Week 15 on the Great American Rail-Trail: Butte to Missoula
Three hundred downed trees, a hostel in an old Masonic lodge, and a stranger who handed him two fifty-dollar bills. Bernie's fifteenth week ends in Missoula.
All photos by Bernie Krausse
Roughly 300 trees lay across 5 miles of the Fox Peak Trail on the climb to the Bitterroot Divide. Bernie Krausse stepped over some. Clusters of downfall forced him to bushwhack around the pile. Others he crawled under. Most he had to climb on top of and walk the length of the trunk. That went on for hours, all the way up to the 7,880-foot summit. He took ibuprofen for a cramping left leg and came out with cuts and scratches on both arms. Biggest workout of his journey.
Skalkaho Road runs about 3 miles longer and skips the blowdown entirely. Bernie stuck it out and found real satisfaction in it. He also told hikers who want their knees intact to take the road.
That was Day 102, the middle of Week 15 on the first thru-hike of the Great American Rail-Trail.
Butte on the Fourth of July
Bernie came over Pipestone Pass with balsamroot still blooming on the slopes, picked up the old Milwaukee Road rail-trail, and dropped west through 2 tunnels into Butte. A parade rolled through as he hit the city limits. A hotel handed him a free upgrade to a newly renovated room. The fireworks ran most of the night.
Butte to Anaconda, 31 miles
Butte's recreational trails and back roads carried him out to the Silver Bow Creek walking trail at the Whiskey Gulch trailhead. Past Ramsay, he picked up the old Milwaukee Road rail-trail into remote Durant Canyon, where it meets the paved Copperway trail. A thunderstorm slid past without touching him. The last 8 miles into Anaconda ran along a wide-shouldered divided highway on MT-1, and a baby deer stood crying in a grassy yard out front of his hostel while its mother stopped traffic in the street.
Pintler's Portal Hostel is a converted Masonic lodge, and Bernie calls it the best hostel he has stayed in on this continent. Full kitchen, which he used for a frozen pizza and a beer. A 4-bed bunk room he had entirely to himself. He met a woman who had walked 2 Caminos, and he met Klaus from Seaside, Oregon, who handed him two fifty-dollar bills for no reason at all.
Into the mountains
The route from Anaconda to Hamilton runs 75 miles through the mountains. Bernie left the highway at Georgetown Lake, camped in light rain, and started up toward the Bitterroot Divide with a red-tailed hawk and a bald eagle overhead. That climb is the Fox Peak Trail (at the top of the page).
A trail crew had cleared the Skalkaho Creek / Jerry Lake trail on the far side this year, cutting through close to 200 logs, so the descent was clean apart from rock and creek crossings. Snowshoe hare bolted ahead of him. Pika squeaked from the rock ledges where they were drying herbs and flowers in their hay piles. 36 miles.
The Bitterroot Valley, where strangers keep handing him money
Two drivers stopped on the 17 miles into Hamilton. The first, a man whose license plates read MUSHROOM, talked with him about the Olympic Peninsula rainforest and its fungi, which is where Bernie will finish. The second knew his name: Mike Crowley (below), who hiked the American Discovery Trail from Delaware to California, the same stretch Bernie covered in 2022 & 2024. Crowley was out scoping the Great American Rail-Trail for an eastbound thru-hike in 2028. He drove into town for gas, came back, and handed Bernie a cold Gatorade.
Bernie Krausse
Great American Rail-Trail - Westbound
Started: March 28, 2026
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The rest of the day ran to 90 degrees and 40 miles. With no bench anywhere to sit and eat, Bernie walked into a marijuana dispensary and asked whether he could eat on the shaded porch. The owner said yes, then brought out a yogurt and a bag of snack mix. In Victor he asked the Sinclair station for ice water. Near Stevensville at 9 at night, the manager of a Subway waved him over from the sidewalk, bought him a footlong, and pulled $10 out of his own pocket. Bernie walked until 10 and camped.
The next morning outside a McDonald's in Lolo, a Canadian woman in her twenties got out of her car, asked for his story, and handed him $13 in loose bills for coffee. His own note on this: I am beginning to wonder if I look pitiful.
Missoula, and the Bitterroot Trail is getting paved
The Bitterroot Trail runs directly alongside the highway all the way into Missoula, and the traffic noise is loud. From Florence north through Lolo, the surface is freshly paved, and crews appear to be extending the new asphalt south toward Hamilton. Bernie resupplied at the Missoula Walmart and bought a backup battery for the stretches ahead with no services. He stopped at Famous Footwear on the way out of town. Missoula is the last reliable place to buy shoes before the coast.
Missoula ends Stage 4. Stage 5 runs the I-90 corridor to Puget Sound on a high percentage of rail-trail, and Bernie now puts Seattle at roughly 555 trail miles ahead. Stage 6 is the Olympic Peninsula.
3,000 miles
Somewhere in the last week Bernie passed 3,000 miles on foot from Washington, D.C. He walked out of Missoula on bike routes and recreation paths, dodged light traffic into Frenchtown in 90-degree heat, and stopped at Old Bull Brewing for water and a microbrew. A customer anonymously bought him a bag of jerky on the way out the door. When he went to settle up for the beer, the bartender told him she was covering it.
At dusk, 2 cow elk broke out of an open pasture and into the trees. He reached the Lolo National Forest at 11 at night and set up camp in the dark. 28 miles.
Bernie Krausse is walking the Great American Rail-Trail westbound from Washington, D.C., to the Pacific, the first known end-to-end foot thru-hike of the route. Hiking America publishes his dispatches weekly, and his field verification feeds our Great American services waypoints – 9,016 – and growing each day.
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