Most thru-hikers obsess over their gear lists. Eliza "Swerve" Sweeney went a step further — she designed and sewed almost all of it herself. A textile design graduate and recent college grad, Sweeney is tackling the 3,100-mile Continental Divide Trail with a kit she made from scratch: backpack, tent, quilt, rain jacket, even her underwear. She talked through the project on episode 379 of Backpacker Radio, presented by The Trek.
The whole thing started as a senior design project. Rather than a portfolio piece that sat in a drawer, she turned her coursework into working equipment she now trusts with her life in the backcountry. That meant sourcing technical fabrics, learning industrial sewing machinery, and iterating on designs — including hiking pants engineered to eliminate friction at the hips, a common problem spot for long-distance walkers.
Sweeney isn't new to big trails. She hiked the Appalachian Trail before university, then squeezed a Pacific Crest Trail thru-hike into a single summer break, finishing in roughly 100 days and even skipping her final physics exam to make it work. Her CDT pace, she says, has been more measured — partly because she's learned to take a zero day now and then instead of racing a school deadline. Among the lessons from building her own kit: the quilt was fiddly, down feathers get absolutely everywhere when you're stuffing a puffy into a tent at 4am, and yes, she was nervous heading into the wilderness with untested gear.
Beyond the gear itself, the episode touches on the economics of thru-hiking. One segment notes that a typical PCT thru-hike cost around $10,000 in 2025 — while another hiker's breakdown shows a couple doing it for about $12,000 total, or roughly $6,000 each. Making your own equipment, as Sweeney has, is one route to trimming that bill while trimming baseweight at the same time.
For travellers, it's a reminder that long trails reward preparation and that the CDT remains one of North America's wildest, loneliest long-distance routes — far less travelled than the AT or PCT, and unforgiving of bad equipment. Whether you'd ever sew your own tent or just enjoy hearing how someone does, it's a good listen for anyone dreaming about the Triple Crown trails.
