April 18th, 2015: KM 402.0 - 422.8

(Blue Mountains 25.1 - 45.9)

Because of the super muddy road, we had to park a bit farther back from the hiking spot we had left off at last time, instead starting at the parking lot on 15/16 sideroad. This added about 0.8km more to the hike, bringing it to a total of 21.6 (painful) kilometers.

The hike immediately started off with mud:


After a few kilometers of this, we reached the top of Devils Glen ski hill. There's still quite a bit of snow on the slopes.



Hiking down to the valley floor was slow going, with the snow melt water making the trail really muddy.



At the bottom, we found that melt-water rivers were covering the trail in some parts. Getting across one of these rivers took us about 15 minutes of detouring. Following the trail caused us to cross the river, then cross back to the original side, only to discover we were about 10 steps away from where we started from 15 minutes earlier.






The trail followed the road across the valley, then headed back into the woods and up the other side.





With the Devil's Glen behind us, the hiking got a lot easier and less muddy for a long while, through farmers fields and along roads.




There were still some occasional patches of snow to navigate through.


The trail approaches Colingwood from the top of a big hill, and the views of Collingwood and the lake were pretty great. On such a clear day we could see all the way around the whole lake to where our parents live in Tiny.



From here, the trail went mostly downward back towards where we had left the car at the Pretty River Valley parking lot.






There were some final muddy sections to deal with on the dirt roads / 4-wheeler trails. Chris found an old GT-snowracer on the side of the trail.





In all it took us exactly 5 hours to hike this leg.  A great day for it!

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