CONTINENTAL DIVIDE NATIONAL TRAIL HIKE

I'm pausing from blogging about Italy to post a few pictures from our 14 mile hike on a very small, but gorgeous portion the Continental Divide National Trail. Organized by the Montana Wilderness Association, we started out by breaking up into 2 groups. One group took 2 vehicles to the south end of the trail, and the other took 2 vehicles to the north end. The 2 groups, hiking in opposite directions, met in the middle and exchanged car keys, which we used at the end of hike to drive back to our initial meeting point in town.

 Bear Grass was healthy and prevalent all through the hike

 Our fearless leader Wayne

 We started at about 6,900 feet of elevation, climbed to about 7,200 and stayed between 7-8,000 feet of elevation. The views were stunning, including being able to identify mountain ranges all around our area.

 Hiking the ridge

 Continental Divide Trail #440

 Beautiful wildflowers of every kind punctuated practically the entire trail

 Nevada Mountain (right) and Black Mountain (left) at about 8,300 feet elevation, were the sentinels during our hike

 Not a bad place to take a lunch break

  A tired but happy bunch. JIR