Photos are under „Fotogallerie“

resume.

Well, it’s done. It’s certainly been a piece of work. How it was?The first word that comes to mind is „long“. It feels both like yesterday and an eternity ago that I hiked out from the Canada border in Glacier National Park. The sense of time was actually fascinating to me, as every day felt quite long, but as a whole it went by rather quickly.
There remain countless memories, of good days, bad days, exhausting and less exhausting days, certain moments, mountains, views, animals, and of course of many people, both hikers and non-hikers. I don’t think I’ve fully realized what I just accomplished and that it’s actually over now. Even though I’ve been working towards this moment for so long, it ended rather suddenly.
I’m already at the airport in Phoenix, AZ, waiting for my flight to Nashville, where I’m going to stay with my friend Hank, before I leave back to Germany on Tuesday.
I’m very curious to see how a „civil life“ will feel now. To be out there has become normality and second nature. To have everything you need in your backpack and to just have to walk gives you a great sense of freedom, and even though of course there are restrictions like water, weather, schedules, terrain, after a while on trail you just know that you have the skills, the routine and the gear to deal with everything the trail and nature might throw at you.
In a way, it’s a very simple life, although it most certainly doesn’t always feel like that.
But in any case, for now I’m just very happy that I actually hiked the Continental Divide Trail.

And here are the numbers:

days: 141
zero days: 14
total km: 4231km
average km per day: 30km
average km per day without zero days: 33, 31km
biggest day: 50km
shortest day: 11km
high point: 4350m ü.N.N., Gray’s Peak, Colorado
low point: 1278m ü.N.N., NM bei Lordsburg
camped by myself vs. with others: 55 vs. 58
Townstops: 28
average km between towns: 151,1km
average days between towns: 5
longest distance between towns: 281km
shortest distance between towns: 63km
smallest town: Leadore, ID (106 Einwohner)
biggest town: Helena, MT (32.901 Einwohner)
nights in actual beds: 10
showers: 19
shoes: 5 pairs
socks: 9 pairs
blisters: 2
rainy days: 46
bears seen and survived: 4 (all at once)
tarantulas: 0!!!
other SoBo hikers met: 86 (55 men, 31 women)

Lordsburg.
Lordsburg, the last townstop before the border! One last time getting food, charging devices, I’ll skip shower and laundry this time, and on Thursday I’ll be at the border and will finally have made it.
I’m back on my feet for the most part, and able to do mostly normal mileage. Since I calculated conservatively, fortunately I don’t have to do all that big miles anymore anyway, which is nice, I’ve done a lot of miles…
There has come up a solution for the border access problem in the meantime: foreigners can now apply to access National Defense Areas if they’re accompanied by a DoD ID card holder. Luckily, the guy that will shuttle me from the border back to Lordsburg – no other way back other than hiking – has a DoD ID card, so that wasn’t too complicated.
Other than that it’s coming to an end in a quite unspectacular way. I climbed the last mountain two days ago, now it’s mostly flat high desert with little vegetation and a lot of cows. The weather is playing nice too, a little over 20C and all blue skies. I saw clouds yesterday for the first time in at least 10 days. I do enjoy that though, there’s been a lot of spectacle…
Alright then, I’ll be back in a few days.

Silver City.

So close to the end and now it happened. So far, I’ve been pretty lucky with illnesses and injuries. But unfortunately I did catch something now that is giving me some stomach issues and making me feel very week. A few days ago I had to go to a small town called Reserve to take a day of rest, I felt better after that, but I’m still kind of weak and have problems eating. That’s why I hitched a small section to get to Silver City, to see a doctor and take another day off.
At least I felt good enough to hike a part of the Gila Wilderness Area. Especially the Middle Fork of the river dug itself into a very impressive canyon. Hiking this Canyon was quite hard, as there wasn’t much of a trail and what trail there was was oftentimes very hard to find. But it was also very cool, the canyon got fairly narrow at times and the walls were mostly vertical and sometimes up to several hundred meters tall. Also a nice change of pace, water was no issue, quite the opposite, actually, I had to ford the river something like 80 to 100 times.
No I have just under 250 km left and I’m just happy that the end is near.

