European Continental Divide Trail

Imagining a European Continental Divide Trail (ECDT)

The Continental Divide Trail (CDT) in the United States is a world famous, ambitious long-distance hike along the Rocky Mountains. The trail creates eco-tourism, geographic awareness and outdoor enthusiasm. Certainly, Europe has a Continental Divide and long-distance hiking is nothing new to Europeans. Why don’t we have a European Continental Divide Trail (ECDT) of our own?

To achieve the goal of a European Continental Divide Trail, three main phases are envisaged:

• Phase 1 – Mapping the Divide (Done): In order to have a trail along the European Continental Divide, you need to know its course at a topographical level, so that hikers on the ground actually know when they are on the divide. With the launch of continental-divide.eu, this phase is now done and can be viewed on the map.
• Phase 2 – Proposing the Trail (Now): To limit environmental impact, we propose an ECDT using existing, well-travelled trails. Combining the datasets of continental-divide.eu/download with those of available hiking trails, we should be able to use an algorithm to detect navigable trails which are as close as possible to the geographic continental divide. These trails could be used as a proposal to the future ECDT.
• Phase 3 – Mark the Trail (Future): With a reliable, well-traveled trail, known by thousands of hikers throughout Europe, marking the trail and making it an official travel destination of the EU would memorialize and cement the ECDT for the future. 

At the heart of Continental Divide lies the word divide, signifying separation, segregation and division. Yet the European Continental Divide Trail belongs to everyone, connecting almost every country in Europe. By raising visibility about the European Continental Divide, we can bring people together for a common purpose. What could be more fitting than creating unity through a divide, community through division? 

Who will be the first to hike the European Continental Divide Trail? Maybe you.

The Proposed European Continental Divide Trail

Rather than rebuilding functionality like trail sharing, hike recording, etc, we will use Komoot to create a proposed ECDT. Anyone with a (free) Komoot account can use the project maps and contribute their own suggestions to the trail. The individual sections of the ECDT will be placed inside a so-called Komoot Collection.

The following collections are proposed routes for the entire ECDT. The routes are generated by importing the Continental Divide Map from this website into Komoot, using the ‘Known Route’ algorithm of the platform. The algorithm selects the accessible trails as close as possible to the geographic continental divide.

The proposed course has been manually corrected in places that Komoot has marked with a red flag, or extremely dangerous requiring special equipment and guides, with difficulty above T5. Additionally, the route has been corrected for trail closure warnings as far as possible. Komoot has marked some sections of the trail with a yellow flag, or as potentially dangerous, with difficulty of T3 or T4. Based on some personal experience in these areas, the trail might be difficult or loose-footing, however generally accessible with hiking boots. Therefore, in order to keep the trail as close to the divide as possible, the yellow portions of the trail are retained, but should be only attempted according to individual comfort or ability.

In any case, as these trails have not yet been hiked and confirmed by users, you should always be cautious and pay attention to the actual conditions on the ground.

• ECDT-MAIN: European Continental Divide Trail (Proposed Course)
• ECDT-NSBS: North Sea – Baltic Sea (Proposed Course)
• ECDT-MMAD: Mediterranean – Adriatic (Proposed Course)
• ECDT-BLAD: Black Sea – Adriatic (Proposed Course)
• ECDT-NMBS: Norwegian Sea – Baltic Sea (Proposed Course)