Award-winning Hiking Tours: Continental Divide Trail Summits Day Hike Tour! You've made it this far, you're either into this site or you're still looking for something. There have been 15 thru-hiker deaths on the PCT. Starting the Cirque of the Towers alternate in the Wind River Range in Wyoming. Fifteen miles (24 km) from the Southern Terminus, the trail was ill-defined and rocks were making me roll my ankle every other step. At any point on the loop, you'll be on one of those two trails. Interstate 15. But Continental Divide Trail thru-hikers are revitalizing the town in surprising ways. Cougar encounter in the Gila (New Mexico). Alex always loved being outdoors, his parents said. [25], Notable points in Wyoming on the CDT from south to north include:[28][25][1], Northbounders leaving Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming enter the Centennial Mountains of Idaho. The Great Continental Divide Adventure Route is a scenic route that slices through several national parks, four or five states (depending on which route is chosen), crisscrosses the divide several times, and consists of pavement, gravel, dirt, and rocky roads. The average base weight of a thru-hiker's backpack in 2018 was 16.4lb (7.4kg). The park was voted second among favorite sections of the CDT by hikers in 2019. He put me in a position where I either had to tell the truth and admit that I had no way of protecting myself while I was completely alone or lie and say yes so that he would leave me alone. I almost camped under some dead trees but decided to keep going through intense blowdowns and got a cut on my leg. Self Guided Adventure. The CDT is now 95 percent complete. Alex's mother, Julie Cahoy, talked to him on June 4. Murder charges: 'Who else want it?' Continental Divide. To complete the trail in six months, hikers must average 17 miles per day. Only about 150 people per year are thought to complete the thru-hike, compared to about 750 on the Appalachian Trail. Learn how to create your own. Before jumping off on the Continental Divide Trailor celebrating its finish (depending on which direction youre traveling)have a great meal at Caf Jaxwe thoroughly enjoyed the huge serving of kielbasa hash and eggs. [], CDTC, New Mexico Land Office, BLM Announce Partnership to Improve & Protect CDT Access, CDTC Applauds Important Milestone for the Bipartisan CDT Completion Act. Wow, what a woman! ALSO SEE: Yokohama Geolandar X-MT Tire Review. The Tour Divide has been raced and completed on both single speed . "Everybody says there was no trauma, no distress," Tom said. David Odell was the first person to thru-hike the (still undefined) CDT in 1977, although there was an earlier claim. When firefighters reached him, they were going over his symptoms when he suddenly went into arrest. The highest elevation is 9,324 feet (2,842m) in the Anaconda-Pintler Wilderness. You might say we were emulating the explorers of the 1800s but we were in Jeeps towing trailers rather than riding horses tugging pack animals or riding Conestoga or Studebaker wagons. By the end of Colorado, I was absolutely worn out and my mental state had deteriorated and I needed to reset and start hiking with other people. "Money wasn't important to him," Tom said. M. Biggers, Ashley. Girl, 13, Youngest to Claim Triple Crown", "Working Together, Continental Divide National Scenic Trail", "Horror & Heartbreak on the Continental Divide Trail (2018 Edition)", "What are the steepest climbs on the AT, PCT, and CDT? The first section of the proposed trail was laid out in Colorado in 1962 by the Rocky Mountain Trails Association. Obviously, we had neither the time nor the funds to explore every alternative route along the divide, but we did sample several of them. He broke one arm, both legs, and suffered a head injury. The CDT, alongside the Appalachian Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail make up the triple crown of hiking. Just down SR60 from Pie Town (Pie Towns claim to fame is two restaurants serving the best homemade pie west of the Mississippi), Datil is a must stop for anyone who enjoys a good beef steak with all the trimmings, served by some of the nicest people youll ever have the joy to meet. Frequent forest fires in late summer often force closure of sections of the trail and early snowfalls in late September may make the trail in Glacier National Park impassable. The average number of days (including "zeros") to complete the hike was 147.[9]. He kayaked in Wisconsin's Apostle Islands, backpacked on Michigan's Isle Royale. Beginning of the hike my shoes were too small and I had mad tendinitis and was afraid of having a, I packed out baby carrots from Ennis, Montana, and got. The youngest person to thru-hike the trail is Reed Gjonnes, who hiked the trail with her father Eric Gjonnes from April 15, 2013 to September 6, 2013 in one continuous northbound hike at age 13.