Searching for Silver Linings in Ecuador

Tags

bad weather, Cotopaxi, Ecuador, equator, hiking, Quilotoa, Quito, SOUTH AMERICA, vacations on a theme, Weekly Photo Challenge

Weather can be a cruel travel companion. Sometimes its best version comes along on a trip and makes everything better and brighter. Most times, it simply hovers in the background, a wallflower friend, neither making nor breaking the voyage. But on rare occasions, it becomes the escort from hell, a negative force that colors every aspect of a trip.

For much of our recent trip to Ecuador, we were accompanied by a physical and proverbial black cloud, making this country – a place that others have celebrated and which well-traveled friends had recently described as “a place everyone should see” – a bit of a disappointment to us. While almost all of our frustrations were directly or indirectly caused by variations on the theme of bad weather, there were other disenchantments as well, and it took our powers of positive thinking to salvage our week.

Quito

In Quito, my sister and I imagined we’d find a vibrant capital city with flowery colonial balconies, lively indigenous markets, and sunny plazas bordered by churches of every variety, all surrounded by Andean peaks. What we found was a smudged outline of that picture: a somewhat tired city, smothered in low-hanging clouds and choked with the black exhaust from dyspeptic buses and private vehicles. The historic part of the city had some of the requisite charm in the most popular tourist patches, but the rest of the hugely sprawling metropolis felt nondescript and lifeless to us. I like straying off the tourist paths, but this time the quieter streets and areas held little interest and even gave us a sense of uneasiness at times. We first stayed in La Mariscal, a neighborhood recommended for its energetic nightlife and restaurant options, but what we saw were some weary-looking prostitutes, a smattering of good places to eat, and bars and cafes seemingly meant to attract 20-somethings on a men’s outing.

Our optimistic natures saw beauty in the colorful houses tumbling down the steep hills surrounding the valley in which the city lay. Laughing at ourselves, we tried to make artsy photos out of the mist cloaking the skyline. We managed to find two tasty dinners even though the first restaurant “ran out” of all white wine and the second said the entrée brought to us was different from what we ordered because they recently revised the ingredients but hadn’t bothered to change the description. Oh, okay. And some of the suggestions mentioned by friends and online sources were simply rendered useless by the weather; why pay to take the teleférico for a bird’s eye view of the city when the city is covered by a big, gray flannel blanket? When we returned to the capital at the end of our week, we moved slightly north, closer to La Carolina Park and a more vibrant barrio and that small shift, along with a few hours of sun one day, was helpful in redeeming the city a bit in our eyes. Would we have felt differently overall about Quito in the sun? Hard to say, but probably.

Cotopaxi

After seeing everything we wanted to see in the capital, we eagerly anticipated what was to be the highlight of our hiking menu for the week. We had arranged a driver and guide to take us to Cotopaxi Mountain, an active volcano that we intended to hike up to 16,000 feet or higher if we felt good and the weather permitted. Friends who had been here a week before basked in the sun at the refuge and took stunning photos of the summit, and we were primed for more of the same. (Maybe we should have adjusted our expectations based on this couple’s attempt to take wedding photos with Cotopaxi as the backdrop …)

On our Cotopaxi morning, however, we woke to very cold temperatures, some 20 degrees below normal, as well as the extremely dense clouds and rain that we had apparently dragged along to Ecuador with us. We put on or packed all of our cold and wet weather gear, and went downstairs to meet the guide … who was a no-show. Several increasingly impatient and irritated phone calls later, we secured a replacement, who arrived 90 minutes late, a big deal because the weather worsens on Cotopaxi Mountain as the day progresses, even on a good day.

The late start, followed by a halting uphill slog on unpaved roads now running with mud, led to a miserable ascent on the cinder paths up the side of the volcano. We (hilariously and optimistically) chose the path that afforded great views of five surrounding peaks, but all we saw when we could lift our altitude-challenged heads was a haunting, blackish-gray slant of ash punctuated by squawking seagulls, whose eerie cawing as they wheeled above our heads just reinforced the gloomy doom of our surroundings.

We made it to the refuge at 15,900+ feet (see it? … squint hard; it’s there, below), but after resting and warming ourselves briefly, we took one look at the now snow-covered trail leading up to the lip of the glacier and decided we’d had enough.

Smart move. Seconds into our descent, we were lashed by small hail pellets that stung our faces and pinged off our rain jackets. A crack of thunder sounded as we rounded the first switchback, and our guide – slow and careful coming up with the high elevation – began to walk at a pace that required us to almost jog down the slippery ash to keep up.

As we dropped lower, the icy pills turned to wet snow and then to cold rain, soaking us to the skin anywhere we were not totally waterproofed. Back in the 4×4, we skidded down the mud tracks to leave the national park, learning that our guide was even more nervous than we were about being on the side of a mountain in an electrical storm.

Chugchilán

We left Quito quite happily, hoping that crossing the mountains into another province might lead us into a different weather system. It did – a worse one! Our first day in the mountains at a rustic lodge surrounded by dozens of hiking trails was a rain-fest. We hiked anyway because, well, we are hard-core and stubborn. Our jackets were sopping, our hiking shoes sodden and muddy, and our spirits as dampened as our clothing. But we (sort of) got our hikes in.

Even though we were surrounded by a smorgasbord of trails, all of the hike descriptions given out by the lodge were inadequate or incorrect, and none of the trails was marked in any way. Throw in the feral dogs that we were supposed to beat off with the sticks we got at the lodge, and it’s understandable that we might have aborted a few hikes before their natural ends.

After a surprisingly great night’s sleep in our little woodstove-heated room, we rose to a hallelujah moment – SUN peeking out from the clouds and revealing a deep and verdant canyon in full view from our window. We wolfed down our breakfasts, loaded our backpacks, and took off.

We got in a solid five hours of hiking before the deluge began. The elevation changes in this part of Ecuador are extreme; starting at 10,500 feet made it even more challenging, but we were euphoric over a short ridge hike to start the day. We clambered a steep half mile up to the top and then completed a big loop with fantastic views. At the end we inched down through farmland that looked like it was built on the side of an Aztec temple or an Egyptian pyramid. The crops planted at 45-degree angles were a vision of geometric landscape art. We were happy girls this morning.

After a quick snack and water refill, we were back out for a hike down, down, down into a canyon and then up, up, up onto a plateau. We met the scariest snarling dog of the trip, baring his teeth and hungrily staring us down from a perch four feet above us. We waved our sticks and carried on, but we ultimately found the plateau hike boring, and the maps made so sense at all, so after a while we ate a snack and then did the reverse down, down, down and back up, up, up.

Undaunted, we decided to take one more short hike because we knew mid-to late afternoon would bring rain. We pushed it a little too far, racing back under black clouds and, at the very end, buckets of rain dumped all over us after we had finally dried out all our gear the night before. Sigh.

Quilotoa

Quilotoa morning dawned just like Cotopaxi day: completely socked in with dense fog. By some miracle granted by the gods of travel (or maybe Instagram), the clouds retreated just as we arrived at the rim after a thirty-minute drive to the crater.

We took full advantage, snapping away with our cameras before we took off on a three-hour trek across a portion of the rim and, as the clouds inevitably returned, down into the town of Guayama, getting sprinkled upon for much of the walk.

Here we needed to make a decision: continue walking the whole way back to Chugchilán, which was another three to four hours, or get a ride back with the driver who awaited us there.

We had plenty of energy, but the rains persisted lightly, and our guide’s description of the route was unnerving. We would descend for about two hours on a very narrow path that started out as a cat’s spine walk with steep precipices on both sides and then turned into an even thinner path that snaked down the face of the canyon to the river. After that, we would need to climb back out of the gorge and walk back to our little village. Having seen the washed out roads and mudslides that littered our route in the car that morning, we could hardly imagine what a rain-soaked trail would look like and what danger it would present to us if the showers were as torrential as they had been the previous two days.

