Dit zijn de afstanden die er per dag gefietst zijn. Dag 4 was de rustdag.Dag 5 en 6 waren de dagen dat we rond hebben gereden in de Veluwe zonder bagage.
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Glacier Peak Wilderness - Day 8
In the morning, we crossed the bridge and continued the trail. We had planned to leave the PCT after a few kilometers and then hike a few more along the river before climbing another huge mountain to a beautiful mountain lake with a lookout tower. The trail to get there had been closed off at its other end, so we were likely the first people walking there in a long time. Luckily it wasn't overgrown and very beautiful. According to the map, we would pass 3 streams before we arriving at the trail going up the mountain. To our surprise, we didn't pass any trail and the trail we were on went downhill while we should have stayed at roughly the same elevation. We again couldn't really see through the trees and had poor GPS reception. We decided to keep going in case the route was again longer than it seemed on the map, just like yesterday.
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After walking at least 4 km more than planned, I noticed a marker by some geological institute that indicated an elevation way lower than were we supposed to be at. By now we were pretty sure there was something wrong with the map, but it was difficult to figure out what it was without being able to see around us or get a GPS signal. We decided to walk another 15 minutes and then turn around. Fifteen minutes later we were even lower and there still was no sign of the trail we were searching for, so we turned around. We had been walking gradually downhill for at least 2 hours and would lose a big part of the day just to get back to where we started.
As I tended to walk faster than Diane I started walking behind her, so she could determine the pace. I especially didn't mind that on this section, as there regularly were spiderwebs strung across the trail with huge spiders in them. Suddenly, I noticed that Diane had just stepped over a twig with a serious sized snake underneath. It must have been about 60 cm long. I told her, "you must be glad you didn't see what you just stepped over". I knew there weren't any dangerous snakes in the area but making it angry by pushing it aside didn't seem like a good idea, so I just stepped over it in my shorts. It suddenly started moving very fast, but fortunately it just tried to get away. I later identified it as a Garter snake. Although they are venomous, they are not harmful to humans.
After hiking a big part of the day we arrived back where we started. Luckily, by following the PCT we would effectively take a short cut off our intended route. That meant we would miss the huge climb and nice mountain lake, but also make up for the lost time. We were glad to be back on the PCT, although still very confused about how we could have missed the other trail. There were again trees blown down everywhere. After walking over the PCT for more than an hour we suddenly saw a sign indicating a trail to the nice mountain lake. There was only one trail going up on our map -- the one we weren't able to find that morning -- so we were confused what this trail was about. Over the past few days we had encountered a few other trails that didn't show up on our National Geographic Map, so although we were confused, we didn't think too much of it at the moment. As the climb would involve 50% more elevation gain than the 4 hour climb we had done 2 days ago, we still decided to skip it and enjoy the relatively flat terrain. Later, as anticipated, the trail started following a river. That was fine, except that we were on the other side of the river than we should have been.
By then we finally were confident we knew what was wrong with the map: the PCT had been rerouted by several kilometer. As a result, we had walked much farther west yesterday than anticipated and had started at a completely different place than we thought this morning. This was very unexpected, as our map had been designed only a year before and there was an enormous bridge over the river we crossed this morning, while according to our map there hadn't even been a trail there last year.