[18][19]. Because of my experience with snow. The Continental Divide Trail Coalition, P.O. This is the legendary Continental Divide, also known as the Great Divide. Though the Internet is now an invaluable resource for hikers, and a number of other authors have created their own guide books, Yogi's Continental Divide Trail Handbook still stands as one of the best resources for CDT thru-hikers. The discovery this week in northern New Mexico of a 59-year-old known for extensive long distance hikes ends a monthslong search after going missing in December. Bridger Peak. The trail then moves along the forested mountains of Idaho and Montana before ascending the tall, sharp, rocky peaks of Glacier National Park, with the Canadian border on the horizon. Hiker Kiana Van Zanten met Alex on the trail and admired the way he approached hiking "really taking the time to enjoy nature and the trail, leaving no trace, taking the time to befriend other hikers even if you're not sure you'll see them again, willing to go on fun side adventures and not just be so focused on staying the line.". These trails travel through 22 states in the USA and cover around 7500 miles. Famous locations like Santa Fe, Jackson Hole, Leadville, Pikes Peak, Yellowstone National Park, and many other national parks adjacent to the route can be visited while you make your way along Americas spineyou (or your group) should make up your own list. The route follows the western mountains known as the Cascade Range and the Sierra Nevada Range. [25][1], Notable points from south to north on the CDT in Montana include:[25][1]. If you know you want to complete a thru-hike, but aren't sold on which Triple Crown trail to hike, this article is for you. Road walking on a highway without a shoulder. As a part of the thru-hiker survey, I also ask hikers, What (if anything) was your lowest moment on the trail? Yes, social media is filled with photos of sunrises, sunsets, and mountain vistas, but not of hikers pooping their pants, crying alone in their tents, or being swarmed by mosquitoes. 1. If you cover a steady twenty miles a day, you will finish it . [16] Andrew Skurka completed the trail as part of the 6,875-mile Great Western Loop in 2007. "He didn't need a lot of money to do what he did. 1 / 8. A lot of the trail can suck (and sometimes it sucks a lot). I experienced vertigo for six weeks from a dislodged crystal in my ear (BPPV) while postholing through snow and low temperatures in Colorado (October and November). Continental Divide Trail. If you are worried about a loved one hiking the Continental Divide Trail or you have doubts about whether you want to undertake this journey yourself, you should probably stop reading now (or maybe you should definitely read this). His body was not recovered until more than a year later. Camping alone when Id flipped up to Idaho/Southern Montana away from the bubble because I was trying to finish to go back to school. Continental Divide Trail Survey Collection, Pacific Crest Trail Horror Stories (Class of 2022), Pacific Crest Trail Hiking Advice for 2023 (& Beyond), Hikers Lowest Moments on the Pacific Crest Trail (Class of 2022), All my gear was totally soaked through at 11,000 ft / 3,353 m in driving sleet after Hope Pass, set up, and wound up. He was in his sleeping bag, his possessions arranged neatly around him. With strong winds, I could not set up my tarp and had to retrieve my sleeping pad which blew away 0.25 mile / 400 m. The only way to keep warm was to, I spent most of Colorado trying to keep up with a group, including a friend I started the trail with, who was faster than me, and I burned myself out badly. Minneapolis man died of unknown causes on Continental Divide Trail . Website Designed & Developed by ThompsonStenning. In that same year, the Continental Divide Trail Alliance (CDTA) was created and with volunteers built or improved the route of the trail. The International Continental Divide Adventure Route is designed to be a self-guided adventure.This route can be navigated entirely by GPS. You being in the desert - not this high-altitude chaparral crap on the PCT - you're hiking for nearly 100 mi / 160 km through shadeless and waterless desert. The peak, near the CDT, is the highest along this section of the CDT with an elevation of 10,621 feet (3,237m). The road climbs to the continental divide at the top of the Pass (12,095 ft.). Keep in mind, that when looking at the map, only 70% of the actual trail routing is . I was also behind most of the other hikers going south, I often felt like the last one. The Pacific Crest Trail is a test of mental, physical, and emotional endurance. Officials reported that the tree had rotted at the base, causing it