20 CDT Northbound Hikers in 2 Days | Epic Wilderness Adventure (2025)

Last night I slept incredibly well. My camp spot was perfectly flat and I never heard a single sound. Once again, I had intentions of starting in the dark. But of course I wasn’t walking until after 6 AM. I had about 9 miles to go to get to benchmark. Hikers are able to send boxes there to pick up. There is camping and lodging in the area as well. And if you wanted to head into town, you could hitchhike into the town of Augusta.

Because the trailhead is quiet and down a dirt road, I’m opting to skip Augusta entirely. But it’ll still be fun to walk past benchmark this morning. I figure I’ll see a lot of people on my way. Plus, the trail was really nice and flat for the entire morning. I don’t think I had any elevation gain to do at all.

The first couple hours of the day were really quiet. But as I got closer to benchmark things started to pick up a bit. I came upon someone on horseback and moved aside for them. Only to realize that there were 10 or so people behind them, also on horses! They must have tours and groups go out from the benchmark area. I got out of the way and let all the horses and people come on by. Then continued on toward the trailhead.

When I set out from camp this morning, I was actually wearing my Sambob alpha 90 layers. I can’t even remember the last time that I set out in the morning with those on. But it was really cold this morning, so the layers were super comfortable. When I finally did get to the trailhead parking lot area, I did take my layers off and pack them away. Then continued along the road for a mile or so. There is an alternate route which picks up right by benchmark. It’s basically just another trail which follows along the river nearby. Rather than jetting out into the woods, turning, going up a mountain pass, and cutting back. This alternate will shave 3 miles off for me! Which is a whole hour of my day.

I saw tons of people as I was walking the road and passing by all of the trailhead and camping areas. But then I popped into the woods and it was quiet once more. I wondered if I would see anyone today. Some hikers might not be doing this alternate. If that’s the case, then we would never run into each other. But the alternate only went on for about eight or so miles. Then I would reconnect to the CDT.

The route that I was on was really easy walking the whole time. There was hardly any elevation gain at all, which was amazing. Plus the trail was free of any obstacles. I just got to walk and didn’t have to worry about much at all. I made really good time before I knew it, I got to the junction. At this point, the sun was high in the sky for the first time in days. There was no sign of weather in the forecast from what I could see.

When I was approaching the junction, the sun reminded me of my wet tent. There’s been a ton of condensation and rain recently. Last night wasn’t bad, but I never dried my tent out from the night before. So I decided to stop briefly at the junction and do myself a big favor. While my tent dried, I ate a snack and just hung out for a minute. The funny thing is that I will procrastinate and put off drying my gear. Even though when you actually do it, the whole process is very fast. Even still, I often don’t do it at all.

I wasn’t there long before everything was dry and I was able to pack up and continue walking. And over the remainder of the day I would wind up seeing so many hikers! I still had at least 20 or so miles to go for the day. But going past the junction, it felt like I saw a hiker every hour or so. Sometimes two or more an hour!

Just like many other days on trail, I entertained myself by reminiscing on my 2024 hike. Sometimes that’s the easiest way for me to distract myself over the course of a long day. I just start remembering as much as I can about the area. Such aa thinking about the exact place where we all stopped to take a break, or where we got water next. Sometimes the water source that I previously utilized won’t exist anymore. It was flowing a month or two ago back in 2024, but this year it’s not flowing at all. I’ve even gone past lakes that are completely dry which previously were bright and beautiful. It’s wild to have photos contrasting so drastically from one year to the next.

The first few weeks on the CDT in 2024 were a really fun time. It’s crazy to think how long it took us to get to the town of Lincoln though. I realize that we started off in glacier and there was a snowstorm almost immediately. Which resulted in taking a few days off right out the gate. And then the mileage we were doing for the first couple weeks was a lot more conservative. As it should be when you’re starting a thru hike. But I think it probably took us around 20 days to get from the border to Lincoln. Sure, in the weeks to come, but we would significantly pick up the pace. But this time around it’s only going to take me about seven days to get from the border to Lincoln. I might’ve shaved off a few more miles here and there doing alternates. But even still, the difference is stark. It’s truly wild to think about. Especially because that wasn’t some hike I did many years ago. That was just last year! How did things change so drastically so quickly?

Over the next few hours that begins seeing so many northbound hikers. The first couple were a delightful surprise. As I hadn’t seen any thru hikers for the entire day! It’s usually very easy to tell the difference between someone going out for a day trip or overnight trip, versus someone who’s been out since the Mexican border. But the majority of the people I’ve seen today were all on horseback actually. I had a lot of fun chatting with some of the northbound hikers who I saw. And a couple of them recognized me off social media, which was cool too.

