So, Sunday the 16th. Day three of hiking. Breakfast not as good as yesterday. Bread, cheese, eggs, apples and some kind of fritters. Fine, but not as good as the day before.
Set off at exactly 8:00am. The route was known to be difficult. "Only" 16 kms (10 miles), but this would prove to be the toughest day of the entire trip, with a cumulative elevation gain of 1,215 meters (3,986') over 5 kms (3 miles). And a rocky karst trail that was difficult to get your footing right.
Another gorgeous day!
Not a cloud in the sky.
Scenery along the way.
Bunker, left over from the communist era.
On the left, the fancy new Grand Hotel Valbone.
These funny little green beetles love this type of flower, apparently.
The climb begins!
One foot in front of the other, but it was very steep in sections.
We each only carry 800 ml of water. But there are fresh water streams all over these mountains, and if we're unsure, we can also drink from standing water using our Lifestraw Personal Water Filter.
However, this time, we would find no water along the way to the top. Which is not good. I seem to be able to go longer without water than Ruth can, so we rationed ourselves sips along the way. But with the steep climb we were sweating a lot, and we really could have used more.
This little guy lost part of his tail!
Selfie in the mountains!
Ruth, with some other hikers coming up behind.
Once again, at 62 years old we don't see many others older than us. We can keep up with the younger folks just fine on the flat, but going uphill we are noticeably slower. I am faster than Ruth, but while she is slower, she never stops, and I take more breaks.
Two hours into the steady uphill climb.
Ruth, pretending she's having fun!
Always fantastic scenery though!
Saw this really odd looking insect!
The wildflowers are amazing!
Some more hikers passed us.
We did stop to look at the views every now and then.
Zoomed in on the snow in the peaks across the valley.
Another pretty flower.
Still climbing!
There are a few of these markers along the way, but really, the trail was not difficult to follow.
Ruth, walking through a meadow of flowers.
Yes, we are heading up there!
Going through a small forest.
The shade felt nice!
This is the only wildlife that we saw the entire trip.
A single mountain goat of some kind, and it was really far off in the distance.
Amazingly vivid blue wildflowers.
Looking back, can you see Ruth on the trail? Still climbing.
I would have loved to go explore this rock system, but we didn't have time.
Still climbing.
Beautiful natural wildflower garden.
Me! Almost at the top!
More flowers.
Made it to the top of the pass at 12:35pm. Four and a half hours of steady, steep climbing. Picture yourself being on a Stairmaster machine for four and a half hours, and that's pretty much what we went through! It kind of reminded us of that last tough day climbing Kilimanjaro. I'm not gonna lie, we were pretty tired.
We sat and had some lunch at the border of Albania and Montenegro.
2,027 meters (6,650') altitude at the pass. A little bit of a breeze, but nice and cool. Still shorts and t-shirts weather, although you can see that Ruth put her sweater on during lunch.
A few people climbed the EXTRA 500 meters (1,600') up to Zla Kollata, the highest peak in Montenegro. Not us!
The next 3 kms or so would actually be through Montenegro before the trail crosses back into Albania. There are no border stations, other than a stone marking sometimes, but we are issued border crossing permits in case you do randomly meet up with any border police. We never saw any the whole trip, despite crossing the borders of Albania, Montenegro, and Kosovo several times, and staying overnight in each of those countries.
The rest of the day was mostly downhill, but the rocky trail was difficult in places.
We came across an ice cave!
The cave has a constant year round temperature of 0C (32F) and there is a cold breeze blowing out of the cave itself. It is believed that there is an underground glacier inside the mountain!
Looking directly down into the cave.
I wouldn't be surprised if there are human bones down there!
There were a few difficult section to climb down.
Scenery along the way.
Signpost at a trail intersection.
We managed to find a small mountain stream at this location, and drank lots of water!
Back at the border re-entering Albania.
There were still some uphill climbs, despite being the generally downhill route from the top.
We are headed down there.
This was a long day.
Interesting tree.
Big fungus growing on it.
Another interesting tree.
Oh, one other thing. There are no mosquitos. But there are house flies. And while they don't bite, they are relentless. They buzz around your head and ears, buzz around your legs, land on your calves and just kind of generally annoy you. There's just so many of them, at any given time there must be at least 20 buzzing around your head.
Almost at the village of Cerem.
Arrived at the guesthouse at 4:30pm. Exhausted. Lots of scratches and bruises on our legs from them banging up against rocks on the climb down. Definitely a difficult hike.
One again, we were happy with our private room.
Felt great to take of the hiking boots and have a cold beer and a glass of wine!
Friends Casper and Demi showed up a few minutes later. We had seen them a few times along the trail, but I think we took different routes down and we had kind of lost track of them.
Slept like a log. Good thing, because we have another 16 kms to do the next day!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Record low deal on this Apple Watch Series 9.
And in Canada...
Oh my, that looks very tough! Hiking on any kind of scree/talus is always a challenge, as is a relentless uphill climb. We've done a couple of those, and I thought I was gonna die! I commend you both on embarking on such a thing. When I did this sort of thing I was about 7-10 years younger than you two. And it was still challenging! Fantastic job.
ReplyDeleteIt was a tough day but we plowed through it and got it done. I think the worst part of the hike was that there was no water source the entire way up the mountain and even then we didn't come to a spring until a few more kilometer further down the trail. I think that was probably our worst day for finding springs along the trail.
DeleteI think too that your legs were tired by the third day and our bodies hasn't adapted to hiking everyday, especially with doing so much up and down. We seemed to do much better after that. Definitely challenging but we love to give ourselves challenges like this to help keep us young, lol!