Pie Town.

New Mexico is still quite varied. The last few days I was hiking across cow pastures a lot, wide dry grassy areas with very few bushes and trees, which isn’t exactly spectacular but makes for good pace. But I’ve also seen canyons and a huge lavafiel.
I have arrived in Pie Town, one of the smallest towns along the CDT, in fact it is so small that there isn’t even a grocery store. I sent myself a package with food for the next stretch to the post office here which I’ll pick up now
The next stretch has one last big highlight, the Gila River Wilderness is considered one
of the most beautiful part of the CDT. It’ll be a nice change to the desert-like landscape of the last few weeks. Part of the change will be that there’s going to be a lot of water.
Especially in the last week there were almost no natural water sources. There’s basically two ways of getting water, one is cow troughs, mostly sort of solid tanks, sometimes just a tractor tire with a tarp. You can imagine what the water looks and tastes like
Luckily, there so ae local people that maintain water caches at strategic places, sometimes you’ll even find some sodas there.
I have now about two weeks left till the Mexican border. I’m planning to make a statistic with my last post, if there’s anything you think I should add please let me know.

Cuba.

No worries, I didn’t miss a turn! The town I’m in is actually called Cuba.
Just as planned I crossed the border into New Mexico on Sunday night. The weekend before I went with 10 other hikers to a balloon festival in Albuquerque. It was bad weather and this seemed more fun than sitting around in Chama.
I’ve been in New Mexico now for a couple of days and it’s actually very different from Colorado. I’m often hiking on top of mesas, so there are a lot less climbs, oftentimes I’m just hiking on top of these mesas for miles and miles through forests and meadows. It’s a nice change, and I am happy to see more trees again, and be more in forests, and it’s also interesting to see the different types of Pines growing on various levels of elevation, although on top there are a lot of spruces and then of course they’re still Aspens in their beautiful fall colors.
But especially in lower elevation, recently I’ve been below 7,000 ft for a longer period of time for the first time since Mid-July, it’s high deserts, with red rocks, cacti, canyons, a lot of brush, and occasionally a tree here and there. It’s a little warmer than Colorado, next week it might be up to 20°C, however the nights are still cold, sometimes below freezing.
And also, and I have been dreading this since the start of this hike, I am now interrential a country, as a fellow hiker was so nice to prove to me with a photo

New Mexico! (well, almost.)

I made it! I got to New Mexico! Well, almost. As I’m writing this, I am in Chama, New Mexico, however, I still have to hike three miles in Colorado to get to the border. Probably on Sunday I’ll actually get there and cross the border into New Mexico on trail, to start into the last state of my hike. Frome here, the trail – with very few exceptions – stays below 10,000 feet, so there’s no danger of being buried by snow anymore.
The last few days I already noticed that the landscape was slowly changing. The peaks and ridgelines were less rugged and jacked, there were often long and wide plateaus, the climbs were smaller as the elevation difference got less (which is very nice!). I got very lucky with the weather, only a little bit of rain, but most days were sunny and all blue sky. This weekend there’s a big storm incoming, so I’m going with a few other hikers to a hot air balloon festival in Albuquerque, and will hopefully hike on on Sunday.
I’m much more relaxed now, the last two weeks have been particularly hard and stressful. I’ve been looking forward to New Mexico for a long time, especially the northern part is supposedly very beautiful, with mesas and red rocks like in western movies.
I have about 700 miles left to hike, which is still quite a distance, however my hike is slowly starting to come to an end. I’m starting to make plans for what comes after, how to get to places, when I’ll fly back, and I also recieved my – in all likeliness – last pair of shoes.
Also, us hikers are now affected by politics as well. A nice little side effect of this hike was that I didn’t get to read a lot of news, however, the federal government in Washington, D.C., decided to turn some areas at the Mexican border into so-called „National Defense Areas“ (NDA’s). That also includes the official terminus of the CDT, which is now set in an NDA. Only US citizens are allowed to enter these areas, and even they have to apply for it first. So currently especially all of us foreign hikers are looking into our options. There are two unofficial termini, but both are kind of complicated in terms of logistics, there’s also the possibility of hiking to the border just a little north of the official terminus, as the NDA’s only affect federal land, not state land. Federalism definitely leads to curious results in the US just like in Germany… the situation is currently not entirely clear and also still changing, so I’ll have to see how things develop in the next few weeks.

