Day 77: Thunderbolt Mountain

It was a full moon. I woke up at 1:30am thinking it must already be 5am based on how bright it was. At 3:30, I woke up again and had to put my Buff on as a blindfold to try to get back to sleep. When my 4am alarm went off, I almost rolled over to try to catch up on the sleep I had missed, but eventually I got up the gumption to start packing.

I didn’t need any headlamp to pack thanks to the moonlight and I reckon some city light pollution too.

I continued down the logging road, walking towards the setting moon as the sky behind me lightened at the sun’s approach. I assumed the trail would remain on the road for several more miles. I stopped briefly at a nice pond under the risen sun, but I didn’t stay. I didn’t need any water and I didn’t need a break yet.

A while later, I found myself at a barrier and a sign with skull and crossbones telling me I couldn’t enter a mine waste restoration site. I checked the map. I had missed some turn a mile back. I turned around and started climbing back up the hill I had been coming down for the last 15 minutes. On the way back, though, I saw a nice buck and a couple of does. I finally found the place where a footpath unexpectedly left the road. There was a CDT sign there making the newly built section, but there was no waypoint marker on Guthook warning me I would be leaving the road at all, so I hadn’t been looking for it when I passed it 40 minutes before. So that’s how I earned two useless bonus miles and a deer sighting I might have missed.

Anyway, I definitely needed a snack break now, so I sat down next to a small stream just inside the woods. I still didn’t need water though. It turned out there was way more water on the section than Guthook said and I had carried way too much out of the city. I did at this time filter the water I had carried out in my dirty bag into my main bag for convenience.

During my break, I was passed by two northbound section hikers who were meticulously marking things that Guthook had missed. I asked them to mark the road-trail junction I had just missed, as well as that random spring I had found two days before.

There’s nothing much to say about the next few miles. I listened to podcasts and walked through the woods. I stopped for snacks. I stopped for lunch on a log in the shade of a tree. At my afternoon snack time, I finally reached the creek I had decided I would finally collect water from. I was joined here by Southbound Stu from Seattle, just four days into his last section to finish the CDT, headed northbound from Butte to Canada. He said a lot of things, some of it somewhat useful, but most of it inaudible over the waterfall I was sitting next to since he sat way up the hill 20 feet away to eat dinner. I told him about the Glacier permitting process and he told me about a trail I might end up taking into Butte in a few days depending on how things go.

I left him there eating and climbed to the viewpoint on Thunderbolt Mountain to have dinner. After dinner, I thought I might as well go up to the viewpoint on the summit as well since it was only a quarter mile up. There was the foundation of a removed lookout tower there and a view that would have been better without the haze.

I went on another mile or so looking for the next available campsite. It turned out to be an open area next to a nice piped spring with one little space that was flat and almost level. It was already 7:30. I was getting sleepy. It was good enough. The easy access to water was a nice bonus. I set up, went to bed, and put my blindfold on to fall asleep to the sound of trickling water and busy woodpeckers.

Trail miles (not counting the bonus miles): 20.6

Distance to I-90: 71.2 miles

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