Day 36-38: The Divide

July 27-29; Mile 538-603

Day 36

The day began with wet shoes, never a pleasant way to start. I had breakfast at Hamby Creek after a successful rock hop downstream and then passed the tents of Steamy and Panty Pirate. 

The trail was a nice, flat route through the forest, and in the quiet of morning I saw another hiker headed my way. She was the first NOBO I had met who had not skipped anything. Wild Child said she had had to DIY parts of Colorado on snow shoes due to the conditions, and that her feet were still messed up from doing so. 

I left the forest and headed through patches of sagebrush with views up to the bright blue sky. The trail began to climb gently back toward the divide after spending the night in the lower foothills. Strix and I stopped for lunch at a stream partway up, and Steamy stopped by to filter water. We chatted about our glissading experiences and the pros and cons of hiking into the night or waking up earlier. The pressure to finish the trail before weather hit was beginning to ramp up, despite being more than a full state away from Colorado – the crux for NOBOs and SOBOs alike. 

Thunderheads were already building even though it was only 11:30 am. We climbed up rocky slopes to a saddle where huge clouds were amassing in all directions. There was a nice descent through living forest before climbing back upward. Once we reached the ridge, we would follow the Divide for over 50 miles until our next road crossing. 

I had hoped I would make it through our high point in time, but as I reached the saddle at 9400’ the dark clouds were blotting out the blue sky. Water lay 2.5 miles ahead, but first I would have to climb another steep 300’ along the very top of the ridge. Instead, alone and afraid, I bailed downslope. 

I descended about 200’ before setting up my tent on an angle I’d usually complain about hiking, let alone trying to lie down on. Rain pattered my tent, and I worried about getting stuck for hours without access to more water. I looked over the map and plotted a cross country route to a nearby saddle, paralleling the CDT a few hundred feet below the ridge. On the other side of the saddle was the old mining road that led to the next water source. 

The weather lightened, and I decided to pack up my tent and get a look at the saddle. It appeared too rocky for my liking, and so I forced myself back upslope to the ridge and continued along the trail, stopping for a little panic venting whenever the trail led out of the trees and across exposed scree fields. 

When I finally reached the water, my feet were pounding and I had some new hot spots. Strix and Lark were eating dinner, and I plopped down and told them about my off-trail misadventure, laughing to force back my tears. “I just need to not hike alone in storms because I always panic.”

The three of us hiked out for the final seven miles, our packs weighed down with water. The trail of course led steeply up a 20% grade when our packs were at their heaviest, and we all panted our way up to the top. The top was super exposed, and I was glad we were in a patch of blue sky. The rocks shifted underfoot as we crested the ridge, straddling the divide near 10,000’. I spotted the old mine from the top; meanwhile dark clouds shed their rain upon the areas to our north and south. We were in the land of big mountains, big views, and big storms. 

After three miles we stopped for a break. I had some chocolate, and as we started hiking again, my stomach clenched and I felt like I was going to throw up. Lark and Strix sat with me as I bent over and focused on breathing. They asked how much water and electrolytes I had been consuming, and Lark offered me a salt pill. The idea of swallowing even a small amount of water made me nauseous. I didn’t think it was altitude-related since I usually got headaches as my first symptom. 

Strix said, “I can offer you Benadryl or Imodium, but I don’t think they’re going to help.” 

Lark said, “I can get you really high.”

I managed a weak smile. “Then I’ll definitely throw up.” 

Finally, I felt okay enough to take a sip of water. I took the salt pill, felt a little better, and was able to keep hiking after loosening my hip belt. 

The last hour and a half was a bit of a forced march. We passed through burn scars, with some shorter climbs and descents, but I was mostly looking at my feet. After a long day, we finally reached camp around 8 pm. 

Day 37

After getting to camp so late, I was groggy in the morning. Also I had been awake several times during the night from leg pain, rain, and lightning. Although it was cool to see clear sky above with stars blazing, and an occasional distant flash.

I finally started hiking a little after six, and thankfully the trail was flat and in the forest. I cruised along until reaching the forest road to connect down to a creek, had breakfast on the road, and saw Steamy and Panty Pirate pass with another hiker named Yukon. Then I went cross country back up to the trail, using the sun as a compass. 

