I awoke about 30 minutes later and though it was only half an hour of sleep, it was enough of a reset to get me moving again. I did not have much choice in the matter because it was really too cold too sleep with the supplies I had anyway so I set out walking around 1am towards Ashmont, the next town along the trail about 20kms away. I walked for about 2 hours with all my gear on to warm up and was eventually able to remove my heavy rain coat. It was still hovering around 2°C until the sun came out around 5:30am and I found this section excruciatingly painful.
For the last 10kms into ashmont I had to sit down on the trail side for every single km I walked to rest my feet and legs. And sitting down probably looked more like falling over since my knees were so stiff together with the fact that the arches in my feet could be barely the support my weight when I leaned forward. The humour was not lost on me since this section of the trail was straight for miles through active farmlands and farmhouses that were in plain view. I guessed that the farmers might have been starting their day with the sight a lone figure staggering down the trail and falling over every so often. I thought that maybe I was beginning to understand how hard is to work on those farms.
By the time I waddled into the well maintained and spacious staging at the Ashmont travel pavillion it was just before 8am and I had travelled 63km from Smoky Lake in roughly 19hours, which is about 3.2km/hour. My initial plan had been to try to stay in Vilna over night, and then walk through Ashmont to St.Paul, but that did not pan out, and St.Paul was still another 25kms away through a deep cut of forested path. Here, I had to admit defeat, my legs and feet were exploding with pain and I could barely bend my legs when I walked. It was 8am and I knew that I could have likely made the additional 25kms by night fall, but I decided that if I did so the damage to my legs and feet might be enough to prevent me from walking any further than St.Paul, so I called a local St.Paul taxi. The driver was friendly and said it was an unusual fair to bring him out to Ashmont but he was happy to do it, at $80 the cost seemed more than reasonable to me.
St.Paul is the biggest township along this section of the trail and while the large gazebo at the trail pavillion in Ashmont would have been nice for an overnight rest I now knew it was still too cold for me to stay outside if I wanted to maintain any kind of a pace across the country. I was now one week into the journey and only half way through Alberta, with the first 120kms of trail walking having taken a massive toll on my legs and feet.
The driver, who knew a lot about the region, dropped me off at the local Smitty’s restaurant at the top of the main strip in St.Paul around 10am. I had a few beers which helped to loosen up my legs a little and walked down to the Galaxy Motel where they let me check shortly after noon since the place was pretty empty. I booked in for 2 nights so I could visit St.Paul at little while I prepared for the next leg of the journey.