Pagosa Springs

The latest posts being so short may tell you that time is sparse. Six days I have hiked in the San Juan Mountain Range, and I’ve been mostly very lucky with the weather. The first few days were very sunny and quite warm, and Colorado proved once more how beautiful it is. To me, this has actually been the most beautiful section of the entire trail so far.
Just two days ago, a snowstorm hit me, and I had to hunker down under my tarp for most of the day. A friendly reminder to please leave the area as quickly as possible. I have 70 miles left to Cumbres Pass, from there the trail will be lower and not go above 10.000 feet anymore, which means there won’t be enough snow to make trails impassable. I will hopefully get there on Thursday.

Lake City.

Today it’s gonna be a short one. The last four days were slightly more relaxed, fewer climbs, lower elevation, even the weather was nice, aside from a few short rain showers. At times it even was a little too warm – gotta complain about something. Only yesterday I went up into the higher mountains again – a little preview of what’s to come.
I have arrived at Lake City, and will be going into the San Juan Mountains from here. This is the last big hurdle on my path to New Mexico, rough terrain at high elevation. Most of the trail is above 12.000ft, and it never drops below 10.000ft. As of now, the weather forecast looks mostly ok, let’s hope it stays that way.

Fall.

Colorado remains challenging. The last two weeks were all about changing plams, finding new routes, slow progress, mainly due to weather, but also things like difficult terrain, high elevation or mice eating my food.
After trail days I summited the highest peak on the CDT, Gray’s Peak at 4350m. It was a sunny day so we could keep hiking the rodgeline fir the next 20km, which gave us incredible views. Only the next day we almost got caught in a thunderstorm, we were barely able to get below treeline. After that, the trail changed, often going trough forests, which ade dealing with the weather a bit easier.
By now it’s definitely fall. Temperatures are low, at night oftentimes below freezing, but mainly, forests are in popping fall colors. Especially the ubiquitous aspens brighten up the mountain sides. Ny the way, those aspens are quite fascinating: these aren’t individual trees but rather tree colonies, connected below the ground through big root systems, often entailing dozens of tree trunks. That also means that every colony changes their colors together instead of every individual trunk.
Fall also means that winter is coming. The race is now in its final stage. First winter storms have already happened, up high I can see snow lingering, but luckily we’re still a little bit away from full winter. It’s just under 500km to New Mexico, and all there’s left to do is to hope that winter won’t be early this year, and to hike as fast as possible.

Colorado. This time for real.

