Follow the Mountains : Italy - Day 2: Lots of orchids and mountains

What a hard first hiking day for my foot I didn't hike many kilometers, but if I can still walk tomorrow, I don't think I will have problems anymore.

I started before 6 a.m., as when I woke up at 5:20 a.m., I was surprised that it was already light. So I quickly packed and started on my road walk. It wasn't as busy as the day before and one of the villages I passed was quite scenic, so it wasn't too bad.

And then I even got a little "birthday present". Not that I liked it, but still nice. I stopped in a village at a bench with a garbage bin to eat my birthday meal of chickpeas and olives. Because a short trail before went through wet grasss, I took off my soaking wet shoes. Then a woman came and brought me a hot coffe with a package of sugar. She said she saw me from the balcony. I don't like coffee, but because it was so nice of her and the coffee was tiny and with sugar, I thought it'll give me energy to walk up the mountains ;)

When I walked around a mine on dirt roads, I hardly managed to continue: I had to check out all the orchids of Italy. And I found a few new ones, like the really large and funky one. The day was nice and sunny, but over the mountains of the Pollino Nationalpark, there were already clouds forming.

I had taken several looks on the map and decided to take the short but steep trail up to a little Plateau and then further up. One of the reasons was, that on the map it was shown as big and fat red hiking trail, while my alternative was just a dotted line.

Turned out I made the wrong choice. There was neither a trail (not even anything alike!), nor markers. Instead I was walking steeply up in a forest, which was more bush than forest. I was swearing loudly!!! I am not a fan of bush-whacking, but it is OK, if I decide to do it. If I expect a trail and there is really NOTHING, I hate every moment... So that was tough going and it took me ages to walk up the 2 km and 750 m elevation gain, my ankle hurting with all the crazy bending and climbing.

Then came a little beech forest and an open part, sometimes with something like a trail, although I found the trail-like thing also, when I was not even close to the trail... At the little pass, I decided to drop down directly, since the weather looked really bad and there was thunder once in a while.

Turned out, the "going down" part was as hard as going up. It was the North side and quite steep. Snow was everywhere, even down in the forest. Since the trail (actually there was a little trail!) followed the mountain ridge just further below for a while, I had to cross several steep snow field. But it was all right, since the snow was mostly soft - not as soft as I wished, but I used my microspikes. Then came the even tougher part: steep hill, snow plus beech trees, which are more like bushes and bent down from the snow. It took hours to get to a flatter part with bigger trees, where I was finally able to actually move and "walk".

I wanted to camp, but not down in the valley that I had reached, so I walked up trailless a bit, still not sure which trail I would take the next day: to my right somewhere, over a mountain or a marked trail to my left, down in the valley over a tiny pass. I found a lovely camp spot and the sun even came out. I was first afraid to get rained on hard (it rained only a little), because dark clouds were above me and clouds were blown around the mountain and into the valley.