Darby, MT

When I run into a dayhiker, I always wonder what motivates them to do a certain section of the CDT. Today, we walked through a burnt section, that crossed the same dirt forest service road every 2 miles. The sun blistered through the scorched section down on us, the trail wasn’t greatly maintained, and blowdowns (or rather, old burnt trees falling down), were all over the place. Either way, the dayhikers seemed to be having a great time.

Storm Lake

We’d been miraculously making 24s for the first time on this trail, and I realized we could make it to the pass at that speed. There was a problem: Our packages were at the Sula Country Store (13 miles from the pass) and one of those packages had shoes–which Brian no longer could wear with his broken foot. We had to get the shoes, get to Darby (31 miles from the pass) to mail them. Also, Sula’s diner isn’t open past 3 pm, so dinner options there didn’t look great. The store closed at 6–could we make 25 by 5, hitch a ride to the store and get there by 6?

Goat Flat

Miraculously, at 5 pm, we made it to Lost Trail Pass, a three way intersection at the Idaho/Montana border. For the past 3 hours of our hike to the pass, we’d been watching a storm blowing in, and as we reached the road, I grabbed my jacket. Across the road, I saw a kid hopping out of a pulled-over RV, taking a picture of me. “Great, I must look so dishelved that the kid wants to take a picture of a dirty hitchhiker,” I thought.

The RV turned around, and to my dismay, picked us up! It was an old 70s style RV that immediately reeked of old cigarette smoke. With now shabby looking valour seats, torn up sheets as curtains, and particle board walls, it certainly made for an interesting habitat. But the front window was amazing like a tour bus as we headed down the pass towards Sula Country Store with the Bitteroot Mountains on our left. The storm hit and even at the speed of the 10 mile per gallon RV, wind came through the window at me. The tattooed, slightly faded woman in the front held a bong, and her kid (the one who I thought took a picture of me–turned out it was the “Welcome to Montana” sign behind me), came up to the front seat.

I bought my first pack of cigarettes at the Sula Country Store. The RV driver was getting them for himself, and I figured it’d be a gift. We picked up our package, and since the RV was headed towards Darby anyway, hopped back on. The lady in the front seat used the bong and handed the kid the bong to hold while she did something else. When the kid asked her a question, she threatened to medicate him. The miracle of the trail is getting the chance to interact with people completely different than my normal eco-Ivy League crowd. Either way, they were nice enough to give us a ride to Darby, and the unbelievable fact that we got to Darby by 6pm–with our package from Sula–made it well worth it!