Day Nineteen, 6 July, 23.5 Miles
At Mile 368.5, Poptart 100/1000
Lake passed by my camp early as I struggled to get myself moving. Caught him as he took a break and we hiked an old, grass covered jeep road together. Nice, new trail up Thunderbolt Mountain. Fairly standard road/trail forest/meadow National Forest fare after that. Nobody around other than Lake. Found a full can of beer beside the trail. Some careless fool. With all the empty cans around I had figured it would simply be a matter time. It had a bit of cow love on it and had been through unknown warm/cold cycles but I wasn't going to leave it there now was I? I knew I was headed for a spring, and yes! The trough it was pumping into was cold. An hour later I was enjoying a fridge-cold beer with my instant mash and 100th poptart. Best Bud Light I will ever have. Of that I have no doubt. Finally cleared and got warm at 6pm after attempting to snow earlier in the day. Probably the last I will see of Lake for a while. He's heading towards Anaconda while I go for Butte. Up until recently the trail that circles to the east and south of Butte, the official route, (following the divide, sort of) was mostly boring road walking so most CDT'ers took a shortcut through the town of Anaconda. Also mostly boring road walking but 70 miles shorter. Apparently the Butte route has been much improved in recent years. We shall see. I'm in no hurry anyway and would prefer to stick with the divide.
I'm packing out my empty can. Something that appears to be too difficult for most of these man truck driving folk who litter the road with their aluminium.
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