CDT Part 2 – Day 7 – Butte

Date: 7/31/21

Daily Miles: 17

2021 CDT Total Miles: 132

Overall CDT Total Miles: 2202

We finally had our first cool night of the trip…perfect sleeping temperature. We seem to have gotten into our routine for packing up in the morning…first put on socks and shoes (Beardoh is much faster at this since he stores his in his hammock), get the bear bags down from their hanging spot, pack up, stretch, and go. Somehow that all takes us 40-50 minutes each morning.

The walking today was quite nice. One of the main reasons we decided to take this longer route by Butte, instead of taking the Anaconda Cutoff several days ago, was that we had heard how nice the trails are around Butte…and that has certainly been the case. In some ways, it feels like the trails around Lake Tahoe, with their gentle ups and downs and soft tread.

We had plans to meet a trail angel at the I-90 overpass at 4pm, which meant that we could have a pretty relaxing pace, but just not stop for too long. We got to our meeting spot about 15 minutes early and just sat in the grass while we waited.

We were very appreciative of Dane giving us a ride into town, since Butte was 10 miles away and it probably would have been hard to hitch at an on-ramp. He dropped us off at the hotel where we had reservations and luckily they had two rooms ready for check-in, so we were able to get in right away.

After seven days on the trail, we are very ready for a shower, laundry and some pizza while watching Ted Lasso. Looking forward to a day for our bodies to be able to rest.