by: Jessica Lewis

Have you ever done something that you thought was way out of your range of capability both physically and mentally and had it change your life?  Have you ever spent time completely devoted to bettering yourself as a person?  That’s just what happened to me on the CDT.

Just over a year ago when I was 14, my family and I (my mom, dad, older sister, two pack donkeys and a dog) set out to trek from Canada to Mexico on the Continental Divide Trail.  It’s 3,000 miles long, took six long grueling months, and went through some of the most beautiful and rugged country in America.  We started in Wyoming hiking north.  Three months later and after seeing five grizzly bears we made it to Canada.  We then turned around and drove back to Wyoming and started south for the next three months through the fall snows in Colorado, and massive grasshoppers which grossed me out in New Mexico on the way to the border of Mexico our final destination. We had so many wonderful, sad, funny, hard things happen on our trip.

We averaged 15 miles a day through Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and Colorado, and once down in New Mexico we bumped it up to low 20’s most days and sometimes even 30 or more.  Every once in awhile my dad would determine we needed a break and suggest a light mileage day of 10 miles or so.   We came to dread those.

“Hey let’s take it easy and have a 10 mile day,” Dad would say in our morning meeting.  Whoosh…a big red flag would go racing up in our minds, the dog would whimper and the donkeys would flee.  A 10 mile day should have been a relatively easy day and have felt restful, but, that’s not what 10-mile days were really like.  I recall them as “memorably hellacious.”  

One of our 10-mile days came at the end of a long hard week and was unforgettable.  When the guidebook said strenuous it meant strenuous, but when it said easy or moderate we also expected strenuous, with some difficult navigating, probably some backtracking, and undoubtedly bushwhacking as well.  The guidebook described that day as “Moderate” but here’s how it really played out.  First was supposed to be a 1,000 foot decent which felt surprisingly like an uphill (and was), then a 800 foot climb back up the Divide ridge (turned out to be 1,200 feet up) and for the last five miles a gradual down hill on a two track.  Then the book also said “impossible to get lost” just to make us feel like complete idiots as we wandered around the woods looking for our trail.  We did hit the road at the predicted mileage, which was about the only thing that went as planned.

We knew that we were supposed to walk down hill and that Salmon, Idaho was out to our left which was our re-supply point, so we turned left on the road and walked a mile and half, at which point we came to a dead end.  Oh joy, here we go again - back past the point where we ate lunch, back past the spot where we came to the road, and then, on down the road.  So our 10-mile day was officially many hours and many miles beyond that and the consistent down hill described by the book was occasionally a steep up hill.  Well, what can I say, it wasn’t like we had expected an easy day or anything.

In time, after the miles passed beneath our boots one after another the Mexican border came into view.  It was a joy, a relief, a blessing.  People often ask me now, months later if I would do it again.  YES!  Yes I would.  Ten-mile days and all.  I wouldn’t trade that experience on the CDT with my family for anything.  It changed my life forever.