I have taken a disgustingly smart approach to taking my main vacation: June, before the school holidays, when the hills aren’t as crowded. 2021 is still a bit unpredictable, so I was changing my plans a lot during April and May…
I’ve held off writing the usual monthly hiking retrospective for several reasons. One of them being that I haven’t passed this self-imposed test nowhere nearly as well as I’d like to. The second being that the rainy July didn’t help my mood to sort through photos.
As I’ve said at the end of my previous hiking post, I had an extended weekend stay planned for the end of October. The promise of colorful woods and rolling fog was the main treat but the end of October is when the weather starts leaning towards the rainy day of November so being prepared for rain was crucial.
The Slovakian ‘Malá Fatra’ mountain range is a place where I’ve walked most of the main trails and a good deal of the side trails – and I still love to return there.
After the rainy May, June seems back to the 2018 standards: awfully hot, often over 30°C. Yet, I went for a few hikes during the first half of June – and will share something about it now (including not-so-few photos).
So, I am back with another hike post. This one is something I’ll start on a bit of detour: back in May 2017 when the hiking club was putting together a plan for 2018 (with me as a guest to the 9 leaders), we lacked something for the ‘slot’ of 30.6. and a few days before, there was a video from Slovakian mountain resort where a group of bikers was startled by a bear on one of the trails. And I had the ‘genius’ idea to suggest to go there. Surprisingly, the suggestion was accepted.
So, that’s the backstory, now for the hike itself.
This is something I’ll try to post possibly monthly, a look back at some of the mountains I visited and are, in some way, memorable to me. At this point, I have a list of almost 80 candidates but I am not sure how many will pass. These posts would be a mix of personal stories with photos and some ‘hard facts’. Maybe some interesting things, should I know about them.
If there’s something that hiking helps me much with, it’s my health. The amount of hiking I did was growing progressively. In my late teens, I was at 10 hikes per year and total around 200km. These days, I am (depending on several factors) somewhere between 30-40 hikes per year and 700-1000km walked during those. And over the last 10 years, my health gradually improved. I’ll try to have a look back and share how much.
There’s a tradition I try to keep going, to go for a hike between exams. It works well to clear my mind. This time, it became a bit extreme. Exam on Monday, okay, went better than expected. The hike was originally planned for Tuesday but the plan changed and I went for a bit different outdoor activity with my sister. So the hike was moved to Wednesday despite the fact that my legs were stiff from 36km of roller-blading in something like 2,5hrs (fastest lap I had was 12min 20sec for 4,5km, by the way).
Anyway, I still set up the alarm at 4:10, thinking that this time I might even regret it (I very rarely regret getting up early for a hike, even in bad weather) and went on with the adjusted plan. Of course, Wednesday + unknown place = being alone.
Waterfall height: 2,7 meters (the slide below it excluded)Continue reading →
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