Voices of the Divide

On July 1, 2025, Wendy Underhill set out south from the Colorado-Wyoming border on the Continental Divide Trail. Ninety-three days and 720 miles later, she reached the Colorado-New Mexico border, right on plan.

The trip was her retirement celebration and the one item on her bucket list. But friends and family joined her for 19 of its 23 segments: her husband, her brother, her three children, former colleagues, longtime hiking buddies, and a new friend she met at a coffee kiosk. So was it a solo trip or a social one?

Wendy reads her own story, from a night camped alone at 12,700 feet in a September storm to a cup of tea shared with a soggy stranger at Stony Pass and a birthday Diet Coke carried into the South San Juan Wilderness.

Voices of the Divide shares stories from the Continental Divide Trail community, read by the people who lived them.

Have a CDT story of your own? Share it with us here.