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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I knew going in that the Continental Divide Trail has a lot of road walks. And after fairly lengthy road walks on the Tuscarora Trail and the Canary Islands, I thought I was prepared. I wasn’t.
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Water is a vital part of life. This makes water logistics a very important factor in long distance hikes. Lack of (as well as the occasional great abundance of) water on the Continental Divide Trail provided ample challenge along much of its distance.
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