Continental Divide Trail: Days 96-106
- Madelyn Dukart
- Aug 3
- 17 min read
Day 96
Forward progress: 15.4 miles
Total distance on trail: 1,273.3 miles
Even with blackout curtains, we were all still awake before 7:00. Habit, I guess. But none of us were willing to get out of bed for a while. Just felt nice to mindlessly be on our phones, not being social, not thinking about anything.
After eating our money's worth at the motel breakfast, we had second breakfast/early lunch at a coffee shop. We only planned 15 miles for today, so no need to start too early. But, as with every time we get comfortable during the morning, it was hard to force ourselves to leave town.
The next few days, the miles will be easy. Like... too easy. Mind-numbingly easy. Downloaded tons of podcasts and audiobooks in town for the next few hundred miles. I lasted about 2 hours today before deciding I needed something to keep my brain occupied.
The mosquitoes right now are horrendous. I hiked with my head bug nut on for the first time. Usually, if I wear it, it's at breaks where I am a stationary target, but I needed it while moving today, which is new. People have said that they skip meals, filter less water than needed, take fewer breaks than desired, because the mosquitoes are just so bad. I can already see this problem forming.
At camp, there were signs about bear activity in the area, so I didn't want to eat in my tent; as a result, I ate only about half of what I'd planned before the mosquitoes drove me inside. They don't care about layers or bug spray, they just go right through. From the security of inside my tent, I see hundreds of them buzzing around over the mesh fabric. My favorite hiking miles today were when it was raining because that meant the mosquitoes weren't buzzing around my whole body. I'm learning already that they can penetrate the fabric of my sun hoodie. To say I am not excited for the next few days is a drastic understatement.
Oh! One of my toenails finally came off. It's been dead for ages, and when I went to clip my nails in my tent, it was obvious that the nail wasn't attached to the skin underneath at all, so I clipped it all away. I was hoping it'd just fall off on its own, but I had to chip it off bit by bit. I've done other thru-hikes and run a marathon but none of my toenails have ever come off! A rite of passage!
Day 97
Forward progress: 28.3 miles
Total distance on trail: 1,301.6 miles
Not sure why my body decided that 3:30 was an appropriate wakeup time, but I couldn't fall back asleep, so I groggily lied in bed until I heard the others start to get ready for the day.
The hiking for the first 12 miles was pretty, but I was feeling extremely sluggish. I was the last one to lunch by a margin; 14.5 miles by noon is still pretty solid, and those miles saw most of our elevation gain for the day, but I felt very slow and lethargic for much of the day. I think it's partly because I didn't filter or drink enough water yesterday. Damn mosquitoes.
Much of the day was just... one foot in front of the other until I could justify taking a break (filtering water, going to the bathroom, taking off/putting on a layer). I got to camp at 6:01 (I was aiming for 6:00 and just barely missed it!) and immediately washed my legs off in the water. The bugs have been mercifully better today, largely in part because it's been pretty windy for most of the day. It's mostly still at camp, and it seems most of the bugs are gnats. I'll take gnats.
Tomorrow, we'll be out of Colorado. Feels weird, but I'm ready.
Day 98
Forward progress: 27.7 miles
Total distance on trail: 1,329.3 miles
I slept like a dream from about 8:30 until midnight. I struggled to fall back asleep for no discernible reason at first, but then I saw a mouse crawling around on the outside material of my tent and I just couldn't sleep. I fucking hate mice. Like I often say that the order of animals I would least like to have a close encounter with on trail goes grizzly bear, mountain lion, mouse. A few more mice joined the party around 1:30. I'm the most food safe person in the group, and I'm not sure why they targeted my tent. It took me hours to fall back asleep, and even then it was very intermittent.
The first 15 miles today were a blur. I was tired, both sleepy and physically exhausted. We've been below 10,000 ft and there is noticeably more heat and humidity. I usually get through most mornings without audio stimulus, but I plugged into a podcast at 8:30 this morning just to get through.
Around 1:00, our group took a long lunch break about a mile from the Colorado-Wyoming border. We were all just beat. You could feel the low energy in us.
But at 2:00, we felt revitalized. Getting over another state border brought us back to life.
Suddenly, we were excited to hike, not dreading it like we had been earlier. As we filtered our first water in Wyoming, we agreed that we had 10 more miles in us. Before the border crossing, we were all reluctant to target 6. That said, the last 3 miles of the day were still challenging to get through, and getting to camp was a relief.
Day 99
Forward progress: 23.4 miles
Total distance on trail: 1,352.7
Oh man, I could have slept another many hours. This may have been my most comfortable night on trail. It was the perfect amount of chilly without being cold. I also was definitely due for some good rest after the previous night. To my knowledge, no mice this time.
