Why i Like the Continential Divide
On my last trip to Yellowstone, near the beginning of Stage 8, I wobbled up the Continental Divide from East to West. It was challenging in the snow. Now with clear weather I couldn’t resist the temptation and scaled the six mile route up the mountain again this time east to west. Why? “Because it was there”, I guess.
Explorers and surveyors of old described the divide this way, “It is not easy to tell by the mountains, only by the rivers. Here in Yellowstone Isa Lake feeds Fire hole River east and then on to the Missouri, the Mississippi, and the Gulf of Mexico Snow fed streams via the Yellowstone and Shoshoni flow west to the Snake river, then the Columbia and on to the Pacific Ocean.”
It’s the romance of arriving on foot to a geological summit where even the rivers spurt and rage in different directions to welcome my long awaited arrival.