I spent a few minutes in particular talking to one guy named Yoats. He was super nice and it was fun just to have a chill and casual conversation with him. It honestly felt like catching up with an old friend or someone you hadn’t seen in a while. We stood there on the trail for a bit before both continuing on in the opposite direction. He had told me that he had a friend behind him, Nona, and I wound up passing that guy within a minute or two of seeing Yoats. A lot of the people thought I was doing some kind of a flip-flop or something. But at this point, I’m pretty used to the fact that my existence is just confusing to northbound hikers. It’s incredibly late in the season!

Later on in the day, I would eventually have some climbing to do. But I definitely remembered this area and the fact that there was a ton of elevation gain coming for me. Initially, after reconnecting to the CDT, I just had a long and gradual climb. Then I dropped down and grab some water. And in the next couple hours is when I passed the majority of the hikers for the day. But as I got closer and closer to my end destination for the day, I would have to wrap things up with a couple steep climbs.

There was also going to be a very long water carry coming up. I remembered they’re being a 10–15 mile water carry in this area. And I actually was almost banking on getting water at a lake which I remembered. But I decided to check the comments, which were honestly shocking. I remember taking a break at this bright beautiful lake last year with my buddy Crigas. I took tons of pictures of the lake because it was so beautiful. Now one year later it is completely bone dry. There is absolutely no water to collect from it whatsoever. So I had to stop off a bit earlier in the evening to grab water.

That would be the last water for 20 miles, which basically meant I would be carrying water overnight and all day tomorrow until I came to Lincoln. I’m going to have about 23 miles tomorrow to get into the town of Lincoln. So when I did pass that last water source of the day, I made sure I could fill up on a little bit extra. That means I would have whatever I needed for the night tonight and day tomorrow. I’m definitely using less water in the evenings though because I’m not cooking at night. And while I have been waking up early and been doing dehydrated meals for breakfast, I don’t know if I’ll do that tomorrow on a town day. I’m always antsy to get to town.

Over the entire time that I’ve been in the Bob Marshall wilderness and now the scapegoat wilderness, I haven’t had service once. The last time I had service was on the road walk leaving East glacier. Then I’ve been pretty out there in the woods for the last four days. But this evening, I started climbing up and remembered that at some point I would be getting a little bit of service. Though I figured it might not be until tomorrow.

But when I came to the water source for the night, I decided to check my phone as I filtered water. And wouldn’t you know, I had a couple bars! Which is nice after not having any connection for literally four days. Obviously I’ve seen people here and there along the trail. But no one‘s walking the same direction as me so it’s not like I talked to anyone for more than a minute or so at a time.

I scrolled and checked some messages. But definitely didn’t want to take too much time because it was going to be getting dark soon. Once again, doing a little bit of night hiking seemed inevitable. But I wanted to do as little as possible. Right before I left the water source I saw that I got an audio message from Slide. Because we’re both on separate trails simultaneously, it’s pretty much a sure shot that you’ll never both have service at the same time. It was nice to be able to download that and listen to his message over the next 10 minutes or so while I walked.

Then in the next half hour or so, I began to lose daylight. I had made my way up the first tier of a climb. Then wound up heading into a valley before the next climb started. Even though it’s a flat grassy area the options for camping honestly were pretty mediocre. But it was getting dark, so my standards were about as low as they could go. I walked up to a trail junction, which I remembered from last year. Then wound up going a little bit further until I found a nice flat spot for the night. It wasn’t the best and I expected a lot of condensation. But it would just have to do.

I got set up and comfortable for the night. The spot wasn’t as great as last night, but was still way better than the night before. Then I laid in my tent for a while and did a little bit of stuff on my phone. Later on in the evening, I got out to go pee and looked across the valley from me. That’s when I caught two bright green eyes staring back at me from a pretty fair distance. Close enough to be a little unnerving, but not close enough that the animal could just run right at me. Green eyes are usually an indicator of mountain lion or deer, which are two hilariously contrasting options. I just wound up getting back into my tent after and trying to ignore it. And for the next hour or so I wouldn’t hear anything at all. But after another hour or so I wound up hearing something very large, walk past my tent. You have to be pretty big to make noise walking across grass. But of course, I didn’t have it in me to look out. And in the lovely nature of most animals, they couldn’t be bothered to bother me. Not long after that I finally fell asleep for the night.

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