Seeing both our worry and disappointment, the guide and driver conferred and decided to take us to an alternate route so we could at least hike the bottom of the gorge and make the climb out of the canyon. While certainly quicker, we soon saw that the rain-damaged road down was just as scary as the trek would have been, and we squeezed our eyes shut, then took fleeting peeks at the drop-offs that beckoned inches away from the car doors. We couldn’t wait to get out of the car and start walking again, no matter how steep or frightening!

Do I even need to say it started to rain on us as we staggered out of the steep canyon walls that afternoon and wound our way back to our muddy, tree-dripping, bone-chilling, bugs-in-the-shower, eco-lodge room? Or that a 300-pound pig began snorting and squealing and trying to nose its way into our room as we hung up our drenched clothing? We slugged back a glass of box wine and a huge local beer in the main lodge at dinner, struggled to make conversation with the motley crew of backpackers there for the evening, and crashed into our rock-hard beds for one last night.

Back to Quito and the Equator

Back in Quito after our stay in Chugchilán, we spent one final day thawing our bones under a few hours of high-altitude sun and turning our previous six days of rain, questionable lodging, and bizarre acquaintances into funny stories and the beginnings of good memories. We overpaid for a ride north to the equator sites (there are several, one of which was semi-interesting and, fortunately, the one recognized as the most accurate location).

We agreed that Ecuador is a physically beautiful country that was just not able to show itself properly during our time there, but that even in great weather it may not have delighted us the way many other destinations have. I couldn’t help but compare Quito to buoyant Bogotá or historic Cusco or rocking Mexico City – all high-altitude Latin American cities that have charmed me to death, and Quito just couldn’t stand in the ring with those places, at least this time. Rural beauty is there in spades, but the infrastructure and information were sadly lacking throughout our time away from the capital, and we didn’t connect as well with the local people as we would have liked either. Because our experience seems different from that of many other travelers, we’ll just have to give Ecuador the benefit of the doubt and try again someday when we go back to the Galapagos or the Amazon!

 

Roughing It

Tags

Enchanted Rock, Fredericksburg, hiking, Hill Country, Texas, weathered, Weekly Photo Challenge

On our recent Texas road trip, we spent time both going and coming in Fredericksburg, an old German-influenced town in the Hill Country near the center of the state. Even before I moved to Texas, I had always loved the soft patina of Texas limestone, the predominant building material in this area. Paired with rough wood siding and beams, the pale yellow stone has a naturally weathered look that I’ll always identify with central Texas. Equally weather-worn is the split wood siding on a few historic log homes and even a few newer doors and walls.

Speaking of weathered …

Always seeking a quick hike wherever we are, here we decided to climb Enchanted Rock, a huge dome of pink granite that rises from the earth just outside Fredericksburg. A billion years ago, this rock was a pool of magma, parts of which pushed up through the earth’s surface, cooled and hardened, and turned into granite. Over time, the surface rock and soil wore away, forming the domes here today. We were fascinated to read that the domes are but a tiny part of a huge underground sea of granite. The entire batholith covers 62 square miles, but most of it is underground.

Enchanted Rock has numerous eroded layers, with pieces expanding and falling off even today on the curved surface. At the high point now, the main dome is 425 feet high, and the entire exposed rock spans 640 acres.

And that’s it for our three-day getaway a few weeks ago. I’m on my way to Ecuador now for some much higher climbs, so stay tuned!

Ambling Around the Alps

Tags

Alps, exploring, hiking, mountains, rounded, Weekly Photo Challenge, woods

How delectable it is to wake up and have a whole day stretching before us with no set itinerary. We eat a leisurely breakfast, stand on our patio overlooking Wolfgansee (Lake Wolfgang) in western Austria, and rejigger the plan we made last night. The morning is misty and cool, so we decide to postpone a hike and instead drive to a nearby town.

Not just any nearby town. Hallstatt, Austria, is a place that has grown so famous and so congested that some experienced travelers refuse to go there, and we are very close to skipping it ourselves. Even our hosts in St Wolfgang have warned us away, saying that people the world over were so obsessed with Hallstatt that the Chinese decided to build an exact replica of the town so that couples could take their engagement photos, wedding pictures, anniversary and birthday snaps, and unimaginable numbers of everyday selfies there without leaving Asia. In spite of the negative reviews, we figure it’s early in the day and not particularly nice out yet, so we spurn the naysayers and jump in the car for the forty-minute drive.

With this less-than-auspicious introduction, we are hesitant, but we arrive and park before the hordes descend, and to our delight, we have the shores of the lake to ourselves, except for a few swans, as we approach the village. Like overrun tourist attractions everywhere, there is a good reason for the throngs. Our first lakeside views take in a diaphanous scene of mirror-smooth gray-blue water, a mini-castle on the far shore, and the spit of the town itself, an impossibly perfect little concoction of spires, rooflines, docks, summer flowers, and wooden boats, all perched on the limpid lake. A ribbon of morning mist threads in and out of an inlet, adding an ethereal touch to the panorama.

By the time the streets start to fill up with the first of the day’s visitors, we are climbing high above the town. Small, tasteful signs ask walkers to refrain from photographing the private homes along the route, and we whisper softly as we pass doorways and gardens. A little later, we come back down and scoot out of town just as the sun begins to peek out from the fog and the multitudes start to arrive.

***

Back in St. Wolfgang, the day has blossomed into a cool and sunny brilliance. We grab our backpacks and set off for Schwarzensee, a lake high up in the mountains above our little resort town. The trail is alternately steep and flattish, with views of the vaporous Lake Wolfgang off to the right though portholes of evergreens and deciduous trees.

It’s a woodsy walk, with birch and evergreen trunks rising high above the needled brown paths. I trudge behind J, who is always the pace keeper, and get lost in my own thoughts for long stretches. We are nearly alone; on rare occasions, we pass a couple or two, and on the way down, we smile at a rowdy little family of parents and young kids cavorting up the hill.

Schwarzensee appears before we know it. After our long and difficult climb in the High Tatras of Slovakia a week earlier, today’s ascent goes fast. We are now starving; it’s after 2 pm and we’ve been gone since early morning. Lucky for us, these mountain trails often have some sort of refuge up high, always with beer and better food in the middle of nowhere than even a busy roadside stop in the U.S. We order a couple of dark brews, salads, and bread, and spend some time sitting in the sun at a picnic table, batting away bees and appreciating our mid-hike good fortune. We bounce with a slight buzz back down the trail and arrive at our lodging in record speed, sated and tired in a most satisfying way, ready for our next Alpine adventure.

***

The Julian Alps stretch along the border of northwestern Slovenia and Austria. They are an impressive but accessible range, and on the Slovenian side, they provide the snowcapped backdrop for the fairytale setting of Lake Bled and its island church. Here, on another quiet morning, we walk briskly around the 4-mile lake trail, viewing that idyllic little clump of land from every vantage point. You can pay to paddle out there on a tour boat, but I’ve eschewed that outing twice, preferring to see the water- and tree-ringed bell tower with its mountainous backdrop.

This time, we also forgo the medieval castle looming above the lake, instead making a number of stops on the stroll, perusing the Olympic rowing facilities, checking out one of Tito’s many summer villas, and stopping at the Park Hotel on the way back to the car for a slice of their famous cream cake.

***

There are higher summits, rougher peaks, scarier climbs, and more exotic mountain cultures around the world, but for my money, the Alps are the torch carrier for highland hiking day in and day out, the winner of the prize for “Most Well-Rounded” of mountain ranges, if you will. The countries that are caretakers of this range, and the people who make these slopes and meadows their home, have created a system of paths and services that are hard to beat. From our post-college backpacking days, to our first serious experience hiking the Mont Blanc circuit a decade ago, to the day hikes we sprinkle into our European trips, we have returned time and again to these green hills full of cows, streams, trees, and fields. It’s always a good day for an amble in the Alps.

