Continental Divide Trail Week 15: The Final State(s)

Week 15 on the Continental Divide Trail brings us into the final two states of the CDT, Idaho and Montana. The trail only makes a small appearance in Idaho and spends a lot of time tracing the Idaho-Montana border. We leave Yellowstone, take the Mack’s Inn Alternate, and arrive in Lima, Montana where we take our fourteenth zero day.

CDT Day 99: The Tub Room (Arrive/Leave Old Faithful Village, WY)

When we wake up, Apache and Quicksilver have already left (in, what I expect, is an attempt to spend as much time at the breakfast buffet as possible). Appa, after having inexplicably thrown up during the night, is still in his tent when I leave camp. Waiting for your friends is not as important as making it to food.

It’s only four miles (6.44 km) to Old Faithful Village, where I hope to take up residence at the Old Faithful Inn’s breakfast buffet. The short distance to the Inn, which essentially amounts to a warmup hike at this point in the CDT, is the perfect amount of time to prime my stomach for a morning of gluttony.

The Old Faithful Inn is an impressive building with some interesting interior architecture. Unfortunately, there’s no time to waste gawking at the lofty ceilings or the mezzanine-encircled lobby; it’s breakfast time. I grab a seat with Apache and Quicksilver for breakfast and am pleased to find that they’ve gotten themselves a table with a power outlet (a classic thru-hiker move in a restaurant and why you should always have a multiport plug).

Despite this being my second breakfast buffet in two days, I’m still just as hungry as ever. The selection of food today is essentially the same as yesterday, but today the fruit selection is notably sadder.

By the time I’m ready for seconds, Appa rolls in and joins us.

Everything is self-service except for drinks, which are served to us by our server, Grace. Grace has an indistinguishable accent and after realizing that we’re going to be shutting the buffet down, she drops the accent and admits that it’s just something she puts on to help entertain herself during her shifts.

When 10:30 rolls around, we’re politely asked to leave. After we pay, Grace offers to let us in on a secret and leads us through a series of floors, doors, and rooms, to a corner of the inn where she tells us we are free to take baths. There are two rooms, each with a mirror, sink, bathtub, soap, shampoo, conditioner, and towels – it’s magical.

Each of us takes advantage and enjoys a post-breakfast soak. I also take the opportunity to give my socks a good washing (since we don’t expect to be stopping in town for another 100+ miles (160+ km).

Freshly bathed, Appa and I take seats on the inn’s balcony overlooking the Old Faithful geyser. Most of the tourists are distracted by the famous spring’s turbulent ejection while the two of us lay out our clothing, freshly washed in the tub, to dry.

I run down to the general store and get us some snacks and a bottle of wine to enjoy while we wait for our dry cycle to finish. We even find a power outlet to continue charging our devices while we wait. This is the life.

Below us, we see JPEG walking past and we yell down to him to make sure he’s well-informed on the bathing/laundry situation. It’s important to share these things with your fellow thru-hikers (but not strangers on the internet).

With our wine exhausted and our clothes mostly dry, we decide it’s time to set off once again and bid farewell to the penultimate National Park of our Continental Divide Trail journey.

We briefly stop and watch Castle Geyser erupt before the crowds overwhelm us and force us to press on. Heading away from Old Faithful Village, we walk first on sidewalks, then over boardwalks, and eventually find ourselves back on the trail. A lonely southbounder passes us and the one piece of information he passes along is that we’ll have to get our feet wet at a creek crossing ahead.

Challenge accepted.

I am wearing a fresh pair of socks (laundered even before today’s bathtub adventures) and there’s no way I’m getting them wet. I make it across the stream unscathed. Southbounders – can’t trust anything they say.

The trail climbs a bit before leveling out, which is good – but then it starts to thunder, which is not as good. As the sky darkens, it begins to rain. Before I even have a chance to think to myself “Hmm, now would be a good time to stop and put on my shell” it begins to hail, which is even more not as good.

These things usually pass quickly and so I take shelter under a nearby tree to escape the hailstones. As the weather clears, JPEG comes hiking up and we hike up to Summit Lake where he has a campsite booked. And so do about a million mosquitoes.

I hang out with JPEG until Appa arrives. Appa and I don’t have permits for camping in Yellowstone tonight, so we need to hike another 4 mi / 6.44 km to the park boundary before camping. However, this is the last water for the next 15 mi / 24.14 km, so we linger a bit longer to camel up and fill up in anticipation of dry camping.

