Continental Divide Trail – Day 108
September 8, 2023
Miles Today/ Total: 21.2 / 1958.0
As usual, even when I could have slept in I was up before 6:00am. Jan’s Cafe and the post office both open at 8:00am. So, I took a shower and packed up what I could. I updated my blog and fixed a pot of coffee (it was terrible).
I finally got out about 7:40 and grabbed some cash at an ATM. On my way to the post office I notice Big Sky Outfitters was open and dropped in and picked up some cooking fuel. Mmmm…. Warm ramen noodles again.
This storm missed me, but I played chicken with several storms throughout the day getting nothing more than sprinkled on.
The post office opened at 8:00 and I picked up my resupply boxes and took them back to the motel. I walked across the street to Jan’s Cafe and had another wonderful breakfast of fried eggs, sausage, and hash browns. They had delicious coffee and I finished it all off with a piece of Cherry pie.
Back at the motel, I packed up all my resupply and Monty picked me up at 9:30 to get back to the trail.
I started on the trail about 10:00 am and the first 7 miles was a walk on a gravel road. I reached the junction where it turned to single track about noon and ate my lunch near Horse Creek.
From here the trail took a short climb up to the divide and began following a fence line on the divide for the next 13 miles. Since this was a ridge line trail there were very many steep ups and downs. As the ridge line rose higher and higher there were many great views.
About 2:45 as I was climbing another mountain on the ridge line, a thunderstorm moved in. The wind was blowing pretty strong and as it started to rain I put on my rain gear. I thought this would be a short 5-10 light rain and then blow over.
As the rain picked up I moved down below the top of the ridge line and found me a place to sit on a rock and hunker down to let the storm pass. It was much worse than I thought. It was a crazy hard rain including hail and at times blowing near horizontally. Overall it lasted about 45 minutes.
Once the storm moved past and it quit raining, I climbed back up to the trail and continued on. At the top of the mountain I was climbing there was a whole flock of sheep. As I’m taking pictures of the sheep, the shepherd climbs up from the side of the mountain too. He had a couple of horses and several herd dogs with him.
I tried to talk to him, but he didn’t speak English so we both nodded, pointed, and tried to communicate to no avail. There was another storm building so I moved on down the trail.
I reached the end of the ridge line walk about 7:00 pm and started descending into a valley. I reached the base of the valley about sunset and knew I needed to find a campsite soon or it would be dark. I soon reached a creek that had water that I needed for dinner tonight. I found a nice pine tree nearby to set my tent up under and barely got set up before dark.
I took my food away from camp and cooked it as it got dark. Finishing my dinner, I hung my bear bag, stashed my bear canister and crawled in my tent for the night.
