Month: July 2022

7/13/2022

Daily Miles: 13

Total Miles: 83

Luckily the six of us sleeping in the bunk room were all quiet sleepers. No snoring, not even SweetPea, who can be a notorious snorer. Everyone started to get up around 6:45am, since breakfast was starting at 7am.

We had some new items this morning at breakfast. Besides the normal eggs (scrambled today) and bread, we had a nice meat and cheese platter that even had venison sausage. We each also got a cup of homemade yogurt which was very good. Instead of our typical scenario of losing weight on a hiking trip, the likelihood is that we will be putting on weight during this trip.

The trail started off going aggressively up right away. There were a number of day hikers around us on the climb, as we were going up to a notable peak, Raduha, in the area. The trail was quite rocky and really had an alpine feel, with very small pine trees.

The view from the peak was quite impressive with views ahead to the very difficult trail we will be starting tomorrow. There was a couple at the top who recommended we backtrack before heading down in order to stay on only “difficult“ trail. We took their advice and headed back and then down. This was our first section of “difficult” trail, as everything up to today has been “easy”. The only real difference we could tell between the two was that the difficult trail seemed to feel a bit more exposed. It was pretty slow going, but it wasn’t too bad.

The trail started to mellow out a bit as we got closer to a hut where we stopped for a break. This hut was also in the process of renovations…it has been interesting to see the work being done during high season.

After leaving the hut, the trail got really rough. It felt like a trail which no one uses anymore…just left to get reabsorbed into the forest. It was very slow and steep for quite awhile. With all the steep downhill trail, our toes have been very sore…SweetPea even has blisters under two toenails. It is impossible to avoid our toes hitting the ends of our shoes when the trail is so steep.

The trail continued to be rough most of the time until we got to the main road in the tiny village of Solčava. At one point as we were coming down on a dirt road, there was a tractor completely taking up every inch of the road. It looked like the tractor had a winch going down the side of the mountain, where someone was cutting trees. We figured that the tractor was pulling the trees up to the road, but it seemed to be automatic, as there was no one in the tractor.

When we got to the road in Solčava, we started to walk towards the grocery store to buy snacks for the next stretch. As we walked into town, it seemed like every house was straight out of a fairytale…flower boxes along the windows, houses that look like they have come straight out of Hansel and Gretel. The valley where Solčava is located is quite stunning. There is a river along the main road, and the mountains go up so steeply on both sides of the road.

We bought our snacks (surely too much, but we were hungry as we walked the aisles), and then headed to our lodging in town. We had about a mile and a half walk, which was a bit tricky as there was very little shoulder on this road with cars going fast.

We made it to our “tourist farm” where we are staying the night. It feel very nice and simple and clean. We have our own bathroom and they were willing to do our laundry which is very nice. We ate dinner here at the farm, which was homemade dumplings and paprikash (basically chunks of pot roast in a delicious gravy) and a strawberry cream roll for dessert. Everything was great and we were stuffed by the end.

We were able to coordinate with someone about lodging for tomorrow on the trail. The hut we would have wanted to stay at burned down several years ago, but we have gotten the ok to stay at a container near the hut site. We have confirmed that there are beds and blankets. At least we are reasonably sure that we have understood things correctly. Being able to stay at that spot really helps us out with keeping our miles evenly distributed for the first few days.

Tomorrow we head into trail that has via ferrata routes. We are a bit nervous to see how it goes.

The post Slovenia Mountain Trail – Day 6 appeared first on Long Distance Hiker.

When you can accept what is…the hiking gets easier.

That’s today’s tip, folks. Acceptance.

But first, coffee.

I’m looking out on Jo-Mary Lake at Antlers Campsite at a cloudy yellow and blue sunrise. It’s quite spectacular. I’m camped on a point next to a bunch of Nobo thru-hikers who are giddy with excitement at getting this far. I’m giddy with excitement that my rash hasn’t gotten worse.

My strange mix of bug bites and rash (caused by bug bites? Or bug spray? Or allergies? Or ???) Has caused me to try and transcend the itch: Don’t scratch, it will be 100% worse if you scratch. Think happy thoughts.

Ok, I gave those bites enough time this morning, time to move on.

2002 She-ra didn’t even have a tent, she slept in shelters and I don’t remember what was done about bugs. Ahhh, the bugs again, they are insistent little buggers. No more talk of bugs.

Right after hiking out this morning I ran into Bilbo. Oh man. He got up and started hiking the wrong way. Bummer, and easy to do out here in a fresh sleep cocoon.

