Our CDT 2025 Gear Lists
One of the most common questions we’re asked about thru hiking is what we’re bringing with us. My favorite iteration of this question is, “How many sets of clothing are you bringing?”, because it brings me a tiny bit of joy to watch the wave of emotions that occur as someone realizes that we do not, in fact, bring any spares.
On a thru hike, your gear is your life. For every item in your pack (or on your body), you have to decide the right balance between the item’s weight and its function, durability, and cost. Between the two of us, Jonathan and I have 5 thru hikes under our belts now. We have a LOT of feelings about what we put in our packs.
Scroll down to peruse our gear lists in full – we wrote down every single non-consumable item in our packs (plus a couple of key consumables) as well as the clothing we’ll be wearing during the day. The lists should contain every single item we are responsible for on the trail apart from food, water, and some consumables like sunscreen or ibuprophen.
Overall our gear lists for the CDT look a lot like they did for Te Araroa, but we've each made a couple of tweaks. Both of us switched our hiking shirts to the sun hoodies we practically live in at home, and we both picked up some cheap wind pants (technically, wind resistant dance warm up pants). We opted for 3/4 length base layer pants along with the wind pants to make our cold weather gear a little more modular without adding weight. I also picked up a new pack after struggling a little with my SWD bag, which was just slightly too short in the torso. So far, I'm loving the fit of my new Durston Kakwa pack, but we'll see how it holds up on trail.
One other big change we've made was that Jonathan will carry his own pot this time. We've been together for over ten years now and have gained enough wisdom to know that a little independence is well worth the weight. We don't particularly fight about money or politics, but if you eat more than half my dinner… Let’s just say we have to live together 24 hrs a day out here.
Finally, we made a few updates that are CDT specific. We're carrying head nets for the infamous mosquitos of Montana and Ursacks for the larger predators. Glacier National Park, where we begin the journey also requires we carry 25’+ of cord for hanging all of our smellables. This is grizzly country!
Each and every item on these lists has been discussed, agonized over, debated, and finally made the cut. What's not here is perhaps as important as what is (maybe more so). And with that, here goes nothing! Next time you hear from us, we'll be on trail.
