mountain road // come again

For me, if I like a mountain, I want to try different routes, different directions, walk in different seasons, and different weather. It seems that only in this way will I start to know her. Especially when the weather is not very good but not dangerous, most people are too lazy to climb mountains but I like to go to the mountains, one often encounters animals. I once saw a large group of antelopes climbing up the ridge in the distance on the misty mountain road where the sky was getting darker, and it became an unforgettable picture in my heart.

Yesterday, I spent about 25 euros. I went to Malá Fatra (Little Fatra Mountain) for a one-day solo climb while the snow had just finished. I took the 5:13 train from Bratislava to žilina, and then changed to 8:00 bus to the small village štefanova. After eating a little something at about 9:00, we started walking. In the cold and freezing forest, there is no quiet as imagined. It should be said that the surroundings are quiet, only the sound of the backpack rubbing against the jacket when walking, or the little birdsong, but the sound of the raft yard working in the nearby valley. Breaking the tranquility always seems disturbing.

Forests change. The first time I came to this mountain was at the beginning of 2018. At that time, the logging farm had not yet started construction. Last spring and summer, there were many natural and man-made changes. After a gust of wind hit the mountain road, there were several fallen trees. There were paths that people stepped on beside the trees. Everyone carefully stepped out of the way to prevent themselves from falling into the valley. A tree extending from the valley to the hillside was cut down. Lost. There is a south-facing detour that faces the sun just beside the cut down woods. Without the shade brought by the trees, the road becomes exposed to the sun, and it is not as comfortable as it used to be. But mine only lasted more than a year, not the accumulation of several years.

Although I haven't known this mountain for a long time, I have been there several times in spring, summer, autumn and winter. This time I went up the mountain mainly to photograph the slopes after the snow in the early winter. At this time, you can also see the frost attached to the small flowers and grass. The frost has a direction, about the southwest direction. Looking back to the northeast along the opening of the frost and the saddle, is another mountain range, Západné Tatry (West Tower). Terra Mountain) and Choč, they are both my favorite mountains. They have open outlooks, and the road up and down the mountain has a changeable landform. The soreness that may occur after returning home is unforgettable and wants to go again.

The highest point of the Western Tatras is 2,248 meters above sea level, and now there are snow-covered peaks. The mountain I went to yesterday, Stoh, is about 1,607 meters, which is 100 meters lower than the 1,708 meters of the highest peak of the Petit Fatra Mountain. The snow season is extremely muddy, where I turned myself into a half-mud man last May, and the start of the snow season was like yesterday, without the trouble of mud. When walking through the woods and going up the mountain in this season, I can feel the chill that the sun cannot reach the woods. There is no sunlight at all. Walking up the steep slopes in the cold place flattens my body when exercising. The hot air that erupted, walked out of the woods to the ridge, and was completely dry.

The ridge road winds its way up to the elevation and goes onward under the sun. An uncle who was willing to share once told me that the trick to hiking in the snow is to find the speed at which you don’t sweat too much. This is a very useful sentence, especially when I walk for a long time, I try not to exaggerate the exercise on the snow, so as to avoid the cold when I stop sweating. At this time, both sides of the mountain trail were covered with wild blueberries with dry tops and a layer of snow. The late-summer wild blueberries that grow near wetlands and can be irradiated by the sun are the most delicious. They are sweet, sour, and large. They are incomparable to those imported blueberries shipped from supermarkets. When I saw the blueberry in early winter, and caught the fog behind the mountains that I couldn't get around, I suddenly felt that this was the happiness of going up the mountain alone. There is no rush to stay in the here and now.

So what is the desolation of a person? It was about an hour waiting for the bus in the village of zero degrees on the return trip. Slovakia is currently closed to restaurants due to the epidemic. In the zero-degree temperature, I took out the salty cake I made the day before and ate it in the wooden table and chair area of the bus shelter. It was not delicious. By the way, I stole the wifi opened by the kind-hearted people, connected to the Internet again, and watched the fog that dissipated in the afternoon and returned to the village. The winter solstice is still a month away, and the night starts earlier and earlier. After 16:30, it was already dark. It would be better if someone could talk trash together and wait for the bus.