We leap froged each other a bit during the morning (going south) and I stopped in the next shelter for a break. Rick was there again. Rick was the trail maintainer I saw yesterday at the shelter. Turns out he drives four hours from Augusta to volunteer on the AT! Has been doing it since the 1980s, and that puts some things into perspective for me…like those steep stairs from yesterday. The Maine Appalachian Trail Club has been working on buliding stairs in this area for over 30 years . He said, “Imagine what it was like before the stairs. They are a big improvement.” I had been joking with myself earlier that not much has really changed on the AT in 20 years, except maybe they installed some more rocks. Guess I was right. Thanks again volunteers! I know I’ll be saying that a lot on this trip. Imagine the collective work that goes into maintaining a 2,175-mile trail? Arguably the most popular, used, developed trail in the country? With shelters and privys every 5-15 milesish??? Absolutely mind-blowing.

But the walking. The walking is infinitely easier than yesterday. There are even stretches that are rock and root free, and you can actually stride out and cruise. Dreamy.

I swim for lunch and catch up with Bilbo again at the next shelter. Now he’s got me turned around and I start leading us on a trail back to the shelter that we just came from. Oops…

We hike together and take a break at a sandy beach before getting to the campsite.

We also started flip flopping with a group of girls hiking a section of the AT with their summer camp. Get this, they are hiking a 350ish mile section! For 7 weeks! Amazing.

I chat with one of the leaders at camp (who gets paid to do this and is a thru-hiker herself) and it turns out her cousin is Adrian, who thru-hiked the Oregon Desert Trail in 2016, the same year I hiked it. The ODT was his first thru-hike, (daunting!) but he had some expert tutelage from his girlfriend Nikki out there. Both are accomplished runners, and I was thrilled to see Adrian won the Leadville 100 last year, one of ultra-running’s hardest races. His cousin (I didn’t catch her name, I’ll find out today) said after the ODT that he decided to stick with running. Ha! He tried one of the hardest hikes in the country first…although these miles on the AT have been anything but easy. In fact Bilbo is thinking about all the other things he could be doing instead of this.

Camp! More swimming! Views!

I meet trail angel Ron tomorrow with my first resupply, and I’ll walk in with one lunch to eat if I need to. I planned the food perfectly!

7/12/2022

Daily Miles: 10

Total Miles: 70

Since our day was going to be shorter, we decided to just wake up a few minutes before breakfast. Last night was probably our best night of sleep. The bed was a comfy foam mattress, while the previous huts had only old mattresses where each of the coils and wires could be felt as you lay down.

After breakfast, we packed up and headed out by 8:30am. It was another beautiful day and the air was cool. We have been really lucky with the weather so far…really comfortable temps and only a few sprinkles one day.

We passed through several small cow pastures today. The cows here seem to be the most contented cows we’ve seen. They have an abundance of bright green grass to eat and mostly they seem to just lay around. They are never bothered by us and there hasn’t been one cow that has run away at the sight of us…basically the opposite behavior of all the cows we hike by in the US.

Since we had a shorter day, we took advantage of the time and stopped multiple times to pick blueberries. We didn’t see anyone picking berries today, even though the bushes were flush with ripe berries.

We have come to the decision that these mountains are ruled by ants. The amount of ants here is pretty unbelievable. There are large ant mounds all over the place…it is hard to go twenty feet without seeing an ant hill. And if we stop for more than a few seconds, the ants will start crawling on our shoes and up our legs.

Around mid-morning, we caught up with Leah, the woman from New Zealand, and we all took a break. It was nice to have another hiker to chat with. Our break spot had nice views down to the valleys, full of farms and forests.

We continued on to our first stamp of the day at a hut which was closed. There were picnic tables and we sat down to eat our breakfast sandwiches. Leah showed up a few minutes later, and then the mother/daughter pair showed up shortly before we left. It is fun to get to know some hikers who you see repeatedly. The mother/daughter pair are finishing their section hike tomorrow, but chances are we’ll keep seeing Leah for awhile.

After our sandwich break, the trail was quite nice for the rest of the afternoon. The trail was covered in needles from the red spruce trees and there weren’t any big climbs. We did start to see larches at the end of the day, which always make us smile and remember back to our time hiking with Mountain Man and Gazelle on the PCT in northern WA.

About 15 minutes before we got to our final hut, Koča na Loki, we passed by a cabin with folks out at their picnic table having a drink. They tried speaking Slovenian to us which we didn’t understand and they didn’t understand English, but then we realized one guy knew a bit of German and SweetPea speaks a bit of German, so suddenly a connection was made. They invited us up for a shot of homemade schnapps. It was a pretty entertaining exchange, where there was probably 20% understood on each side, but we all had a good time. The schnapps was very strong and still somehow we managed to get ourselves down the trail.