The forest continued along the ridge – all the while I was thinking how it would have been nice to have this cover during the storm the night before. Eventually I emerged into a field of sagebrush with views down toward Lemhi Pass. It was hot, dry, and there was zero shade, but the open landscape afforded views in every direction. 

I stopped in the privy before the pass, which was pretty grim. There were so many massive flies inside that you could hear the buzzing from outside. 

At the pass I took the side road down to the Sacagawea memorial and filtered water for lunch from one of the headwaters of the Missouri River. It was cold and delicious. Strix, Handy, Yukon, and I each sat on a bench cooking our lunch and relaxing in the shade after the hot walk. 

In the afternoon heat, the sagebrush was fragrant and the sun lit up the plants and brought out their bluish tint against the dried yellow grasses. Massive clouds lurked everywhere but directly above, and as I stopped on the shade of a tree, Strix caught up. 

“How are you feeling about those clouds over there?”

“Looks exciting.” 

“Do you want to hike together?” she asked. I was very happy for the company, and it made the miles go by faster. 

Much of the hiking was ATV tracks that went straight up the mountainside with some short reprieves in the sage. We sweated our way uphill as people occasionally zoomed by in their UTVs, kicking up dust and looking far too relaxed. The main topic of the day seemed to be food – we were both ready for some real town food the next day. 

Less than a mile from camp we came to another off-trail spring. We left our packs at the junction and hauled water up the steep trail. Our campspot for the night was a nice treed area on the edge of a meadow. 

For the first time in days we had dinner at camp with Handy, and Lark showed up as we were finishing. He had had to stop a lot during the day to retie his shoes. Somehow he was still walking after 100 miles, and he said he had used my plastic bag as cushioning since there was nothing left. He then described the shoes as his personal prison. 

During dinner we got to talking about the Basin. Handy and I were leaning toward skipping it in order to get to Colorado earlier. Lark interjected, “Hey the Basin is cool. Truly. Where else can you see nothing but one plant for 100 miles? It’s surreal.” I said it sounded like a video game without enough budget to render varying scenery. 

Day 38

Town day at last! But first, a sleepy morning. With the longer mileages we were doing, the days were surpassing 12-13 hours from when I left camp to when I reached our next spot for the night. I was looking forward to catching up on some sleep when we reached Salmon, ID. 

The trail led through grassy meadows with beautiful views of sunrise on the mountains to my west. Spotting some bleached deadwood at sitting height, I stopped early for breakfast so that I could watch the pink light creep down the peaks as the sun climbed above the horizon. 

Much of the day was spent walking on steep double track as it followed the ups and downs of the ridgeline. After a few hours the trail contoured around the backside of a peak and led to a trickling stream. Handy and I filtered water, and I wished him a happy birthday. 

We were soon out of the forest and back into the empty grasslands. Strix and I hiked together, pausing in the shade of a lone tree to cook some lunch. Ahead of us lay miles of rolling hills and sagebrush, a welcome break from the steep climbs of the past few days. 

A herd of cows were loitering across the trail, staring at us blankly as we approached. We tried shouting, clacking our poles, walking closer. Nothing. They just watched us quietly as we cut through the sagebrush to go around. 

I was a little ahead of Strix when we came to the next herd. This time, there were two horned beasts standing apart from the crowd: bulls. I watched them from the corner of my eye as the trail led past the grazing cows, and they watched me right back. I was still fifty yards away when the bulls trotted ahead on an intersecting path. They quickly closed the gap, and I stopped twenty yards short, the two bulls between me and the trail. We were at a stand-off. Thankfully they looked young and curious rather than aggressive, but I just waited as Strix neared, until the two bulls ran off back to the herd. 

The final few miles followed a wooden fence through forest, and herds of cows on the other side of the fence mooed and trundled alongside us, like we were their afternoon entertainment. 

At last we reached Bannock Pass, where Handy’s dad was waiting with cold drinks and lawn chairs. He would be driving us to Salmon and back, as well as helping resupply us at the next pass so we could skip Lima. It was the latest installment in our well-planned thruhike, a welcome thing given that the pass was seeing one car per hour. 

That night I slept for over 11 hours.