Belatedly following up with Part 1, my remaining time Prague had a day-trip to Bohemian Switzerland National Park, Bastei Bridge, and a lot of geocaching throughout the city. (Prague geocachers bring their A-game. I went home finding 132 caches in Iceland, 71 in Czechia and 5 in Germany.) To blow through my remaining CZK, I made a trip to a grocery store and bought enough candy and beer that I needed a second suitcase. ...
For today, I had booked a (small) tour through the hostel. The Midgard Surprise is what it sounds like, the guide picks a route based on weather, road conditions, expertise, and whim. Today’s was to Gígjökull, Þórsmörk then a couple of waterfalls. According to Discover Iceland, Gígjökull is a 7.5 km long crater glacier and one of the outlets from the glacier volcano Eyjafjallajökull, famous its eruption in 2010 that wrought havoc with air traffic as well as being difficult for non-Icelanders to pronounce. (I’m told that it sounds like “Hey I forgot the yogurt” if spoken very quickly.) Eyjafjallajökull ...
The first official CHS hike was the Bullitt Fireplace Loop on Squak Mountain. It’s east of my prior two hikes: The route is similar to a reverse of this loop: Cougar-Squak corridor to the Fireplace, direct to the microwave towers, then Old Griz to Eastside Traverse and back down. Although this hike was labeled “easy,” the last 0.4 miles up to the fireplace was steep enough that I needed to pause a few times. ...
My daughter, who’s home for her last spring break ever, wanted to go on a hike before heading back to school. I’d scoped out a lot of interesting hikes, but several were in weather-affected areas, because I forget 50s here does not equate to “melted snow” east of the pass. We ultimately settled on something closer to home: Cougar Mountain Regional Wildland Park. Cougar has well-maintained trails and a selection of waterfalls, marshes, and mining artifacts. It’s a really nice area that I forget because it’s so close. For today’s hike, we’d do a 6.5 mile loop from the Sky Country trailhead, covering several lookouts and the waterfalls. ...
To help remotivate myself to get outdoors again and, hopefully, lose some of the “Covid 19”, I’ve signed up for the Conditioning Hiking Series with the Mountaineers. This involves two hikes from April to August, a “graduation” hike of >15 miles in September, and a stewardship project. Map from GaiaGPS based on my track with the parking lot to trailhead portions removed. There are two tracks: CHS 1 — pace of less than 2mph CHS 2 — Pace of more than 2mph. Cool. A few questions: how does one calculate pace? Is it total moving average? Moving time over flat terrain? Distance divided by total time with breaks? No one was able to articulate this in a way that I could nod agreeably in understanding. I was leaning towards the faster group, but unsure about my current couch potato-ness. ...