Before we leave, Apache and Quicksilver show up; they have campsite reservations here. Appa and I bid farewell and continue through long flat fields and a burn area until we’re outside the park boundary and nearing the Wyoming-Idaho border.

We make camp in anticipation of entering the second-to-last state, Idaho.

CDT Day 100: Idaho! (Arrive/Leave Macks Inn, ID)

We get up early and leave our lives in Wyoming behind as we cross the border into Idaho. The Continental Divide Trail doesn’t hang out in Idaho for too long, and it spends a lot of its Idaho time literally tracing the border with Montana, but the CDT does in fact enter Idaho, so the CDT does technically pass through five states.

That said, Idaho is commonly written off as simply part of Southern Montana. Poor Idaho.

The trail into Idaho heads directly west across the Wyoming-Idaho border. Shortly after entering Idaho, the official Continental Divide Trail turns north and past Targhee Pass and Raynolds Pass before turning back south and then continuing west. It essentially does a 103 mi / 166 km arc.

What can you do instead of this arc? You can take the 33 mi / 53 km Mack’s Inn Alternate route and simply cut from the east to the west end of the arc.

This alternate involves a bit of road walking, but it’s a small price to pay for shaving 70 mi / 113 km off the CDT. Sure, you may read this and think to yourself, “NO! I want to be in nature the entire time and I would definitely hike the extra miles!” but I promise you that you can change your assessment between the US-Mexico border and this junction.

Appa and I take the alternate.

A river (Henrys Fork) runs east-west through the middle of the Island Park/Mack’s Inn alternate, and we decide to take our chances with the establishments on the north side.

Walking the road through town we make it to Robins Roost, a small, gas station (Chevron) attached grocery store with snacks enough for us to replenish our supply for the next section of the trail.

After hitting the shop, we go in search of wifi. We try a motel across the highway but they want $8 to let us online. Not going to happen. Next, we head to the Island Park Lodge – back across the highway just north of the grocery store. The Island Park Lodge has wifi and a Chinese restaurant downstairs where we take up residence at a table with a power outlet. We eat four entrees between the two of us as we chat with the server – who is incredibly nice (we’re also the only people in the place).

Apache and Quicksilver show up and get a room at the lodge. It’s basically an apartment with five beds and a full kitchen (including a dishwasher). They invite us to crash, but we’re on a mission to do miles and we know that if we sleep in beds tonight we’re not going to wake up at the crack of dawn and start hiking.

Instead, we buy a box of wine and walk the gravel road out of town.

There are signs up on the road notifying people that this road will be closed soon due to it leading to an area that will be within the zone of totality for the upcoming eclipse. Unfortunately, we will be too far north to see the eclipse in its entirety but had we delayed our hike a bit, this would likely be a spectacular place to view the eclipse from (since I am guessing/hoping there won’t be many people here).

We scramble up an embankment, away from the road, and into the trees to find somewhere suitable for finishing our wine and setting up camp.

CDT Day 101: Sheep Experimentation Area

First up this morning is a long and gradual climb that culminates in a rare, early-morning bowel movement. At the top of the climb, the trail fades into obscurity and we begin a 4 mi / 6.44 km descent which mostly consists of bushwhacking and cursing.

As the trail begins leveling out, I wade through a pond that nearly swallows my shoes as they sink into the soft dirt at the bottom. With the exception of my poop, not the greatest of mornings.

We stop for a much-needed break from the morning struggle bus and we have a mid-morning snack. Just ahead we’ll be rejoining the official CDT where, hopefully, we will find some semblance of a trail.

Mosquitoes haven’t been too much of a problem recently, but a few are beginning to gather as we begin another climb. I hate them and wish they would all die horrible and fiery deaths, but they sure do motivate you to keep moving.

At the top of the climb, there’s a pleasant flat section of trail and there’s even cell reception. Checking for cell reception on peaks, ridges, and high points along the trail is a fun game. Usually, you lose, but sometimes you get the dopamine hit of notifications. Appa joins me at the top of the climb and we take notice of the clouds beginning to gather. We’re not in Colorado anymore, I was led to believe that our dealings with thunderstorms were a thing of the past.

