Continental Divide Trail: The End + Reflections

Day 152: September 8th, 2025

Forward progress: 20.7 miles

Total distance on trail: 2,391.6 miles

Our plan to be hiking by 7:00 was immediately thwarted by... you guessed it... rain. It started drizzling around 5:30, pouring by 6:00. None of us were interested in starting our last day in those conditions, so we shouted through the walls of our tents at each other that none of us were going to start packing until the rain let up. By the time we had originally planned to leave, we were breaking down our tents.

It rained a couple more times throughout the morning, but just small drizzles. We started hiking together but quickly separated, needing our own space to reflect on our own thoughts. We all started this hike alone, and it felt right to spend a lot of the day alone, too.

I picked huckleberries, slowing myself down, lamenting the thought that one would eventually be my last on trail. After one particularly sweet and flavorful one, I decided that that was it. My next huckleberry would be as a day hiker, not a thru-hiker.

The Canadian border is on Upper Waterton Lake, and the trail follows the shore of the lake for several miles. With under 2 miles to the terminus, we regrouped on a beach. Watched the waves lap the shore, the sun sparkle on the water. We knew in a few short minutes, we would be done with the trail.

No matter how much time I had to reflect today, I didn't know how to feel about it being over.

It wasn't until I saw the terminus with my own eyes that I burst into tears. I wondered all day if I would cry at all. On my last day of the Appalachian Trail, I probably cried more than not. Today, even thinking about being at the terminus didn't bring a single tear to my eye. But when I saw it, crying was all I could do.

I cried for so many reasons.

For being proud of myself for making it here.

For the anguish of not being here last year with the friends I'd made.

For the many versions of myself this trail that didn't know if I would make it here.

For feeling stronger and more powerful than I ever have before.

For getting here injury-free.

For knowing that when I wake up tomorrow, I don't have to hike. (Well, I do... my parents and Mitch are in Glacier and we have lots of hiking plans.)

For getting to see the people I love for the first time in months.

For seeing the ugly obelisk and wondering if it was even worth everything it took to get here at all. (It was. It just... was it?)

We spent over an hour at the terminus. Popped our mini bottles of champagne, jumped in the lake, attempted polite small talk with a couple who had hiked 5 miles to get there and not thousands.

Leaving the terminus felt like nothing. I had no thoughts in my head, no epiphanies, no feelings. I just felt numb.

I had planned to meet Mitch and my parents in the trailhead parking lot, but they seemed to have gotten impatient and started hiking toward me. It felt surreal to see them, knowing that seeing them would be my new normal.

In the parking lot, the tramily played one final round of euchre, drank plenty of champagne, and ate more food than we needed. And when we left the parking lot, the journey was over. It doesn't feel like I had expected it would. It doesn't feel like anything. Not yet.

---

It's been one month since finishing the trail.

I still haven't really processed how I feel, but I'll do my best to describe it.

I miss being on trail a lot. Not the hiking part so much. While I love hiking and seeing beautiful things, I haven't so much as gone for a long walk since being home. It's been really nice to rest and relax and recover.

My body is finally letting itself feel all the pains it hasn't been allowed to for the past few months. I hobble the first several minutes after getting out of bed because my feet feel so stiff. My left ankle, which I badly rolled a week before finishing the trail, still hurts to flex; I can't sit cross-legged because bending it that way hurts too much, I can't climb because I don't trust my left foot, and I can't even swim because the pressure from the water causes sharp pain. Sometimes, the bottom of my feet start hurting out of nowhere. My knees whine at me when I go down steps. I didn't feel any of that while actually hiking.

But I miss being... not here. I haven't adjusted to being home as well as I had hoped. I knew it would be hard. After the Appalachian Trail, Mitch and I were at our place in Columbus for about a week before we moved to Denver, and being in such a new environment -- figuring out new jobs and learning a new space and making new friends since we didn't have any here -- gave us the distraction we needed to assuage the depression so commonly felt after a thru-hike. Being home, not having any such distraction to keep my brain occupied, has been really hard. I feel lost.

I feel guilty that everyone seems more excited about me being home than I am. When they ask me how the trail was, they want to hear that it was good. When they ask me if I'm excited about being back, they want to hear yes. When they ask how it feels to shower or wash my clothes or eat whenever I want, they want to hear that it feels amazing, never mind that I've only showered twice, and my clothes aren't filthy enough for me to care about washing them, and I'm not that hungry most of the time anyway.

This trail felt so different from the Appalachian Trail. That trail was my childhood dream, and I did it with my partner, and we made the most amazing friends. That trail was part of my transition away from a place and a life that didn't feel fulfilling to me. The motivation for being there was endless. Beyond anything, I was fueled by a need to prove to myself that I was capable of achieving something great. And then I did.

I didn't need to prove myself on the Continental Divide Trail in the same way. I had already impressed myself. I have a life in Colorado that I love. Being away from Mitch for so long was really difficult. And the motivation to get through it was much harder to find. A lot of it was the knowledge that the injured version of myself last year would have committed felonies to be where this year's me got to be.

This trail broke me in a way that others before it haven't. Last year, it was a physical fracture; this year broke me mentally. Much of this thru-hike felt like me convincing myself to stay on trail, even if it wasn't what I wanted to be doing in that moment. And if I didn't want to be there, then why did I spend so much time away from home?

(I say that with the full and complete knowledge that I will be doing the Pacific Crest Trail someday. Not out of obligation to Triple Crown, but because I know, deep down, in a few months, I will miss the everliving shit out of being a piece of hiker trash, and I will crave being back in the throes of a thru-hike as if none of my frustrations ever happened.)

Thru-hiking always makes me reflect on what I actually want to get out of the sweet, finite time I have with my life. This trail forced me to really contemplate what it is that I love about this kind of travel.

What I love most about thru-hiking is the connectivity of it. The community of hikers, trail angels, townspeople who buy you a beer in town, drivers who see you walking the road and offer you a soda, strangers who cheer you on in your journey... it's amazing. The interactions you have with people is the pinnacle of human connection. For many reasons, I realized that I want to do more traveling by road trips -- it's like thru-hiking in its minimalism and filthiness and nomadic style, just less physical effort -- but when you're hiking, you have to connect with other people. You just have to. There is no vehicular barrier between you and the outside world. It's just you in it. And there's such magic in that.

What this thru-hike taught me, more than the Appalachian Trail, is that experiencing the world is an amazing thing, but it's not worth it for me to do it alone. I met so many people on the Continental Divide Trail, but I didn't make any new best friends. I didn't have my husband with me. When I was supposed to do the CDT last year with my best friend, it would have been such a joy to experience the trail with her. When I did the AT with Mitch, it was incredible experiencing the trail with him. This felt like such a solo endeavor, and I'm not meant for that kind of journey. Consider this the first of many pleas to my husband to join me on the Pacific Crest Trail, even though he considers himself retired from long thru-hikes.

I already forget all of the reasons I was ready to leave the trail. I go back and read my past journal entries and want to shake that girl and scream because I already want to go back. The grass is always greener, they say. On trail, so much of what I wanted was to come home. Now that I've been home for a few weeks, all I want is to be on trail.

Send help.

And, as always, thank you for following my journey. I couldn't do this without all the love and support I've received along the way.