Lucy Ondo

August 1, 2021, to August 6, 2021

The summer 2021 the plan was to hike the first section alone. Hyojin, my niece, was planning to join me in Lincoln for the Bob Marshall Wilderness section of the CDT. Unfortunately, the best plans went south.

This section was hiked alone. I drove a rental car to Helena then hired a shuttle driver to deliver me to McDonald Pass. I arrived at the trail head late in the day around 7pm. It felt good to get a few miles in after the long drive. As soon as I was a couple of miles up the trail I saw a moose. We stared at each other as the trail circles around.

I hiked until dusk and set up camp before reaching the top of the mountain as lightning was starting to strike. Fortunately it did not rain long or hard. In the morning I crested the top just in time to enjoy the sunrise.

During lunch my tent parts were set out to dry in the wind. The ground sheet was the last to dry.

The first water on the trail was 20 miles in. This is what I saw first….

Luckily, this was not far away. Happily, I started yesterday with 4 liters of water because by the time I reached this point I was out of water and happy to see the spring feeding the trough.

The third night, I found a flat spot on the edge of a ridge. This is the sunrise in the morning.

Unfortunately, I ran into rain and thunder storms on the hike into Rogers Pass. It rained endlessly and topping mountain passes in the middle of lightening strikes was frightening. One strike started a forest fire not far from me. Sometimes I had to waited out the storms to continue onward. Soon after this photo was taken, I spent the night in a heavy storm. Luckily, I set up my tent and had just crawled in when the rain, thunder and lightening started up again. The storms seemed to roll in quickly in the early afternoon and then again in the evening.

Two thru hikers passed me on the trail, otherwise I saw no other hikers in the section.

I arrived at Rogers Pass early in the morning of August 6 and luckily was able to hitch a ride into Lincoln with a man parked at the trail head.