„Colorado is kicking my ass“. The most common sentence in the last 2 weeks among hikers. Last week especially was a big challenge to all of us. I’m mostly used to the elevation by now, which was more of a problem in the first couple of days, especially during a long time I was breathing much more heavily than usually. However, the actual big challenge in the last couple of days was the weather combined with the terrain.
The trail often follows long rich lines, oftentimes 6 miles and more without going below tree line. The last couple of days we had a lot of bad weather, quite a bit of rain, a lot of hail storms, and thunderstorms. Thunderstorms are quite useful at this time of the year in Colorado, however, usually during the afternoon and last about an hour. This was very different last week, which made hiking more of a gamble. At one point I even went back for almost 2 miles and 1500 ft of elevation gain just to not be stuck in a thunderstorm on top of the ridgeline. As I had learned the day before it is very unpleasant to sit and open Terrain in the middle of a thunderstorm. And today I’m taking an additional day of break to wait out some storms.
But when the sun is out or at least it is clear enough to get some views Colorado is absolutely stunningly beautiful. Often you can see dozens of miles across the Colorado Rockies.
Since I have a little bit of time on my break day I would like to say a few words about Trail culture. I’ve mentioned occasionally that I do meet other hikers. I estimate that there is a low three figure number of hikers who more or less like together towards Mexico. And it’s very fascinating to see who you meet and where you meet them.
Some hikers I meet very often for weeks, other times I meet someone I haven’t seen in 2 months, and occasionally I even meet you people. However, a lot of the times people know each other or at least have heard of each other, there’s definitely a feeling of community between hikers.
Since this happens every year it led to some sort of subculture on the big US trails. For instance, people don’t call each other with their actual names, but we are given Trail Names by other hikers that are usually based on an episode or story on trail. A lot of the hikers have previously hiked similar trails and have their own trail names already. My trail name is Yukon, if you’re curious you might want to google „Cornelius Yukon“.
Another thing is Trail magic. That usually means that people from villages near the trail will help us out in various ways, sometimes intentionally, sometimes just randomly. For example, sometimes you find water Cassius on trail, just boxes with water in them and sometimes even cookies and candy.
On another instance I was hiking with another hiker on a road and someone pulled over and just asked if we wanted anything from McDonald’s. He then turn around and drove back 15 miles to town and returned to bring us some burgers.
Yesterday I was in Leadville, Colorado, where the CDT coalition, that’s the organization that organizes and tends to this Trail, organized the so-called Trail Days, which is a one-day event for all of us „Sobos“, which is short for „southbound“ hikers. There were presentations, booths from gear manufacturers, workshops and other events, but most importantly it was a possibility for all of us hikers to meet up and hang out in one place without the stress of actually having to do hiking on that day. It was very nice seeing people again that I haven’t seen in a while and also made new people.
It’s very fascinating to see you meet on this trail because there’s so many people from so many different backgrounds. The biggest nationality of course are americans, but Germans are coming in second. And I’ve also met hikers from Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Japan, China, Brazil, Switzerland, Canada, and Austria. The diversity regarding jobs as just as wide, I’ve met teachers, engineers, it people, biologists, a freelance music producer, an art professor, travel nurses, government workers, and there’s a big group of seasonal workers that work during the winter and hike all summer.
There’s also people of all ages on trail, most of the hikers are between their early twenties and late 30s, but I’ve met not just a few hikers in their 50s and 60s. Most hikers are on trail by themselves, there’s just a few couples that started the trail together. However it’s not uncommon for hikers to group up in smaller or larger groups, which doesn’t necessarily mean that they hike together all the time, it’s more that they camp together, take breaks together, and spend their town days together.
I personally still am by myself, but I have sometimes hike with other people, for instance right before I got to Wyoming I hiked with a Brazilian for a little over a week, and the last couple of days I’ve hiked with an American quite a bit. I do enjoy that I can make things up, that I can hike with other people for a while, but then also do my own thing and keep my independence. In any case, the social element is a big part of the trail and makes it even more interesting.
Now I will head out of town very soon, next stop is Gray’s Peak, the literal high point of this trail at 14256 ft.

Colorado!

I am in colorado! Three days ago I crossed the border from Wyoming into Colorado and I’m now in my second to last state. To race against winter is now in its final stage.
Colorado ist der highest state of the continental us and the first you days I definitely have noticed that. After the Great Basin of Wyoming there was quite a bit of uphill. Last night I camped a little over 9,000 ft which is actually more on the low side for these parts. I’m still in the beginning parts of the Colorado Rockies and I also can see that I’ll only be really in the mountains in a few days.
After the desert in the Great Divide Basin I’m happy to ne back in the mountains. The mountains here in Colorado are less rugged than in like the Alps, the trail often passes through alpine meadows on wide ridgelines.
Fall is definitely coming, the nights are getting noticeably colder and it’s getting harder to get out of the sleeping bag. Also, the days are getting shorter which makes it harder to get the miles in, especially as I’ll be at high elevation and there’ll also be quite a bit of elevation gain. Nevertheless, I’m very much looking forward to what Colorado has to offer.

