'Triumph'. Accumulated elevation on the day, some 3,000 feet hike or a cable-car ride for the weary, with only 5-minutes of rain, for a change.
Finding and taking the gap as we move upwards through the clouds.
A view from the top.
Coincidences on the trails.
We are fascinated by coincidences in general and specifically, where we are participants. We remember mentioning a few over the years but before relating one from this week, we thought about rehashing a couple or more.
We spent four days on the Kepler track in New Zealand a few years back. We met a young Swiss-German, Todd, who was studying in Auckland, at the time. The following year, we returned to New Zealand and after hiking to the peak of one our favorites, retired to a small park in Queenstown to enjoy a hot beverage and savor the afterglow of a big day on the mountain. A young man walked up to me and said, “Hello, Jeffrey.” I looked up, hesitated a moment and replied, “Hello, Todd.” It was exactly 365 days since we’d last seen him.
We were at the base of Mount Shasta in Northern California, intending to hike to Helen Lake, some 3,000 feet above. A young woman was sitting near us and we heard her complaining of blisters on her feet and not having anything with which to cover them. We offered her our recently purchased mole-skin covers. The following week, we were sitting on the top of Broke-off Peak in Lassen National Park, some 100 or so miles from Shasta. The young woman we had helped the previous week arrived as we were sitting at the top talking with another couple. She came up to us when she recognized our accents.
We were at Hogsback in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. On a trail, we met a young Scot, Michael, who asked us for some suggestions re hikes. We encouraged him to go to the Drakensberg mountains. At worst, we urged him to try Lesotho, a country bordering South Africa, some 5-6 hundred miles distant. A week later, we left for KwaZulu-Natal and from a base (Elsa and Derryl's house) hiked up into Lesotho where we stayed for 2 nights. We had completed a hike in that country and were sitting in the ‘highest pub in Africa’ when a young man wearing a funny cap walked up to us and said, “Hello, Jenni.” We looked up as he took off his hat and we greeted Michael from Scotland.
We’ve met only two women from Wales over eight years on the trails. The first was in New Zealand on the Routeburne Track. She looked like our daughter and had the same name, Natalie. Earlier this year, we met a second Welsh woman on a peak in San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina. Her name: Ellie. The same name as Natalie’s daughter.
A picture is on the blog (36.15) showing us moving up a dangerous gorge with another couple last Tuesday. The guy reminded us of Yaakov Shore, a resident of La Jolla, San Diego. He had the same coloring and twinkle of the eye. On the same day, 'out of the blue', we heard from Devorah Shore, his wife. It seemed quite strange and I mentioned it to her. The next day, we went to view a castle, thirty-five miles from our village, as we were enjoying a rest day. We decided to walk around the castle and obtain better views from ground-level, some 700 feet lower. When we arrived at the lowest point, an entry way from a village, we bumped into the couple we had met at the gorge the previous day. It does not seem possible that something like that could happen. After we said our ‘farewells’, another young couple arrived and followed us up to the castle.
We left the area and headed to the largest city below the Tatras—Poprad, approximately twenty miles away. Along one of the aisles in Tesco, a major British supermarket chain, we bumped into the other couple we had seen below the castle walls earlier.
We mentioned this one a few weeks ago which occurred in Austria. We met a couple on a peak one Sunday. The following day, we drove to another village and I thought I recognized the woman from the previous day (peak), in her backyard. When we passed the house on foot on the way to the trailhead after parking the car, I greeted a man who was on the sidewalk of that same house. He came up to us and in broken-English mentioned our meeting on the previous day at the peak. We recognized him within seconds of his approach.
It makes you think, smile and wonder, well us, anyway.
We wrote of coincidences: Here's one of the places, Spis castle, where two took place, partly.
There's a cableway going over the mountain, north to south and of course, vice-versa. It passes below the peak but crosses over the mountain top.
Jenni descending from the small peak that sits atop the mountain.
And then the lights went out. "Jen? Where are you?" A few feet below the peak and he's lost.
The best news of all-he found a route down from the peak. (The worrying aspect is he's pointing up.)
The most beautifully rich countryside.
Growth and more growth and constant reminders of Andorra.
Beholden to the surrounding beauty as we return on a short-cut down a ski slope.
Ghost-like in places.
Cheers,
Jenni and Jeffrey
"Castles in the Air". We see a great future for castle restorations. Currently, we are looking for a solid hammer, trowel, maybe a ladder and an English manual-('Castle restorations for Dummies').
Beckov Castle, as we made our way back toward Bratislava and Wien. (Who needs a moat?)
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