We got to the hut around 3pm and spent the rest of the afternoon chatting with the other hikers. The hut is currently having renovations done, so only the bunk room is available…a large room with about 30 mattresses. There are six of us here tonight…the five of us who stayed together last night, plus one Austrian guy who is hiking a north/south route that will have him ending in Ljubljana.

For dinner tonight, we had mushroom soup (better than last night’s version) and goulash, plus the obligatory basket of bread. We expected macaroni to be in the goulash, but it was just a tomato-based soup with meat and vegetables…it was definitely Beardoh’s favorite dish of the trip. We also went for desert after seeing someone else eating the blueberry dumplings…so good!

The post Slovenia Mountain Trail – Day 5 appeared first on Long Distance Hiker.

7/11/2022

Daily Miles: 15

Total Miles: 60

Since we were the only ones at the Postarski Dom hut last night, the manager asked what time we wanted breakfast. We figured we would prefer breakfast a little earlier, so we requested 7:30am. Somehow we still left at the same time as previous mornings, but it was nice to have a relaxing meal. Breakfast today was coffee/tea, rolls with toppings and a bowl of blueberries. It is interesting to see the slight differences in meals between the huts. While breakfast is often very similar, dinners have been completely different at each hut.

It was blue skies and cool when we started out. We knew we had a big climb to start the day, so we were glad to be doing it when the air was cool. We had about 2,700 feet of climbing in less than four miles, so needless to say, it was a pretty steep climb. We managed to get to the top of Urslji Gora in just over two hours. We got our first stamp of the day in our trail passports there at a hut on the peak. It was a pretty nice spot and we sat at the picnic tables for a few minutes before heading on.

As soon as we left the peak, the trail headed down as steeply as we had ascended. As we hiked these really steep and challenging stretches of trail, we wonder how they can be categorized as “easy trail”. We wonder what has to happen for a trail to get a “difficult” rating. We figure that we are going to be really hurting when we get to the “difficult” or “very difficult” trail.

Once we finally made it down the descent, the trail was quite gradual for the most part. We stopped by another hut to get a stamp in our trail passports and got some ice cream for a snack.

The trail felt really quiet today as we really didn’t see other hikers after the peak in the morning. We are getting the feeling that things are busy in the mountains on the weekends, but during the week it is very quiet.

In our last hour of walking, we got a really nice view of Urslji Gora that we had climbed this morning. Looking at it from a distance, it looked like a very large, round knob. We got to our hut for the night, Smrekovcu Dom just after 4:30pm. We were really beat and happy to be able to take our shoes off for the rest of the day. There are several other hikers here for the night…one woman from New Zealand and a mother/daughter pair from Austria. We chatted for a bit with them, while drinking a cold Radler, which was nice.

We took showers and headed to the dining room for dinner, which was pasta with bolognese and mushroom soup with a buckwheat crumble to sprinkle on top. They were both good, but small, so we had dessert as well, which was something with blueberries.

After dinner we took a closer look at our schedule for the next week or so. We needed to adjust our schedule a bit, as we had planned for bigger days before totally understanding the daily logistics / trail difficulty and also a hut we had planned to stay at is closed after being burned down a few years ago. We decided to break up the big day we had scheduled for tomorrow into two shorter days. We figured our bodies will appreciate the break. We are still trying to work out how to deal with the burned down hut (the lack of the hut causes one to have a 10+ hour day of “very difficult” trail – no bueno!). We have a few feelers out for a backup option…hopefully it will come through, otherwise it will be a very painful day.

Since we have a shorter day tomorrow, we can sleep in until breakfast and not bother packing up until after we eat. It will be nice to have a more relaxed pace for the next few days.

The post Slovenia Mountain Trail- Day 4 appeared first on Long Distance Hiker.

I’m going for maximum enjoyment on this hike.

This morning that looks like two cups of coffee and adding freeze dried strawberries to my blueberry granola. Living large!

I am though. Did I tell you about all the fruits and veg I packed out? When I left Hilary the other day I was carrying: an apple, avocado, red pepper, 1 1/2 cucumbers, and a bag of cherries. They all pack fairly well, I’m really impressed with the cherries…Day 4 and they aren’t smooshed despite my packing techniques.

Since my goal is to enjoy two months of living along the AT, I’m going to live it up.

Some call it #platinumblazing

Actually I think platinum blazing is supposed to mean doing fancy things all the time like staying in hotels and eating good food…I will be the more dirtbag version.

****

I wrote the above on the morning of Day 4 before leaving camp. Good morning entries will have a much different feel than grumpy morning entries, or tired morning entries. For example I’m writing this now on the morning of Day 5 when I keep finding bug bites everywhere. I am covered in bites and have no idea where they are coming from, and yesterday’s insane rocks reintroduced the AT ache in my feet.

I guess this is an itchy and annoyed morning entry? Oh wait, I haven’t had my two cups of coffee…stay tuned.

