I had woken up in the middle of the night to a bright tent. It’s strangely the first time that I’ve seen the moon on this trip. It somehow comforted me and I slept again until just after 7.

The morning view of the mountains was lovely to enjoy from the campsite and after setting off, it was an fairly easy climb up to a ridge with views across the valley to the real mountains.

It didn’t take too long to do the 6 km to Etherington Creek road, my planned exit point from the trail. It wasn’t really a road, more a boggy clearing with muddy wet cattle trodden holes everywhere. It did improve in places, but was also flooded in others. You could see where others had gone to get around the flooded bits so it was easy enough to navigate. Luke was with me since he decided to also exit here and share my ride to Peter Lougheed provincial park.  We got to the junction with the road at around 1 pm and ate lunch while waiting for our ride at 2 pm. Chantel showed up right on time.

Chantel drove us to the food lockers where both Luke and I had food packages waiting. However, mine wasn’t in the locker it was supposed to be in. There was a number posted to text if any issue although there was no cell service to do so. I figured, I could contact them from the Boulton campground, where I have a tent site booked for the next 2 nights and where there is Wi-Fi. It turned out that there was some confusion with the locker numbers and that my parcel was there, just in another locker. With the codes to all the lockers, I headed back to the food lockers 2.6 km up the road. Luckily I got a hitch most of the way there and all the way back and was able to find my parcel. Back at Bolton, we decided to get an ice cream, since everyone around was having them. There was a line up and when it was finally our turn, the guy at the window said they were closing up since they were selling out and didn’t seem to want to serve us. Someone else then said that they would serve those in line but no more, phew. I ordered 2 scoops, butter pecan and chocolate, and was handed the most ginormous ice cream I’ve ever seen. Maybe he felt bad when he saw my face when he said that that they were closing up. Anyhow, it was a ridiculous amount of ice cream and I didn’t even try to eat it all.

After the ice cream, it was off to find the campsite, which was a bit of a walk (partly up a steep hill) as the campground is spread out. After setting up, I decided to go to shower, another long walk away, only to find that you need tokens for the shower. So, back down to the service center I went, another long walk, to get tokens. I stated my surprise that I hadn’t been asked if I wanted tokens when I checked in, so the guy gave me the tokens for free. Back up the hill I went and finally had a lovely hot shower and did some sink laundry. It was a pretty chill evening after that and no sighting of the teenage bear who is apparently hanging around.