Day 119: Back on the Divide north of Helena

Mileage: 31.4 miles (2238-2269.4)

We woke up slowly and I made coffee and oatmeal. I slept like a rock, though a few mosquitoes buzzed in my ears overnight. 

Got going by around 8am and hiked and talked most of morning. Commando is a lot more set into his routine than I am, dividing the day into "shifts" including breaks mid-morning, for lunch, mid-afternoon, and at the end of the day to setup camp and cook dinner. I, on the other hand, take breaks whenever I feel like, eat all the time, and have no real routine, other than not having a routine. Talking about it he compared himself to a mental patient, saying he'd go crazy without the routine to fall back on. I liked just adapting to each day and being free to do whatever I felt like. That all said, I was happy to follow his routine for a few days as I really didn't care when I took my breaks, etc.

I got lost in the morning and ended up walking right past an old railway tunnel, but did miss the trestle which was marked on the map. The tunnel was pretty cool, but we didn't go inside, anxious to get back to the CDT. We got back and continued to follow the amalgam of poorly marked trail and road as it wound up and down the divide.

So, we took a break mid-morning, at lunch, and so on per Commando's routine. The wrinkle thrown-in was a couple guys in a pickup stopped and gave us each a beer and water midday under the hot sun. We were both dehydrated and the Bud Light tasted as good as I can ever remember, so crisp and refreshing.

A mile or two later we reached the spring and had to reach way far down to fill our bottles, but were just thankful there was any water at all. Then we began a section right on the divide continuously heading up and down, up and down. The divide was made up of dry, red dirt and what seemed to be old metamorphic rock. 

We finally made it to the junction with the next water source by 8:30 and after some tense moments of not finding water, we found a few puddles in a stream bed and replenished our bottles for the night. Both dehydrated, we headed back up the hill where we'd setup camp and left our packs. We joked around a bit and I gave myself a sponge bath inside the tent and both turned in by around 10:30pm.