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Continental Divide Trail (CDT) - 3,100 miles - View Gallery

It’s a celebration of the wilderness, of America’s places of singular solitude. On its journey between Mexico and Canada, the 3,100-mile Continental Divide Trail (CDT) weaves its way through the wild places of the west along a rugged route that traces where water flows east or west off the crests of the Rocky Mountains. It treats hikers to geological wonders, including lava flows frozen in time at El Malpais National Monument; a massive escarpment, the Chinese Wall, in the Bob Marshall Wilderness; bubbling bubbling mudpots and spraying geysers at Yellowstone National Park; and glacier-carved landscapes at Glacier National Park. It tells tales of human history upon the land, from the Zuni Acoma Trail trade route to the lead miners of Colorado. It embraces remote places of incredible beauty, such as the San Juan Mountains, the Wind River Range, and the Chama River Wilderness. It is truly a place to get away from it all.

Long distance hikers know the CDT as the most challenging part of the Triple Crown. Its lengthy remote sections make logistical planning crucial. After 30 years, more than 67% of the trail is complete, but it still means roadwalks and wayfinding between broken sections of trail, often with multiple possibilities available. Less than 80 thru-hikers are thought to attempt the trail each year. For day hikers, the best access to the CDT is in the many popular public lands that the trail crosses, such as Rocky Mountain National Park, Glacier National Park, and Yellowstone National Park.

Benton MacKaye, well known for his advocacy of the Appalachian Trail, wrote a 1966 memo requesting “the creation of a trail along the crest of the Continental Divide,” which he called the “Cordilleran Trail.” When the Appalachian and Pacific Crest Trails were designated as National Scenic Trails in 1968, the Department of the Interior began to study the potential for a trail in the middle of the nation. After an end-to-end hike of the Appalachian Trail, Jim Wolf walked the Continental Divide and went on to advocate for the trail’s designation before Congress. He formed the Continental Divide Society to gather supporters together. In 1978, the CDT was finally designated a National Scenic Trail. But struggles with making the trail a priority among the many federal lands it crossed kept the project from blossoming until 1994, when the federal manager, the USDA Forest Service, asked Dr. Stephen Fausel of the Fausel Foundation to put together a public/private partnership to support the trail. The Continental Divide Trail Alliance (CDTA) was born. Based in Pine, Colorado, it is now the primary nonprofit partner in the management of the CDT.

Coordinating volunteer efforts across five states, CDTA has some especially creative programs, such as the CDTA Family Volunteer Adventures program funded by Coleman. It connects children 10 and older with volunteer projects. The Youth Corps puts together trail crews with participants ages 18-25. The public is invited to free, guided “Get on the Divide” adventures each year during the CDTA Trailfest. To learn more, visit www.cdtrail.org

“Fun Facts”
If you’re a flatlander, you’d better get acclimated to the mountains before you hike the CDT! Elevations on this ridgeline trail are consistently higher than any other National Scenic Trail, with the low point being at 4,196 feet along Waterton Lake in Glacier National Park in Montana, and the high point at 14,270 at Grays Peak, Colorado.

Although it spans from one border of the United States to the other, between Mexico and Canada, the 3,100-mile CDT is longer than the distance between our coasts! It’s 2,790 miles between Los Angeles and New York .

To determine the first route for the CDT, members of the Rocky Mountain Trails Association walked the proposed Colorado section and nailed blue cans to trees (which would stay put when the snow fell) to mark their planned route for USDA Forest Service approval. For a while, their section was called the Blue Can Trail.