Two crosses

Climbing up

We went hiking after long time today; Markus was in a different village giving massages for Finnish sportsmen, so he only left directions for us at his practise in Niederdorf. We felt pretty lazy at the morning so we woke up at 9 and were in Niederdorf at 10:30. The instructions were to go by bike to lake Toblachersee and then to take a hiking trip trhough the nearby mountains. It said in the instructions that it would be nice trip to go and visit two mountain tops; Lungkofel and Sarlkofel.

We stopped on every stream to cool down

We biked pretty fast since the route was familiar and started walking up the mountain. It was a beautiful day, but soon it felt pretty horrible, because of the heat while walking the steep hill up to Sarlkofl. We walked past a hütte while walking up but it wasn't open, so we had to eat some peanuts and energy bars on the way. The walk up to Sarlkofel seemed to take forever, and it felt pretty bad after week of basically doing nothing. When we were on the top of some little mountain near Sarlkofel, we thought we were close, but we had to walk back down a little and again head up.

Aino struggeling behind

After passing a few "scary" herd of cows, we reached the sign that said which way was to Lugnkofel and which to Sarlkofel, we decided that we would not go to any mountain top, since we felt so tired already. We thought that the way down went near Lugnkofel, so we followed the path there. We found out soon that we had taken the wrong turn, and decided to continue up to Lugnkofel. The top was beautiful, frighteningly steep but the view seemed to go on and on. We rested a while and headed back to take the another route down.

Gleb on the top of Lugnkofel

The steep Lugnkofel

We found a shortcut to a different crossing, near Sarlkofel. The sign said it would take 30 minutes to walk up, so Aino felt eager. After a while of persuading, we headed up to Sarlkofel as well. The route was cool, there were parts which had rope to help you climb, and the path was in some parts very narrow with a drop right next to it. After reaching the top, we again admired the view for a while, signed the guest book, and started the way back down to Toblachersee.

Gleb leading the way

The way down was even more horrible than the way up, because our feet were already exhausted. It took nearly two hours to get down and we spoke rarely. When we finally reached Toblachersee, we took two big cokes for the both of us, one liter of water and we ate pizza. The first meal of the day at 6 PM... fortunately it was mostly downhill back to Niederdorf, so we rolled it down quite fast.

The route had lot of ascent and quite steep parts as well, so it would be nice to a sporty person. We on the other hand felt like it was maybe a bit too much after such a while, but the view and feel of achievement after reaching two crosses in one day made it all worth it, once again.