***

Everything was wet. I waited for the steady rain that fell overnight to wane before emerging from the dry. So good news: the tent holds up well in constant rain.

The morning was misty…perfect moose weather, but no moose sighted yet. I walked along Rainbow Stream and stopped often to watch the water flow through blocks of rocks. Kirk would love this little creek and all its water features. I need to get him over to the NE for some adventures…off the AT…he’s not a nerd for trails like I am.

I stopped for a morning break at the next shelter and find 17. He got wet last night, and was using the shelter to dry some stuff out. We had a good chat…he’s thinking of turning around (not enough food) and climbing Katadhin instead. I have a feeling this will be the first of many backpacking adventures for 17…I can tell he has the stoke.

As I was getting ready to keep on keeping on, a trail maintainer walked up to check on the shelter. Thanks for all you do!!!

The name of the game here is to go slow. Not because my legs are quivering masses of jello on the insanely steep climbs and descents, but because the rocks, roots, and mud will take you down without a second thought if you don’t think. It really is one step at a time out here, and today the steps were steep.

Speaking of steps, I’m still finding immense pleasure in not having to think about where to go. The AT is the ultimate in a well-marked trail. I can let my mind wander and every once in a while look for that iconic white blaze on a tree, and am reassured that I didn’t wander down a creek thinking it was trail (a real risk out here for sometimes the creeks are trails). When my head is down and I’m sweating through another meham of roots, the blazes lead me to the next gap in the forest and the rest of the trail.

Ok, Onward. A rare road crossing provided just what I needed: a big patch of sun. The clouds have finally blown off, and a wooden bridge gave me the perfect dry spot to hang out all my wet gear. Thru-hiking tip #4: Never pass up a patch of sun when you have wet things.

As I lumbered on, the next section the trail circled Crescent Lake and started the climb up Nesuntabunt Mountain. I passed the sobo hiker Bilbo who was taking advantage of a rare bar of cell signal at a lookout point, and kept going to the top. A short side trail led to a view over to Katadhin, and another sobo (flipflopper) Kool-aid was there. I ate my lunch of tuna packet and avocado and did a little cell phone checking of my own.

Then the crazy stairs happened. Some of the rock work on the AT is out of this world, and the descent off of Nesuntabunt was straight down wet rock stairs. Going down wasn’t much fun…I almost prefer steep uphills to these downhills which can blow your knees out fast.

The rest of the afternoon I got stumbly…the tiredness in my legs was making it harder and harder to make the steps…and each step had some kind of obstacle to navigate around. This hiking might not be demanding to navigate, but it was demanding to walk.

Camp came just in time. I walked through the scene of a lord of the flies rampage…teenage boys and their stuff was everywhere…it might have been a sweet-natured boyscout troop, but the chaos of voices and gear drove me to hide out on the side of the camp and pitch my tent away from the scene.

Oh my, this is my day five morning entry, and I’m still alive.

Day’s highlight: Rainbow Ledges

Day’s lowlight: walking the edge of Rainbow lake for miles before I could jump in.

Each night I sleep more out here. I imagine my muscles knitting layers of new strong as I slumber. It’s a nice dream…I look forward to the day when I jaunt up the rocks and roots instead of heavily trod and plod.

Two rounds of coffee for me this morning. Several hikers take off, and I stretch and dawdle….with short days every task can be stretched out. There is no need to hurry or worry here.

When I do start hiking, it’s uphill. Up up and away to Rainbow Ledges. Have I mentioned the rock is mostly granite here? Giant slabs of the stuff. In fact, I’m walking thise giant slabs as trail on Rainbow Ledges. The trail is actually just the absence of moss and flowers….I’m surrounded by green mosses, yellow and fuchsia flowers, and trees that let up enough for another view back to Katadhin.

Alright, alright!

Break time.

I meet the 17 year old (the one mentioned yesterday) at the top and we both take off packs and shoes for the first sweat-free moment we’ve had all morning.

It’s sunny today…but the last weather news I had was rain. I looked and looked, but it was only blue sky with wisps of cloud. No rain in sight.

It was 5.2 brutal miles to swimming after that, brutal because we were so close to the lake most of the time. I pictured diving beneath the chilled yet swimable surface of the water where all the dirt and sweat would flow away. Great lengths of time were spent envisioning the swim.

When I finally rolled up, 17 was just in front of me. We plopped down and then I had my swim. In reality, it was a quick dive into the deep, and I was out soon after. Cold!

It was amazing.

Lunch.

I had a lake day after that. I only hiked a few more miles to a small dam, and set up my shelter with a view of…wait for it….Katadhin.

An early afternoon meant naping, podcast listening, reading, and snacking.

Alright, alright.