Dressed for Success

Tags

Alps, exploring, High Tatras, hiking, packing lists, scale, too little, too much, Weekly Photo Challenge

My packing list for most trekking trips, whether they’re going to be day hikes or multi-day marathons, is pretty simple: hiking shoes or boots, a few layered tops, athletic tights or maybe a thicker hiking pant, some cold and/or rainy weather gear, a trusty baseball cap that has seen better days, and … that’s about it. Most of those layers are more than a decade old, but I know they all work, and I can pack all the right stuff while half asleep.

On one of my earliest outings with strangers years ago, I met my first Haute Hikers. These upscale, stylish ladies had more than one nanopuff jacket buried in their overstuffed duffel bags, the better to coordinate with multiple pairs of figure-enhancing pants. They had decorative scarves and neck gaiters that matched their expensive little tank tops, jaunty caps (one had a feather), fancy watches (with altitude readings, naturally), and snazzy boots that were so new they got blisters the first day. I did covet some of their stuff, I have to admit, but I was pretty happy to avoid those ridiculously heavy duffels and backpacks. Being underdressed had benefits I appreciated, both logistical and psychic.

Let’s switch channels to European day hikes in the mountains, specifically the ones I took on our recent Central Europe swing. I am equipped just about as I described above. I’m in the same clothes I’ve worn in other parts of the world, and I’ve got a light daypack with water for the day, a snack or two, a rain jacket, and a hat. But now I am clearly overdressed, too sporty for the trails, and way too amply supplied in general.

You see, in the mountainous parts of Europe, hiking is such a part of life that it requires no special apparel or gear. In the High Tatras of northern Slovakia, on a trail that chewed me up at times, cute young women in capris and sandals – several with heels – sauntered past me, stepping up and over the jagged rocks as if they were power shopping on Fifth Avenue. The men wore basic pants and t-shirts and kept up a blistering pace that allowed them to stop for a smoke and still pass me again fifteen minutes later. Did anyone even have a backpack? I don’t think so. Six hours for them must be a morning constitutional – no snacks or extra water necessary.

In the Austrian Alps, we trundled down from a high mountain lake one afternoon to see a family with toddlers, all seemingly dressed for the playground, scampering up the steep path toward us, as carefree as could be. Dogs joined their owners on many a trail – not big tough dogs, but little fashion dogs, white yippy things that bounded over tree roots and mossy stones with their 4-inch legs while I heaved my taller, stronger (I thought) body over the same obstacles.

There were actually a few European hiking beasts who carried more than I did. But their bulky loads were their children, from infants on up strapped onto their backs, with the little ones’ legs and arms dangling and swinging wildly as their parents maneuvered down rock piles and mud chutes. Look, no hands! the adults might as well have proclaimed as they careened by my pokey self crawling like a baby down some scree. I couldn’t decide if I admired these risk-takers or found them mildly (or wildly) irresponsible …

Even if I scale up my gear program and buy some newer, more attractive apparel, I’m never going to be a mountaintop model; I value comfort and carry-on convenience way too much. At the downscale end of the spectrum, I can’t quite see myself tackling serious climbs in clothes I last wore to a casual picnic either. I think I’ll just stick with my dependable old middle-of-the-road hiking attire and save the other two ends of the scale for a blog post.

High Tatras High

Tags

High Tatras, hiking, mountain lakes, mountains, pedestrian, Slovakia, Strbske Pleso, stubborn, trekking, Velke Hincovo Pleso, Weekly Photo Challenge

There was nothing pedestrian about the hike and the landscape we encountered in northern Slovakia last month, except that the only way to see it was on foot, of course.

I first heard of Slovakia’s High Tatras mountains in July of 2015, when a fellow blogger penned a compelling personal account of a hike to Veľké Hincovo Pleso. Her descriptions of both the physical trek and the restorative power of nature resonated with me. It was my introduction to both her and this relatively unknown trekking area, and I resolved then and there to do this very hike someday. In a way, our driving trip around central Europe 26 months later was planned around hiking this one little trail.

We arrived at Strbske Pleso, close to the mountainous border with Poland, after a few days in western and central Slovakia. We had already begun to absorb some of the wild roughness of this country’s natural beauty. Its smaller roads cut through dark forests of evergreens, but a drive up multiple switchbacks to our hotel and a late afternoon stroll around Strbske Pleso itself (pleso means tarn, or mountain lake, for those who don’t do crossword puzzles!) brought home the towering and glowering nature of the area. It was raining more than it wasn’t and when it did cease at times, there was a low-hanging mist and a deep chill in the air. We gazed out the front of our lodging to a valley far below, but at this point we had no idea what jagged heights lay behind the hotel.

Completely unaware that there are high peaks behind all those clouds

The morning of the hike, we rose to a miraculously sunny day – quite cold and crystal clear – but I had a new obstacle to overcome. Stomach trouble the night before had left me depleted, and I was plagued with a sharp headache and weakened limbs from the sickness and lack of sleep. But there was simply no way I was giving up the chance to take this hike on the only sunny day the area had seen or was likely to see in well over a week. I forced down a piece of toast, filched a roll and some cheese from the breakfast table for later, and donned every layer of hiking-appropriate clothing I could find in my suitcase.

We set off with husband J’s idea that I might only make it to Popradské Pleso, the first mountain lake on the route and about an hour and a half up the trail. Truth be told, even before I felt so debilitated, the map of the hiking trails had intimidated me; our ultimate goal lay near the highest peaks of the range, and there was a disconcerting amount of snow on steep-looking ridges on every drawing I consulted.

As we got underway, I had moments of doubt that I’d even make it to Popradské Lake, but as I have on so many treks in the past, I put one foot in front of the other until I fell into a rhythm and pushed my discomfort and worries into the background.

Somehow, even with my slowed pace and frequent camera stops, we made it to the trail junction in less than the posted time. Motivated to keep going by that surprising discovery and a deep drink of water, I insisted that we press on, passing a sign that said we had just a few more hours to Veľké Hincovo Pleso. No problem, I thought, even though I knew that the next phase would involve steeper slopes, fast-flowing streams to cross, and a jumble of rocks to climb. Two hours was nothing to me; I’d taken difficult treks that chewed up ten-hour days, and I repeated them day after day for weeks at a time in some pretty precipitous parts of the world.

Well, I was about to be humbled. Shortly after the turn, we were clambering over muddy tree roots and then a rock-strewn path, both of which felt nearly vertical to my wasted body. I begged J to go on ahead; he hikes fast and usually has no qualms about ditching me. But today he refused, saying there was no way he was leaving me alone when I felt weak and dizzy. I’m not much of a trail talker to begin with, but now I was dead silent, summoning all my energy stores for the next steps, steps that quickly became higher, sharper, and more irregular.

We began to cross several small streams, two with wood bridges and one an easy hop, skip, and jump on the rocks. I was relieved; the fording with a rope over a fast torrent that Julie had written about was no longer here! So what was that sound? That sound of churning water ahead and above, that sound of voices and shouts. My heart sank as we rounded a bend and saw it: a rough and tumble gush of water over half-submerged, jagged rocks – and no rope. People were tottering across, many plunging at least one boot into the rapids.

I was done, I thought. I have great balance and I love a good rock hop, but I was exhausted and suddenly paralyzed. I stood on the near bank, staring and shaking my head. The longer this goes on, I scolded myself, the more wobbly I was going to be. The key to rock hopping is an agile quickness; the more you waver, the shakier you get. J stopped halfway on the biggest, flattest rock and held out his hand. I have to admit it; I am a hiking hard-ass, and I wanted none of that wussiness. I made a few perfunctory, dismissive motions, but I finally hopped in, grabbing his hand, and we scampered the rest of the way across.

J said again Do you need to turn around? There’s still a long way to go, and then we have to get down.  

NO, I snapped. I’m not quitting. Spit out as if it were the most terrible word and idea in the world.