The Basin

The Continental Divide Trail has a habit of throwing unexpected things at hikers. For a Great Divide basin I was expecting temperatures up to 100°, a lot of sun and very little water. In reality I got rained on everyday, yesterday even for pretty much the entire day, and there were some of the thunderstorms, which is definitely no fun in that type of landscape.
Nevertheless I found it very fascinating to hike through the basin. Just 3 miles in, I came to a little ghost village named South Pass City. One of the villages that was founded in the 1800s during the gold rush. Nowadays it’s just a museum, some of the buildings have been rebuilt in an original manner and you can look inside and in some you can even go inside. The most fascinating part of the exhibition were the photos of the town, the mines and their workers, and other people from the village, that were taken between 1870 and 1920.
The Great Divide Basin really is a fascinating area. Previously, I’ve always been hiking along the Continental Divide, meaning that the water left of me was going into the Atlantic and the water right of me into the Pacific. However, here in the basin the Continental Divide actually goes around it, meaning that all the water that’s coming in stays here.
Now usually, apparently with the exception of the last couple of days, there’s very little water, hardly any rain and just a few natural springs. To call it monotonous is dar from being an understatement, nevertheless it was very fascinating hiking here. It was a little more hilly than I would have thought, but it was still pretty flat compared to most other parts of the trail and it was probably nice that there were at least a few hills, because other than that it stayed always the same.
During the last one and a half days or so I’ve hiked more than 40 miles literally going straight, every now and then a slight change of direction by a few degrees. Now I am in Rawlins, Wyoming, the terrain will stay roughly the same for a little bit longer and then it’s going up into Colorado.

The Winds.

Well, after 8 days I finally arrived in Lander, Wyoming. That was definitely some piece of work. Nevertheless I really enjoyed the last couple of days, just scenery was spectacular and definitely one of the highlights of the trail so far. The Wind River range, named after the Native American tribe and the river that’s flowing through it, is definitely stunning.
For the first time I spent some significant time about 10,000 ft. After hiking at 8,000 to 10,000 ft for the last couple of weeks, I went over 12,000 ft last week. You might not always realize by looking at my photos at what elevation I’m at, but the treeline is actually around 11,000 ft around here.
Anyway, the last few days I saw a lot of rugged mountains and also a lot of stunningly beautiful alpine lakes. Starting from the third day, I was very lucky with the weather, so I could cowboy camp a couple of times and enjoy a beautiful clear night sky with a lot of stars.
Maybe this is a good opportunity to talk about wildfires. So far I was very lucky, I have not had to hike around any fires yet. The only time it came close, the trail had been reopened less than a week before I hiked through. And I got lucky last week again: last Sunday I hiked along the Green River, last Thursday a wildfire started right there. For many hikers that are a couple of days behind me this is now quite a bit of a problem.
But even though I was not impacted directly by wildfires so far, I have hiked several hundred miles through burn zones, areas that have burned anytime between last year and 15 years ago. You’ve probably seen that on my photos every now and then, but I actually uploaded to galleries this time, one of them specially with photos of burn zones.
These areas are often exhausting to hike through, because the trails are often in a bad condition, depending on how long I go it was burnt down, there’s a lot of blowdowns, often times very little water, and it’s hard to find a camp spot, because all the dead but standing trees can fall at any time, especially when it’s windy. I have actually seen that happen.
In the beginning I found it very interesting to cross through this areas, but by now it’s mostly annoying, especially since this can go on for hours. However, it is very interesting to see how the forest and a vegetation renews itself and the status of exactly that depending on how long ago the fire happened.
The next section is going to be the die exact opposite of the last one: the Great Divide basin, a desert- or prairie-like area, it’s at lower elevation, sometimes even below 7,000 ft, it’s very flat, there is very little water, and most likely it’s going to be very hot.
In other news, I’m finally leaving Grizzly country and put my bear spray in a hiker box this morning.

Yellowstone. Geysers. And Grizzlies!

