No, hiking the Continental Divide trail is not possible in four minutes, but watching clips of it is. The 3,100 mile trek that connects Mexico and Canada through the US seems like it might be a very long walk and could be extremely lonely unless you took someone along with you. Even then it might be incredibly taxing unless you happened to be an experienced hiker and had weathered more than a few long distance treks throughout the years. This kind of trip would make it necessary to either have an ample supply of funds available or on hand, and possibly a person following somewhere with extra supplies. Extra clothes, shoes, supplies, would be a must because no matter how tightly you pack those bags only so much is going to fit in them and it won’t be nearly enough for 3,100 miles.
You can see however that they do go through towns at some point despite sticking to the wilderness throughout much of it. And whether the trail they continually find is part of the divide or if it’s something that they found that takes them along an easier route, I choose to believe the former, they have a well-defined path to follow. This would be an arduous journey though that would not be for the weak at heart or those that cannot take more than a few miles at a time per day.
It’s said that a fit person can walk up to about 96 miles per day if they’re taking it at a moderate to fast pace and can sustain that pace. If someone were to push it and make up that four miles to reach an even one hundred it’s possible that their output per day could decrease steadily after that since pushing one’s body after a prolonged period of time could lead to stress, which could lead to injury and possible dangers to one’s health. So let’s assume that a person will only walk those 96 miles a day, max. That means that this trip would take anywhere from a month to a month and a half.
That’s a solid month and a half, roughly, of waking up, walking as far as you can go for the day until it gets dark, and then bedding down to rest and then get up and do it all over again. There’s a reason why the video has a statement saying that most people won’t make the entire trip. There might be some that decide to see how far they can go and then ride or drive the rest of the way to the border. But think about it, 3,100 miles is more than some people might walk in a year or two, perhaps even five years. Walking that much without so much as a day’s break could do one of two things, and might do both at the same time.
It would either toughen your body and make you harder, leaner, and help you to get in shape, or it would break you down in ways you didn’t even know about yet. It’d be an experience no matter what happened, that’s for sure.
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