CDT Thru-Hike Stats: Showers Make Thru-Hikers Sad and Other Data-Driven Insights From the Trail

A thru-hike is such a transformative, all-encompassing experience that when people ask, “How was your trip?” I struggle to find the right words. How do I explain that it was both the best and hardest thing I’ve ever done? That there were days I cried, yet even in those tough moments, I knew I was exactly where I wanted to be? Over 148 days, I walked from Mexico to Canada along the Continental Divide Trail. I can’t fully capture every moment with words, but I did track the journey in another way — through data.

From the number of steps I took to the elevation I gained or lost each day and even which days I did or didn’t shower, I condensed the adventure into a few columns of numbers. What does it feel like to climb through Colorado’s San Juan Mountains? How often did the rain soak through my gear? Did those challenging moments impact my mood? Let’s dive into the numbers and see what the stats reveal about spending almost five months living on the trail.

Mileage

Let’s start with the most obvious question on any thru hiker’s mind: mileage. The CDT spans roughly 3,100 miles, but as every hiker knows, the number on paper never quite matches the steps you actually take. From route decisions to alternates and a few mishaps, the total mileage can tell a story of its own.

As I tracked my daily miles, it was incredibly satisfying watching the number tick higher, with each step bringing me closer to the Canadian border. But how does that look when we break it down over all 148 days? Let’s look at the miles — where they came easy, where they dragged on, and how they added up.

Mileage: Overview

This graph looks at the breakdown of total miles and steps taken per state. Colorado takes the lead for both with 675 miles and 1.7 million steps while the nebulous border section between Montana and Idaho only clocked 338 miles and 795,000 steps.

With over 6.2 million steps taken and 2,600 miles hiked, the distance traveled often blurred into a mix of mountain climbs, desert sand, and countless hours of navigating blowdowns. I find it fascinating how the steps and mileage data reveal the challenges of specific trail sections on their own without any bias from my memory.

Colorado required the most effort, as indicated by the ratio of steps to miles. This makes perfect sense, as the rugged and snow-covered terrain of the San Juans and Collegiate Peaks necessitated shorter, more careful steps. Similarly, the Idahontana section showed the second-smallest gap between steps and mileage, consistent with the steep and challenging climbs there.

In contrast, Montana and New Mexico — two relatively flatter and easier states — exhibited a greater difference between steps and mileage. It’s interesting to see this visualized, as I believe the ratio of steps to miles accurately reflects how challenging I found each state. However, this data doesn’t account for the time it took to complete each state or how many days the steps and miles were spread across.

With the black dots representing zero days, it’s easy to see where on the trail I got injured. In New Mexico, I spent almost a week in Albuquerque on antibiotics for a scary toenail infection, while in Wyoming, I took a few days off in Lander to give a nasty ankle sprain some time to calm down.

My mileage trended upward as I progressed along the trail, which should come as no surprise. While New Mexico had the easiest and flattest terrain, I opted to take the beginning of the trail slowly to avoid injury and to delay reaching Colorado until I felt comfortable with the remaining snowpack. Even though New Mexico and Montana had a comparable number of miles, I spent almost half as much time in Montana compared to New Mexico.

This plot illustrates why I’m not a fan of breaking down the average miles per day. On days when I either entered or left a town, I was far, far more likely to hike very few miles compared to the days when I both woke up and went to sleep on the trail. My personal favorite? It has to be the day heading into Dubois, Wyoming: the night before, I had camped a third of a mile from the highway so I could hitch in early enough to eat a double breakfast at the Cowboy Cafe. 

If you ignore the days that bookend time spent in town, you can see my average mileage tick upwards from around 20 miles a day in New Mexico to 28 miles a day in Montana. Eight miles a day may not seem like a lot, but it was interesting to experience exhaustion after a 20-mile day early in the trail compared to how easy 28 miles a day felt by the end. 

Mileage: State by State Breakdown

I’ve broken this data into the notable sections of New Mexico: the Bootheel, Gila, Desert, and Colorado Plateau.

I entered New Mexico with the goal of taking this state slow and steady, and feel I did a pretty good job of this. This layout also visualizes the largest stretch of trail I had to miss: 70ish miles of the Gila between Doc Campbell’s and Pie Town. During this time, I was in Albuquerque healing from an infection that didn’t end up taking me off the trail as I had feared, but did end up costing me my big toenail. After returning to the trail at the point my friends had hiked to, I continued towards Pie Town and finished the rest of the New Mexico section without any issues.

I’ve broken this data into the notable sections of Colorado: the San Juans, Cochetopa Valley, Sawatch Mountains, and Northern Colorado, which encompasses everything after Breckenridge until the Wyoming border.

