I’ve been thinking about doing the CDT since the middle of my PCT hike in 2007. I was in central California, staying at a trail angel’s house, and they had a copy of one of the guidebooks for the CDT laying about. Oh, as an aside, a trail angel is simply someone who helps long distance hikers along the way. On the PCT, I was able to stay at quite a few people’s homes, occasionally I met people along the trail that offered me food, heck even people that I got a ride from qualify as trail angels in my book 🙂 Anyways, I read the guidebook and thought to myself that a CDT adventure sounded quite nice.

I’ve set a range of time for when I want to start the CDT. June 15th – July 1st is my approximate start date. I’ll start sooner if snow conditions in the Rockies permit, or later if they don’t. Counting back from there, I have a lot of things to get done! The main thing to figure out is how to get food along the way. Generally, I’d like to start any section of the hike with about a weeks worth of food on my back. That seems to be the line between having enough food and having a backpack that is too heavy 🙂 Lots of people choose to pre-pack all their food and then have someone at home mail it to them in towns along the way. That way they arrive in town, go to the post office, pick up a food parcel, and then they can hike on. This has not been my choice because of two factors: 1) I don’t have an obvious way to get things mailed to me (Canadian Customs is a serious “wild card”), and 2) I am incapable of guessing what kind of food I’ll want as I go along. Things that seem so tasty beforehand become totally unpalatable within a week. Imagine making 5 months worth of food and hating it all within 2 weeks. That’s a lot of wasted/hated food.

There is a wonderful woman named Yogi who wrote a town/resupply guide for the CDT. She has saved me an incredible amount of work by simply laying out the resupply options. What I’ve done is go through her book and identify towns approximately a week apart. Then I’ve decided whether I think I can buy food at grocery stores or convenience stores in the town, or if I’ll need to mail myself food. If I need to mail it to myself, I go backwards and figure out what’s the nearest previous town with a good grocery store, and then buy the supplies there and mail it forward. This all takes advantage of the wonderful US Postal Service, which lets you mail things to any post office via “General Delivery”. They’ll hold anything for anyone at any post office for up to 30 days if propery addressed.

This plan works for almost the entire length of the trail. I can either buy food directly in a town, or buy food and mail it to myself down the trail. There are a couple places where I’m going to have to pick up food in odd places, like random little resorts that happen to be near the trail and are kind enough to hold packages sent via UPS. There are some places where getting to town is a huge hitchhike, and others where the trail goes right through town.

The other main trick I’ll be using, is to send a “bounce box” to myself. This is a box of things, mainly packs of maps and guidebooks, that I don’t want to carry the whole way, but will need to regularly replace. So I’ll send it a week or two of hiking down the trail, then pick it up at the Post Office, take out the maps I need, probably grab some batteries, charge some other batteries, top up my water purification supplies, etc. Then send it onwards to the next stop. The reason this is worthwhile to me is that the CDT tends to pass through very small towns. The chances of getting anything other than food is very minimal.

What other logistical issues do I have to sort out? Gear and maps are the biggest ones, I’ll post on those separately.

In order to make it through thousands of kilometers of hiking without my body totally failing me, I’ve adopted a lightweight philosophy to what I’ll be carrying. On the PCT, this worked out to ~14lbs of gear, plus water, food, and fuel for each section. I would guess that it averaged out to ~25lbs when I walked out of a town. Having gear this light enables me to walk 40-50km a day. It helps me stay relatively fatigue-free. It keeps me happy 🙂

The key to getting the weight of gear down is generally replacing “bombproof” gear with flimsier gear plus experience. I’ve discovered that I don’t mind being wet while I hike, so a waterproof jacket isn’t that important to me. I can carry a windbreaker instead that weighs half a pound less, and keep hiking to stay warm.

This principle is applied to almost every piece of gear I carry. The other main principle of my lightweight philosophy is to have multiple uses for many pieces of gear. Using my tent as an example, it doesn’t come with any poles. Since I use trekking poles, they are used at night to hold up my tent. Another example is using my backpack as a foot-rest, and not carrying a full-length sleeping pad.

Finally, I have a spreadsheet detailing what I will carry and I’ve weighed everything. Then I have gone through each item and tried to locate replacements that are significantly lighter. If you do this enough times over the years, you’ll end up with a) tons of gear, but b) a light pack 🙂 This has led to things like not carrying a full-sized lighter, instead I have a “mini Bic”.

I learned a lot from hiking the PCT, and have replaced bits of gear since then. I’ve learned even more from the internet, and specifically backpackinglight.com. This site takes a very scientific approach to reviewing gear, and it has enabled me to make better choices for myself over the years.

My name is Ryley, I’m the CTO of PresiNET and I’m a thru-hiker. That means that I enjoy some very long walks. In the summer of 2007 I walked the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), through the Sierras and Cascades in California, Oregon and Washington: over 4000km of continuously connected footsteps. This summer, I’m planning to try a similar feat on the Continental Divide Trail (CDT).

The CDT follows the Rockies south from Alberta, starting from Waterton, AB and ends at the Mexican border in New Mexico. Where the PCT is 99% a finished trail, the CDT is more like 70% trail, the rest being either a line on a map, or walking on dirt roads or the sides of highways. As a result of its more nebulous nature, every person that hikes the CDT essentially hikes their own trail.

There are some amazing things awaiting me on the CDT. Right from the start, the trail goes through Glacier National Park. I’ll be there very early in their season, probably setting out in mid or late June. There will be tons of snow-capped peaks, grizzly bears, and me! After that, the trail continues south into the Bob Marshall Wilderness, containing an amazing geological feature called the Chinese Wall – a 22 mile long “wall” of mountains that I’ll get to hike right along. In Wyoming, I get to traverse across Yellowstone National Park (going right by Old Faithful), and then soon after the Wind River Range, a beautiful mountainous area. Colorado has some of the highest peaks in the Rockies, and one of my choices will be how many I detour to climb. In New Mexico, I’m most looking forward to the Gila Wilderness, a series of canyons, rivers, and interesting archaelogical features.

Why am I doing this? I love being in the wilderness, especially by myself. I think of it as a kind of walking meditation. I’m also walking in support of Victoria Hospice, and specifically the Bharatpur, Nepal Hospice project that my mom is involved in. This project is a partership between the hospices in Victoria and Bharatpur. Their goal is to support each other in providing excellent end-of-life care.

Update: I’m now finished hiking, and you can read through my whole journal here.