Continental Divide Trail

Route choice is the defining CDT planning fact — the trail is officially only 70 percent complete by federal designation, and thru-hikers stitch the gaps with sanctioned alternate routes through the Great Divide Basin, the San Juan high-country, and the Anaconda-Pintler. Unlike the AT (single official treadway) or PCT (single official treadway with minor reroutes), the CDT is a corridor concept: the Continental Divide Trail Coalition publishes the official ground-track plus three commonly-walked alternates per state, and most thru-hikers mix-and-match based on snow year and personal route philosophy. The trail was congressionally designated in 1978 under the National Trails System Act and is administered by the US Forest Service with the CDT Coalition as the recognized stewardship partner — a structure that mirrors the PCT but with weaker on-the-ground signage because completion remains decades behind schedule.

The southern terminus at Crazy Cook Monument in New Mexico's Bootheel sits 30 miles down a primitive dirt-and-sand road that no RV should attempt; the canonical rig staging is at Columbus, NM (Pancho Villa State Park, 30-ft rig cap with electric and water hookups, 10 minutes north of the international port of entry), where the Continental Divide Trail Coalition coordinates a paid shuttle service to the trailhead on Saturdays during the March-April departure window. Hikers staying at Pancho Villa SP overnight before the shuttle get the rare combination of a paved-pad campsite with hookups within an hour of a National Scenic Trail terminus.

Northbound hikers exit Glacier National Park at the Chief Mountain border crossing in Montana — the canonical northern endpoint. Glacier's Many Glacier Campground (35-ft rig cap with no hookups, reservable on recreation.gov but books out 6 months ahead) is the closest rig staging for finishing hikers, though the trail itself enters Glacier from the south via the Two Medicine area where the campground holds 40-ft rigs with a partial-hookup loop. Section-hikers stage at Wolf Creek Pass on CO 160 (USFS Wolf Creek Snotel parking accepts oversize day-use vehicles, the nearest RV campground is South Fork Campground 20 miles west with 35-ft cap and partial hookups), Rawlins WY (the trail crosses Interstate 80 in town, where multiple commercial RV parks line the I-80 frontage road for rig fleet drops), West Yellowstone MT (the CDT exits Yellowstone NP into the Lee Metcalf Wilderness here — full-hookup RV parks fill the town's east side), Steamboat Springs CO (the trail crosses Rabbit Ears Pass on US 40, and Steamboat Lake State Park 20 minutes north accepts 35-ft rigs with full hookups), and East Glacier MT (the rail-line town at Glacier's southern entrance where the campground at Two Medicine is the obvious anchor).

The trail's Colorado segment crosses thirteen 12,000-foot passes — late-July snow on Hope Pass and the San Juan complex is the most common reason a planned section gets bailed, and the Coalition publishes annual snow assessments in mid-June to help hikers calibrate. The Wyoming Basin segment (the Great Divide Basin proper) has 80 miles of water-cache-dependent walking where the trail leaves the actual divide and crosses sage-and-cattle country at 6,500 ft elevation. The Idaho-Montana border ridge through the Bitterroot Range is the most-remote 200 miles on any National Scenic Trail in the lower 48 — resupply gaps reach 100+ miles and the nearest paved road is sometimes a day's bushwhack south.