The Continental Divide Trail promises 3,100 miles of wild, high country between Mexico and Canada. For one hiker writing on The Trek, the dream of finishing it ended not with a summit photo but with a difficult, honest decision near Breckenridge, Colorado — and her account is a useful reality check for anyone eyeing a long hike in the Centennial State.
The trouble began at the Colorado border. After a work-mandated break (she's a substitute teacher and had to teach one day to keep her job) and a snowy stretch her partner JC hiked solo, the pair reached Pagosa Springs and opted for the Creede Cutoff, an alternate that bypasses most of the San Juan Mountains. It sounded like a snow-avoidance win in a low-snow year. Instead, it delivered slushy traverses above steep slopes, 50 mph winds on thin, eroded switchbacks, and a 2,000-foot scree descent that she describes as the most miserable hiking of her life — worse than a month of rain on the Appalachian Trail.
The pattern repeated through the Collegiate Peaks: nerve-racking drops beside the trail, the scree descent off Lake Ann Pass, and the near-vertical, sandy slog up Hope Pass — where a 100-person ultramarathon training group came bounding past. A highlight came at Twin Lakes, where the abandoned Interlaken resort and a sunset loop around the lakes provided her favorite view of Colorado. But ahead lay Grays Peak and Argentine Pass, and the trail-app comments about exposed ridgelines filled her with dread rather than excitement. She realized she'd stopped enjoying the trail entirely.
Her solution was pragmatic: skip the scary section, bus from Breckenridge to Grand Lake, and let JC — on a six-month visa, chasing his Triple Crown — hike on alone for a few days. She spent the time with her father visiting from Minnesota, hiking an easy waterfall trail in Rocky Mountain National Park and camping outside Grand Lake.
There's a takeaway here beyond one person's story. Thru-hiking culture can quietly gatekeep, and she pushes back on it: finishing requires time, money, energy and mental headroom that not everyone has, and the trail shouldn't be closed to those who lack them. Turning a completion task back into a journey — even if it means bussing around a ridgeline — is a legitimate way to experience Colorado's most spectacular long-distance route.
For holidaymakers rather than hardcore hikers, the towns along this stretch are worth the trip on their own: Pagosa Springs' hot springs, Creede's baseball-field hiker camping, Salida's arcades and downtown, the ski-resort bustle of Copper Mountain and Breckenridge, and the quiet lakeside museum at Interlaken all sit on or near the CDT/Colorado Trail corridor.
