Day: 105
Date: Monday, 19 August 2024
Start: Boatman Springs Road
Finish: Horse Creek Trailhead (but staying at Dillon MT)
Daily Kilometres: 19.3
GPX Track: Click here for Julie’s Strava & Photos
Total Kilometres: 3081.3
Weather: Cool early then warm and sunny.
Accommodation: Motel
Nutrition:
Breakfast: Pop tarts/Muesli
Lunch: Bacon cheeseburger & fries
Dinner: Chimichanga, rice & beans/Nachos, peach pie & ice-cream.
Aches: Dave - the usual niggles; Julie - nothing reported.
Highlight: Catching up with Appalachian Trail friends from last year, Mathieu and Christine, who made a huge journey to meet us on the trail as the first part of their summer roadtrip through the western states of the US. Their flights from their home in Quebec were massively delayed and then, after arriving in Edmonton after midnight, they picked up their rental vehicle and drove over 1200km through the night to reach us in the early afternoon as originally planned. It was wonderful to see them again and we are very appreciative of the effort they made to get here to see their AT “spiritual trail parents”.
Lowlight: Nothing in particular.
Pictures: Click here
Map and Position: Click here for Google Map
Journal:
We woke at 5am after a sometimes very windy night, knowing we had about 20km of road walking to reach the trailhead where we had arranged a pickup from a local CDT volunteer at noon.
The first kilometres were gradually downhill on the dirt road through sagebrush country on a perfectly still early morning with the sun slowly illuminating the bare mountains on the other side of the valley. A peaceful and beautiful scene.
At the base of the descent, we crossed the valley, through sheep and cattle grazing country, and a rail line and the I-15, a remarkably quiet interstate freeway.
After road walking on a gravel forestry road alongside the freeway for a few kilometres, we followed the road gradually uphill into the bare mountains on the other side of the valley, reaching our goal trailhead soon after 11am. There, we waited for our rescheduled, to 11:30am, shuttle to the tiny town of Lima.
By 12:30pm, with no vehicle appearing, we feared the volunteer had misunderstood where she was to pick us up, despite being sent, and acknowledging, a specific Google location. Using a flakey AT&T connection on Julie's phone, we contacted our friends, Mathieu and Christine (see above), who were on their way to meet us in Lima, and they offered to pick us up around 2pm. We were very remote and there was no traffic along the forest road, so were lucky to have a Plan B.
In the event, the shuttle driver turned up around 12:45pm, directed by the only other hiker we had seen that day, a southbound CDT thru-hiker, who knew we were waiting and also wanted to go to Lima.
We reached Lima around 1:15pm, in time to get our mailed replacement boots/shoes from the Post Office which closed at 2:30pm. Mathieu and Christine arrived 30 minutes later and we ate our lunch and caught up on our respective activities in the shade of a pavilion in a small park.
They then drove us to our booked motel in Dillon, a larger town 80km away. After showers and a short relax we all had an early dinner at a local Mexican restaurant followed by an early night.
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