In today’s post, I’ll look back at the last two hikes of August, which ended up being the last two of this year’s summer – though I didn’t know that at that point.

The first hike was a short but quite scenic loop I planned to do with my sister. For her, it was partially a preparation for the next week, for me, it was a relaxing trail. Our goal was to see some of the not-so-popular spots in the nearby hills (in an area that was severely hit and damaged by the September floods).

Our first point of interest was a waterfall, the tallest in the area, though it was split into several smaller waterfalls during a flood in 1880 by a rockslide, which makes me wonder if the September flood had an impact – something I won’t know anytime soon.

The trail passes a bit below the fall, so a direct view of the largest section is tricky to achieve even if the days were dry as it’d mean making our way on the rocks. This is quite common for waterfalls in this area as they’re often tucked into a tight corner, and makes it hard to take photos that fully showcase the sight.

Then, we made our way through a mix of trails and footpaths to the next area, a peak with quite nice rock formations.

After that, we descended toward the valley and took a path to another waterfall, much smaller this time and, unfortunately, almost dry.

Then, it was uphill again to the second peak which has a few more rock outcroppings, though nowhere near as large as the first peak.

Then, we made our way through the paths and trails back to the pass where we began. The hardest part of this half-day hike was, at least to me, the warm weather.

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The next weekend, at the very end of the month, the hiking club had a harder hike scheduled. To a large degree, it was a repeat of the 5th-day hike from our 2017 week-long trip, focusing on one of the major peaks. Again, the day was quite warm. The trail we took starts ascending quite early and keeps going steeply uphill for quite some time. Thus, we were sweat-soaked very fast. Soon, we ended up in groups of 2-4 people, each going on our own pace.

As soon as we were above the tree line, we could enjoy the sights around, which included the seemingly unending ascension towards the main peak – but we needed to reach the other peaks in the line first. After we got past the first main peak, the drops between them weren’t that major, fortunately, and were a chance to rest.

Up there, a light breeze helped with cooling us down, which was definitely welcome and a pleasant feeling.

Getting to the final peak in this line wasn’t easy but we made it in a good time, with almost an hour ahead of the plan. On the way, we’ve been considering some options on lengthening the hike but eventually agreed to decide once we’re at the main peak and have some idea of our timeframe and pace. We chose to use the east “wing” of the possible options which definitely wasn’t easy – after descending the peak, we’d need to ascend again. And not just once.

From the peak, we could also see that the warm summer had quite an impact on the set of lakes in the valley – one was partially dry and another dried up completely, though, given how shallow they are and that their only source of water is rain and snowmelt, that is no surprise.

While the previous part was mostly rocky, the next peak was mostly smooth soil and grass, which was a nice change of pace. But it was not much easier as the trail was steep and our legs have been through a lot of uphill walking already.

At the top, we looked at the next mountain in line, across another pass. We knew that we’d descent from the pass, the question was whether to try and go up the next peak or leave it be for the day.

After some quick calculations, we reached the conclusion that we had enough time to try, with some 30 minutes to spare given our current pace and a chance to cut the time more once we were in the relatively long valley. With our leg muscles protesting another uphill walk (on the photo above, it’s the right-most peak), we still made it in decent time, and took a short break at the peak.

I, personally, focused on the grassy pass below, one of the few trails I have yet to walk, where tiny lakes created a couple of dark dots in the endless green.

During our descent, a group of chamois reached the pass as well. For a while, we kept our distance while they decided whether to cross or turn back. Eventually – with us and the three other groups furiously taking pictures – they decided to cross and, once they realized we’re no danger, paid us no mind and focused on grazing.

From that point, all that was left was to get down to the valley and reach its lower end, which was still over two hours of walk. At the very end, we took the chance to cool down in the mountain stream, which was colder than I expected, but still refreshing after a long hike in a warm summer day.

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After returning home, I was looking forward to seeing more nice places but, as I mentioned in the September summary, our weather took a turn for the worse and the flood made a large part of the nearby mountains unsafe, as well as many roads impassable. Thus, I’ve been without hiking for over a month since – a break this long isn’t something I had since December 2019, and much, much longer during the main season. But that’s just how it goes with nature and weather. I’m looking forward to October with its charming colors and hoping that the weather won’t be as much against me.