Having completed the Triple Crown of Hiking last year, I now turn my sights to an epic-length trail outside of the United States: New Zealand’s Te Araroa.
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If there’s one theme that should stand out from my earlier posts on the CDT, it’s that the CDT provides a lot of adversity. The questionable water conditions in New Mexico. Snow conditions in Colorado ranging from annoying to dangerous. Endless road walks. Minimal shade. A very long trail with a too-short weather window. The list goes on.
There’s still beauty there, though. You just have to be open to it. Or, at least be willing to laugh at the absurdity of it all. That wasn't always, easy, though.
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Compared to most other long-distance trails, the Continental Divide Trail is very much a choose-your-own-adventure trail. With numerous alternate routes available, it is quite likely that many hikers have traced unique routes on their journal along the CDT.
On my CDT hike, I took 38 alternate routes, 605 miles in total, which collectively bypassed 1067.5 miles of official trail and reduced the length of the trail by 462.5 miles. Here, I’ll discuss some of the more interesting alternates I took.
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Take a thru-hike, and add in a few spreadsheets, and you get statistics. Lots of statistics.
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The unofficial motto of the Continental Divide Trail is “Embrace the Brutality”. My first long-distance hike was the Appalachian Trail, which is brutal in its own way, so I was resistant to viewing the CDT in those terms. The AT is a physically very challenging trail, and has more elevation gain than the CDT in fewer miles, so just how brutal could the CDT be?
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