The Continental Divide Trail

Nicole's father Bob is spending much of this summer hiking the Montana section of the continental divide, a trail which spans the 5,000km between Canada and Mexico, and I joined him for a small two day section.

Our walk started in forest, beautiful, lush and green with trees so straight and slender and grown so close together it was impenetrable.  Luckily for us, the trail was mostly a clear, well marked path.  We spent a great deal of time hiking up and down through the woods, and only had one real view for most of the day from the top of Thunderbolt Mountain, and what a view it was, you could see miles in all directions.

That evening we ate dinner by a tranquil lake.  We then continued hiking and the woods turned golden with the evening sun, it was incredibly beautiful.  We were attacked at this point by a thousand mosquitoes and we did not dare stop to even catch our breath, when we set up camp for the night I dressed in full waterproofs to keep from being bitten.  This turned out rather funny, because I was trying out a bivvy bag for the first time rather than using a tent.  I carefully climbed into the bag with all of my things, and had successfully zipped myself in without any mosquitoes joining me, when I realised I had a problem.  Getting undressed and into my sleeping bag in a bivvy which was only about the size of a large sleeping bag was difficult to say the least, but I managed, although only with a lot of comic thrashing.  I then lay in my bag listening to an orchestra of high pitched bugs until I fell asleep. 

The next morning (we retrieved our food and bags which had been hung in a tree to keep the bears off) and we set off on our way in rather miserable mist and rain.  I was just telling Bob that this was perfectly normal hiking weather for me, when we came to a meadow and lost our way.  Luckily we re-found the trail  (goodness I love OS maps, I felt quite helpless, we did have a map but it wasn't as good as an OS map, and it was all in imperial not metric!)  We dropped down to an old mining settlement, which was in ruins but quite fascinating, and then hiked back up the hill.  Why do I always forget how much more powerful gravity is on the second day, and how much slower and harder I find the hills?  The last part of our hike was simply the best though!  We descended out of the mist and rain and onto the ridge of a hill, which was covered in wildflowers and I could only name about a quarter of them.  It was beautiful; and so amazing - about a wondrous as the bit in the Sound of Music at the beginning, or like something from Fantasia.  It was Glorious!