After two years of delay, I will soon be starting the Continental Divide Trail, my third epic-length hike.
Planning the Continental Divide Trail
- Why the CDT?
- Picking a Direction of Travel
- Alternates and Route Planning
- Selecting a Start Date and Getting to the Trail
- New Challenges on the CDT
- The Wilderness Requires a Surprising Amount of Civilization
- Let's Try This Again Next Year...
- After Two Years of Delay, I’m Finally Hiking the CDT
- Gear on the CDT
- CDT Gear Changes
- Final Preparation and Planning
My plan from sometime in 2016, while on the Appalachian Trail, was to hike the Pacific Crest Trail in 2018, and the CDT in 2020. In February 2020, I picked a start date of April 25th. Then the COVID-19 crisis happened, which necessitated canceling my hike that year. I’d hoped to defer only a year, but the coronavirus situation had not sufficiently improved, and I had some other things going on besides. However, I decided that 2022 would be the year of the CDT, barring things somehow becoming worse.
In the meantime, not content to be idle, I hiked the Tuscarora Trail, the Tahoe Rim Trail, the Black Forest Trail and part of the Quehanna Trail in Pennsylvania (both of which I’ll write about someday), and the Canary Islands GR 131.
While on the GR 131 in February, the Continental Divide Trail Coalition opened up registration for their southern terminus shuttle, and I managed to snap up the last open spot on the April 25th shuttle.
So on April 25th 2022 (six days from now!), exactly two years years delayed, I will be starting my Continental Divide Trail thru-hike.
The last few weeks have been a flurry of activity, including:
- booking travel to Lordsburg, NM
- obtaining a new New Mexico State Lands permit
- refreshing my gear
- getting food and preparing and sending the one mail drop
- finishing up a lot of work (both personal and for clients)
This Thursday (in less than two days), I fly out to Tucson, Arizona, where I’ll spend a couple of days acclimating to desert conditions, before taking a bus to Lordsburg. After an overnight stay, it’s off to the southern terminus in the “bootheel” of New Mexico, and the beginning of a five month hike north along the continental divide, from Mexico, through New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana, to Canada. Assuming I make it to Canada, I’ll become one of the few people to have completed the Triple Crown of Hiking: completing thru-hikes of the AT, PCT, and CDT.
As with the AT and PCT, I’m sure this will be an amazing adventure, and you’re welcome to follow along. You can follow on Twitter, Facebook, or RSS Feed.
See you out there!