I finally actually made it to Wyoming! I’m currently in Dubois, and have just crossed the 1500km marker.
I spent 4 days in Yellowstone National Park and absolutely loved it. It’s very unique and entirely different to everything else on this trail.
The trail was quite flat throughout the park, which was a welcome change. But of course the most amazing thing were all the geysers and hotsprings, with their unique colors and forms. But also outside of that I really enjoyed the park. I was reminded of the beginning of my hike in Northern Montana, hiking through many river valleys, but this time they were often very wide, which gave me a very cool „wild-west feeling“.
Also, I saw grizzlies for the first time! First a Mama bear with two cubs, about 10-15m away from me, which was a little closer than I would have liked. Luckily, they didn’t want to be around me just as much as I and ran off across the river. I took a break for 30 minutes to give them time to wander off, but when I continued, I saw the three of them plus another adult hanging out at the other side off the river. This was far away enough to not be dangerous, and I managed to take a few pictures.
My next section is the Wind River Range. It’ll take me about 8 days to get through that, so it’s a whole lotta food in my pack again.

Good-bye Montana

It was a small section this time, just about 70 miles since Lima. On Saturday night, the nice people from the motel in Lima drove me and three other hikers back to trail. We were planning on just doing like two or three more miles and then setting up camp. However the trail had other plans: just a few minutes after starting out, the weather turned bad, thunderstorm, rain, hail, strong winds, the whole thing. At the first sheltered spot we set up camp, soaking wet. At least my sleeping bag was dry. But the next couple of days the weather was nice, so we got everything dried out.
The trail was fairly easy the last few days, there was not a lot of elevation change, so I could do a bigger miles. Now I’m sitting in a hotel where I’m waiting for my new shoes that will hopefully arrive tomorrow. It’s actually my first night in an actual bed since more than 3 weeks!
Yesterday I left Montana for good. The last few hundred miles I’ve been hiking along the border of Montana and Idaho, going back and forth between the two, now I am cutting just through Idaho for a little while. It’s actually only 22 more miles until I will cross the border to Wyoming in Yellowstone National Park. I have mentioned Wyoming in previous posts, so that may tell you how much not just I, but pretty much all hikers are looking forward to this.
It will be the end of the first big section. One state down, or actually two, kind of. This makes me feel like I’ve actually accomplished quite a bit so far and that I’m actually moving forward, but it also gives me new motivation, because Wyoming offers quite a few highlights of the trail. First, there’s Yellowstone National park, of course. Right after that, there’s the Wind River range, that a lot of hikers say might be the most beautiful part of the entire trail.
And then, last but not least, there’s the Great Basin, and geologically very interesting area, because the Continental Divide doesn’t actually go through it, but around the basin. I’ve been looking forward to seeing this for quite a while, because it’s unlike everything I’ve seen on this Trail or elsewhere for that matter. It is a very flat, plain area, desert or Prairie like, hardly any vegetation. Unfortunately it is also very hot, particularly in August, and there’s not a lot of water. But that’s a little while down the road.

Lima

No I didn’t get lost. Like most of you probably know, people here weren’t always very creative when it came to naming towns, and so I am here in Lima, my last stop in Montana.
The last couple of days have been quite interesting because the vegetation changed quite a bit. So far it was a lot of forest on and around the trail, now it’s much more like Prairie with a lot of sagebrush.
Other than that, there’s not much new going on. Almost every afternoon there’s a thunderstorm, sometimes I get lucky and it’s so far away did I don’t even get rained on, other days not so lucky. I’m making good progress, in a few days I will get to Yellowstone, where I will cross the border to Wyoming.

