New Trail!

It's finally time. I'm so excited, nervous, worried, prepared, forgetting something, and on and on and on. After months of planning, changing plans, changing them back, making new plans then repeating the process over over and over I'm getting ready to jump back on trail. This is going to be my most ambitious yet. I'm doing the Continental Divide Trail. It tries to follow the continental divide from Mexico to Canada and will be unlike my previous hike. The route I have planned has me doing over 2900 miles. The AT was only 2156.9. The portion of the PCT was only 860ish so by the time I'm done I'll have doubled my miles.

The AT was a very well defined path that required no navigation skills and hardly any planning at all. I was always within two days of a road or town. The portion of the PCT I hiked was not labeled as well as the AT but required nothing more than a phone app to tell me if I took a wrong turn at one of the very few junctions.

The planning portion of the PCT was slightly more involved than the AT since there were a few locations that you had to use a mail drop for but for the most part you could make due work carrying no more than 100 miles worth of food.

The CDT is not like that at all. I've already spent days plotting routes deciding whether I should follow the official trail or take the scenic route. Unlike the other two trails there is no "right" way to hike it. As long as you make it from border to border your good. I'm not sure  if anyone has actually hike the entire official trail yet. There are just so many options and the official trail often doesn't take the best available route. Then there is the resupply issue. The entire trail is much more remote than the other two tails. A hard hitch on the AT was 6 miles on a paved road. On the PCT it was about 10. For the CDT the average is going to be closer to 12 with several resupply points where I'm packing an extra days food and expecting to hike 15+ miles to and from town.

Well that's enough whining. I'm jumping on an airplane in 14 hours and my bag isn't packed and my bedroom is a mess still so off to pack and clean.