Day 20 - Retracing steps

WOW almost 3 weeks has gone by. I started this morning early hoping to get a good start and some big miles in. My ankle was feeling decent enough to walk and my stomach and headache had subsided. All that being said I put in 4 hours this morning just looking for the trail. It was so overgrown and disappeared so often that I couldn't tell which point to cross the pasayten river at. Finally I just decided to cross and try my best to find it. When I finally saw trail I could not have been more relieved. After all I had walked 2 miles into Canada looking for it and then 5 miles back. What a waste of time. I followed the trail a few miles and then saw the trail closed sign due to fire. I had no idea. I decided to walk on the closed trail until I saw the reason. After all this trail wasn't supposed to be closed. I thought the forest service made a mistake. I got up to a point and across the valley on the adjacent ridge I actually saw the forest fire. This startled me and I turned around and realized that all day I had been hiking the wrong trail. An adjacent trail that wouldn't have mattered except all the connecting trails were closed due to fire. I had to turn around and walk all the way back to where I started the day. It was 4pm and it was all I could do to salvage the day. The positive side is the huckleberries were good. On the long climb up the ridge to end the day I saw a moose. It was an ornery bull and he really didn't want to move away and let me through. I was amazed at the size of him too. I ended the day on top of a ridge only a couple miles from Canada.