December is a tricky month for hiking, and this year was no different. However, all the trouble was worth it as I finally accomplished one of my long-term hiking goals.

Ever since I first reached the 1000km/year goal, I came to the conclusion that it should, eventually, be possible for me to reach 1200km/year (which would, on average, mean 4 hikes at 25km each month). Planning and weather would be the two main challenges, as well as building up consistency and stamina because this would pretty much eliminate any kind of break. Last year, I reached 1109km/year with visible space for improvement.

This year, I hit it hard from the very beginning and was well on track and even ahead of the plan by July. And it all went well until the September floods. At the beginning of December, I was at 1146km. Given the typical length of December hikes, which tend to be shorter, that meant I’d need three. Not an easy ask given how tricky the month’s weather can be.

Snow showers and warmer days take turns quite often and at varying intensity, so it’s hard to guess whether the trails will be snowy or muddy, and at what elevation the cut-off would be. The first hike took me to the foothills nearby, where most of the snow was gone, and it didn’t seem to be much better on most of the other peaks.

I had some leftover vacation days, so I decided to put them to use the next week and took from 11th to 13th off, planning to go hiking on the 11th and 14th. The first part worked well and I got to see some charming winter atmosphere with a nice amount of dry and frozen snow in the hills and, fortunately, without any extra wind. The day was a bit too icy in the morning so I had to adjust my schedule as the bus I planned to take ended up being stuck and canceled, and it made me improvise and take the train, flipping the direction around.

This was probably a key element in what happened – I ended up taking the steep trail up instead of down, and warmed myself up maybe too much – and then cooled down too abruptly as I took a break to have a snack.

As a result, I ended up down with cold and had to cancel the plans to go hiking again on the 14th. Fortunately, as cold always takes a week to pass, I was ready to go again on the 21st. This was after a wave of warmer weather, so I couldn’t expect any charming winter landscape, but the low sun combined with clouds led to some nice colors in the sky – until I was high enough to end up being in the low-lying clouds (the area I visited on the previous hike is in the back to the right on the photo below).

But, given that my main objective was to finally accomplish my long-term goal, I wasn’t exactly deterred by that. Despite all the setbacks with the floods, I finally managed to achieve 1200km in a single year of hiking, even though it seemed likely to fail after the floods. But I didn’t give up.

This also gives me a bit of time to think about what the goal will be for the next year as taking this on raised some questions about balancing my hobbies which I’ll need to think about and answer.

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So, that’s it for now. A happy ending for my hiking endeavors this year. I hope the encroaching festive time will be happy for you and your family. Enjoy the holidays and see you next time.