How did you end up like this? He laughed and shook his head.

Like what? Competitive? You know I’ve always been this way.

I was thinking stubborn and hard-headed …

That I was. Am. I was getting to that lake today.

Let’s give it until noon, I bargained. That’s the 2:10 we saw plus some extra time for all my stopping and slow going.

The next 75 minutes were arduous, and we walked in silence, J surging ahead and then checking behind him, me talking to myself in the sternest terms and ducking my head every time he looked back. The toil was relieved by the most astounding vistas – sweeping panoramas of the Mengusovská Dolina (Valley) behind us and neck-craning views of the crests on the border ahead.

At ten minutes before noon, a descending hiker said 5 minutes! and all of a sudden the trail leveled out and we were walking into the bowl that holds the largest and deepest tarn in the Tatras.

Not yet!

The goal – Veľké Hincovo Pleso

It was uniquely exhilarating, in some ways the most satisfying “summit” I’ve ever reached. I pumped my fist, J slapped me five, and a rush of energy propelled me out to the glacier-carved pool to fully absorb the arc of sharp peaks standing guard. We had the place nearly to ourselves for a few moments. I sat down alone on a boulder, finished my sandwich, ate a small square of chocolate, gulped as much water as I dared, and stood up.

And then we went down. It was an ordeal, and it took even longer, including a stupid mistake that cost us 45 knee-destroying minutes at the end. But I prefer to end this story at the high place, on a high note, in the High Tatras, by far the highlight of my two-week trip.

Road Trip: Central Europe

Tags

Austria, Central Europe, Czech Republic, hiking, Hungary, road trips, Slovakia, Slovenia

Two weeks, almost 2000 kilometers, five countries, three major cities, three more of their little sisters, an agreeable array of country villages, and an assortment of amazing hikes: this was the Euro-version of a late summer road trip, right on the heels of the U.S excursion I’d taken alone just weeks before.

We chose our route to cover some places I’d been before, a few husband J had visited on a post-college rail trip, and a number that were new to both of us. Arrival and departure points were determined solely by airfares; in between, we attempted an itinerary that gave us city days interspersed with hiking time in the mountains. This arrangement was ideal, keeping us stimulated both mentally and physically as we bounced from historical tours to rocky trails throughout the trip.

We started in fair-haired, sophisticated Vienna. Warm in temperature and topped by a pale blue sky that matched her palace ceilings, Austria’s capital exuded a cool grace and refinement. She was the well-groomed, grown-up sister of her fellow Central European siblings. Perhaps a little prissy at times, she nevertheless offered a courteous and easy entrée to the region: familiar enough, yet fancily and intriguingly European in her costume of ornate facades. We found ourselves putting on nicer clothes for dinner here, and we strolled along elegant tree-shaded avenues all day long, from Schönbrunn Palace to Stephansplatz to the charmingly retro Prater park and amusement area.

Brilliant Budapest offered a pleasing contrast in many ways. More flamboyantly (and invitingly) overdone in her architecture, this more spread-out metropolis captured our imaginations in a different way than pristine and picture perfect Vienna. Budapest sprawled and lounged, her elegance ravaged at times by her history. The ruin bars, the Jewish quarter overall, the enormous thermal baths, and the outrageously large and magnificent buildings – from Parliament to the Buda hill complex, from concert venues to monuments – all bore a patina of faded beauty. Budapest felt larger-than-life and brainy in almost a mad scientist kind of way; she was the gorgeous but messy kid who forgot to comb her hair each day. Its glut of high culture notwithstanding, Budapest was a blue jeans kind of place for us, a grungier, looser city, and I think I enjoyed our time here more than in any of the other Big Three of the trip.

Prague was the last big city we visited. Everyone we talked to said it was their favorite, but for me, it suffered a bit for its place in the itinerary and the gray, bone-chilling dampness that hovered over the river and the town during our stay. Certainly clad in a similar – really, even grander – wardrobe of extravagant vestments, Prague impressed with its opulence, but wearing those pretty pastel fronts was a dark-haired, more serious girl, with a touch of masculine sensibility thrown in. Here we distinctly felt the presence of our former lives in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Chicago in the dark bars down a few steps from the street, with their heavy beer mugs and pretzels dangling on wooden stands. Dumplings like anchors in the stomach, soot-darkened stone, wood carvings and benches, leaden skies – the overarching feeling of Prague was a heaviness that might have been lightened by softer weather … but maybe not, I decided by the end.

Which brings me to beer. And bread. The Czech Republic won back all the points lost to the climate with those two beloved carbs. We drank beer, nearly all of it dark, in every place we sat down, no matter the time of day. We consumed baskets of bread meant for a family – no petite baguette rounds here; no, these were dense, earthy slabs, and there were times I think we ate a whole loaf between the two of us. We made good, solid Prague as good and solid as we could, and we came to appreciate her Baroque charms. Our final dinner was a cozy repast in a monastery outside of town; unlike the night before when we had desperately sought out lighter fare at a vegetarian place, this evening we filled our bellies with rich, warm barley, dumplings, and of course, more beer and bread.

Our time in the countryside was a fresh air counterpoint (and badly needed exercise opportunity) to these three lovely, cultured ladies. We ventured into the High Tatras mountains of northern Slovakia for some jaw-dropping scenery and hardcore hiking prospects. We circled alpine lakes on foot in Slovenia and elsewhere, climbed high above picturesque little towns in Austria, and ambled on a quiet Sunday morning through a village nearly untouched by tourists deep in the woods of Slovakia.

Every few days, we popped into the baby sisters of the bigger cities: Bratislava, with its unnecessary inferiority complex; Ljubljana, the quirky, bubbly little sibling; and Salzburg, a lovely riverside city unfortunately overrun with conspicuous consumption. We checked out a few travel darling locales and were surprised at our reactions; we adored Hallstatt, Austria, early one morning before the crowds arrived, but we were left feeling pretty ambivalent about Český Krumlov as we took a break on our drive north through the Czech Republic into Prague.

Random observations: Smoking is alive and well in this part of the world, as is flamingly fake maroonish-red hair. Europe does manhole covers better than anywhere else. I was freezing for much of the trip, but the locals were often in t-shirts and higher heels than I could have managed on old stony streets (and trails, but that’s for another post).

The driving was easy and fun; although I hated the long tunnels under the Alps, I appreciated as always the proper use of left lanes for passing only throughout Europe. The back roads, as they are everywhere, were a window into the true soul of these countries, and we rarely minded when we got stuck behind tractors, belching local buses, and the occasional horse cart.

We were chagrined to find that tourist behavior has continued a downward spiral, with selfie sticks at peak density even in smaller cities, young girls and couples posing with ridiculous pouts and/or cringe-worthy, exaggerated emotion, boorish elbowing in crowds, and blatant disregard for property. There were many times I felt sorry for the local people with all of the tourist ruckus in many of our destinations.

We interacted with both kind and gruff residents and shopkeepers throughout the region. As in many countries outside the U.S., service people seem to have a different idea of helpfulness; a vague answer or a shrug were often the only responses to a question or problem. It is what it is, they imply, and as always, we learn to adapt and eventually embrace the whatever attitude many other cultures possess.

The languages made for some fun deciphering, especially those that were closely related, and we built on our scant knowledge as the days went by. Perhaps it was manufactured in our minds, but we seemed to feel a tangible difference in the vibes of the countries we traversed. From proper to rugged to intellectual to laid-back to outdoorsy to blue collar to cultural (in that order, if you want to peruse the map again!), we followed a trail of central European personalities in a roughly clockwise loop. We wouldn’t have skipped a thing, but we both agreed that we wished for a lot more time in the mountain towns of our hiking bases. More on all of our destinations in upcoming posts!