As the next downhill starts, we pass a sign that reads, “The U.S. Sheep Experiment Station”. Apparently, the mission of this experiment is to, “improve the genetic merit, nutrition, health, and reproductive efficiency of the sheep.” I don’t see any sheeps. Perhaps the experiment has failed.

The trail is now tracing the ridge that is the Idaho-Montana border. Does this count as having entered Montana? I guess it would be best to wait until Idaho is officially behind us before we start the Montana celebration (which will probably be something like, “Uh…hey, we’re in Montana”, “Oh, okay, cool”).

According to the map, there’s a spring just off the trail ahead. Unfortunately, just off the trail ahead is also tons of brush that we frustratingly stop around for about ten minutes before being able to locate it. It’s been 13 mi / 20.9 km since the last water and is another 4 mi / 6.4 km to the next water – which I don’t think we’ll make it to tonight. The flow isn’t great and it’s swarming with hundreds (thousands?) of bugs, but we hydrate and fill up enough to dry camp tonight.

Bushwhacking back up onto the ridge, we continue hiking along the Idaho-Montana border for a while longer. There aren’t many great camping spots to be found up here and we end up just laying down in the middle of the trail. If anyone happens upon us it will probably be Apache, Quicksilver, or JPEG.

CDT Day 102: Flash Party

It rained last night which means this morning I get to do one of my favorite things – pack up a wet tent! I’m off ahead of Appa today and when I pass the day’s first water source I figure we must be near a trailhead because I see two day hikers. I consider holding them up for all of their snacks, but I decide better of it and continue.

Eventually, I decided it was time for a snack. I stopped to eat and wait for the Appa. It takes a while for him to show up, but when he does I find it’s because he’s already stopped once this morning. I guess we’re on similar schedules – only took 102 days.

The trail now does something that it’s fond of doing and just disappears for 3 mi / 5 km. My phone’s GPS has conveniently decided that this is the perfect time to stop working, so I do my best to stick to my interpretation of my map.

Every once in a while I will stumble across a trail marker which lets me know that I’m not yet hopelessly lost and gives me the confidence to continue. As a bonus, while struggling through the brush during this section, I fall and decide to test my kneecap’s durability by directing it straight into a rock. Blood has been drawn on the CDT.

Approaching the next water source, a lake, there’s suddenly and strangely infrastructure. Trail infrastructure usually means there’s a nearby trailhead. Trailheads can mean pit toilets. Pit toilets can be a mixed bag, but a clean pit toilet can be a huge morale boost if found at the right time.

Following the series of posts delineating the division between Idaho and Montana along the trail, I watch as storm clouds gather above the imaginary line that is the border.

There’s a climb up to an exposed ridge coming up, and I’m not confident in the weather to hold out long enough for me to safely make it past the next section of trail. I don’t have much time to consider my options as just moments later the sky erupts in a fury of thunder, lightning, and hail. I take cover under a nearby tree to wait for the worst of it to (hopefully) pass.

Between the thunderclaps, I think I hear voices. I’m convinced enough of this to let out a loud, “CAW! CAW!” I get a reply. I scramble up the trail to the next brush-enshrouded tree and find Apache and Quicksilver doing the same thing as me – hunkering down and waiting for the worst to pass.

The three of us hang out (I don’t know where Appa is) with lightning flashing all about us for about the next twenty minutes. Before long it appears that it’s safe to start moving again.

We hike out together and when we reach the next water source (what I believe is the last one before hitting the road that will take us to our next resupply stop, Lima, MT), Apache and Quicksilver stop to camp.

With the promise of town tomorrow and still no Appa (I am guessing he’s in ahead of me?), I decide to press on into the sunset. The trail follows a jeep road for a while and I start finding the trail better-marked. However, whenever the trail comes to a junction, there’s no indication of where the CDT goes. It’s like, wherever the trail is obvious there are CDT markers, but then when you need to know where to go, you’re left with nothing.

I don’t see Appa’s footprints in the trail ahead of me, and I have a fairly clear view back along the ridge, but I can’t see him. At 9:15, I stop to eat and wait for Appa. He’s probably not night hiking, so I am unsure whether he’ll turn up from behind. I finish dinner and keep moving.

In the distance, I can see headlights from cars moving up and down Highway 15. Eventually, it gets too dark for me to confidently follow the trail which tells me it’s time to camp. It’s challenging to find a spot large enough to lie down without having to do so on top of a pile of cow shit, but after some persistence, I manage.

