Hiking the Alpe Adria Trail: Day 5

How can I describe today? The word that comes to mind is ‘epic’. At different points in the day I thought this was the most wonderful walk, the most awful, the most beautiful, the most tiring. It’s certainly one of the toughest I’ve ever done, perhaps even the toughest. Why?

Well it began with an inexorable climb, along switch back roads, with the odd, even steeper, path shortcutting across the fields. The weather was a bit changeable all day, starting wet, and it turned out the only really sunny bit of the day coincided with the steep, exhausting climb while for the rest of the day it was damp, grey and increasingly chilly.

But the views were once again spectacular, and different again from before. By about 12 o’clock, I had done most of the climbing, and not having been able to buy lunch from the supermarket at Stall where I started, it being Sunday and the shops shut, I stopped for a snack.

While I sat snacking , a lady hiker- only the second person I’d seen that day- stopped briefly to chat. She told me her name was Barbara and not only was she hiking the Alpe Adria in full like me, but she had only started the day before and had done the first three days in one. Today she was doing both stages four and five. Knowing now what they involve I think she must be superhuman! Anyway it wasn’t long before she was haring off into the distance. I’m sure she finished her ‘double’ day well before I finished my single one.

Shortly after we chatted the wide path became a narrow and increasingly steep one, and there then followed the first of two stretches where the path had obviously been the victim of falling trees, boulders or avalanches. As a result there was barely a flat space to put a foot at times, the ‘path’ was only discernible because someone had thoughtfully splashed white paint on every few trees, and I slowed down to a snails’ pace. You had to climb over fallen trees, climb up and around bigger ones and walk through sloping narrow paths above a steep drop to the right. Because I took this so carefully, these parts took me probably nearly an hour to go less than half a mile. At one point another hiker also overtook me and seemed to take it all in her stride.

I knew that a mountain hut for which I was aiming was nearby, because I had seen it, and could hear the bells of the cattle close, outside the forest. When I finally emerged from this nightmare, I followed a path under a field of cows, and was making my way towards a fence but couldn’t see a way out. Suddenly, a young woman in the hut ahead started waving and calling to me in German. When I explained I was English and didn’t speak German, she came out of the hut and showed me the way across. I’d hoped I’d finally arrived at Goldberghutte, and so it now proved. She welcomed me in, sat me in the piping hot kitchen, and offered me hot soup and to dry my waterproofs. So for the next hour or so, I was made to feel at home by Jussi and Manuela ( I hope I have their names right) in the homely Goldberghutte.

Having said our farewells, I promptly slipped on a wet grass slope leading back down to the path. Ironic after all the care I’d taken earlier, but I’m glad it was there and not where it was more dangerous, as I just picked myself up and carried on. But it showed how lethal wet sloping grass can be.

Most of the rest of the walk was downhill or level. For nearly an hour I walked along the Rollbahn weg, a level track of an old narrow industrial rail line. With a car park at one end and being a Sunday, I actually saw two groups of six or seven people out for an afternoon stroll, more people than I’d seen for days on the trail.

But the trouble was I knew there was all that height still to lose, and once it started in earnest, for the last couple of miles into Innerfragant, where this stage of the walk ended, it was seriously steep and long. And made up of that rubble, ballast-like, loose stone which is hard on your feet at the end of the day and means you have to watch every step to avoid sliding downhill.

Finally, arriving in the village, I should have taken up the offer to call my hotel to pick me up, as the hotel was another mile away from the trail up the road. But my guidebook said it was only 25 minutes walk, and I thought: what’s that after nine hours on my feet? Besides I would have had to rake around to find the phone number and hope that they spoke English. So rashly, I walked it, not realising until too late it was all uphill. Weirdly, the 2 million Euro EU funded road saw only one, yes one car, in one direction for the whole mile I walked it. By the time I reached the hotel, which turned out to be a touch of luxury compared to recent nights, I was exhausted.

So there we are. The first of the five ‘difficult’ days on the trail. A climb the height of Ben Nevis, and a descent almost as much, and I did it. Tomorrow’s walk is classed as moderate, but ominously seems to have almost as much up and down, and be as long distance-wise as today. Maybe it’s just easier going. I hope so. Today’s hike was very enjoyable in parts, but a nightmare at times. But, hopefully, it shouldn’t get much tougher than this.