Friends on Foot

Tags

friends, hiking, mountain guides, new friends, trekking, Weekly Photo Challenge

I wake up, groaning, in a 35-degree lodge, my stomach in spasms, and my head pounding at an altitude of nearly 14,000 feet, a good week into the Everest Base Camp trek in Nepal. How am I going to do this today, I wonder? Teeth chattering, I dress and stumble out to the small dining room, thinking about how I can tell the guide I can’t possibly go up another 1000 feet or more this morning. And then a guy from Alaska pushes a bowl of warm oatmeal and a mug of coffee at me and gently encourages me to eat. A young woman leaves her mom’s side as we get up from the table and commiserates about my cramps, and our guide slaps me five as we gingerly step into a snowy, misty morning. You’re looking good, Miss Lexie – ready to go? And indeed, there I went, held up by people I didn’t even know when I landed in Kathmandu two weeks before.

Tramping across this Earth has been one of the highlights of my life and, more often than not, I have been introduced to new lands in the company of strangers. Even when I have set off with family members or existing friends, I have collected what I always call “my hiking friends,” people I’ve met on the trail who become fast friends for as long as the trek lasts, and sometimes longer.

On rare occasions, those people become real friends, and some have joined me on future walks. While others do eventually slip away and become simply holiday card recipients or pleasant memories, there is a small circle of us, including a few guides, who will always be connected long after we left the pathways.

My husband and kids tease me about my hiking friends, wondering how I can become so attached to people with whom I have spent a mere week or two. But a week of post-hike beers and dinners gives friendship formation a power boost, and believe me, three days in camps with no showers and one toilet tent creates an intimacy one rarely experiences with friends at home! In a matter of days, we think nothing of sharing our trail food or embarrassing stories, and we take care of each other in ways that belie the brief life of our relationship.

Every step of the budding bond is accelerated when we spend our waking hours chatting on a tough mountain track and our evenings sharing meals, pains, and more life stories. Most of us are in the early-impressions phase of trying to be agreeable and supportive, and friendship blooms quickly and easily with those who are open to it.

In the last decade, I have met my Nepal hiking friends for a ski trip in Utah and reunited with them on the Paine Circuit in Chile, hosted my Tanzanian guide in our home in Chicago, gone back to Peru and linked up with my Inca Trail guides again for some smaller walks on my own, and recently had another Himalayan hiking friend over for dinner here in Houston. They may not be my everyday pals, but my hiking friends and I have a singular connection that I cannot share with anyone else, and my life is richer for them.

Warning Signs

Tags

canyons, danger, Gurvan Saikhan, hiking, Mongolia, warning, Weekly Photo Challenge, Yolyn Am

Yolyn Am canyon was a welcome stop in our exploration of Mongolia last summer. We had been on the steppe for over a week, baking under the Eurasian high summer sun, and we were headed to the even hotter Gobi Desert when we boarded a tiny propeller plane for the south and the Gurvan Saikhan Mountains.

From flat, scrubby expanses, we arrived in a deep, cool gorge for an invigorating hike inside towering walls. Yolyn Am (named after the yol, or lammergeyer, a vulture-like bird) is known in part for its ice field that lingers well into the summer, and we saw remnants of this as we criss-crossed a running stream at the base of the canyon.

Although the hike was lengthy and we had to pick our way carefully in some of the narrower stretches, there was only minor danger encountered that day. Nevertheless, we got a huge kick out of all the warning or admonitory signs on our way into the trailhead! Can you determine what to watch out for or refrain from doing here?

Happy Camper

Tags

camp, confidence, girlpower, girls, hiking, North Carolina, transformation, transmogrify, Weekly Photo Challenge

An unexpected glimpse of my childhood arrived in my inbox this past week. The camp I attended as a young girl had revamped their website and sent me a link, so I poked around it for a few minutes until I came to a video. I blithely clicked PLAY and for the next 30 minutes I was transported several decades back in time to a place that started my love affair with the great outdoors and in many ways transformed the arc of my life.

The camp was founded over 70 years ago and most of the cabins and other facilities had seen little updating by my day, or since. (This is a good thing.) Green Cove is a traditional girls’ camp (the brother camp is nearby), a place where old-fashioned activities continue to be practiced in much the same ways they always have, perhaps with slightly better equipment. There are no team sports here, no competitions, no electronics, and no fancy anythings. The cabins and dining hall smell delightfully of mildew, and the furnishings are of the woodsy, rustic variety.

Here we learned (and the girls still learn) to rock climb, build a fire, sail and kayak and canoe, and ride mountain bikes and horses. We handled carabiners, tent pegs, awls, pitons, booms, paddles, and reins. We got filthy almost every day, and we didn’t care if our wet hair stuck to our faces, our t-shirts got permanently stained, and our shoes and bathing suits never dried out over the course of a month or more. We ate hungrily at every family-style meal, and we burned off all of it and more every day in the lake and on the trails.

We launched arrows and fired rifles, cast fishing lines and hoisted backpacks, carved wood, wove textiles, and enameled copper. We were trusted around sharp tools and hot fires, wobbly river rocks and skittish horses. We were given the confidence to lead the way on a steep ledge, the skill to clean a mare’s hoof, the faith to lean back into a rappel, the nerves to flip a kayak.

In our free time, we swept high out over the lake on a giant swing and dropped into the cold, muddy water, played capture the flag until we were winded, lay back in the grass to count wooly white animals in the sky, wrote long letters home from our bunks, and napped, deeply. At night, we gathered around campfires, sang songs, played ping pong, opened mail from home, talked for hours in our cabins, and slept more soundly on a lumpy cot than we ever would again in a five-star bed.

Camp life was idyllic, but for me, the highlights of my months in the mountains were the wilderness trips. Starting at young ages, girls could start spending from 1 to 6 or more days out in nature, learning to live as one with the earth. I loved that Green Cove’s raison d’être was to encourage girls to seek outdoor adventures and to develop the skills needed to continually pursue challenges in the woods and mountains and, ultimately, life. I went into camp a very shy girl, a girl who played it safe. I emerged with the ammunition to get through my teenage and young adult years with some semblance of confidence, and I started down a path of world discovery, ideally on foot out in nature, that I still eagerly pursue today.

I’m sure a few of my fellow campers no longer want to trek for weeks on end, go without showers for days at a time, or sleep on a flimsy mat under a sleeping bag on a buggy night. For me, it’s still heaven, and I still chase those interludes when iPhones and email, work deadlines and house projects fade into gray, and nothing lies before me each morning but a chance to put one foot in front of the other under a green canopy or on a rocky path. Camp changed my whole relationship with the world outside my door; I fell in love with it, and I never fell out.

Submitted as part of the Weekly Photo Challenge: Transmogrify

Photo Note: Not a single one of these photos is from camp! Those days were captured on a tiny, crummy old film camera, and I don’t even know where the prints might be.

Missing Mongolia

Tags

camels, deserts, Flaming Cliffs, Gobi Desert, hiking, Mongolia, nostalgia, travel memories, Yolyn Am

Fall is upon us in the eastern U.S. and no matter how much I wished for these cooling breezes and drops in temperature and humidity over the past three months, I am already feeling nostalgic for summer. More than the weather, however, I am missing the yawning span of free and easy vacation days that are one of the perks of being a university professor.

More specifically, I am reminiscing about the weeks I just spent in Mongolia, a place that in itself brought back poignant memories for me: my days of horseback riding as a young child and teenager, sleeping under the stars on a totally black night, county fairs, rock-hopping in mountain streams – all thousands of miles and decades away. As I ride a last wave of nostalgia with my final post on Mongolia, I revisit a summery landscape that caught me by surprise.

I’ve said it before: I’m not a desert lover. One of my new travel mates in Mongolia couldn’t wait to get to the Gobi. I, on the other hand, would have been quite happy to park myself in a ger out on the steppe and never leave, riding my horse off into the soft, green hills. I’ve never been drawn to arid landscapes and don’t naturally like places that are dry, brown, or barren. But just as I did at Zion National Park in the U.S., Wadi Rum in Jordan, and other famous desert destinations, I put aside my distaste for desiccation in order to see one of the world’s famous deserts.