Leadore
Today I arrived in Leadore, ID. A very small village with a little over a hundred people, like there are so many in this part of the country. The Idaho Montana border is very sparsely populated, even for local standards. The highway that goes over the pass where we arrived, turned out to be little more than a dirt road. During the two and a half hours I was there with a few other hikers we saw about five cars. Luckily we had organized a shuttle that brought us into town.
The last couple of days were agaim full of beautiful scenery and fantastic ridgewalks with great views. I even got lucky with the weather, even though it was a thunderstorm almost every afternoon, most of the time it was so far away that I didn’t even get rained on.
What also changed since the last town stop: ever since I left Glacier National Park I have been alone for most of the time. About half a day to a day and ahead of me there was a hiker bubble of about 25 hikers, but since we were doing the same mileage I never caught up with them except occasionally in towns. Since I left Darby I was in a bubble of roughly 10 hikers, we kept leapfrogging, sometimes we hiked together, or camped together and stayed in touch that way. After such a long time being alone this feels nice.
I halve hiked over a thousand kilometers now and been hiking for more then a month. It’s been a very interesting time, a lot of things have been like I expected, others have not. Such a huge hike sounds of course like a big adventure, filled with great moments, lots of fun, beautiful sceneries, just like a great outdoor experience like in the movies or books. However, oftentimes it’s just hard. The backpack maybe heavy for a long water carry, the climbs are steep, or even the downhills, it may be hot, or cold, it could rain and get you soaked, there are a lot of mosquitoes at times, the loneliness gets to you, something hurts, or anything else really. But most importantly, and I already realized this last year when hiking across the Pyrenees, it is a huge mental challenge, to motivate yourself to get out of the sleeping bag everyday again and hike all day again, or even just to get up after a break and hike the next 5 miles. Nevertheless, it’s been an amazing experience so far that was definitely worth it.

Idaho. IDAHO!

The first big part is done. I arrived at the border to Idaho today. However, this doesn’t mean I’m leaving Montana. For the next few hundred miles I will be hiking along the border of Idaho and Montana, until shortly before arriving in Wyoming at Yellowstone National Park I will make one quick cut through Idaho. This is a while the road though.
Now I’m sitting in Darby, Montana, where I arrived to this afternoon. I got some food for the next 6 days, I added a picture of it in the gallery, both spread out and in a bearbag.

From Helena I took an alternate route that took me into a small City named Anaconda. To get there, unfortunately I had to road walk quite a bit, mostly on dirt roads, but also on highways every now and then. Luckily, as aren’t that many people, there’s not that much traffic. Once I passed Anaconda I went back into the mountains, an of course it got a lot more beautiful again. Compared to previous sections I hiked relatively high, mostly between 7000 and 9000 ft.
Oftentimes it was just climbs to passes, then back down again, and then back up to the next pass, which can be pretty tiring, but there were also sections on ridgelines, which were just beautiful. Also, yesterday I made 500 miles.

Helena, MT

Yesterday I arrived in Helena, Montana. Helena is the capital of Montana and its 4th biggest city, with about $30,000 inhabitants. It’s a nice city with cute little shops in a pedestrian area and pretty decent restaurants. Montana ist actually the second least densley populated State in the US. With an area just a bit bigger than Germany it only hit one million inhabitants in 2021. I took a day off here to give my feet a little break and to wait out bad weather.
Whenever I get into town I have some errands to run to laundry: take a shower, make some calls to Germany, reply to messages, update my blog, get some warm food and very important: buy more food for the next couple of days and to buy other supplies if necessary. For instance, this time I got new socks and a new pair of shoes,although I sent those to two towns ahead, my current ones should last just that long. To get new socks was actually long overdue Originally I carried two pairs, but I lost one of them on my third day into the trail when I was hiking up a pass and got hit by a hailstorm and I had my second pair of socks hanging off my backpack to air out, so for the last two weeks or so I have been hiking in the same pair of socks without really having the possibility to wash them because I needed them as dry as possible, which made for a really disgusting experience in the last couple of days with socks drenched in the mix of dirt sweat and whatever else there was. The new ones felt just amazing.
The towns I visit usually are not right on Trail usually I get you highway or some Road and from there I hitch into towns, usually about 20 to 30 miles. So far that’s worked pretty well and I never had to wait particularly long, and I got to meet some very interesting people.
The trail has changed the last couple of days. During the first two sections, a lot of the time I was hiking through valleys along streams and rivers, more or less, and only occasionally climbed up to passes or peaks, whereas now the last few days I’ve been hiking mostly along the actual Continental Divide along ridgelines, which brings fantastic views a lot of the time and it’s a lot of fun to hike. However it has gotten a lot harder to find water and I’m above treeline a lot, which can be kind of unpleasant with temperatures in the 80s even above 7,000 ft.

