Day 108 - Continental Divide Trail - Sawmill Creek to Divide Creek

Day: 108

Date: Thursday, 22 August 2024

Start:  Sawmill Creek

Finish:  Divide Creek

Daily Kilometres:  35.0

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

Total Kilometres:  3142.6

Weather:  Very cold early then mild and mostly sunny with a strong wind in the afternoon

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:  A strong crosswind in the afternoon made hiking unpleasant.  At times, with our packs acting as sails, it was hard to stay on the trail.

Pictures: Click here

Map and Position: Click here for Google Map

Journal:

Around 1am we were woken by a wolf (but maybe a coyote), not too far away, howling loudly at the moon.  It was answered by another further away.

No sign of the wolf when we woke at 5:30am on a cold clear morning and we were hiking by soon after 6:30am.  We were climbing straight away, but the grades were not as steep as yesterday and we made reasonable progress.  For most of the morning, the trail alternated between crossing open grassland and passing through dark pine forests.  It seemed that, with the open grassland came fantastic views and difficult uneven trail while, in the forest, the trail was good but there were no views.  You can't have everything.

Once again, for much of the day, we were following the Idaho-Montana border with superb views in all directions of mostly treeless mountains when we weren't in the pockets of forest.

After lunch, except for a very rough first few kilometres almost cross-country through the grass and sagebrush, we followed a 4WD track which made for faster progress.  It followed a grassy ridge where we were exposed to an increasingly strong crosswind as we slowly descended to Bannack Pass, where we stopped for dinner, before climbing steadily and sometimes steeply into the mountains on the other side of the pass.

Around 7:30pm, in an open grassy saddle, we found a tent site and set up camp.  We are quite exposed, so are hoping none of the forecast possible thunderstorms eventuates overnight.

We didn't see any other people today, just some cattle and three deer.