I traded a shiny-coated horse for a mangy camel, elevation for endless flatness, and verdant hills for rust-colored cliffs, but the Gobi’s sere, simple beauty grabbed me after all and seems to have stubbornly parked itself in my memories.

Sunset happens precipitously here; one minute there is searing heat and glare and the next, the sun has sunk below the horizon in the blink of a squinting eye. Mornings are equally hasty in arriving, with the deep blackness of desert night quickly shattered by sunlight that has no natural barriers. I am missing that unimpeded view of the sun each morning and night here in my city home.

The Gobi has a few salmon-colored, ridged sand dunes, but on the whole it is a land of reddish dirt patterned with olive-green scrub grass. Four of the usual Mongolian suspects ply the paths; that is, the sheep and the goats, the horses and the camels, always in those pairs.

Vehicles are few and far between, and with no marked roads, routes, or landmarks, I have no idea how they find their way around. There were long periods of time on our drives when we saw no other vehicles and when faced with a choice of three identical dirt paths at just slightly different angles, our driver always seemed to know exactly which one to take. (I normally have a very good sense of direction, and I occasionally had the feeling that we were doubling back after making a wrong turn, but that was just a hunch. We did always end up where we wanted to go!)

One exception to the stubbly green topography was the Flaming Cliffs, a series of sandstone formations that are most famous as the site of Roy Chapman Andrew’s expeditions in the early 1920s that led to the discovery of the first dinosaur eggs, as well as thousands of dinosaur bones, all of which were packaged up and carted away on the backs of camels to their new home in the American Museum of Natural History. After a hike of only several hours on the parched cliffs, I found the notion of mounting such an extensive expedition in this harsh and remote environment – nearly a century ago, no less – to be truly staggering.

A final stop in the Gobi provided a brief respite from the heat and sun as we hiked deep into Yolyn Am, a narrow canyon in the Gurvan Saikhan mountains that is home to an ice field that often lingers the whole way through the summer months. We stream-hopped back and forth until we could go no farther into the gorge, but try as we might, we did not glimpse any lammergeiers, the large birds after which the canyon is named.

The Gobi was the last stop on a wide-ranging trip around Mongolia, chronicled in the posts below, and the final travel spree of my summer break. Soon it will be time to stop looking back in longing and start contemplating the next memory-making escape.

Want more Mongolia?

Danshig Naadam: https://lexklein.wordpress.com/2016/09/06/danshig-naadam/

Framing a House Mongolian Style: https://lexklein.wordpress.com/2016/08/26/framing-a-house-mongolian-style/

A Steppe Out of Time: https://lexklein.wordpress.com/2016/08/19/a-steppe-out-of-time/

Ulaanbaatar’s Contrasts and Surprises: https://lexklein.wordpress.com/2016/08/16/ulaanbaatars-contrasts-and-surprises/

Nothing Narrow Here: https://lexklein.wordpress.com/2016/08/01/nothing-narrow-here/

Can’t See the Forest for the Trees (and other little things)

Tags

details, forests, hiking, Laurel Highlands, outdoors, Pennsylvania, trees

On our last two weekend escapes from the hot and humid city, we’ve hiked some very small sections of the Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail in western Pennsylvania.

It is a woodsy walk, overall a 70-mile traipse through more than 20,000 acres of dense trees, cold streams, ferns, wildflowers, and prodigious clumps of rhododendron. The LHHT starts in Ohiopyle State Park and ends near Johnstown; along the way, there are shelters every 8-10 miles and enough varied terrain to keep hikers happy for days. There are great views from the higher ridges, and the entire trail sits at about 2500’ of elevation, so even on a sweltering day like one we had this weekend, the air is cool and the path largely shaded.

But that’s an overview of this trail I want to thru-hike some day. Yesterday what I focused on were the details, those little features that make every walk in the woods a mini treasure hunt.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (Cinque) Terre

Tags

Cinque Terre, day hikes, hiking, Italy, Liguria, numbers

Day hikes are the appetizers and desserts of trekking aficionados. When I can’t get away for a week or more, the next best thing is a jaunt that still requires a backpack and provisions, a destination, and some great scenery. And the Cinque Terre, literally ‘Five Lands,’ is the perfect place to spend a day on foot and rack up some numbers, traversing the five small towns that form a colorful string along the rugged Ligurian coast of western Italy. We did just that to top off our Tour du Mont Blanc circuit hike one summer.

Uno: We based ourselves and started our walk in the busiest and northernmost of the Cinque Terre towns – Monterosso al Mare. Here there are many accommodations, restaurants, and even a beach, all set in irregular stone streets that surround the seashore and harbor. The town is famous for pesto, anchovies, and lemons, and we loaded up on pizza, pasta, and limoncello as a well-earned reward for our long Alpine hike and, in my case, the rigors of driving a little stick-shift car on the outrageously steep and twisted roads into the region.

Due: After a hearty breakfast the next day, we set off for town number two: Vernazza. This fishing village is the most picturesque of the group, and we were very lucky to get a beautiful approach shot before a morning rain shower swept us into the harbor and onto the main plaza. Fishing boats bobbed in the curved waterfront (and rested in the village streets), an old castle loomed in the background, pastel-colored buildings haphazardly climbed the hills, and villagers and tourists alike crammed under the few awnings and overhangs in the piazza for protection from the short-lived squall. With the passing of the mini-tempest, the old men went back to untangling their fishing lines, the adolescent boys to ogling the scantily-clad young female visitors, and we to our hike.

Tre: We climbed out of Vernazza on a series of winding stairs and terraces, feeling almost voyeuristic as we passed private patios and stereotypical lines of laundry dangling off skinny houses.

We were now on our way to Corniglia, the only one of the five towns not directly on the water. Perched high on a rocky hill and surrounded by vineyards, Corniglia was the quietest of the villages, and we decided to stop here for a relaxing lunch amid flowering bushes and old stone walls.

These two first sections were the toughest – close to 4 miles overall of steep hills up and down – and we hit the highest point of the day on the way into Corniglia.

Quattro: The smallest enclave, Manarola, was the fourth stop, following a relatively flat and easy route of just over a mile after lunch. Like its big sister, Vernazza, it is a jumble of vibrant facades that spill down the hill into the harbor. It is bright and busy, filled with shops and boats and locals, but has a smaller, more relaxed ambiance – the ideal time and place for an ice cream stop and whiling away some time just people-watching.

Cinque: By late afternoon, we had arrived in Riomaggiore on a cliff-side trail, dubbed Lovers Lane, that overlooked the brilliantly-blue sea.

Farthest to the south and east, Riomaggiore is the largest town of the five and feels more accessible to the outside world than the other villages. Here, those same painted buildings form a V around one final scenic harbor, and the railroad provides an easy return to Monterosso, just in time for more limoncello and pizza.

More Numbers: The Sentiero Azzurro, the Cinque Terre’s most popular walking trail, covers about 7 miles overall and can be walked in either direction. Most people walk south to north, starting flat and easy, but we did it backwards. In recent years, the path has been closed in some sections; heavy rains have washed out parts of the route and rock slides have blocked the path in and out of Corniglia. In addition, the Italian government is limiting the number of hikers to 1.5 million this season (a high of 2.5 million trekked the trail last year) to protect the area, so I’m glad we got there when we did!

Jubilation in the Mountains

Tags

Aspen, aspen trees, Colorado, hiking, jubilant, Maroon Bells, White River National Forest

Is there anything more restorative than a walk in the woods? This past week I was able to hike for a few days in the area around Aspen, Colorado, and I lapped up every minute of it.

