The history of hiking The Continental Divide Trail

A hiker walks along the trail to Knapsack Col on CDT’s alternate route in Wyoming’s Wind River Range.
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Kevin “Kip” Rusk stares off into the distance over the northern Colorado Divide. On his 1977 trek, Rusk set the goal of sticking as strictly to the Divide as possible.
In 1922, two young women pause on a day hike at Montana’s Priest Pass.
Bill Gamber, founder of outdoor gear company Big Agnes, helps the CDT celebrate its 40th anniversary. Big Agnes adopted 72 miles of the trail and was part of a legion of other trail adopters wielding hammers and nails to help fully sign the CDT.
Two hikers head toward Grants, New Mexico.
A storm closes in on the plains of San Agustin.
A late spring hiker walks in the white expanse of the San Juan Mountains.
From Nebo Pass, sun and snow spotlight the Rio Grande Pyramid and a distinctive feature called the Window.
An expansive view opens up as a hiker approaches Cottonwood Pass.
Spider Lake sits in the Bald Mountain Basin of the Wind River Range in Wyoming.
In Glacier National Park, the Ptarmigan Wall path leads to the eponymous tunnel built in 1930 to allow hikers to avoid a precipitous climb that previously existed between Many Glacier and Belly River Valley.

The Appalachian Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail have both become famous in books and film, achieving notoriety as two classic ways to experience the United States on foot. But there is another and less-frequented third path that runs down the spine of the nation and across five states, and, according to Barney Scott Mann, there are many reasons to hike it. In The Continental Divide Trail: Exploring America’s Ridgeline Trail, Mann writes about this less well-known option, a 3,100-mile journey from Mexico to Canada. The book chronicles the first steps of the trailblazers (literally) who envisioned the CDT’s creation and describes the various organizations that have since kept it accessible to the heartiest of hiking enthusiasts. These pages are an ode to the trail’s beauty and travails, its glorious vistas and its history.

The Continental Divide Trail: Exploring America’s Ridgeline Trail
By Barney Scout Mann
288 pages, hardcover: $50.
Rizzoli New York, 2018.

This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline The history of hiking The Continental Divide Trail.

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