[Edited and Reposted so Comments were Lost!]
Fortunately the weather has been stable for the last week because every day has had a lot of exposure. Lots of passes over 2,000m, lots of climbing, lots of descending, and generally lots of effort. It’s been a hard, awesome week. This is how I wanted it to be!
When I say “stable weather” I mean “predictable”: things tend to start out clear in the morning and get cloudier as the day goes on. On this day the clouds were being brought over the peaks down into the valley… it felt like I was at the foot of a tsunami. Astounding sight!
Of course, the problem with good weather is that you want to continue hiking through every single day until the weather breaks… and that’s what I wanted to do… but a few days ago, towards the end of Stage 23, after seven consecutive days of living off mountain hut rations and tough 6-10hr days, I was exhausted so I descended into the valley and caught a bus and train to Lienz (where I am now). Coming down from hard-earned altitude is soul destroying because you know you have to regain it, but I would have needed to come down within the next few days anyhow for more Euros and the next map to take me into the Dolomites.
I was tired after seven consecutive days of hiking (almost 5km’s of ascent/descent), but earlier in the week I ran into two Belgian guys who had thru-hiked the Via Alpina from Trieste to Stage 20 in just 13 days and caught me up. RESPECT! Thinking back, there is just NO WAY I could have done that distance over that terrain in that time carrying what I’m carrying. NO WAY! So I take my hat off to them: well done! Smelling worse than Michael Jackson does right now, they descended into the valley to get their first laundry done.
Yesterday was the best day of all so I will write some bits and pieces about that. The hike from HochweissSteinHaus started with some tough snow fields to cross. There were four in all, but it’s only after this last one (the easiest!) when I’d recovered that I was in any fit state to take a picture:
To put it mildly: I am not a fan of these! I hate crossing them.
I seem to be adept at picking the hardest route across the snow. Some of the others make it look so easy! A Swiss hiker that passed me told me that my boots were too soft to “kick in” so that might be something worth looking into (she was wearing not-quite-four-season hiking boots but they looked rigid). Had there been many more of these today I would have had to turn back. It took me almost one hour to cross the four snow fields and it was HARD WORK.
Apart from that though, the day was awesome with the best weather of the entire trip so far. Here’s a few shots looking down on HochweissSteinHaus where I stayed the night before:
The thing is: it doesn’t matter how high you are, there’s always higher to go! You can (just about!) see where I stayed last night in the bottom left.
If you’re really hard you can hike/scramble up this peak which is to the right of the above photo. It’s a lot bigger than it looks!:
After the hour fighting the snow, I was finding it hard work today and then it dawned on me as I passed a Sattel whose name escapes me: I was at over 2500m! No wonder! I took a few shots into distant Italy that came out a bit dark:
I managed to take a panorama of the above photographs and I guess, if I was arty-farty, could stitch them together. But I’m not arty-farty and I’m not bothered 
But all is not well! I have encountered a problem that I never anticipated. Something I had never even considered. Something that will definitely affect the rest of the trip: I do not like mountain huts. For the last month it has been OK: perhaps 10 people or so in some of the huts (or only me). Ideal! But since the holiday season started they are relentlessly JAM PACKED FULL of people. At one of the huts we passed through they were waiting for a party of FORTY to arrive. FORTY! I am used to bunkbeds because I have hostelled for years, but Schlagens (lots of mattresses placed side-by-side) really suck.
And they won’t even let you camp nearby if you have your own tent.
My main grievance though is the food. The prices are colossally high and the portions are tiny. Some of the evening meals served at certain establishments (cough – HochWeissSteinHaus – cough) contain fewer calories than my ideal, mid-morning snack! Are two small scoops of mashed potato and two small slabs of pork really an ideal meal for an end-of-day-hike?! Clearly they think so!
It takes a lot of work to get up high and when the weather is good you want to stay on the ridges and in the huts for as long as possible: but to do that I need food! I just can’t see how, carrying what I am carrying and living off mountain hut rations (and lots of extra chocolate and energy bars), I could possibly survive for more than a fortnight without wasting away (or spending a fortune). Evening those bastions of 21st century masculinity, my moobs, might even be in decline!
Having hiked along the GR20 (far harder than the Via Alpina thus far) I found the facilities superb: camping was permitted, the huts had self-catering facilities (even a sheltered cooking bench and a sink suffices) and it was possible to buy food along the way at the huts (bread, sausages, pasta, etc). The meals portions served were sufficient or good. Several of the huts there were supplied, every morning, by mule runs and the prices were reasonable. I have been disappointed and surprised so far by what is on offer in the Alpine Huts, particularly in Austria (Slovenia seemed better). I was expecting to be able to camp, at least occasionally. I do not like starting and ending my day in the mountain huts. They are overcrowded and noisy. I should have done more research before I started!
Obviously, as I am not working any more I am travelling on my savings so every time I pay 7 Euros for an apple-sized bowl of soup or 8 Euros for a breakfast (four slices of bread, coffee, a bit of marmalade) it hurts! I do not see this as good value for money… I need to think about what this means over the next few days.
I’m spending a few days in Lienz and will then go back onto the Via Alpina to get to the Dolomites… apparently, the Dolomites Rock (no pun intended!).
