Day: 118
Date: Sunday, 01 September 2024
Start: Three Mile Ridge
Finish: Chief Joseph Pass (but staying in Darby MT)
Daily Kilometres: 18.4
GPX Track: Click here for Julie’s Strava & Photos
Total Kilometres: 3437.0
Weather: Cool early then warm with hazy sunshine.
Accommodation: Cabin
Nutrition:
Breakfast: Pop tarts
Lunch: Cheeseburgers & fries
Dinner: Meatloaf, macaroni cheese & vegetables, apple crumble & icecream.
Aches: Dave - the usual niggles; Julie - eye trouble from wildfire smoke particles (not good when you only have vision in one eye).
Highlight: Getting to Darby in Montana and our cabin around 1pm after a tough section of the CDT that has certainly tested Dave physically. Over 200km (125 miles), about 7500m (25000’) of ascent & descent in 5.5 days, the last three of which were in thick wildfire smoke haze. We are both looking forward to a relaxing day off.
Lowlight: We were impatient to get a lift into Darby, 50km from the trail, when we reached the highway and thought that more than 30 minutes of hitchhiking, when there was a reasonable amount of traffic, was too long to wait. (Eventually, a very kind lady and her daughter took pity on us and we had a.pleasamt chatty ride into Darby.)
Pictures: Click here
Map and Position: Click here for Google Map
Journal:
We were late getting to sleep last night and our tent site was the worst we have had for the whole trip - sloping, lumpy and rocky, surrounded by gnarly burnt vegetation - meaning we both had poor sleep. Our sleeping mats kept sliding down into the bottom of the tent with us on top and, at one point, a tent peg was dragged out of the ground at the top end.
Anyway, we were both ready to get up when the alarm went at 5:30am and keen to get to Chief Joseph Pass, 17km away, from near where we intended to hitchhike to Darby and our day off.
The first 8km was undulating single-track trail through mostly burnt and desolate forest with the surrounding views marred by the continuing smoke haze from the wildfires in central Idaho. The smoke was affecting our eyes (both of us wear contact lenses), but Julie's good eye was particularly impacted and very painful, making her even more keen to get to Darby.
The last half of the hike to Chief Joseph Pass was a long a forest road, which meant faster hiking and we reached the Pass and Hwy 43 around 11:30am. Although there was some traffic,.not all of it was going in the direction of Darby, so we walked another 1.5km down the road to its intersection with Hwy 93 and began hitchhiking from there. It took longer than we would have liked, but we finally got a lift into Darby where we were allowed to check in early to our roomy cabin.
After quick showers, we walked down to a bar in the centre of this small Western town and enjoyed a burger accompanied by multiple cold drinks for lunch.
It's Labor Day, a public holiday in the US, tomorrow so, rather than risk shops being shut (even though we didn't expect them to be), we did most of our resupply shopping during the afternoon. While at the small supermarket we also bought some dinner that Julie later cooked in our kitchenette.
We will have a very welcome early night tonight followed by a sleep-in tomorrow.
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