Our goal for the morning was to get to WY Hwy 70 around 10:00. We had 11 miles to do. Vibes's brother was meeting us at the trailhead there to drive him to Rawlins -- while Shadow and I and a zillion others were canoeing in Utah, Vibes hiked Encampment to Rawlins in Wyoming and spent time with his family in northern Colorado -- and he had offered to bring me and Shadow to Encampment. Whatever miles lead to a town, they feel fairly irrelevant in my head. They're just a barrier between me and food.
Encampment is a tiny town with a few restaurants, a gas station, and that's kind of it. Most people who get off at Battle Pass Trailhead continue on to Saratoga because there are more amenities, but Shadow and I planned to hero (zero = no miles, nearo = small number of miles, hero = going into and out of a town in the same day) and just get enough food to get us through tomorrow. We obviously demolished some diner food before doing our gas station resupply.
Shadow has been having some... issues... with the Breckenridge post office. Yes, Breckenridge, like 300 miles ago. He had sent some packages there and has tried to bounce them ahead, which you can do for free with verbal confirmation over the phone, but they seem to have disconnected their line and are unreachable by phone. Carly from Montezuma went there in person and was on the phone with Shadow so they could confirm information about him, but they denied him the bounce because he wasn't there in person and they wanted confirmation from a postal service employee. Finally, in Grand Lake, Shadow went to the Grand Lake post office while another hiker was in Breckenridge at their post office and had the employees talk to each other. Everything seemed like it would work for them to bounce the boxes to Rawlins, but Shadow got notice that they ended up back in Breckenridge, so he has to pick them up in person. Unfortunately, we are way too far ahead for that.
Fortunately, I have the best and kindest and most supportive partner of all time who is going to drive to us on trail tomorrow to bring us to Rawlins (which we were going to do anyway because I need to have service the following morning to FaceTime into my friend's wedding dress appointment), then drive us from Rawlins to Breckenridge and back. By the time he gets back to Denver on Sunday, he will have done 16+ hours of driving. A literal saint.
We got a ride back to the trail from a man named Bobby who built a bench and a hiker box outside of his house, which is on the road back to the trail. He saw us attempting to get a hitch and just pulled his truck around. He has never hiked this trail or any other, but noticed he was in a prime location to help hikers, so he just... helps hikers. It's really lovely.
Anyway, it says something about the terrain and elevation profile that we completed 11 miles before 10am, went into town, spent several hours there, hitched back to trail, hiked 12 more miles, and still got to camp at our normal time.
Day 100
Forward progress: 33.8 miles
Total distance on trail: 1,386.5 miles
It feels weird celebrating day 100 with the knowledge that 14 of those days were hiding from the snow. But here we are, 100 days into the journey, which is nuts.
Today, we began in the foothills of the Medicine Bow mountains and ended in the Great Basin -- a vast high desert that will occupy the next many days. You thought the endless sagebrush and paved road walks ended in New Mexico? Ha you fool! (Just kidding, you didn't know any better, it's not your fault.)
Shadow and I knocked out the 12 miles to the highway junction by a little after 10:00. We could see for ages into the basin as we descended the foothills, and then we were just... in it. We hiked most of the day with an older hiker called Dad Bod, whose name at the moment is almost ironic because ain't none of us have much body fat left at this point.
Most people, including the three of us, opt to hike WY Hwy 71 instead of the trail at the moment because the trail does an unnecessary bank west whereas the highway shoots straight up into Rawlins, and also the water situation on the trail is pretty terrible, and people cache water on the highway. In addition, it made an easy pickup point for us; I have to be in Rawlins tonight and we have lots of driving plans tomorrow courtesy of Mitch.
As much as I hated road walking at the beginning of this trail, I've really come to appreciate it. For starters, it's easy hiking. Even though it kind of sucks on the joints, the elevation change is negligible, the path is clear, and the miles go by really quickly. It also lends itself to easy trail magic. I was given two cans of soda and two cans of beer for the road.
We stopped for a late lunch at a campground with the absolute cleanest privies of all time. Seriously. The floor was shiny, it was so devoid of grime. There were no flies buzzing around. The toilet paper was two-ply. Whoever maintains these deserves a raise, for real. While breaking there, we met a local named Jim, who operates one of the caches. He says that when he did a section of the PCT in the '80s, he would have loved someone to provide water for hikers when it was scarce. Much love for Jim and people like him!
Around 8:30pm, Mitch arrived on the scene to bring us to Rawlins. After demolishing some McDonald's and taking a shower, I felt almost human. Almost.
Day 102
Forward progress: 21.1 miles
Total distance on trail: 1,407.6 miles
This morning was oddly chaotic. There were a bunch of small chores that I had forgotten about yesterday. The wedding dress appointment FaceTime was very fun, though! After driving to and from Breckenridge yesterday, I think my main priority last night was to soak up quality time with Mitch. Unfortunately, that means this morning, involves a lot of running around and making sure everything was squared away. I've grown perhaps too accustomed to having Mitch visit on the weekends and being able to resupply from our tub of hiking food or changing my mind about little things that I want to take or leave behind. After he drove away today, he won't be visiting until the very end of trail.
