Hello to all the lovely people who visit this site. Although I don’t know you personally, I feel we have a kinship of sorts, a love for the mostly peaceful, yet sometimes exhilarating, nature of hiking. Although I haven’t been out with my camera in quite a while, far too long, I am always making plans to re-enter that magical world and jump start this blog again.

As I may have mentioned, I have been sitting on photos from about 30 great hikes. Problem is, whenever I look at them I have trouble remembering. Trouble remembering not just important technical details, such as the name of a mountain I’m looking at for instance, but how I felt at that moment and what inspired me to take that photo in the first place. Too much time has passed now and those details have been lost.

But I am going to do my best to remember, and refer back to other sources when possible, and start posting those hikes. For those of you who read these new entries, the experience won’t be the same. But I hope you will still find enough value to continue to visit. Through the years I have always appreciated all the kind words of support given by you, the readers. Soon, after all these old hikes are up, new ones will arrive. Let’s continue this adventure together.

Thank you,

Silent Hiker

The post Let’s Try This Again first appeared on Silent Hiker.

7/30/21

Daily Miles: 22

2021 CDT Total Miles: 115

Overall CDT Total Miles: 2185

We all managed to have a good and comfortable night’s sleep. We headed out on the trail by 6:20am, with the sun coming just over the trees, looking like a big bright orange ball.

We headed down to the flat and barren land between two mountain chains. As we got closer to the valley floor, the trees really started to thin out. We stopped at a nice creek and did a bit of laundry since we missed it yesterday.

After the creek, we got onto a gravel road and headed in the direction of I-15, which cuts through the valley. We had several miles before we were walking on the frontage road right next to the interstate with cars going 80 miles per hour. This trail certainly has some extremes.

We crossed under the interstate and continued up the dirt road for several more miles. As we were walking, we saw two bike packers riding towards us…our first sight of bikers on the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route! We were so excited to see them with our current fascination with bike packing. They were really excited to see CDT hikers and we ended up chatting with them for a solid half hour. They were in their 60’s probably and seemed to be having a great adventure.

We finally had to say goodbye so we could keep walking. Shortly after leaving the bikers, we ran into a CDT section hiker. We just chatted a few minutes and didn’t even get her trail name, since we felt like we needed to keep walking.

Shortly before lunch we ended up back on trail tread. We were glad to be off the dirt road, since our feet were rather sore. Mace got the first blister of the trail, with one inconveniently located on the ball of his foot. Definitely painful.

When we are hiking, we pick up small bits of trash that we find on the trail. It is not really common to find much trash…in the first five days, we only found one candy wrapper. This afternoon, we started seeing more trash – six pieces. They were almost all parts of an energy gel wrapper. We know that these are often used by racers, and that there had been a mountain bike race last weekend around Butte. We eventually saw some flagging that said “Butte 100”, so we were pretty sure that the trash was from the racers who were careless with their garbage.

The trail this afternoon has been in great shape. It is a bit surreal as the forest around the trail looks like it has been through the wringer. There are piles of dead trees all over…it looks like a complete mess. But, then there is this perfect trail cutting right through it. Certainly a lot of trail maintenance in the area.

When we stopped for water a few miles before camp, SweetPea found a painted rock. Apparently there is a Facebook page for the rock to see how far it gets carried. It is written on the rock that you can keep it or re-hide it. Although SweetPea is not one to carry rocks in her pack, she put the small stone in her pack to re-hide somewhere else. Now she just needs to decide where to leave the rock for the next person to find.

Tonight we are camped a short bit off the trail. We are near a dilapidated cabin and the most amazing spring we have ever seen. The water coming out is so forceful that it sounds like there is a raging river right next to us. We have never seen a spring like this one. We even got to hang our bear bags over a dead tree which fell on the cabin roof.

Today was the least smokey day we have had so far this week. It was nice to see the blue skies.

The post CDT Part 2 – Day 6 – Interstate appeared first on Long Distance Hiker.

Date: 7/31/21

Daily Miles: 17

2021 CDT Total Miles: 132

Overall CDT Total Miles: 2202

We finally had our first cool night of the trip…perfect sleeping temperature. We seem to have gotten into our routine for packing up in the morning…first put on socks and shoes (Beardoh is much faster at this since he stores his in his hammock), get the bear bags down from their hanging spot, pack up, stretch, and go. Somehow that all takes us 40-50 minutes each morning.

The walking today was quite nice. One of the main reasons we decided to take this longer route by Butte, instead of taking the Anaconda Cutoff several days ago, was that we had heard how nice the trails are around Butte…and that has certainly been the case. In some ways, it feels like the trails around Lake Tahoe, with their gentle ups and downs and soft tread.

We had plans to meet a trail angel at the I-90 overpass at 4pm, which meant that we could have a pretty relaxing pace, but just not stop for too long. We got to our meeting spot about 15 minutes early and just sat in the grass while we waited.

We were very appreciative of Dane giving us a ride into town, since Butte was 10 miles away and it probably would have been hard to hitch at an on-ramp. He dropped us off at the hotel where we had reservations and luckily they had two rooms ready for check-in, so we were able to get in right away.

After seven days on the trail, we are very ready for a shower, laundry and some pizza while watching Ted Lasso. Looking forward to a day for our bodies to be able to rest.

The post CDT Part 2 – Day 7 – Butte appeared first on Long Distance Hiker.

Date: 7/27/21

Daily Miles: 19

Total Miles: 56

It was another really warm night. We were hammocked across the trail, and during the night, SweetPea heard a deer or something walk down the trail towards us, then stop (presumably after noticing our hammocks in its way), and then bound off into the woods.

Sadly, none of us have slept well yet. It makes it hard to have sustained energy for the day without enough sleep. We are all hoping for a solid eight hours of sleep tonight. Hopefully the fact that we are in bed by 7:45pm will help.

We could smell the smoke in the morning at camp. We had a few miles of descent before we started our big climb of the day. We stopped partway up to do laundry and met another CDT hiker, Windy. He seems to be doing big miles and was planning to walk the 100 miles of road to get around the fire closure.

The trails today were pretty spectacular. Several areas looked like there was so much work involved in creating the trail…this morning there was a nice path through a giant rock slide. In the afternoon, they had created a great set of switchbacks for a comfortable descent along what would normally just look like a almost vertical rock wall. Sometimes we are reminded of all the work that goes into creating a continuous footpath through rugged terrain.

After we made it to the top of our climb (Rainbow Mountain), we sat down for a snack as we took in the views. The descent was another great trail as we worked ourselves back down to the valley for a brief visit.

As per our current “usual”, the trail headed right back up to the same height we had just been at. We were able to get good views back to Rainbow Mountain and see how far we had come. It looked so far, but in reality it was probably just five miles.

Near the top of our last climb, we came to the junction with a notable alternate called the Anaconda Cutoff. Many hikers take this alternate in order to save something like 90 miles. Since we don’t have a rush, we are opting to stay on the regular CDT, mostly because the alternate has a lot of paved road miles. For thru-hikers it makes sense to shorten the overall route when possible, because it is hard to finish the trail in just one season…they are always running against the clock.

Some highlights for today – lots of wildflowers (there was even a whole stream bed filled with wildflowers)…we saw a marmot, a fox, and something which Beardoh is convinced is a ferret (it was standing on its back legs looking at us in the trail)…it is starting to sprinkle now and hopefully this means a night of rain which will help the firefighters and hopefully knock down some of the smoke.

The post CDT Part 2 – Day 3 – Rainbow Mountain appeared first on Long Distance Hiker.