health & safety – Page 72

August 26, 2009September 5, 2018

Mt Blanc to Matterhorn – day 3

Hiking trip report by site editor Rick McCharles. Day 3 of 7.

day 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | info

This turned out to be the most memorable day of many amazing days.

The weather was terrible. All day. Terrible.

The most remote and wild terrain of the entire route.

I was quite happy to finally arrive at Cabane de Prafleuri.

These refuges offer accommodation as well as food. Nice.

I got a chance to dry out. And warm up. Then walked on when the rain slowed.

Very impressive this day was Lac Dix, man made, created by one of the highest dams in the world.

The wildflowers and wildlife this day, were the best of the entire Haute Route. It’s an animal reserve.

In the early evening the weather worsened. Again.

I decided to stay at an alpine hut rather than try to climb out of the valley.

A long, impressive ridge would take me up to Cabine Dix.

That photo I shot the following morning. The night before, in the rain and dark. I thought I’d never get there. It’s very high. Nearly 3000m. Higher than the pass I would cross next day.

Cost for dinner, bunk bed and breakfast was US$65.

The dinner was excellent. The bed very comfortable. The breakfast the worst I had in Europe.

I was the only Anglophone that night. Ordered about like a German soldier.

Overall, I’d rather sleep in my tent and cook my own food.

See the rest of my photos from day 3.

… on to day 4

day 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | info

August 23, 2009

Climbing Ben Nevis Monday

… weather permitting.

Got pounded with rain today. Typical walking weather in Scotland.

August 11, 2009August 3, 2009

BIG in Europe: Nordic Walking

My stand on hiking canes remains unchanged.

I think they’re great for the elderly and infirm.

Just kidding.

I’m astonished at how popular this new activity is in Europe. It’s HUGE compared with North America.

Europe has dedicated Nordic Walking paths.

Nordic walking is defined as fitness walking with specially designed poles. … Hikers with knee pain discovered they could walk more powerfully with a pair of trekking poles, often eliminate or reduce hip, knee, and foot pain, and backpackers found relief from painful backs when using poles. …

Wikipedia

Check out a video tutorial by trekkingpoleguru.

Swedes call it stavgång. In Norway and Denmark it is stavgang. And to the Estonians it is kepikönd.

August 5, 2009August 3, 2009

where is the best hike in Austria?

by site editor Rick McCharles

Though I’ve been hiking in Austria out of Bad Gastein for a week, I’m still not clear where to find the best hikes in this country. More than 60 percent of the nation is mountainous. Seems to me you would enjoy hiking almost anywhere.

A good starting point for someone hiking Austria for the first time, however, is Hohe Tauern, the largest of Austria’s six national parks.

Grossglockner 3,798m (12,460ft) is the highest peak in Austria.

Every Summer, over 1.2 million people drive an expensive toll road to see it.

I wasn’t one of them this Summer.

Instead, I tried to spy the big guy from the top of Kitzsteinhorn. That’s a very popular day trip out of Zell am See.

Kitzsteinhorn

The Alexander Enzinger trail here is often touted a best hike in the area.

The day I rode one of the longest cable cars in the world (50min) the weather turned bleak. And I ran out of time to make it to the top station.

In fact, I must report that it was very ugly at the top of the ski lift. My least favourite place in the Alps, so far.

construction-atop-ski-resort

It was here, too, that 155 people died Nov. 11, 2000 in a tragic railway car tunnel fire.

… enough grim reporting from me …

Check out some gorgeous hiking photos of the area from Adventure4Ever. Everyone else aside from me loves this region.

August 4, 2009July 30, 2009

Your Own Machu Picchu: Choquequirao, Peru

An excellent article on one of the best hikes in Peru was posted on Matador Trips: Discover Your Own Machu Picchu: Choquequirao, Peru

Did you visit Machu Picchu thinking you’d arrived 50 years too late? Wish you could’ve seen it before the tourist hordes and luxury hotel moved in? Then Choquequirao might be for you. …

There are very few trekkers there in comparison with Machu Picchu. We did it in 2005 and had the ruins to ourselves.

It’s a massive up and down hike. We hired a mule and mule driver to carry our packs.

The scenery is fantastic, of course.

Our biggest concern was the tiny biting flies. (Especially after their bites get infected.)

read the entire Matador article: Discover Your Own Machu Picchu: Choquequirao, Peru

Read the comments for some personal stories on continuing from Choquequirao to Machu Picchu without a guide.

P.S.

There’s one drastic mistake in the story:

From the village to the ruins and back, you’re looking at 74 km (46 miles). …

It’s nowhere near that far. … Is it?

More details and links on our besthike Choquequirao Trek information page.

August 3, 2009January 27, 2010

future climbing trip to the Italian Dolomites?

Dreaming …

Via Ferrata are, in effect, a range of protected scrambling routes, comprised of skilfully installed fixed cables, ladders and gorge-spanning bridges, which assist ascents to high levels, from which you walk on, often to a nearby rifugio, or back to the starting point via a path.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

I wouldn’t want a guided trip. But one instructional session would be valuable.

The gear costs about $200. Helmet, and carabiners. Or you can rent it for about $10 / day.

via-ferrata-gear

Best timing would be the first 3wks of July. Or September.

There are plenty of good guidebooks.

August 1, 2009

lesson learned: don’t hike Iran/Iraq border

Three US nationals who crossed into Iran via Iraq have been arrested, the state-owned Al-Alam television has reported.

“An informed Iranian source confirmed the arrest of three Americans after they infiltrated through the Iraqi border,” the Arabic-language television station said on Saturday.

