Caldera Crew

Last week, the Caldera Crew (team MT36) explored a difficult, and extremely wild, portion of the CDT from Targhee Pass into Yellowstone National Park to Old Faithful. As you'll hear, they did a lot off-trail navigating, and suffered through a 32-mile stretch without water except for a "nasty" waterhole. Three teammates endured dehydration at some point and one member might have a broken toe. It's likely the team questioned, maybe even, cursed us and this project as they pushed over downed logs, up steep slopes, around cliff bands, all the while with a deathly thirst. In an email sent Friday, teammate JC Harlan of Nampa, ID, called it the most grueling trip he'd done and despite the all the challenges "we all had a great time and would not exchange it for anything."

We say, thanks Caldera Crew for busting your butts out there. Your work as well as the other teams won't go ignored. In fact, the more we learn about the status of the CDT, the more we realize the dire help it needs.

Below are four podcasts from the team:


Monday, July 9 (Day 1)
The team recaps their somewhat challenging day of trailblazing through grizzly and moose country. GPS location: 12T 0480885E, 4940178N

Listen to: Day 1

Wednesday, July 11 (Day 3)
Today's report comes in two calls. Many challenges have unfolded since Monday. Water is becoming scarce, and solid navigation skills are essential as they blaze sections of new trail, move through burn areas, and backtrack to known points. GPS location: 12T 0488874E, 4927553N

Listen to: Day 3, part 1

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Listen to: Day 3, part 2

Thursday, July 12 (Last Day)
Teammate Catherine Cox of San Jose, CA, sums up their 66-mile trip by saying, “…We’re standing here looking at Old Faithful and it’s the perfect paramount to our trip as we had to maintain faith at various sections on this arduous trail…” Listen as they re-play their exciting journey. GPS location: 12T 0513513E, 4923006N

Listen to: Day 4

P.S. We had some bugs with our new phone system, so we weren't able to post these reports as they came in. Our "new and improved" phones are supposed to email a sound file of messages left on our voicemail mailbox. After several hours of trying to figure how to access the sound files and no word back from our technical support guy, we decided to publish these the old school way. We went out and bought a voice recorder and recorded the messages left on the phone. This was an unexpected glitch in our system, which is now resolved. We apologize to readers and, more importantly, the families of the hikers in the Caldera Crew. We know you're watching.