CDT Day 103: Getting Moist (Arrive Lima, MT)

It’s 6:30 when I wake up and I have just 8 mi / 12.8 km until reaching Highway 15 where I hope to catch a ride into Lima, Montana (our next resupply stop) – which is pronounced lie-maw, not lee-maw (like the capital of Peru). There are cows everywhere. My relationship with these beasts has been strained on the CDT. I don’t know if this means I want to continue or to stop eating them.

In the daylight, it’s now obvious in which direction the trail goes. Night and day on the trail are two entirely different worlds. At the top of a small climb, I find a trail register (a little book where passing hikers can write their names) and see that JPEG passed here last night – no Appa. He’s probably dead.

I hear a “YIP! YIP!” from behind and turn around to see Appa heading down the road toward me. He catches up and calls the Mountain View Motel in Lima to ask about getting a ride into town. They tell us that they’re picking up at the highway at 9:00. If we hike at 3 mph (4.8 km/h) we won’t make it there until 9:20. Guess we have to move quickly.

We make it to the road at 9:00 and find JPEG also waiting to be picked up.

Before long, a truck pulls up, and something like 11 hikers pour out of it. It’s all-new faces, northbound CDT hikers we haven’t met before. I catch a few names – Mowgli, Little Spoon, Lux – but the quick hi/bye doesn’t leave us with much time for anything other than simple trailside pleasantries.

JPEG, Appa, and I hop in the truck and head into town.

The three of us get a room together, $66 for a large room with two beds, a couch, and a kitchen complete with a fridge, oven, stove, and microwave. The bathroom isn’t super nice but it’s better than a hole in the ground. We head across the street to Jan’s Cafe where we hope to catch breakfast (and where, interestingly, there are Tesla charges in the parking lot).

We walk into the diner and are happy to find Endless and Queen B sat down for breakfast. We saw them in Yellowstone but were a day behind when we camped with them (because of some camping restriction hijinks we all had to contend with).

Even more shocking than seeing Endless and Queen B (which is quite normal at this point in the trail), is seeing the person they’re eating breakfast with. It’s Moist! After having abandoned us (died) in Northern Colorado, he’s now back from the dead to rejoin our fellowship.

We order omelets and coffee from our frazzled server and spend the rest of the morning reminiscing and draining coffee refills. After breakfast, we head to the gas station across the street to stock up on snacks and adult beverages to sustain us for the rest of the day.

For dinner, we head to (what I assume is) the one bar in town where they sell $1 corn dogs and have a “cook your meat at your table” system (but not in an “oh, this is neat” way, more like an “oh, this is strange” way). The bar is about as welcoming as you would expect from a small Montana town with a population of just over 200.

To make up for having to cook my own food, the bar offers what is apparently a popular thing at Montana bars, shake a day. This is essentially a gambling game (that is, on some level, probably illegal), where you can win either a pot full of money, a free drink, or nothing. I win myself a drink. Great success.

Tomorrow is going to be our fourteenth zero day of the trail, and we retire to our motel room fully prepared for our day of rest.

CDT Day 104: Zero Day 14 (Lima, MT)

It’s been three weeks since our last zero day back in Rawlins near the start of Wyoming. In celebration of this fact, and thanks to the reappearance of Moisture, today will be zero day fourteen.

Most zero days I try to leave my bed and/or motel room as little as possible. However, since the amount of effort required to cross the street to enjoy breakfast at the diner is quite minimal, I make an exception to my rule today. JPEG, Appa, Moist, and I sit down at a table, eat omelets, and drink coffee until we’re all primed to put the motel plumbing to the test.

We saunter back over the road to our cavern.

A man we befriended back in New Mexico (Mr. TEDOLSON! for anyone who has been following along and paying attention), recently let us know that he had, sadly, gotten off the trail.

However, he had prepared himself resupply boxes before beginning his thru-hike and still had that had yet to be sent out. In a truly legendary gesture, he offered to send these resupply boxes to me and Appa along our remaining stops for the final stretch of the trail. The first of these boxes was waiting for us at the front desk of the motel.

We pick it up and delve into the revealing and mysterious world that is someone else’s resupply. It feels a bit invasive, pulling out, looking at, and picking apart someone’s resupply, but it’s rare to find a thru-hiker that will say “no” to a free meal and we’re certainly not complaining.

