These three days had us hiking a trail shaped like a large backwards “C” in the mountains that surround Butte, MT. The mountains are gentle and littered with unique granite rock formations.
Day 116 – Mile 2504.4 – Cows, Rocks, and I-15
This morning was much warmer than expected. Nice! We broke camp and had a nice time walking on dirt roads until lunch. We passed under Interstate 15, we saw many cattle, and we enjoyed the nice weather. Our lunch was large today, so we enjoyed that too. Shortly after lunch we left the dirt roads for a single-track trail. It was very nicely built and had been recently cleared of fallen trees. The trail did plenty of ups-and-downs, but it was so we’ll graded that we barely noticed them. We spent much of the afternoon weaving around large and interesting rock formations. I spotted a badger in the early evening. We made it to camp before sunset — that’s becoming rare but is always pleasant! I cooked taco pasta for dinner and added all of our remaining oil because we are going into town tomorrow and can buy more. It was yummy! After cooking there was still a tiny bit of fuel left over — that was exciting because for this entire stretch I have been hoping that we wouldn’t run out of fuel. We should have just enough left for a few coffees in the morning. Woohoo! -T
Day 117 – Mile 2518.5 – Butte, MT
Today we headed into Butte, MT to resupply. We had 14 miles to hike before hitchhiking to town via I-90. We took it easy on our way in. Butte has a population of 30,000 and is Montana’s fifth largest city. It is a huge city compared to the other towns we’ve resupplied in in Montana. All of the stores were open late, so we didn’t need to rush. The hike was beautiful and featured lots of neat rocks. It didn’t take long at all to get a ride into town when we got to the trailhead/on-ramp. We showered and did laundry for the first time in two weeks, which felt really nice! We ate lots of food in town and probably brought too much back to the trail with us. We also swapped out a lot of gear. We got new shoes, which were long overdue. We also got new socks because our socks were getting holes. We swapped our shorts for pants. We got a new power bank, water filter, and hiking pole tips for me because they all broke. We ended up taking an Uber back to the trail because it was after dark when we left. We hiked half a mile or so with our headlamps and then found a place to camp. We can hear the interstate, but our sleeping bags are nice and cozy. -R
Day 118 – Mile 2545.0 – Beautiful Fall Weather
It is fall in Montana! At least it feels that way right now based on the weather. It was a little bit chilly when we woke up, but otherwise it was amazing today. It was mostly sunny and the air felt crisp. It didn’t get cold until we were just about at camp. We hiked on the mountains surrounding Butte, MT again. They are very pretty mountains. We picked up too much food in Butte… We enjoyed that for a lot of today because it meant we could eat more than usual… But by the evening our backs were really hurting from the extra weight. This afternoon we hiked past an old mine with some cool abandoned machinery and explored it a bit. Then we bumped into some folks out riding ORVs and ATVs and chatted for a while. They were very friendly and even gave us each a beer! In the evening we spotted a white-tailed deer. That shouldn’t be too exciting since they’re abundant where we come from, but we haven’t seen one on the trail since New Mexico! (we have seen plenty of just about every other type of deer though.) For dinner we had taco mac. Yum! -T
