Day 145 - Continental Divide Trail - Red Eagle Lake to Reynolds Creek Campground

Day: 145

Date: Saturday, 28 September 2024

Start:  Red Eagle Lake 

Finish:  Reynolds Creek Campground

Daily Kilometres:  25.3

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

Total Kilometres:  4149.9

Weather:  Cold early then mild and mostly sunny.

Accommodation:  Tent

Nutrition:

  Breakfast:  Pop tarts/Muesli

  Lunch:  Protein bars/Trail mix 

  Dinner:  Rehydrated meals

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

Highlight:  For much of the morning the trail ran alongside, but high above, Saint Mary Lake, through lovely forest with magnificent views across the pristine lake to the jagged mountains on the other side.

Lowlight:  Nothing in particular.

Pictures: Click here

Map and Position: Click here for Google Map

Journal:

We woke at 6am and, on his way to the privy, Dave met a full-size moose on the trail which casually walked off and was later silhouetted by the dawn light grazing in the lake shallows.  Magic!

We were hiking by soon after 7am on a cool morning under clear skies, but the surrounding mountains prevented any sunlight from reaching us for another hour or two.  We followed the Red Eagle Creek downstream through long-burnt forest with the sun gradually illuminating the rocky escarpment to our left.

After crossing the creek, the trail took us along the shore of Saint Mary Lake and we had magnificent views (see above).  There was no wind today, which was a very welcome change.  It was a perfect day for hiking.  As we neared the western end of the lake there were some spectacular waterfalls and just after the falls at Virginia Creek we met, coming the other way, our friend, Rob.

Rob has kindly arranged to be in Glacier National Park to coincide with our finish of the CDT as part of a trip to the West Coast and will be at the Canadian border to pick us up when we finish the trail on Monday afternoon.  He hiked some of the Pacific Crest Trail with Dave in 2017 and also joined us for some days on the Appalachian Trail last year.  We were very pleased to see him and he is camped with us tonight.

We reached our campsite, along with Rob, around 3pm and had a lazy afternoon catching up on each other's news.

While we all had dinner, we had an interesting chat with the Swiss/Canadian CDT hikers we first met on the trail a few days ago.  Then, just as we were about to retire to our tents, another CDT hiker, Snazzy, arrived in camp.  He had started the CDT the same day as us back on the Mexican border nearly five months ago and we hadn't seen him since.  It was good to see he was still going and he seemed pleased to see us.  We didn't get time to catch up with him, but we'll probably be staying on the same campsite tomorrow night so will see him then.