A flat 20 miler and a newly closed trail
Still recovering somewhat from our Mt Hood circumnavigation, I went back through the blog looking for 20 mile routes and found one that was as flat as I could make it. Whoopie! This trail is CLOSED As we ran down Gas Line, the main, sketchy-ish trail straight down to Leif had a big branch across it. We decided to follow the little, unobtrusive sign to the left, pointing "to Leif Erikson." That trail has had lots of work recently. They're obviously revamping it to be a nice, new, switchbacking and gently descending replacement for the other. When we got to Leif and passed where the old trail joined, we were greeted with a surprising sight: the whole thing had been filled in with branches. That trail is definitely closed! We decided to deviate from the route after Maple, because 2 1/2 miles on Leif just sounded like too much. Instead, we continued up Maple to Wildwood. We did some quick trail-math and realized that the overall mileage would be just about the same.