Gear and technique review for the Continental Divide Trail
Shelter, Pack and Sleep systems say a lot about a hiker. Here’s my CDT Big Three manifesto.
Trailstar + Shaped Groundsheet + Bivy
The whole point of this combo was to meet successfully the diverse conditions inherent to such a long trip while providing all the usual: protection, comfort and light weight. The short answer is it did.
Highest camp of the trip at 12300′
Shoes, poles, stove or a kitchen wipe. Everything is important.
Merrell All Out Blaze Aero Sport
These shoes worked well for me. They’re soft and ventilated with moderate drop. My feet don’t seem to have very specific needs anyway.
1400 miles vs. 0
The most remarkable fact is probably not that much about the shoes themselves but about my use of them on the CDT as I completed the trail in just 2 pairs where the average seems to be more than twice that. That’s 1500 miles per pair. This is probably not that much about the durability of the shoes but about my using them to the very last bit, something discouraged by many users that doesn’t seem to have any negative effect on me.
When the first pair was about done, I ordered another one online and shipped ahead.
I brought navigation and planning together as the relevant resources often overlap. In a bit of a stretch, let me consider the soft ware as gear.
As of 2019, there was 3 CDT-specific map sets and 2 smartphone apps. Then there’s the generic map sets and generic apps that you could adapt. I carried one map set on paper, the others on electronic form, plus the two specific Apps and two other generic ones. Most of my navigation was on the Guthook App, allegedly the most popular.
Maybe it’s that I planned for this trip in a bit of a rush, maybe it was just bad luck, maybe a sign of the times but I had several cases of gear/strategy failure, something I’m not used to and makes for some worthy comment. These below are the main offenders:
ZPacks CloudCover
This is an old item, no longer available, built with plain DCF. It is not breathable and it doesn’t mean to be. I find this an interesting idea, currently unfashionable, if it ever was, with some potential to work well in some circumstances. It is a jacket with full front zip, pit zips and a hood with cord-lock and visor, i.e. a full jacket. No other extras though. One key feature is it weights 83 gr. I’ve had this jacket since around 2011 and I had only taken it with me on one multi-week trip where it didn’t rain much.
British Columbia, 2012
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