What a fascinating day. I don’t usually go hiking on Sunday but at the
moment I’ll take any hiking time I can get so Sunday it is. I repeated my first ever serious barefoot
hike to see what had changed and whether I had improved. Well what had changed
was that instead of putting shoes on for the initial climb and again on the
difficult bits on the way down, this time I left home barefoot, stayed barefoot
for the entire 6 hour hike and returned home barefoot. Nothing like
freewheeling in shorts, a t-shirt and barefeet down 9 km of mountain road on
the scooter with the temperature up in the high 30s. Exhilarating.
Today was the Tre Rifugi mountain race which takes in two thirds of my
planned route so I expected a lot of people. The first three runners passed me
half way up and there was a wet sponge and refreshment post at a certain point (not that they offered me any) but
other than that I’d already reached the turn off point well before the main
runners came into sight. But looking up to the Manzol Pass as I passed by was
horrendous, full of people, dozens of them presumably there to cheer the
runners on. How sad. What a depressing thing spectator sport is. Every time a
runner passed the staging post some total fuckwit sounded an air-horn. Great.
You come to the mountains for peace and quiet, miles from anywhere, and get an
air horn. Bollockbrains. As I said, I did expect some human activity but no way
did I imagine someone would haul a frigging air horn up to 2600m and I imagined
even less that he’d actually sound the damn thing.
Mind you I’m sort of less inclined to be critical of humanity today as
I’m beginning to appreciate this herding instinct that everyone seems to have.
After I’d been at destination (Lago Pieno Sia 2,566m) for 40 minutes or so I
asked some through hikers what the situation was like below. One woman compared
it to Ikea on a Saturday. I can well imagine. Apart from two groups of hikers I
had the whole lake to myself despite being only 8km from the riotous assembly
below.
The climb up was absolutely comfortable, just like walking in the
garden. The final half hour on the decent was a bit tiring as the 300 plus
runners had totally demolished the path
leaving a lot of sharp stuff on it. Still, though I had shoes in my pack, I
didn’t need them. An amazing difference.
On the way down the people I did see noted but ignored my bare feet
which I’m grateful for. I was not in the mood for explanations. Perhaps there’s
some good in humanity after all.
After hiking with Baldrick who carries sod all in his rucksack I have
started to do likewise. Today I regretted it. “Dangerous and irresponsible...”
would have been the summary in the press on Monday after my helicopter medivac.
“...due to being barefoot with no suitable back-up clothing”. Jesus’ foreskin
was it COLD. Absolutely freezing. A strong, icy, multidirectional Scandinavian
wind was tearing about the lakeside to the point that it was impossible to find a sheltered spot. My shirt was drenched
with sweat and to get warm I had to find a hollow and wrap myself in my poncho
and lie down in it I was shivering so much. I took my shirt off and literally
in 5 minutes it was bone dry. But I only lasted an hour up there. In fact there
were people with jackets on, hoods up and gloves further down. So I’m going
back to carrying my usual load. Better safe than sorry and if I’d had hat and
gloves and a fleece I could have spent the entire day up there.
When I got back to the scooter I was amazed and grateful to the
conglomeration of humanity following their instincts at the refuge. Even more
people along the road down. Hundreds of people all herded together taking the
sun on the rocks in the river, dozens of people with picnic tables by the side
of the road and to crown it all, one couple sitting in a rock and rubble dump
next to a mountain of manure listening to the radio as they ate their plate of
spag bol.. You couldn’t make this stuff up. Looking down at the Barbara refuge
from a hundred metres higher up you could see how humanity works. A vast
expanse of flat land near the refuge with clots of people all within spitting
distance of each other, while in between the clots, large areas of emptiness.
And the clots thinning out the further away from the car they were until right
at the end of the glacial basin, nobody at all. Even up at the lake a bunch of
hikers were all set to sit right next to me to have their lunch until I managed
to convince them to carry on up to the Dar Moine pass to see the view. Go
figure.
No photos unfortunately as the camera is bust. But I’ve added on a link
to the first barefoot hike.
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