The trail has been very green for the last few days. The mountains have been beautiful and full of interesting rocks. We haven’t seen any other northbound thruhikers for two weeks.
Day 113 – Mile 2419.4 – Anaconda Pintler Wilderness
This morning we had a bit of a slow start. I went to get the food from the tree a little after 5 am. We eat a lot these days and need an extra bag on our first couple of nights out. Two of the bags were easy to get because they were our bear resistant food bags that can just be tied to the trunk of a tree and bears can’t bite through them. The other was the overflow food that was in a grocery bag hanging from a tree branch with a rope out of reach of the bears. I tried for 5 minutes to get it down, but it would only go up, not down. I had Tim come help me. It took us about 15 more minutes to get it down with me pulling hard on the rope to bring the branch down, and eventually Tim was able to hook the bag with a big stick and pull in down. It was a cold morning, so we hurried back to our sleeping bags to warm up. The hiking today was challenging but beautiful. We had a lot of climbs and descents. The dry mountains covered in sagebrush from before fire detour are gone, and now the mountains are green, rocky, and covered in trees with lots of streams and lakes. -R
Day 114 – Mile 2448.7 – Last Time Above 9,000 feet
Montana in August is cold! We decided to switch our target start time to 6:45am from now on because sunrise is getting later and it is cold in the mornings. Still, when we got out of the tent we were freezing and that lasted for the first half of the day. We had three big climbs in the morning. At the top of the last we were at about 9,400 feet and we stopped for lunch. It was a beautiful spot and the sun had finally warmed us up enough to be comfortable. We won’t be higher than 9,000 feet again on the CDT. Northern Montana will still have huge mountains in terms of relief, but their bases will be lower so their tops will be lower too. After lunch we had a gradual descent for the rest of the day, which we appreciated after a lot of climbing for the last two days. Toward the bottom Renee spotted a skunk. Cool! We are camped in a huge valley with mountains all around us. I really like these giant Montana valleys. -T
Day 115 – Mile 2476.2 – Frost
We woke up this morning with frost on the tent. We were warm and cozy in our sleeping bags though. The cold made it a bit hard to leave the tent and get to hiking. The trail today was relatively easy and followed plenty of dirt roads through nice forests. The sun eventually warmed us up. We met two guys with metal detectors and shovels out looking for old relics near an abandoned homestead. They had found an old beer can, knife, and a bell. We asked how old the beer can was. They said early ’50s and pointed out that the ground is frozen 6 months of the year in Montana which preserves things nicely. That made us nervous that we’ll have some cold weeks to come! We dried out the tent during lunch, and it was still covered in frost when I pulled it out of my backpack. Late afternoon a storm rolled through, and it rained on us for a half hour or so. We saw elk and deer, but no pronghorn today. We also saw some bear tracks and moose poop. -R
