Category mountains

Oh boy… Do I miss the mountains

iz4vve Leave a comment

I’m back!! BACK!! After a whole year, I’m finally back on a mountain!

Yeah, I know there are “mountains” in Ireland, but it’s definitely not the same. I mean, today I managed to hike to the Pratignano lake (Lago di Pratignano) in the province of Modena. It’s at 1,307m above sea level: not particularly high up… But it’s still more than 200m higher than Ireland’s highest mountain!!

And the weather… well, it’s absolutely impossible to compare  🙂

The valley below
The horizon
Looking back towards home
The guide
To the top
Sky and sun
The ascent
Who said you can’t shoot into the sun?

It didn’t feel like December at all!

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On the ridge

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Along the lake

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Blue and ice

Clear skies
In the valley
Cold and wet
The way back
Layers
Berry
DAT SKY
Lone tree
Briscola (the dog’s name)
Near the lake
Frames
The guide (2)
The guide (3)
Just keep walking

Great day and hike. Tip of the hat to our wonderful guides!

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Monte Cimone (Mount Cimone, 2165m)

Oh, and a very happy new year 🙂

Looking for snow: Mullaghcleevaun

iz4vve Leave a comment

After hiking during Christmas holidays, I think I came down with the hiking disease once again. And I find quite ironic that I had to come to Ireland to find snow…

My short time home was marked by a remarkably warm weather, therefore you could only find a few small snow patches on the mountains. Which, needless to say, was quite disappointing…

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See what I mean? Almost no snow! 1730m above sea level in December!!

Compare that with this…

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This is Lough Cleevaun. 700m above sea level… THIS IS IRELAND!!

There was snow from around 550m and up! In some place over 40cm deep!

It was wonderful :3 …

All in all, a great hike. Most of it in the white…

First snow
Follow me
The group
Mullaghcleevaun
Treacherous passage: in some places snow becomes suddenly very deep… Watch where you step!
The line
Tricky path
What a wonderful panorama!
A moment of rest
Dangerous descent
The great white
Slippery path
That way!
Ireland at its best 🙂
River crossing

Mountains! At last!

iz4vve 1 Comment

I must admit that since my Irish adventure started I have been somewhat in withdrawal… I need the mountains to function properly and Irish mountains, while very nice, are not enough…

So yesterday I joined a group to go on Monte Cimone on our mountains in Italy (God bless holidays!). It should have been a walk on snowshoes due to the altitude and, you know… winter…

But, it turns out there is almost no snow on our mountains these days, so we decided to go without snowshoes. That was a good call.

Once I got out of the fog bank on the plains (horrible…), there wasn’t a siongle cloud in the sky. On the mountains there was almost no snow, and it was incredibly warm for December…

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View from Monte Cimone to the south

One of the first thoughts that came to mind was a solemn curse because I forgot my polarizer… No, none of these photo has been taken with a polarizer… And no, I haven’t bumped up the saturation in any of them…

This is what the sky really looked like 😯 …

So anyway, we climbed from Fiumalbo up above the tree line, where we had a pleasant hike in the sun.

Sun
Climb
Briscola! (the dog)
Just keep walking
The descent begins
Towards the sun
Ice
Watch your step
What’re you looking at?
O’er there!
Break the ice!
Sunray
Descending
Guide
Path

We even enjoyed a meal in the sun and a few minutes rest before making our way down.

Snow and ice
Making a path
Going down
Almost there
Sky
Stream
Group

I really needed this!

And tomorrow we go up again!