Couch surfing at Tyler’s in Helena with Woodchuck, Cricket, and Chip

I had been feeling a bit homesick lately and really missing my wife Vanessa, my friends, family, the ocean, and my other life. I wasn’t on trail to run away from this life but rather to experience some of the wildest parts left of this country, go on a grand adventure while my body was still up for it, and hopefully come back as a better person for it. For a while, I needed to strip down my life to the basics as my real life had become too cluttered. As Thoreau wrote:

“I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.”

Lowest terms for me still includes a budget of about 8 sheets of toilet paper a day but I’m working on that. Lowest terms also includes Vanessa whom I miss terribly and it turns out will be Colorado with friends until about August 10. If I can average 25 miles a day (including nearoes and zeroes), I’ll be able to make Pinedale WY to finish up Montana, Idaho, and northern Wyoming just in time to flip down to Colorado to give Vanessa a kiss hello and goodbye in the Denver Airport when she flies back home. This was not going to happen unless I set out on my own and started making serious tracks southwards.

So….. Cricket and I said our teary goodbyes in Helena and the next day we split. Now I was coming off of a nearo and a zero, had a belly full of good town food, had 2 long nights rest, had been doing short (mostly 20 mile) days with Cricket, and had just got my new trail runners. I was flying down the trail which mainly consisted of forest roads and was passing everybody. At some point it occurred to me that I had a chance of doing the 79 miles from Helena MT to Anaconda MT in under 48 hours. This would have seemed like crazy talk a few weeks before (I had never done more than 32 miles in a day) but with all the road walking, easy trails, less than 4000′ of climbing a day, and feeling really good for this segment, it wasn’t seeming so crazy anymore.

The last 15 miles were on paved toad

No getting lost on these trails

The trail turned out to be easy to follow and fast, the mountains mostly rolling, and the last 15 miles were on paved roads so by just getting up early and walking until well after sunset, it was possible to put up big miles.

During the night walk,the forest service was experimenting with using dogs to protect the sheep in the adjacent fields so for miles, in the dark, I was followed at a distance by one barking howling dog after another. I was walking by starlight without a headlamp but the dogs always seemed to know where I was.

When I got to Anaconda, the first thing I did was to get a big 32oz sugary soda and an ice cream, find a place to stay, then sleep for a good chunk of the afternoon remaining to recover. If you include some of the detours I took and the wandering about town, it was over 80 miles in less than 48 hours. If you include the extra half day of sleeping to recover from this crazy effort, the average was not so impressive. Won’t be doing that again.

Giant slag pile near open pit mine in Anaconda MT. The area around the smelter is on the national Superfund priority list.

The new shoes on the left did the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs. The torn up shoes on the right made it through about 600 trail miles in about 3 1/2 weeks and into the trash bin. Bye old buddies!

Anaconda was beautiful, the folks friendly, and I was able to meet up with a pile of trail buddies (most of which hitched into town), but I was eager to get back into the mountains. The next section would not be so easy.