Hiking into the clouds

Despite the fact that we couldn't see anything, there were still some highlights to this hike!

We took the 10:00am bus to the village of Zverovska. It's a little higher up in altitude, and also allowed us to hike all the way back to our town in Zuberec. Here's the map of our Sunday stroll...

15.4 kms (9.5 miles). 

Ruth, modeling the signpost. We are headed up to Brestova peak, three hours away.

And I mean three hours of uphill, every step of the way. The signposts don't give distances, only estimated time to get there. We found that we must hike at a pretty average speed because we're always pretty close to the estimates on the uphill sections, and we usually beat the estimated times by a fair bit on the downhill sections. The estimated times on the signs include what people would normally take for rest breaks.

The only problem is the weather. 

We knew it was cloudy at higher elevations, but we decided to go for it anyhow. We hoped that we were going to be above the clouds once we were at the top, or that they would dissipate. The worst case scenario was that we would be in the clouds the whole time.

Up.

Up.

Up! Notice that it's getting a little foggy!

Kevin, sitting in the mist at a rest point.

There was a lot of moisture in the air, but it never did rain. But there was a slight breeze, and anything facing towards the breeze got a little wet. One side of my head was soaked because your hair would pick up the water in the air!

The grass was wet even though it wasn't raining.

And, at 1:10pm, here we are at the top. No view at all!

And I took a 32 second video of our view from the top. Three hours of hard work got us this fantastic view!

Turn up your volume for the commentary!

And then it was time to head down. Our route took us along the ridge. This normally would have given us some great views, but instead we looked to the ground for interesting things to see.

Hmm. Turned out that this wasn't a problem. Yes, it was damaged by water, but not enough to warrant putting the sign up.

Finally made it back through the clouds!

So we did get the odd nice view. Just not as good as it could have been.

Coming back down.

Where we had been!

When we got back to town, the clouds had lifted and you could see where we had been! So I guess we should have stayed up there for a couple of hours and waited. No, I don't think so. Still, it was a little frustrating! 

We were pretty tired after that hike. We have done 55 kms (34 miles) in the last five days, and some of it has been strenuous uphill climbing. We are due for a break, and fortunately it's cloudy and they're calling for showers today so that kind of forces us to relax a bit. Sounds like a good day to stay inside and watch a couple of movies! So that's what we're going to do!

Happy Birthday Helen! We didn't forget, we just forgot to say it yesterday! We will celebrate in September!