We continued snaking along the border of Idaho and Montana, which follows the Continental Divide. The landscape has become much dryer. We’ve had expensive views into both states, which have been a bit obscured by smoke.
Day 101 – Mile 2082.2 – August heat
Today ended up being a fairly hot day on trail. We leapfrogged with Jazz Hands, who we met on the Pacific Crest Trail in 2018. It was fun catching up. We had one stream crossing today where we had to get our feet wet. Tim was super bummed about this because his feet are hurting after being soggy for a week straight due to rain and stream crossings not too long ago. He has a big crack/fissure on the ball of his foot. We passed a sign for the goose creek fire. Luckily for us, it hasn’t closed the trail yet. We’ll have a big detour in about a week due to two wildfires burning on the trail. -R
Day 102 – Mile 2112.4 – Going berries for berries!
Our campsite last night was at the top of a mountain so this morning we had a beautiful view of sunrise lighting up the mountains around and below us. It was nice. We lost the trail a few times today but always realized our error pretty quickly and got back on without too much added mileage. We saw one southbound hiker and no northbound hikers on the trail today. We hiked past a trail register that showed a hiker named “Metric Ton” hiked through six days before us. We know him from the PCT but had no idea he was on the CDT this year. When we don’t have service out here, trail registers are kind of like social media for us 😆. We saw a large group of kids with two adults. They seemed like a group of boy scouts. They were very surprised and confused that we walked here all the way from the Mexican border! We found a few patches of berries on the trail. We’ve been waiting 2100 miles for berries! We picked salmon berries, raspberries, and huckleberries. Yum! We hiked until about 9pm tonight and were both very tired when we got to camp. -T
Day 103 – Mile 2136.5 – Lima, MT
Today we had over 20 miles to hike to get to the interstate where we could hitch into Lima (pronounced like the bean). We started a bit earlier than usual and didn’t take many breaks. We made it to the I-15 around 2:30. It was a bit strange hitching from the interstate, but a friendly couple picked us up in no time and took us to town. The town didn’t really have much. We stopped at the motel/RV park to pick up our really box and for laundry and showers. Then we headed to the gas station to resupply. At around 7pm we started walking back towards the highway and Martin pulled over right away to give us a ride. He was very nice and fun to talk to. It was a super quick and efficient town stop, which made us super happy. We got back to the trail, which way on the frontage road for a bit. We found a campsite as soon as we started heading away from the interstate. We can hear the cars, but we always sleep better in our tent than in a hotel. We packed out some wine to celebrate getting in and out of town quickly for once. -R
Great update. I’ve been following here and TikTok. One question I see over and over on TikTok is how you will get home after you are done. That might make a good video. Stay safe!