The two men and a woman entered Iranian territory a day earlier from Iraqi Kurdistan despite repeated warnings not to do so, a Kurdish official said.

A fourth American originally with the hiking party had not joined the trek due to illness, said Beshro Ahmed, a media adviser for the general security department in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region.

He named the three as Shane Bower, Sara Short and Joshua Steel, while Shaun Gabriel Maxwell stayed behind in their hotel in the autonomous Kurdish region’s second-largest city of Sulaimaniyah.

A spokeswoman for the US embassy in Baghdad said: “We’ve seen the reports and are looking into it but can’t confirm anything at this time.” …

… The arrests came after the three visited the mountainous resort region of Ahmed Awa, about 90km northeast of Sulaimaniyah.

Ahmed said: “The [Kurdish] tourist police in the area asked them not to climb the mountains because the Iranian border was very close. …

al jazeera

August 1, 2009August 1, 2009

hikers die of dehydration … near Palm Springs

… Authorities recovered the remains of two hikers in the hills near Palm Springs last week. They can tell that they’re hikers based on their clothing, but the bodies are so severely dehydrated that they can’t even pull fingerprints. …

details on The Goat – Why It’s Important to Bring Enough Water

In the Italian Dolomites I was shocked at the scarcity of water. There’s none up high. Anywhere in July.

Weird.

And the few water sources you do come across normally have signs saying “not potable”.

Luckily, carrying a stove, I melted snow whenever I needed H2O.

July 29, 2009July 26, 2009

hike Bocca di Brenta to Molveno, Italy

The Brenta Mountains in the Dolomites are popular with via ferrata (iron road), cable assisted, climbers.

They stretch 40km (25mi) on a north-south axis. I nearly chose to hike a lengthwise itinerary called The Mighty Brenta Dolomite Traverse. … Unfortunately transport to the trailheads was problematic.

Instead I crossed west to east from famed tourist trap Madonna di Campiglio to the most lovely mountain town I’ve found in Europe so far, Molveno.

Again I took a cable car to start as high as possible.

I was delivered to Rif. Tuckett and Sela.

The wildflowers are still going strong in late July. (They are nearly gone now in Canada.)

It’s great being instantly on top of the world. Just like heli-hiking. The start is mostly a traverse under the highest peaks. Amazing. Such easy access to this environment.

The sunset was a classic Dolomite experience. Wow.

Next morning the weather was fantastic. So I stashed my pack in the boulders and dashed up as high as I could go to Rif. Alimonta.

Wonderful. But daylight was burning. I turned back and pushed hard to get over the mountains.

Here was the crux of the hike when I was there. (It was not quite as bad as it looks in the photo. But it was challenging.)

I entrusted a Summit Stone to the virgin guarding the highest pass.

This is astonishing Rif. Pedrotti 2491m. Many famed climbers have stayed here.

Starving, but in a mad rush now to get DOWN off this mountain, I ordered a meal. It tasted FANTASTIC at this altitude.

No photos from my decent. I practically ran from 3000m to the lake at 868m in order to be sure I would catch a bus out of the valley.

That was one long, long exit.

Whew.

This was my personal favourite of the 4 Dolomite hikes I did on this trip. See the rest of my photos on flickr.

July 27, 2009July 27, 2009

harsh night on an Italian mountain

Trip report by besthike editor Rick McCharles.

I was super excited to hike the Alpe di Siusi region of the Dolomites.

… Seiser Alm, (Italian: Alpe di Siusi) is the largest high altitude Alpine meadow in Europe. Located in Italy’s Bolzano-Bozen province (South Tyrol) in the Dolomites mountain range, it is a major tourist attraction, known for skiing and hiking. …

I planned 3 days, 2 nights. A big trip. Lots of mileage.

To get started, I cheated by riding the cable car to Compaccio 1844m (5050ft), a busy mountain tourist trap.

Arriving late afternoon, I was quite quickly forced into a cave.

under-a-ski-lift

OK, it was actually a storage space under a ski lift. I relaxed, dry, for about 90min.

The typical late afternoon rain ended. Some blue sky appeared. So I set off across gorgeous alpine meadows in the direction of the high peaks. Towards Rifugio Bolzano. I was following the Walk 24 itinerary from Walking in the Dolomites: 28 Multi-Day Routes by Gillian Price.

I was alone in the early evening except for many friendly cows.

Surprisingly, the skies threatened rain once again. To stay completely dry, I quickly set up my (technically illegal) tent on the side of the mountain. There I got pounded with a severe storm. Thunder and lightning non-stop for at least 5hrs. Super dangerous in the mountains. I feared for my life.

It continued raining all night.

I stayed in the tent 10hrs before I finally heard it stop.

Unzipping the fly , I was astonished to see this winter wonderland. It was July. In sunny Italy.

snow-in-the-trees

Snow is always better than rain for a hiker. I packed up as quickly as I could. And headed back down the mountain. The only other hikers I passed were a couple from Norway. They had the same idea. Hiking in the snow is beautiful. Hiking in the rain, a drag.

That night I ended up in a soft bed in a terrific hostel in the quiet mountain town of Brixen.

All’s well that ends well, I guess.

But I REALLY want to go back ….

By the way, my friend Jeni had a similar experience on this same route. She got lost, taking a wrong trail/animal track. On the side of a steep mountain she decided to rope herself to the cliff. Gathering her wits, she finally decided on the safest way out of danger.

Even when there are hundreds of other hikers around, the mountains can still be very dangerous.

This was a cautionary adventure for me. It was almost as scary as the lighting storm I experienced on the John Muir Trail.