From loading my backpack for the day (does anyone else find this an oddly satisfying task?) to spending hours at a time with no other human in sight, I allow time to fade from my consciousness. I’m in a zone I can only find on a woodsy trail, and a Rocky Mountain high is a real thing (even without legal-in-Colorado help). I hike by myself the first two days and feel the deep joy of being out in nature, alone with my thoughts and the sights and smells of the mountains.

The aspen trees sport feathery leaves at an elevation of 8000’ but at 10,000’ they are still naked soldiers lined up in ranks up and down the sides of the mountains. (The aspens intrigued me; please indulge me this gallery of trees!)

Some paths are still blocked with snow, while others are beginning to grow a spring carpet of colorful mosses and tiny wildflowers.

The trails are wonderfully diverse; I start on a shaded path alongside a stream, emerge into some prairie-like flats, then climb on exposed red rock one morning.

A hike at a higher elevation begins at lake’s edge, climbs gently through dense aspen thickets, then rises steeply over rough root systems and rocks until I am forced to stop when the route is fully snowed over.

My obsession for the four days I am there is to get a great shot of the Maroon Bells, (supposedly) the most photographed mountains in North America. I go after breakfast one day, but the three-peaked mass is partially shrouded in cloud cover. They are visible – and impressive – but the color palate is drab and cold, with water, trees, stone, and sky all a similar dark gray-blue-green. I am not completely disappointed (and get in a fantastic hike on the almost-empty Crater Lake Trail), but I do have that familiar feeling of seeing my target mountain in less-than-perfect conditions.

I return that afternoon to find even thicker clouds, but the peaks and the swoop are in slightly sharper relief. I snap away, hoping the wind will die down enough to allow the iconic reflection of the massif in the lake. It is not meant to be, and I leave the White River National Forest feeling better about the clarity of my new photos but still not very satisfied.

Unlike my usual self, I decide I simply must have a better photo and set my alarm for 4:15 am to try to catch the sun rising on the face of the Bells. The next morning, four of us bundle up and head to the lake once more. Hopeful and shivering cold, we walk the shore of the lake, pacing up and down the beginnings of several trails, then set up with a few other hardy souls for the spectacle to come. The sky is clear and slowly turning orange behind us and pinkish blue in front.

Ten minutes after official sunrise, the crests ignite! We are all clicking away as the rosy light gradually lights up the whole face. Suddenly … jubilation! The lake grows still and flat, and the fire on the mountain is mirrored in the water. It is this amateur photographer’s dream come true, and I snap away with both Nikon and iPhone until my batteries fail. (I did say amateur.)

If you search for images of the Maroon Bells, you will find photos that blow your mind. Mine are no match for those, but I am happy with them, and happier still that I made the effort to capture to the best of my ability a place I may never get to see again. I was indeed jubilant as the rising sun hit those peaks, but the whole time I spent in the mountains was a source of deep joy that will sustain me until I can escape the flatlands again!

Earth

Tags

Earth, ground, hiking

Earth, capital ‘E’: I immediately picture the planet, that beautiful watery ball floating through space, green and yellow and brown patches dotting the blue, all under a wispy swirl of high-atmosphere clouds. I have no photos of my own (yet!) that depict the Earth, the whole Earth.

Small ‘e’ earth, I am intimately familiar with. My feet know its ground: squishy sand, hard-packed dirt, spongy tufts of mud-grass, stern granite slabs.

My eyes follow its paths, up and down mountains, around trees, alongside streams.

My nose breathes in its fertile scent – decomposed leaves, fresh shoots, the oxygenated freshness right after a rain.

My hands sift sand, move rotted logs, dig deep in boggy peat.

Big Earth is made small for me through the earth it has in common. The rhododendrons I adored as a child in Pennsylvania spring from similar soil in the Himalayan valleys of Nepal. The sand in Delaware buckles into ridges just like those on the Tasman Sea shore.

The grasslands in South Dakota rustle like the savannah in Tanzania, and the scree on a pass in Patagonia slips and slides under my boots just as it did on high slopes in Tibet and the Alps.

I like the abstract idea of Earth, and in my mind’s eye, I see myself, a tiny dot, crisscrossing it with a mission, but what I really love is earth, that organic foundation of it all, the part I get to actually touch, see, and smell as I ramble the globe.

Inspired by the Weekly Photo Challenge: Earth.

Grudgingly (Pretty) Great

Tags

Bryce Canyon, hiking, national parks, Utah, Zion National Park

I was dragged to Utah a few summers ago. Not quite kicking and screaming, but definitely taken against my will to hike in Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks, which, from all pre-trip appearances, were a collection of arid, rust-colored landscapes that made me thirsty just looking at them. The two parks and Utah in general, however, had long been at the top of my husband’s wish list for a hiking trip, and since all of our travels for years and years had been my choices, I gave in. (Nice of me, I know.)

I’m always looking to escape from the U.S. at least a few times a year, often, admittedly, to see things that are quite similar to the places I eschew here at home. (I was desperate to see dusty red Jordan, for example, but snorted at the idea of dusty red Utah.) But I knew I needed an attitude adjustment because my own country contains a vast assortment of destinations, and I finally succumbed to my husband’s pleas to see more of our homegrown scenery, particularly the national parks.

I am a big fan of state and national parks. My parents stuffed our family of six in the car for innumerable trips to these treasures in the eastern and southeastern U.S., and I’d adored them. I loved road trips, first of all, and even as a child, I relished being in the untrammeled outdoors, sinking my boots into pine needles in the Appalachians and breathing in the earthy smell of the dark, loamy soil in the Great Smoky Mountains. We clambered over rocky balds in the Shenandoah Valley, swished through dune grasses from Cape Cod to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and explored spooky Mammoth Cave and other caverns and hollows in Kentucky and Tennessee.

But what all those parks had in common was greenery and/or moisture. I loved the mossy clumps along woodsy paths, the smell of mildew in an old cabin, the dripping of leaves on my rain jacket in a forest, even the clamminess of a bathing suit at the shore. The desert had none of that; it was dry and dusty, odorless and often colorless. It made my eyes and nostrils itch, and I hated the grit it deposited on my skin. In short, it left me cold.

But I went. Our first stop, Zion National Park, had more varied terrain than I’d expected, and I started the trip on a surprising high note. We had an invigorating wade through the Narrows (water!),

numerous hikes through treed paths and ravines (green!), and some good steep climbs to various outlooks, including Angel’s Landing.

The scenery was truly majestic, and I ate my negative words about Utah many times in those first few days of hiking.

I adored the little town of Springdale where we based ourselves, and I looked forward to walking into Zion every day for a new and different adventure, even gaining an affection for the (dry, dusty, red) slot canyons.

Bryce Canyon was our next stop. For years, I’d heard people rave about Bryce Canyon and, really, how could I not find the surreal assemblage of hoodoos fascinating? I’m glad I saw them. They made for some great photos.

But we trudged for hours and hours through this baking forest of pale, parched towers and, dare I say, it was pretty boring and exhausting after the first oohs and aahs.

It did redeem itself at sunset, when the shadows and cooler air sharpened my sense of the place, replacing the desiccated blandness at high noon with a pleasing line-up of variegated figures in the evening.

In the end, Zion and Bryce and the land in between were a nice sampler in our quest to see more of our national wonders. I left impressed and grudgingly appreciative of both parks, although Zion was the hands-down winner in my book. The trip served a second purpose – getting us on a mission to see more of the national parks – and we followed it up with a trip the next summer to Glacier National Park, much more my kind of place!

This year is the U.S. National Park Service’s 100^th birthday – get out and see one of these national gems soon!

Frustration at Fitz Roy

Tags

adventure, Argentina, disappointment, El Chaltén, hiking, Laguna de los Tres, Los Glaciares National Park, Mount Fitz Roy, mountains, Patagonia

I am obsessed with mountains. Many of my travels are fueled by a desire to trek or just lay my eyes on a specific mountain, and our first trip to Patagonia was no exception. My goal was simple – to get as close as I could to Mount Fitz Roy in Los Glaciares National Park in Argentina. I have no technical climbing skills, and it’s too late to start, but my fascination with the world’s most difficult ascents can be satisfied with circuit treks, base camp visits, and partial climbs. I am willing to hike for weeks on end, up and down, through heat and cold, to glimpse the heights that stir men’s souls.

