Day 102 - Continental Divide Trail - Island Park to Centennial Mountains Wilderness

Day: 102

Date: Friday, 16 August 2024

Start:  Island Park

Finish:  Centennial Mountains Wilderness

Daily Kilometres:  33.3

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

Total Kilometres:  2987.2

Weather:  Cool early then mild and mostly sunny.

Accommodation:  Tent

Nutrition:

  Breakfast:  Microwaved breakfast scramble

  Lunch:  Turkey, bacon & avocado wraps

  Dinner:  Rice & tuna/Rice

Aches:  Dave - the usual niggles plus a couple of small blisters; Julie - nothing reported.

Highlight:  We crossed into Montana today, the fifth and last state on our CDT journey.  However, we haven't left Idaho behind as the CDT follows the state border for some days and tonight we are camped right on the Montana-Idaho border.

Lowlight:  Nothing in particular.

Pictures: Click here

Map and Position: Click here for Google Map

Journal:

We had a relatively relaxed start to the day and didn't leave the comfort of our heated cabin until around 8am.  Our first 15km was a forest road walk climbing gradually up to 9000’ on the shoulder of Sawtell Mountain from Island Park (6500’).  We both noted how nice it was to be hiking in dry socks and shoes/boots after about five days of wet feet.  There were a few cars and ATV’s on the road but not enough to matter and hiking conditions were good, so the climb wasn't too bad and we did get some nice views.

We turned off the forest road on the shoulder of Sawtell Mountain onto a rough single-track trail and gradually descended following Hell Roaring Creek, which was actually quite benign, through pine forest and wildflower-carpeted meadows until we linked up with another trail at Lillian Lake and climbed up to rejoin the official CDT around 4pm.

Any hopes we had that the trail quality would improve were disappointed and we had long switchbacking climb up onto a high ridge at 8500’.  The country was partially forested, felt very remote and there were good views.  Since leaving the forest road we saw no-one and feel like we have the place to ourselves.

Around 7:45pm, we found a nice place to camp in a small copse of pine trees on a very calm evening.