Life of Wry

It’s not like Jim and I are not in good shape. Both of us work out daily. That said… speaking for myself, my little daily workout, while laudable for a near-70-something, isn’t nearly sufficient to prepare me for the kind of hike we’re going on in August. It’s not like we don’t hike. We do. We go on some pretty impressive hikes in Yosemite every year, for example. But this upcoming Dolomites hike, the Alta Via 1, is an 8-day hike, with a group and leader, that is quite challenging. But more than that, there are no outs. You have to keep up, you have to hike every day, you have to get to the end of the day’s hike in time for dinner. Once you start, you pretty much have to finish and you ought to do so without ruining the experience for your husband, son, son’s girlfriend, and anyone else who might be on the hike.

So… Jim and I will need to make sure that we are in THAT kind of shape… not just Yosemite hiking shape (for which we do nothing extraordinary in preparation), but Dolomites hiking shape. I looked at the hiking profiles today with a keener eye than I had before…

Over eight days, we’ll average about 10 miles a day, and average 3000 feet of elevation gain. Some days are longer (11 miles is our longest day) and there is one day when we’ll climb 5500 feet (that is a lot.. and it comes on the 11-mile day… which is actually a good thing.. spreads that elevation gain out).

Anyway, we flat-landers will have to get creative in finding hills (big ones) to train on. I searched last night and found a few in Fairfield, some in Vacaville and bunches in Napa, not to mention a few around Lake Berryessa. Berryessa’s closest but loaded with poison oak which is a deal breaker for Jim.

Today we hiked in Lynch Canyon. This was a pretty perfect day for that area.. it was 75 degrees which is relatively cool (summer will be unbearable for hiking in the Central Valley), and just gorgeous emerald green as far as the eye could see. The ground was soft, but not too, too muddy. And all the cows were busy eating so paid us no nevermind.

Some pics:

There were cows…..

A horse…(and a caballero!)

Trees.. lots of stands of them all over the place (note for future summer hiking)..

The trails were not always clear. There was some signage and some orange-post trail markers, but it was very good Jim had loaded maps before we went and we had GPS. We used it a lot.

All told, we hiked six miles. We think we climbed about 1000 feet. A good start to our training.