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For those who don’t know us, we’re Ginny and Jim Owen aka Spirit Eagle. We started our first CDT (Continental Divide Trail) thruhike on May 30, 1999. We finished at Palomas, Mexico on Nov 30, 1999. We loved the trail so much we decided to go back and do it again, this time in reverse. On April 18, 2006 we started north on the CDT from the Crazy Cook Monument at the Mexican border and we completed our second border to border trek on October 14, 2006.
Over the years, we’ve had more than a few people ask us for information about hiking the CDT. So at one time, we put a series of posts on the cdt-l email list with some of the information that we either used for planning or acquired along the way during our 1999 thruhike. The theory was that the information would be in the cdt-l archives if anyone else wanted it. But that was a long time ago - and the information in the cdt-l archives has slowly (or maybe not so slowly) become not only obsolete, but hard to find.
There were 10 of those posts, and most of them will be updated and incorporated here. But these are NOT everything you need to plan for a CDT thruhike. They're nothing more than pieces that you might want to add to your planning process – or in some cases that may make your planning process a little easier – or maybe it’ll just answer a few questions. Whatever.
One of the main purposes for this section was as a repository for some of the planning information we used on our own 2006 CDT thruhike. We needed to put some of OUR planning information someplace where we could find it while we were hiking. It served that purpose well, but we found a few inevitable errors and places where the trail had changed over the years. Once we returned, we decided to update the information so that it would be available to other hikers planning their CDT hikes. At the least, it'll provide a basic framework and some basic information for anyone who wants it. Just don't take it too seriously - and keep in mind that this is for "our" hike. You might want to do something different.
Having said all that - we know as well as anyone that information is ephemeral. Things change on the CDT. Sometimes weekly or monthly - sometimes daily. For the CDT in particular, you can't assume that anything that's written about the Trail will be valid when you get there. That includes the information on this site. In the six years between our hikes we found that expected water sources went dry, the trail was rerouted, and businesses came and went. We saw a lot of 'for sale' signs along the trail, both in town and along the trail.
We'd advise anyone who intends to hike to do their own checking - whether mileage, services, or trail conditions. If I were in your boots, I wouldn't completely trust anyone else's information - why should you? As I've warned people before - and as is true of any and all information relating to the CDT - you use this information at your own risk. You're welcome to use what's here - but you're not welcome to carp, whine or complain about it. Nor are you welcome to blame us for errors, omissions or changes in the information. If something doesn't match reality when you get to a particular town, then you can do the same thing we'll have to do - deal with it.
To that end, you might want to read some of the "head stuff" that's on this site - in particular, "What is a Thruhiker?"
Created: Fri, 06 Jan 2004
Revised: 15 Nov 2009Copyright © 2004-2009 Spirit Eagle