The Bob

„The Bob.“ That’s the colloquial name of the section I just did. Technically it’s three parts, the Helena Lewis and Clark National Forest, Bob Marshall Wilderness and Scapegoat wilderness. It’s about 175 miles that took me just a little over 8 days, which makes it the longest distance between two towns on this trail.
Everything felt very different than i Glacier National Park it’s not as rugged, everything feels very wide, a very fascinating area.
Wilderness Areas are under the strictest form of protection of all protected areas in the US. They’re supposed to be protected from any kind of human influence and I actually did not see any sign of human civilization within these days other than hiking trails, no roads, not even dirt roads, no towns, no farms, absolutely nothing. Hiking trails are much less taken care of here than in Glacier, they’re often overgrown, which can be very annoying after rain. Also contrary to Glacier National Park I’m at very few people often only two or three per day except around China Wall, one of the highlights of the Bob Marshall Wilderness, I met quite a few of them.
I am now into this Trail for about 2 weeks and a lot of things have become routine, get up in the morning, pack up, have breakfast, hike, lunch break, hike, find a spot to camp and get into the sleeping bag. I’ve also noticed that I’ve become stronger, it’s been easier to hike long days with long miles than in the first few days.
What I find very interesting is that even though I meet very few people a lot of other CDT hikers are often just a short distance, a couple of miles away from me without me ever meeting them. This morning I just arrived in Lincoln, after having slept just 3 miles out and last night about 15 other hikers stayed in Lincoln that for the whole 8 days have often only been a couple hours in front or behind me. Yet I always felt that I was completly alone out there.
From here it’s only a short section Helena, MT, about 70 miles.

Glacier National Park

First section done! After about 90miles hiking through Glacier National Park I got to where I had arrived by train a week earlier: East Glacier Village.
The „hostel“ I’m staying at is a pretty interesting place. It’s explicitly aimed to CDT hikers, there’s just a big open space where you can sleep 9n the floor or you can set up your tent in the yard, there’s a kitchen, showers, outlets, Wifi, just everything a thru-hiker would need and nothing more.
However, the actually interesting thing are the people here. For me, that was the ideal place to.start out, having never hiked in the US before, to get an idea of how things work, to meet people, to get some last-minute intel.
So 6 days ago, we set out. Me.and three other hikers I had teamed up with for the backcountry permits for the Glacier National Park were picked up by a shuttle that took us the 70 or so miles to the border. We took some pictures at the border monument, and off we went! The forst day was pretty short, about 10 miles, so we got to our campsite early, which was beautifully located at a lake. Actually, of the days were kind of.short, 10-14 miles, except for two days that were around 25. That meant I often got to campsites early and could hang out, relax, talk to other hikers. he weather wasn’t too bad, all things considered, the first 3 days were somewhat rainy, not too bad though, except for the hailstorm that caught me right at a pass. The last 3 days were quite sunny and hot.
The scenery here is pretty spectacular, amazing mountaim views, beautiful lakes, gorgeus waterfalls. The same goes for the fauna. So far I’ve seen a fox, bighorn sheep, mountain goats, a (small) snake, deer, lots and lots of marmots and chipmunks, and one evening we were even visited by a moose in our campsite. No grizzlies so far!
Today, I’m taking a day off before heading out into the Bob Marshall Wilderness,.which will be the longest stretch without resupply options, about 175 miles.till the next town! With the fixed campsites gone, this is also where the race really starts – I have to be through Colorado by early October.

Starting out

I’m in the US for about 10 days now, and finally made it to East glacier. After spending about 5 days in Nashville with Hank, eating a ton of food and looking around Nashville we headed to Memphis on Saturday. Memphis is actually a pretty interesting City with quite some history. On Sunday night I boarded a train to Chicago, and from there I took another train to East glacier, which all together took about 45 hours. Yesterday evening I finally arrived and stayed in a hostel where most CDT hikers stay before setting out. Tomorrow morning we’ll catch a shuttle to the ranger station where we will pick up our permits for the National Park, and then we’ll head to the Border to start hiking on the Continental Divide Trail.