The rest of the day consists of some of my favorite thru-hiking moments – laying in bed, drinking champagne from the bottle, eating frozen pizzas, and watching terrible daytime television.

Tomorrow it’s back to the trail (but probably not before hitting Jan’s Cafe for the third morning in a row).

CDT Day 105: By the Beard of Zeus (Leave Lima, MT)

We wake up early and JPEG pulls an advanced move by getting on the first shuttle out of town (at 9 a.m.) back to the trail with Apache, Quicksilver, Treeman, and Flip-flop. Appa, Moist, and I have other plans – namely, breakfast.

At breakfast, we see Fainting Goat and Acorn – two hikers we haven’t seen since New Mexico. We have a new server today who manages better than the especially frazzled woman from the previous two mornings. Today I get the Denver omelet (which is the same thing I have gotten the previous two days) and drown another pot of coffee.

After breakfast, it’s back to the room to tidy up before catching a ride back to the trail at one in the afternoon. That’s the problem with waking up in town – so hard to get back on the trail early (unless you’re disciplined, where we, apparently, are not).

We get dropped off back at the trail along with three southbound hikers we’ve never met before and whom we’ll never see again; they have a dog with them.

The weather for the (nearly) two days we spent in town? Beautiful. The weather today? Dreadful. We walk 2.5 mi / 4 km up a dirt road parallel to the highway watching the clouds in front of us slowly gather and morph into an impenetrable gray sheet. Thunder bellows in the distance and we see a lone southbound hiker approaching.

We stop and chat for a while, but are on completely different wavelengths. She’s excited to be getting to town and escaping the storm while we’re primarily concerned with making it to shelter before being struck down by Zeus. Farewell, Medicine Woman, and best of luck on your adventure.

The distant thunder soon becomes right-on-top-of-us thunder and with it brings a flurry of lightning. Like a lot of lightning.

We run across an open field and cower beneath a tree beside a small stream. Probably not the best place to cower in a thunderstorm, but remember kids, there’s no safe place outdoors during a thunderstorm. The tree (which is not the tallest in the area, I should point out) provides enough cover to keep most of the rain off us. Before long it turns to hail and we hunker down waiting for it to pass.

Welcome back to the CDT, Moist.

When the hail lets up and the thunder and lightning finally have some space between them, we start hiking again. We’re soon surrounded by cows (another hallmark of the CDT), and as we approach a trailhead (we’ve been walking dirt roads), we encounter three more southbound hikers. We’ve met at the bottom of a long climb and they tell us things don’t look any better from up on the ridge.

We examine our maps and find an alternate route that will allow us to stay lower longer before (hopefully) meeting back up with the CDT. It looks like it might be a bit longer overall, but it will be faster than sitting here and waiting for the weather to clear completely.

Eventually, we come to a point where our alternate, too, climbs up onto the ridge. We decide to camp instead of pressing on as it’s already 7 p.m. Not the best day back on trail, but at least we’re back.

Week 15 Totals

• Day 99 (August 5): 21 mi / 33.8 km (Arrive/Leave Old Faithful Village, WY)
• Day 100 (August 6): 24 mi / 38.62 km (Arrive/Leave Mack’s Inn, ID)
• Day 101 (August 7): 30 mi / 48.28 km
• Day 102 (August 8): 30 mi / 48.28 km
• Day 103 (August 9): 8 mi / 12.87 km (Arrive Lima, MT)
• Day 104 (August 10): Zero Day 14 (Lima, MT)
• Day 105 (August 11): 9 mi / 14.48 km (Leave Lima, MT)

CDT Week 15 Total: 122 mi / 196.34 km

CDT Journals

• Day 1: The Middle of Nowhere
• Week 1: The Bootheel
• Week 2: The Gila
• Week 3: We Got A Dog
• Week 4: One Month In
• Week 5: Don’t Die
• Week 6: The San Juans
• Week 7: Big Decisions
• Week 8: Three Is Company
• Week 9: Moist Is Dead?
• Week 10: Shortcuts to Town
• Week 11: Farewell Moisture
• Week 12: Wyoming!
• Week 13: The Winds
• Week 14: Yellowstone
• Week 15: The Final State(s)
• Week 16: MURKAH
• Week 17: Fires!
• Week 18: Canada

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