GDT 4 – Willoughby Ridge

Daily Miles: 15

Total Miles: 59

Last night was really warm and we mostly stayed out of our sleeping bags. We have been pretty surprised by how warm it has been the last four days. We had expected cooler and wetter weather, but we have been enjoying the blue skies (even though it is a bit hot for our taste).

As we were packing up this morning, Beardoh saw a bear pop his head up from the grass just outside of our campsite. It seemed to take off as soon as it saw us, but we tried to make a bit more noise to make sure it was gone.

The morning started out with more roadwalking and then we started on what appears to be a network of snowmobile trails. It was really pretty walking with lots of colorful wildflowers. A lot of the trails and roads we’ve been walking on have been lined with thick bushes of salmon berries. They aren’t close to being ripe yet, but come late summer or early fall, there will be a feast for the bears.

Today we saw our third moose since we got to Canada. The first was on the road when we were in the shuttle van before starting the trail. The second and third we saw from the trail, but a ways off. Still, it’s pretty cool to have seen three moose in five days!

Most of the day was spent walking on Willoughby Ridge, which was clear and gave great views from both sides. This area seems to have been previously burned, as almost all the trees on one side of the ridge were dead and many blown down. There were only a few patches of intact forest that we walked through today, so our hammock hanging options were pretty slim.

Luckily, the campsite we were aiming for had good trees for hanging. We got to camp just before 4pm and enjoyed the relaxing afternoon.

Mace’s feet were giving him a lot of pain today. He has multiple blisters on the pads of both feet, and walking is very painful. It is hard to see him in pain, but hopefully his feet will get better after some rest in town.

We will have a short day into Coleman tomorrow and are then planning to take a rest day. We don’t normally plan for zero days so early in a trail, but as we were planning for this trip, we realized that if we didn’t take a zero in Coleman then we wouldn’t be able to take one for 17 days which just seemed so long. And it worked out perfectly, since Mace’s feet are trashed and he needs to rest.