GDT kms: 20.9 (+ 1.9 to the Crossing Resort)

We woke up surprisingly warm for having basically camped on top of a river. Even though we had to get our feet wet right away, it was so much nicer being able to make progress at a decent rate (and being able to see decent views too) compared to the official route through the forest.

After a few kilometres of hopping between gravel bars, we needed to cut back inland and get off the river. Unfortunately, we noticed this a bit too late and had to either cut backwards quite aways or cross a deep but slow moving section of the river – we opted for crossing the deep section as we didn’t want to backtrack. This was perhaps not the best decision as the deep section ended up being up to my rib cage and actually a bit deeper on Kyle as he hit some squishy sand and started to sink in, and he had to swim a couple feet to get to the shore.

Once on the inland trail again, it was challenging, but notably better than the earlier section we had been stuck on and it got continually better as we got closer to the highway.

Overall we made slower progress than ideal, but we still managed to reach the Crossing Resort in the early afternoon. Arisa was already there – she was smarter than us and took the river route from the start.

The Crossing is just as expensive and disappointing as everyone says, but still a very welcome break before we get on trail again tomorrow for a seven day stretch.