Colorado, on the other hand, was much more variable in terms of mileage. I spent the first two weeks in the snowy, challenging San Juan Mountains, where my daily pace dropped to a crawl. Afterward, in the flat, dry Cochetopa Valley, my speed drastically increased. However, I injured my ankle pretty badly about halfway through the state, causing my mileage to drop again before stabilizing around 25 miles a day in the northern section of the state. 

With Colorado being my home and there being so much access to towns throughout the middle of the state, I found it impossible to resist stopping in every possible town to visit friends. This is reflected in my daily mileage, particularly in the Sawatch region, where I spent some time in a town almost every day.

I’ve broken this data into the notable sections of Wyoming: the Great Divide Basin, Wind River Range, and Yellowstone National Park.

In the easier sections of Wyoming (The Great Divide Basin), my mileage was higher but fell in the Wind River Range where the climbs kicked my butt, rocks aggravated my still very injured and inflamed ankle, and views made me want to slow down and take my time. In Yellowstone, my foot finally started feeling a little better, but my daily mileage was constrained by the permits needed in a National Park. 

The Idahontana section of the trail didn’t seem to have notable sections; Most of the trail was quite similar in terms of the scenery and terrain.

I felt like I truly hit my stride once I reached Idaho. The views, though beautiful, had a certain repetition that made it easy to keep moving. Days slipped by quickly — each mile drawing me closer to Canada — but the end still felt just far enough off that I still couldn’t picture it. This steady rhythm was partly thanks to taking no zero days. My shortest day in this whole stretch was an 11-mile trek into the town of Lima.

I’ve broken this data into the notable sections of Montana: the Bitterroot Mountains, the Pintler Region near Anaconda and Helena, the Bob Marshall Wilderness, and Glacier National Park.

 Montana was an odd state. I had never before visited the CDT’s northernmost state and didn’t know what to expect outside of the Glacier National Park finale. Over half the state consisted of easy walking along forest service roads, but the towns were such a draw that I found my mileage fluctuating wildly. 

Once reaching the Bob Marshall Wilderness — where there were no towns to distract me — I maintained a steadier pace. Much like in Yellowstone, my daily mileage through Glacier National Park depended entirely on the available permits. 

Elevation

If mileage tells part of the story, elevation gain and loss add to the full picture of just how grueling a thru-hike can be. Over the course of my CDT journey, I climbed a staggering 401,648 feet and descended 404,702 feet — a reminder that for every brutal ascent, there was an equally tough descent waiting on the other side.

Some days felt like an endless grind uphill, others were spent barreling down into valleys, and many days were spent cruising along flat, sandy ground. Elevation is where the CDT truly tested my endurance, not just physically but mentally. Let’s dive into the ups and downs — quite literally — and see how those thousands of feet climbed and lost stacked up over the five states.

This image shows the total elevation gain (lighter color) and total elevation loss (darker color) for each state in feet.

In very not surprising news, Colorado takes a strong lead in terms of total elevation gain and loss. Colorado throws 127,000 feet of elevation gain at you across the nearly 700 miles. To put this in context, across the entire trail, I ascended and descended the equivalent of sea level to the summit of Mount Everest 14 times, with Colorado alone accounting for over four of those Everests.

New Mexico takes the prize for the flattest state. Although Wyoming is nearly 200 miles shorter than New Mexico, the two are comparable in their total elevation change. Idahontana, which is by far the shortest section of the CDT, comes in third for overall elevation change. 

Now, we can look at the average elevation gain and loss experienced per day for each state. I removed zero days from the code, since that would skew the average elevation gain per day towards sections of the trail when I didn’t take time in towns.

When we account for how long I spent in each state, we now see Idahontana shoot up in the rankings. While this section wasn’t very long, I do remember nearly every day having some long, difficult climbs and descents.

Colorado, while overall the winner for elevation, had some flatter sections. The main challenge there, in my opinion, was the snow instead of the grade of the trail itself. In fact, when meeting SOBOs towards the end of Wyoming, they all warned us that the Idaho sections of trail would be harder than Colorado. I certainly disagree with that, but can understand where they were coming from if they didn’t have to hike through any snow in Colorado.

New Mexico can now clearly be seen as the flattest state on the trail. While Wyoming had some flatter sections through Yellowstone National Park and the Great Divide Basin, the Wind River Range in the middle of the state catapulted it ahead of New Mexico in terms of elevation change per day.

Montana is the only state here that surprises me. Perhaps, by the time I reached the final 500-ish miles, I was acclimated enough to the trail to not notice the physical challenges as much as I did earlier in the journey. Even still, I certainly don’t remember the end of the trail being as tough elevation-wise as it clearly was.

