Day 078 - Continental Divide Trail - Rawlins to Bull Springs

Day: 078

Date: Tuesday, 23 July 2024

Start:  Rawlins

Finish:  Bull Springs

Daily Kilometres:  45.2

GPX Track:  Click here for Julie’s Strava & Photos

Total Kilometres:  2269.2

Weather:  Very warm with hazy (from wildfires to the north) sunshine.

Accommodation:  Tent

Nutrition:

  Breakfast:  Microwaved breakfast burritos.

  Lunch:  Ham & cheese subs

  Dinner:  Tuna/Chicken & rice

Aches:  Dave - chafed shoulders and the usual niggles; Julie - nothing reported.

Highlight:  Nothing in particular.

Lowlight:  Nothing in particular.

Pictures: Click here

Map and Position: Click here for Google Map

Journal:

Conscious that we had 42km+ to hike today to get to the second of two water sources as a campsite, we woke at 4:30am and were hiking by soon after 5:30am.

Initially, we had about 27km of road walking to do along the busy Hwy 287, with a small deviation after 19km to a solar spring to get enough water to see us through the rest of the day.  The countryside along the highway was arid sage brush-covered hills, occasionally with some cattle visible. The last part of the highway roadwalk was a steady descent to the Great Divide Basin which looked like a desert spread out before us.

Four of the CDT hikers we had dinner with last night, a young married couple from Boston, a young French girl and a retired US serviceman from Reno, who were a “trail family”, meaning they loosely travelled together each day, were hiking the same route as us today and we saw them several times, and ended up camped in the same place tonight.  

At the bottom of the descent, we left the highway to follow a perfectly straight old sealed road into that desert for many kilometres.  There was almost no traffic, but a pickup did stop along the way and the driver, after asking Dave whether he was too old for this, gave us both a bottle of water!

In mid-afternoon, we left the sealed road and followed a rough undulating 4WD track for the remainder of the day, which had become very warm.  However, the earlier road walking had allowed us to make good time, and we reached Bull Springs, our goal for the day, around 5:45pm and found a campsite nearby.  There are cows about and plenty of cow pads around our tent.