-elevation hikes) then help you recover (also: daily massages and in-room oxygen therapy). And with an impressive array of perks and programming on offer, and several weeks of retreats already sold out, it appears to be worth the price tag.
Your Reset Begins Now
Brand new as of May 1, Reset’s six-night, 18-person retreats begin every Sunday and run now through the end of October. While an experience like this is bound to draw attendees who share common interests in trekking, health and wellness, this isn’t a one-size-fits-all operation. You can customize your experience by choosing to follow one of three pathways: Reach, a results-driven program with amplified trekking and fitness classes; Roam, which swaps two treks with half-day, hike-in wilderness experiences like fly fishing or rock climbing; or Recharge, which includes an extra dose of bodywork and meditation sessions for added zen. Regardless of the pathway you partake in, Reset wasn’t designed to be merely a healthy-for-a-week vacation.
“Reset was born out of a desire to offer just that — a true reset of the mind and body that inspires a lasting transformation,” Holli Owen, cofounder of Reset, tells InsideHook. That’s why each guest begins their week with an intention, works towards realizing it with Reset’s wellness experts, and receives the education needed to continue their health and wellness journey at home.
Also of note: You’ll be sleeping comfortably at Reset’s home base, the Madeline, which is Telluride’s go-to luxury hotel. Here, the retreat has their own private wellness center and guests are accommodated in a secluded section of the property in Reset-branded rooms.
The Trekking Program
Set on the doorstep of Colorado’s San Juan Mountains, each day at Reset centers around a half-day trek. Led by AMGA-certified mountain guides, these backcountry workouts will have you making elevation gains between 580 and 3,700 feet — and that’s starting from Telluride’s already high base elevation of 8,750 feet. The keyword here being elevation, as “moving your body at altitude improves your breathing, increases your power, and helps your muscles push past the burn to peak performance,” per Reset. In other words, come ready to work because hiking in Colorado is not the same as the low elevation hiking you’ll likely encounter back home.
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If you’re not intimidated by that, choose the Reach pathway where you’ll also conquer the Wasatch Trail. Reset’s most challenging trek at 12.3 miles long, it traverses alpine meadows with summertime wildflower blooms and gains 4,250 feet of elevation along the way to the 13,050-foot summit. It’s without a doubt a challenging workout, but the experience is about more than sweat.
“Trekking is a foundational pillar of Reset because we believe moving our bodies in nature gives us the time and space to regain perspective, unplug from our daily grind, and ultimately find more peace and happiness in our lives by creating sacred space and time out in wild places,” Owen says.
The Recovery Smorgasbord
If you got sore just reading that last section, rest assured that Reset has thought through everything you’ll need to recover and stay trail-ready.
Really, everything. The exhaustive wellness menu includes access to one-on-one health coaching, a hyperbaric chamber, oxygen enrichment therapy and IV therapy to replenish the body with vitamins and minerals that support high-altitude training. Then there’s the on-hand bodywork practitioners here to heal with treatments such as assisted stretching, reiki, acupuncture, craniosacral therapy and customized massages (the last of which you’ll receive five of over the course of your stay). To better understand your body from the inside out, there’s also body composition scanning and nutrigenetics sessions. See? We mean everything.
To continue unwinding outside of the high-end and high-tech treatments, evenings at Reset include access to activities like guided meditations, sound therapy, yoga, and personal and group fitness classes, if your idea of unwinding is working out more.
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Refueling, The Gourmet Way
Reset’s culinary program pulls double duty as both a part of your recovery protocol and a standout component of the retreat in its own right. For six days and nights you’ll eat clean with an organic, plant-based meal program designed to enhance digestive health and reduce blood pressure and inflammation. These chef-prepared meals focus on flavor and include dishes like overnight oat peach cobbler for breakfast, a turmeric and curry loaded sweet potato for lunch, and cauliflower steak en croute for dinner. In other words, it’s a masterclass in how healthy, plant-based food doesn’t have to be bland or boring, a revelation likely to be heard on repeat while dining at Reset’s communal, 20-person table.
And since “the rituals and experiences at Reset are intended to become lifestyles for our guests,” according to Owen, it’s only logical that you’ll be set up to continue eating right when the program ends. Through nutrition coaching and plant-based cooking classes, you’ll leave with insight, recipes, techniques and shopping lists to utilize back home.
If the $10,000 price tag still seems steep, consider that a six-night stay in mid-July at The Madeline would run you just under $6,200 — for the hotel room. So for $4,000-or-so more you’re getting a meticulously detailed and designed all-inclusive retreat. Not a bad deal in our book.
The first two weeks of programming have sold out, as have select weeks in August, September and October. So if you’re thinking about joining for this inaugural year, better give them a call, and pick up a new pair of hiking boots, soon.
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