Great Divide Trail – summer 25

[Wandering Aimlessly]

Hello there,
Planning to walk the GDT this summer from south of Banff to the end. I think the most stressful day of my life so far was permit day release for Jasper as you watch your sites going red and have to changes dates taking a hit for booked sites… Permits are sorted although some of the distances are a bit crazy – a very short day followed by a very long day: I will keep looking for cancellations.

A few questions: I normally use an alcohol stove, but struggled to buy fuel last year in BC when walking the WCT. Is it easier in Alberta?

The crossing and the post office in Field suggest I leave at least ten working days to be sure my food parcels arrive in time. This isn’t going to work with my arrival time in Banff so my options would be to send food from the UK (scarily expensive probably) or use a courier service. Is a courier service a viable option?!

Bear can or Ursack? I see that Ursacks are approved. There are only a few areas where there won’t be bear boxes to store food at night.

Thanks
David

[Link .]

Here is Jupiter’s The Great Divide Trail trip report with a lot of information. He wrote it because when he went in 2023 he had problems finding a lot of info, hope this helps some(or maybe you have read it already?)

[jscott]

Wow! what absolutely stunning scenery!! Seemingly one of the great hikes in the world.

Umm..folks, hiking videos are not MTV. One doesn’t need to cut the scene every three seconds. Adults have longer attention spans.

For example,  there was a shot of the woman on this trip entering a deep and rapid river crossing. CUT!!! wait a minute, what happened? how did it go? It’s like telling someone, “one day I was held up outside of a bar at midnight” and then changing the subject to “but the weather the next day was fine”. obviously the woman survived. Still, given the printed river crossing warning in the video, and given this looked to be a risky crossing…use it as an illustration, please. Theres a time to linger on the subject at hand.

 

[Author]

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