to become unstable (source), DROWNING | Wang Chaocui | Mid July, 2017 | In Yosemite National Park (California), Wang Chaocui was discovered in a river in Kerrick Canyon. The CDT is considered the most challenging of all the Scenic Trails in the US. The most common problems reported by thru-hikers are injury and snow. No AT reading list would be complete without Grandma Gatewood's Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail by Ben Montgomery. Amazon; Wilderness Press; hikers. We were not following the official Continental Divide Trail its for hikers only since we were in Jeeps. The award is acknowledged here . Not being able to keep up with the other hikers while I was approaching Monarch Pass. Horseback riding is permitted on the trail; mountain biking is only permitted on a few sections. You've made it this far, you're either into this site or you're still looking for something. At an elevation of 11,315 feet (3,449m), the highest point reached by the CDT in Wyoming. Thru-hiking the CDT is an adventure of a lifetime, but it's not for the faint of heart. Mountain bikes are allowed on parts of the Colorado Trail. Most thru-hikers take this alternate route, which is 60 miles (97km) shorter than the official CDT and passes through the town of. The lowest elevation of the trail in Colorado is 8,044 feet (2,452m) along the Middle Fork of the Elk River near the border with Wyoming[22] and the highest elevation in Colorado is 14,278 feet (4,352m) at the summit of Gray's Peak. The Continental Divide Trail Guide for Thru-Hikers. At one point in the Winds I had lost my tent, my wallet, and my flashlight and my phone was dying and I had to bushwack over 10 mi / 16 km of wet blowdowns just to get to a spot where I had a chance of hitching into Pinedale to buy a new tent, flashlight, and phone, and I only had $50 in my pocket. In his 20s, he hiked several trails, including the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail along the West Coast. Leaving the Basin, the CDT traverses the remote and rugged 'bench' of the Wind River Range, climbing to above timberline which is about 10,000 feet (3,000m) in this area, and then through the Absaroka Range in the northwest portion of the state. This beautifully produced volume makes accessible the highest and most remote . The vehicles ran the gamut from a 5-year-old Jeep to a 45-year-old Toyota FJ40, with two more Jeeps (a Cherokee and a Wrangler) in betweenquite an eclectic selection of four wheelersand four camping trailers. Another hazard to hikers is Colorado's 'monsoon season' with violent afternoon thunderstorms that are common in July and August on high mountain ridges [26][27], Notable points on the CDT in Colorado from south to north include:[28][25][1], The official route of the CDT in Wyoming is 513 miles (826km) long,[1] although several alternate routes shorten or lengthen that distance. Progress in completing the trail was slow and interest in hiking the complete trail was minimal. Wolf envisioned a similar trail running along the Continental Divide, and in 1978, he organized the Continental Divide Trail Society, which advocated for the newly designated National Scenic Trail and published several early guidebooks.[4]. San Jacinto in an unseasonal snowstorm. Over the past few years, Yokohama (www.yokohamatire.com) introduced two wonderful off-road tire designsGeolandar MT G003 and Geolandar X-MT with the X-MT design being the more aggressive of the two tire designs. It is a rare club of hikers that have hiked . And thats it! I was exhausted and frankly traumatized. The CDT is by far the most rugged of the three, being only 70% fully completed with a lot of portions of road walking and . While the blue tracks werent all that difficult, the green tracks were definitely easiersometimes all pavement. [5] More than 1,000 thru-hikers completed either the AT or PCT in 2019 compared to 150 completing the CDT, a reflection of the isolation and difficulty in hiking the CDT. Anaconda cutoff. borders.] Hiking The Continental Divide National Scenic Trail . A few hikers "flip-flop," hiking different sections of the trail when the weather is most favorable rather than sequentially. Because the Continental Divide Loop . The CDT stretches 4989 km between Canada and Mexico, slicing the United States from top to bottom, crossing New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho and Montana. One night in the Collegiates (Colorado), I had already gotten rained on all day and picked a suboptimal campsite just to get it over with. It traverses a multitude of biospheres, from tundra to high desert, with a vast variety of flora and fauna, including several . Not everyone who begins a Pacific Crest Trail thru-hike will complete their mission of traversing the country-spanning 2,660 mi / 4,280 km