For quite a while I have been dreaming to hike the continental divide trail – or in short: CDT. This trail is one of the ‘big three’ long distance hiking trail of the continental U.S.A going from border to border through 5 states: New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho and Montana.

While it is less popular than the AT and even the PCT by quite a margin it certainly does not lack in beauty or appeal. Being less popular can be mainly distributed to being the most challenging trail of the three. This challenge comes from several factors, starting with it’s length: Approximately 3100 miles long. Why an approximate you might ask? Well the trail is different to the AT or PCT in terms of the official route. As not all of the trail is along the terrain and land that the CDT organizations want it to be, larger sections are currently still road walks or are not yet along the desired place. This means that there is no one specific route to hike the CDT but many ways to hike a continuous route from new Mexico to Montana. This makes the trail pretty unique and also enables most hikers to choose their favorite parts and provide the option to avoid high sections in deep snow or enable them to hike around areas closed due to fire, while still being a ‘purist’. But it also means that navigation of this trail is more advanced than the PCT (AT being the easiest to navigate) and one should plan to find yourself of trail once in a while. Not only are there way less markers than on the PCT, but also less people hike the trail in total numbers and more sections are less well maintained.

Another challenging aspect of the CDT is the fact that longer sections are at high elevation, especially in Colorado where large sections of the trail elevation is above 10000 ft. This causes less predictable weather patterns and more afternoon thunderstorms where you don’t want to be on top of an exposed ridge if you can avoid it.

Further challenges can be distance between water sources and water quality – especially in New Mexico, large sections that are Grizzly country and require precaution, and long distances between resupply points.

These are some of the reasons for most hikers to choose to do the CDT after already having some thru-hiking experience.

I am personally drawn to hike this trail in part due to all these challenges and it’s unique landscape and look forward to start my hike in early may of 2019.