Day 095 - Continental Divide Trail - County Line Creek to South Two Ocean Creek

Day: 095

Date: Friday, 09 August 2024

Start:  County Line Creek

Finish:  South Two Ocean Creek

Daily Kilometres:  38.2

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

Total Kilometres:  2773.8

Weather:  Cool early then warm and mostly hazy sunshine with a mid-afternoon thunderstorm nearby.

Accommodation:  Tent

Nutrition:

  Breakfast:  Pop tarts/Muesli

  Lunch:  Snacks/Trail mix

  Dinner:  Rehydrated meals 

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

Highlight:  Nothing in particular.

Lowlight:  Horses and blowdowns.  For all of today's hiking we were on a trail that is also used by horse riders and mule/packhorse trains.  Consequently, the trail was extremely dusty, a mix of dirt and manure, we were constantly dodging piles of droppings, the trail had become multiple narrow deep ditches in places and, whenever the trail crossed water or a stream, it had been churned to mud.  Also, there were a lot of trees down over the trail today, slowing us as we had to climb over, or detour around, them.

Pictures: Click here

Map and Position: Click here for Google Map

Journal:

It sounded like it was raining lightly when our alarm went off at 5am but, happily, everything seemed dry when we emerged from the tent thirty minutes later and we were hiking by 6am on a cool, somewhat hazy, morning.

For most of the day, we were following long valleys before climbing over low passes and entering new valleys.  Where there was forest on the morning, it consisted of stark dead or burnt forest offset by colourful wildflowers.  The trail was dusty and there were many blowdowns (see above).

On either side of the valleys, which averaged 7000’ - 8000’ elevation, rose attractive high mountains partially covered in forest.  We met about eight southbound CDT thru-hikers during the day and two mule/packhorse trains.

At one point we could see fresh bear tracks on the trail and one of the thru-hikers said he had seen a bear earlier in the day.

Despite the trail conditions we made reasonable time all day, exceeding our goal mileage if only because we couldn't find anywhere flat to camp in the last hours of the day as we climbed steadily to over 9000’.

Eventually, we did find somewhere passable around 7:30pm and set up camp.  We'll still have a bit of climbing to do first thing tomorrow.  We also reach the famous Yellowstone National Park tomorrow.