Even though I am sad about the prospect of not seeing him for another 1.5-2 months, I think it will be good for me and my mental space moving forward. Every time he visited was a time that I had to acknowledge that I was choosing not to return home, even when given an easy opportunity to do so. Now that I'm in Wyoming, it's going to be better for me to just focus on finishing the trail.
When Mitch picked us up from the road the other day, we cut off about 15 miles of highway walking. Personally, I would have been fine to call those miles a wash -- I don't mind walking paved roads, but anything I can see from the car isn't something I feel deeply compelled to hike -- but Shadow wasn't so keen on disrupting his footpath by that much, so Mitch dropped us back off around where he picked us up before.
Fortunately, I had good service for most of that stretch back into Rawlins. I was able to download some podcasts, call some people, and even watch part of a movie. For miles like this that are just getting through, I don't feel bad treating it like a road trip.
When we got back into Rawlins, we had an early dinner at what I would have assumed to be a sports bar if Wyoming had sports. As soon as we finished charging our electronics and other miscellaneous town chores, we hiked out. Since the trail goes through town and we didn't have to worry about it catching a ride, we could leave as late as we wanted to. We hiked only a couple more hours until it was starting to get dark. My understanding of this stretch of trail is that campsites don't really exist, and you just put your tent wherever there is space that's big enough, flat enough, and lacking in cacti enough.
Day 103
Forward progress: 32.2 miles
Total distance on trail: 1,439.8 miles
You know those days where you feel energetic and ready to take on anything the world has to throw at you? Today was the opposite of that day.
Shadow and I planned to get an early start, but when my alarm went off, I was totally unable to wake up. This was my worst sleep in hundreds of miles. Perhaps that's why I had such little energy today.
The trail and the water sources today are very reminiscent of the bootheel in New Mexico. Most of the trail today was a network of dirt roads. There isn't an ounce of shade to be found anywhere, and I'm grateful that the cloud cover was pretty strong after 2:00. All of our water came from cow tanks, cisterns, and cached water jugs.
When we got to our break spot for lunch, we knew that we wouldn't hit our mileage goal today. Because the Basin is so flat and boring, people tend to try to push miles here. We were hoping for a 40-50-30 split to get into Lander -- the 50 mile day would be in lieu of the ever popular 24 hour challenge, and the other two days would be bigger miles than usual. However, we made these plans when we were feeling energetic in town. It's like going grocery shopping when you're on a health kick and wishing a few days later that you should have gotten some ice cream and potato chips. Unfortunately, my dumb (or optimistic? Let's go with optimistic) ass prepared for these miles and didn't grab much extra food because I wanted my pack to be as light as possible for doing their miles. Now that I already know that we won't be hitting that goal, I'm feeling a little food scarce, and that's a really terrible feeling out here.
This part of the trail is definitely something to just grit my teeth and get through. It's a good thing we aren't getting near a popular road or the temptation to hitch out would be really high. I understand already why so many people choose to skip this stretch.
Day 104
Forward progress: 35.6 miles
Total distance on trail: 1,475.4 miles
I slept substantially better than the night before, but not nearly as much as I'd have liked. I was able to drag myself out of bed and pack up for our agreed upon 5am start.
Our first 6 miles got us to the water source where I'd hoped yesterday to camp. The hiking wasn't hard, but yesterday, there was absolutely no way we could have made it there. Unlike all of yesterday's water sources, this one was natural. Shadow and I rejoiced at this little oasis.
Around 8:30, it began to rain on us. Not hard, but enough to cool us down. Even this early, the sun is pretty intense, and there's nowhere to hide from it. As grateful as I was for the rain, I wish it had come a few hours later. The afternoon miles were so exhausting, and when we stopped for lunch after a long water carry, we were both pretty zapped. I felt bad for Shadow; I wasn't exactly having a great time, but I handle heat a lot better than he does, and it was pretty evident that he wasn't doing any better than I was yesterday.
With the exception of the first creek, all of the water sources have been pretty cow-forward, even if they've been natural. I'm glad I brought extra flavoring packets for this stretch.
Our campsite is objectively not very good. We had planned another mile, but the sun was setting quickly and we still had to make dinner. Neither of us love hiking or doing camp chores in the dark, so we claimed spots where the ground is devoid enough of sagebrush that we could fit our sleeping pads. I'm watching flashes of lightning in the distance, and since I can't hear any thunder, I know that storm isn't close, but we're definitely screwed if we have to pitch our tents because we simply don't have the space to do so.