Fitz Roy drew me because it is so extreme. Not the highest of mountains – the Himalayan peaks have double the elevation – Fitz Roy is still considered one of the world’s toughest climbs. The sheer verticality turns away most comers; in some years, more people summit Everest than even attempt Fitz Roy. Fitz Roy also attracted me because it is so fearsome-looking. Its stony gray face looms threateningly over a remote and barren landscape, raising goose bumps on my skin even from a distance – even from a photo! Often sheathed in cloud cover, the pillar pushes dramatically upward, a knife piercing the usually leaden skies above. The mere thought of clinging to its wind- and rain-lashed face brings shivers.

As we approach the small town of El Chaltén for the first time, our driver pulls over and suggests a photo of the spike and its neighbors from afar. In a hurry to get to our lodging and dinner after a long day of travel, I demur at first, saying that we are hiking to a better vantage point the next day. He pulls over anyway, looking at me pityingly, obviously more aware than I that this may be my one and only shot of the unobstructed peak.

We meet briefly with the guide we have hired for the next day and he lays out three hiking options. The longest (estimated at 8-10 hours round trip) is a trek to Laguna de los Tres, a high-altitude glacial lake with the most spectacular view of Fitz Roy. We will not be dissuaded from taking this route, even when he warns us that tomorrow’s weather will be atrocious. We fortify ourselves with the coziest dinner ever – thick local stew and dark home-brewed beer at La Cervecería, a warm cocoon of rustic wood benches and tables crammed together in one snug little room.

Our trek day dawns gray and foggy, as predicted, and we pile on warm and waterproof layers for the hike.

My spirits are already sinking, but we try to stay upbeat and optimistic as we walk, first through gently rising lenga forests, then past ice-cold streams and glacier tongues, and on up to the barren flanks that house two base camps for real climbers.

The closer we get to the lagoon, the denser the fog becomes and the more heavily the rain falls. We are now fully draped in rain ponchos, our hoods and hats and headbands underneath deadening the senses. Our pants are drenched; there is no sheltered place to stop and eat, and our legs and lungs are burning as we near the apex of our climb.

We stumble over slick rocks, seeing nothing but our own boots and the back of our guide. He suddenly halts and points ahead. We are on the shores of the lagoon, a murky pool of dull liquid, topped with a gloomy mist so thick it hovers mere inches from the surface. Behind the lagoon and the damnable vapor lies the best view of Fitz Roy in the world, but it is not for us to see today.

I am not a good sport about this. I have tears in my eyes and sulky words for my family and the guide, who is cranky himself at our insistence on completing the hike. We yank our lunches from our backpacks, eat soggy sandwiches in disagreeable silence, straining for a tiny gap in the murk that never appears, before turning helplessly downhill for the five-hour trek back to El Chaltén. It is the most disappointing day of my travel life, and even my strapping son collapses in exhaustion and frustration at the end of the day.

Like many disappointments, however, the day allows us to focus on smaller scenes of beauty, like the delicate calafate berry below, and serves as motivation to go back to this enigmatic mountain and charming frontier town at the bottom of the world someday.

Happiness is …

Tags

Appalachian Trail, backpacks, Camino de Santiago, happiness, hiking, through-hiking, trekking gear, Via de la Plata

After those last two downer posts, I had to get back on the happiness horse. Luckily, I tend to be a pretty optimistic, easy-to-amuse person, so a very simple activity these last few weeks has significantly boosted my mood. What has brought me to this new state of cheerfulness? Trekking equipment. Thinking about it. Organizing it. Buying more of it. Packing it and unpacking it. (I could continue …)

Recently, I have begun to tentatively plan for a very long hike. There is almost nothing on earth that makes me happier than waking up each morning with nothing on my agenda but lacing up my hiking boots and having a full day of walking ahead of me. (Except maybe doing it the next day and many more after that … or maybe the thought of getting into my tent at the end of a day and organizing my little living quarters before snuggling in for the night.)

Home Sweet Home

But before all that happens, just planning out all the parts gives me great joy. Simply put, I LOVE hiking gear and just taking it out and playing with it can lift my spirits immensely. (I know – you’re getting worried about me now, but I’m pretty normal – honest!)

What has gotten me back on this equipment kick in the middle of winter? Tonight, I will attend a meeting on through-hiking the Appalachian Trail, a 2000+-mile trek from Georgia to Maine. I really doubt this particular hike will turn out to be my first attempt at an epic trek because it takes a good six months and I still have a job (and all that equipment funding!) to think about. While this one is likely to be in the more distant future, I am reading up on the Camino de Santiago (only 30 days or so), the Via de la Plata (6 weeks), and other protracted hikes that can still fit into my summer break from teaching. (Feel free to pass along ideas!)

Many of the longer treks I’ve done to date have been supported by horses, yaks, and other beasts of burden, so I could pack just my medium duffel and a decent-sized daypack with all my goodies.

But now I’m excited about my new, bigger pack – the repository for everything I’ll need for a multi-week or –month hike. Weird as it may seem, I find myself smiling just loading it up, experimenting with compartments and gear and trying to get everything down to the lightest weight I can since every bit of it will travel on my back and shoulders.

All packed up and nowhere to go

When I think about those contents and go shopping, I am similarly delighted, but I’m not always a buyer. I’m a sometime-sucker for the coolest, lightest, smallest, most waterproof, warmest hiking and travel equipment I can find, but I don’t really believe a lot of the product hype. It’s so much fun to look at and consider, but it really doesn’t have to be the strongest, techiest, most perfect product to be of great value to me. For example, I adore my Big Agnes sleeping bag. At three pounds, she’s a hefty gal compared with the ultralights, but I’ll carry those extra two pounds for weeks if it means I’m toasty warm and can move my legs inside the bag every night on the trail. For years, I carried an ancient North Face backpack with minimal features (no pole loops, no chest strap) and I was happy as a clam in my comfortable old friend. On the other hand, I was willing to shell out (no pun intended) for an Arc’teryx rain jacket, and it’s been worth every one of the many dimes I spent on it.

The clothing is less fun than the other gear but still an enjoyable venture. I’ve owned some of the ugliest pairs of hiking pants ever manufactured; only in the last few years have outfitters been trying to slim these pants down and make them a little more stylish and interesting to buy. So yes, I do care about my pants, but trendiness does not factor into many of my other travel clothing choices. My base and mid-layers are frighteningly old and worn, and my baseball cap has seen better days, but sometimes we avid trekkers take perverse pride in our aged gear, glancing a bit condescendingly at the perfectly-attired hikers we encounter on the trail in their color-coordinated outfits and shiny new watches with a million functions.

And what seems cool in the store may not pass the test on the trail anyway. REI, EMS, Backcountry (and the mother-of-all-gear-shops in Namche Bazaar on the trail to Everest, if you’re ever in the neighborhood) can put me in a state of almost drug-induced euphoria, but I’ve purchased my share of “waterproof” gloves that were sopping wet in 15 minutes, a handy little compass-thermometer-carabiner combo that was wildly inaccurate, leg gaiters that leaked, and “quick-dry” clothes that never dried for days on end.

Then again, sometimes a product is so perfect that I’m terrified I won’t be able to replace it. Years ago, I found some Keen hiking boots that were so comfortable and hardy that I’ve now stockpiled multiple boxes of them in my size and favorite colors. I only hope I can keep trekking as long as the supply lasts.

Good for another 2000 miles?

Meanwhile, I am spending these gloomy winter days happily sorting my stash of gear and roaming around the internet in search of some lengthy rambles and, suddenly, I am sunny and smiling again!