Mood

As any long-distance hiker knows, a thru-hike is as much a mental journey as it is a physical one. Each day on the trail brought a full spectrum of emotions — from the joy of a perfect sunrise to the frustration of endless rain, heat, cold, or just sheer exhaustion. To capture this rollercoaster, I recorded my mood every single day, giving each day a rating from 1 to 4 (with 4 being the best mood). There were days that were unforgettable in the best ways and others when nothing sounded better than quitting the trail and going home.

I wanted to know how much of my mood was influenced by external factors, such as rain, or if my particularly bad days stemmed from simply a bad attitude and waking up on the wrong side of the sleeping pad. 

This plot tracks my recorded mood across all 148 days of my hike, with rainy days highlighted in blue. A rainy day only means it rained for some point in the day for any amount of time.

I find this graph fascinating and could talk about so many aspects of it for pages and pages. First, I want to point out how my mood changed towards the end of each state. Normally, I had a string of wonderful days as I got excited for a tangible marker of progress along the trail. However, in Colorado (by far my favorite state on the trail), I got very down in the dumps at the thought of leaving. 

Despite Colorado being the best part of the trail, it did have the lowest average mood ranking: a 3 out of 4.

Wyoming, which was my least favorite state of the trail, had an average mood ranking of 3.1. I had very few great days in Wyoming compared to Colorado, but I was in a terrible mood for a lot of the northern part of Colorado, which dragged the average mood score down.

New Mexico, Idahontana, and Montana came in at 3.11, 3.14, and 3.35, respectively. It was hard to be in a bad mood in Montana when the trail felt so close to ending. 

In terms of the weather, the rainiest portions of the trail happened in Colorado and Montana. Funny enough, my average mood on days with rain was actually a little bit above my average mood. While I can’t say I enjoy rain while backpacking, the only explanation I can offer for this is that heavy clouds and rain would often cool the trail down through some particularly hot stretches. Some of my worst days on trail came from the overwhelming heat.

This plot shows how my mood changed in relation to whether I showered that day or not. The wider the horizontal bar, the more times that mood level coincided with a shower/non-shower day. I only counted showers in towns as real showers; no alpine lake dips were tracked here!

Another surprising result! No, you aren’t reading this graph wrong — I was more likely to be in a terrible mood on days when I showered compared to my stinky, sweaty days. I do have a simple explanation for this: I hate leaving towns. Every time I reached a town, got to shower, eat a real meal, and sleep in a bed, a little part of my brain would whisper, “why do we even have to go back outside?”

Waking up in a town, grabbing breakfast and a shower, but then having to hike a few miles before sleeping in the dirt was a recipe for a bad day. On the flip side, I had far more days rated a 4 when I didn’t shower. Waking up on trail, hiking all day, and sleeping in my tent — fully immersed in the trail experience — was wonderful!

Camping

Speaking of sleeping in my tent, let’s now break down where exactly I called “home” each night. With the CDT lacking the shelters that are so prevalent along other long-distance trails, I only had three choices: setting up my tent, hitchhiking into a town and sleeping in a building, or cowboy camping.

Of the three, cowboy camping (where you lay your sleeping pad out under the stars with no tent or netting around you) is by far my favorite. Not only are the stars out west incredible, but I’m very lazy and hate packing up a tent in the mornings. 

However, when the bugs were unbearable, clouds threatening rain, or I just needed a little privacy, I would take the time to put up my tent and enjoy the flimsy protection of those DCF walls. 

Breaking down the proportions of how I slept each night. While sleeping in a building didn’t guarantee I slept in a bed (in fact, I only got to sleep in a bed 14 times on the trail!), it does mean I was in a town and sheltered from any bad weather.

This chart surprises me — I don’t remember spending this many nights in a building. Outside of time spent in town, the split between cowboy camping and tent camping makes sense to me. When I felt secure in my ability to cowboy (read: no rain), I chose that option almost every single time. 

Despite the cowboy camping being the easiest in New Mexico, where the weather was always dry and the stars unbelievable, I spent the greatest number of nights in my tent there. It was an irrational fear, but I could too easily envision waking up in the morning with a rattlesnake or scorpion curled on my stomach. I don’t get a good night’s sleep when stressed about creepy crawlies. 

This image shows the breakdown of where/how I camped on nights where it hadn’t rained at all that day (left) and days where it had rained for some amount of time (right).

This chart reiterates what I said above: if I felt capable of cowboy camping, it was almost always my preferred camping method. Some days, even when it rained in the morning or afternoon, I risked it all to sleep out under the stars. Most of the time this was great. Sometimes, though, I got burned.

My least favorite night by far has to be the day in the Wind River Range when I decided to cowboy camp despite some wispy clouds in the evening sky. I was rudely awoken at 2 a.m. by a downpour and spent the next 24 hours trying my hardest to dry off and warm up.

A Sappy, Sentimental Conclusion