Day 105
Forward progress: 30.4 miles
Total distance on trail: 1,505.8 miles
For how absolutely exhausted my eyes, body, and brain were at the end of yesterday, I cannot believe how poorly I slept. I was expecting to be totally conked out, but I woke up around 12:30 and couldn't fall back asleep for over an hour. I stretched a bunch yesterday because my hips are tight, but I know the only real cure for that at the moment is a good night's rest. I am desperate to feel rested when I wake up in the morning.
Today was an infinitely better day of hiking, though. Only 30 miles. Lol what a world. Can't wait to go back to normal miles, even if they're harder. Today, the water was spaced out every 5-7 miles, so we had short carries and took small breaks at every source. I also took a 5-10 minute break every hour because I wasn't on a time crunch. I even took an impromptu break when I saw the best shade I've seen the whole Basin in a dried up creek bed. Much more relaxing, and we still got to camp by 6:30.
The water sources were a mixed bag. We had one glorious water cache, a metal cistern that was cool and clear and only had a few bugs floating at the top, pools of water blocked off by rocks to separate them from the muddy and cow poopy stream, and a river where the dead cow was fortunately downstream from the flow.
We're camping near the river on a grassy patch. I'm positive we'll wake up to pretty intense condensation, but tomorrow's a town day, so it doesn't matter.
Day 106
Forward progress: 17.6 miles
Total distance on trail: 1,523.4 miles
As predicted, my quilt was soaked when I woke up. In a way, it made packing up quicker; I wasn't so tempted by my soggy setup.
This morning felt weird. The morning miles have been the best part of the Basin: chilly enough to hike in a sweatshirt with soft light gently blanketing the landscapes. By as early as 8:30, any unnecessary layer will have been shed, and the light will have turned harsh, rendering the vast vistas less magical. But this morning, I couldn't even bring myself to fully appreciate the beauty of blue hour, cool and comforting as it was. I just wanted to be at the road intersection to get to Lander.
A few weeks ago, I heard this piece of advice being told to a hiker who was debating going home: if you are enjoying town more than you're enjoying the trail, you might want to consider getting off. Especially during this stretch, I have largely not enjoyed my time on the trail, and I've been dreaming of town. I know I'm not ready to go home yet, but I feel like if I couldn't even enjoy this place at its best, maybe I'm doing something wrong, or at least experiencing it the wrong way.
Much of the trail today was a network of dirt roads. The parts of the trail that were not dirt road were incredibly confusing to follow, in large part because the sign posts indicating where you're supposed to go have been knocked over by the insane wind in this area. For some of those spots, we were able to follow dirt roads that ran parallel, but some parts we just had to deal with.
I got to the ghost town of South Pass City, an old mining town that had a decade-long boom in the 1860s. Now, it functions as an interactive museum. I saw summer camp groups panning for gold in the creek, and a lot of families were in the area checking out the buildings that have been pretty well preserved. For CDT hikers, our main interest is the general store, which isn't beefy enough for a resupply, but it does have ice cream and soda. I drank a cream soda while waiting for shadow to arrive and grabbed a root beer for the remaining 3 miles to the highway Junction.
It only took us 20 minutes to get a ride to town, which was pretty good, considering most of the traffic on this road is tourists, and there is no signage indicating that the CDT intersects the highway. Our ride, Eric, was possibly the most interesting person I've ever met. He's in his 60s, lives in an off-grid cabin near Augusta, Maine, and has spent over 600 cumulative of days hiking in this part of Wyoming. He currently is preparing for a 30 day stint in the backcountry by strategically caching bear canisters so he doesn't have to go to a trailhead or a town if he doesn't want to. He says the longest he's ever been out for something like this was 30 days. He knows where to interact with people if he wants to, and I don't get the impression that he's currently planning to do much hiking, but rather enjoying relaxing and camping in these mountains.
Eric was also shuttling another hiker, Peanut, to town. She was partway through the Wind River Range when she decided that she truly wasn't having fun anymore, and she was ready to go home. Her partner lives in Boulder and came to pick her up from Lander this evening. She cited one of her reasons for choosing to leave the trail as feeling pretty alone, since she hasn't been around very many hikers for the past several weeks, and if she didn't already seem so at peace with her decision, I would've definitely tried to convince her to hike with me and Shadow and Vibes. We had so much fun at lunch together, and I'm desperate for more female companions on this trail. Not that Shadow or Vibes give off particularly masculine energy, but it's not the same.
Shadow and I were feeling pretty drained when we got to town, and we were hoping to zero tomorrow, but Vibes has been in Lander for several days waiting for us (as a reminder, he already did part of the basin when Shadow and I were canoeing, so he was able to skip ahead a few days), and we could tell he was getting pretty antsy. I know he would have taken another day off if we really pressed him for it, but we compromised on a zero in the next town. We'll all need it then; we're aiming to average 25 mile days, and it should still take us about a week to get there.
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