trail. [35] The Montana Wilderness Association is the leading non-profit partner for the northern section of the CDT. The alternate was probably fine for a northbound hiker, but going down this field of scree and causing small landslides while jumping from boulder to boulder and, I slipped climbing over the 100th downed tree coming out of the Scapegoat Wilderness. The establishment of the Appalachian Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail inspired proposals to create a Continental Divide trail. Long water carry out of Lincoln, Montana with eight days of food on ridges. As of the end of the application period in late 2021, 525 hikers have been designated Triple Crowners since 1994 by the American Long Distance Hiking AssociationWest. The Continental Divide in Southwest Montana. Website Designed & Developed by ThompsonStenning, The town of Lordsburg, New Mexico, will be hosting a Trail Days festival April 14-15, 2023. The Continental Divide Trail Coalition (CDTC) is the 501(c)(3) national non-profit working in partnership with the US Forest Service, National Park Service, and Bureau of Land Management to complete, promote, and protect the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail. ALDHA-West recognizes those individuals who have hiked, in their entirety, the complete lengths of the Appalachian Trail (AT), The Continental Divide Trail (CDT), and the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT). Join. Consider all these things while assembling a group and planning your trip. Founded in 2012 by a passionate group of volunteers and recreationists, CDTC is . 70% (2,170 miles) of the trail is along land managed by the U.S. Forest Service. So if you ever see a headline something like, Hiker deaths on the PCT jump 200% in the National Scenic Trails deadliest year ever!, know that this means ten people died doing something inherently dangerous (aka its clickbait). We use data about you for a number of purposes explained in the links below. It was called the Eagle Guest Ranch, and when we found that they raised and served their own beef, we decided to eat, shower, and sleep at the Eagle Guest Ranch. The road is open to traffic and is extremely narrow in some sections. MWA staff work to maintain the CDT in Montana and Idaho with the help of volunteers and agency partners. And if youll be towing trailers, as we did, the tag-alongs will also require clearance and tough tires. [8] In 2007, Francis Tapon became the first person to do a round backpacking trip "yo-yo" on the Continental Divide Trail when he through-hiked from Mexico to Canada and back to Mexico on the CDT. Jennifer Coleman, 34, of Richmond, Va., died hiking in the Logan Pass area of Glacier National Park on Aug. 30 or 31, 2021. The Continental Divide Trail (CDT) is a long-distance trail that runs from the Canadian border to the Mexican border. He didnt understand that the only thing I was afraid of at that moment was. State Land Office, BLM New Mexico Announce Partnership To Improve Continental Divide Trail Access; Scammers Posing As BeWellnm Representatives; Latest e-Edition The route follows the Continental Divide and is 90% off-pavement using high-quality dirt roads, gravel roads, trails, and a few short sections of unmaintained tracks. If hikers begin too early they may encounter heavy and near impassable snow conditions in the southern San Juan and San Juan Mountains of Colorado, and if the hiker finishes too late they may also encounter heavy snow in Glacier National Park near the Canadian border. If you know of any sources for the below deaths or have any that may need to be added to the list, please let me know in the comments. Pacific Crest Trail Death, PCT Resources, Research, Statistics. Coming over a ridge to end what was my longest day so far on the trail (27mi / 43 km), only to see a new, active fire less than 10 mi / 16 km away and no way to escape but forward. Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, NJ/PA. In other words, rain falling on the western-facing slopes eventually finds its way to the Pacific Ocean; while the eastern watershed drains into the Atlantic Ocean. By using the many interstates that cross the divide, an intrepid explorer can take the trail in shorter segments. A freezing rain and thunderstorm storm in the Winds made the trail entirely sludge. With the morning sun at his back on August 12,1805, Meriwether Lewis followed a well-worn Indian trail from southwest Montana's Horse Prairie Valley up Trail Creek, gradually topping out on a 7,373-foot pass. The Triple Crown Hiking Trails are the Pacific Crest Trail, Continental Divide Trail and the Appalachian Trail. He was, North of Grays (Colorado) on a forest service road a man in a Jeep passed me twice and then stopped and asked if I had a gun or bear spray.