With about 800 miles left on the Continental Divide Trail, one thru-hiker has crossed from Yellowstone into the stretch locals jokingly call 'Montanaho' – the long section where the route tracks the Montana-Idaho line – and the clock is ticking. Days are shortening, rain has turned to freezing rain, and the northern terminus at the Canadian border is pulling hard.
The early miles brought the kind of small-town rhythms that make the CDT what it is. An overnight at Island Park Lodge and a package run to West Yellowstone (aided, apparently, by a lucky potato carried for hitching) preceded a wet push into the Centennial Mountains, where a mother moose and her calf repeatedly used the same trail. A 27-mile day ended at Aldous Lake sharing a campfire with a dad and his five-year-old on a first overnight trip.
Lima, Montana delivered both a feed and a story: a steakhouse dinner at The Peat (worth beating a rainstorm to reach), a floor to sleep on behind the restaurant courtesy of southbound hikers, and roughly two hours of sleep thanks to a host convinced his phone had been stolen by the kitchen staff. From there, wet Montana soil – famously adhesive – slowed the road walk out of town before a joyful reunion with a whole bubble of northbound hikers in Leadore, a one-general-store town where 13 of them descended on the local diner for breakfast and Jen at the Mustang Inn hosted an impromptu zero day.
The final stretch blurred past in big-mile days: Lemhi Pass, where Lewis and Clark crossed the Continental Divide; the Anaconda alternate with a zero at Pintler's Portal Hostel and a last trailside Dairy Queen; a pub trivia win at Mount Ascension Brewing in Helena; and a night at an alpaca ranch that hosts CDT hikers and Great Divide mountain bikers. The one constant downturn was the weather – relentless freezing rain that chilled pace and morale and dropped the writer off the back of the group, setting up a final push through Glacier National Park to the monument at the border.
For travellers, this is a nice window into what a CDT hike actually feels like in autumn: less summit glory than mud, motel floors, hostel kindness and race-you-to-the-border urgency. If you're considering a section hike, southern Montana and the Montana-Idaho corridor offer easier logistics than you'd think – small-town lodges, hostels, steakhouses and general stores strung along the route – but the season is short. Later starters spend their whole hike racing the freeze, just like this crew.
