Mileage: 27 km

It did not rain overnight and it got cold enough to scare the mosquito swarm away; this was our nicest morning on the trail so far!

We were making relatively slow time as we were taking pictures and waypoints to document the worst sections of the trail. The brush wasn’t too bad until a particularly brushy section before Mary Schaffer where the trail got close to the river (and had actually washed away in a couple sections along with the river bank). We got to Mary Schaffer a bit before noon, but stopped for lunch as it was raining.

The rain didn’t last for long, but the clouds stuck around obscuring the fairly nice views that we would get on a clear day. The rest of the day we alternated between forested sections with regular deadfall to navigate over and brushy meadows. The meadows were fairly dry and we didn’t experience too much carwashing which was a pleasant surprise.

At Maligne River, the old bridge sat on an small island in the middle, taunting us for trying to keep our feet mostly dry today. The river was substantially deeper than when we went through last year, but still very manageable; where we crossed it was mostly knee deep with a brief crotch deep section close to the shore.

After the river ford, we still have several hundred metres of meadows to get through before the worst of the brush would be behind us. Unfortunately all the rain the area has received this year meant there was a new challenge in front of us – a boggy muddy mess. It wasn’t nearly as bad as the mud we encountered approaching Kakwa, but nonetheless, it wasn’t my favourite part of the day.

Soon enough we finished the mud and reached the area we had been clearing the trail a few days prior! After this we flew down the trail, opting to head all the way to our car rather than camp at Trapper Creek.

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