Rachael DeLano

Continental Divide Trail Complete!

Rachael DeLano
Continental Divide Trail Complete!

On September 1, 2018 I completed the Continental Divide Trail (CDT). The trail is approximately 3000 miles long. It took me 136 days to walk from the Mexican border, starting near Lordsburg, NM, and ending at the Canadian border in Glacier National Park.

Thinking back on my CDT trek, my first night on trail stands out to me. I woke up in the middle of the night, after having hiked 16 miles on my first day. I had to pee so I stumbled out of my tent and into the sand of the New Mexican desert. Suddenly, I found myself standing in what felt like a blanket of stars. The complete and utter darkness gave way to a perfect view of the sky, the milky way, and more stars that I have ever seen. I stood there in awe of the universe. Tears ran down my cheeks as the doubts I had starting this hike faded away and I knew I was in exactly the right place.

From beginning to end, this trail challenged me and I fell more in love with it each day. Like most loves, some days you are positive you hate them, but then you remember why you’re there.

On this trail, instead of blogging like planned, or vlogging (never planned), I did audio updates. Some of my updates were assignments as part of being on the Backpacker Radio podcast backpackerradio.libsyn.com and other were just done for myself. I will be transcribing those audio recordings into posts as well as posting the original content. Stay tuned for that and…hopefully some yoga career updates!

Love,

Rabbit