Šimonka ascent

Alas, I am settling in after my now-traditional Wednesday evening dinner of boiled potatoes (the secret of which, I found out today via the New York Times, is to really salt the water -- we can discuss later how rather sad/interesting/nontraditional/postmodern it is that I read this in the NYT) and a can of Šariš. Sunday afternoon, a beautiful day, we went up Šimonka. The great news is that I always feel a great deal of satisfaction when I finish a walk like this and I value the mental exercise it requires as much if not more, as the physical exercise.

As we were walking on this mountain, we were walking on top of what was, until the mid-19th century, the only known source of opals. Along the trail, there is also a fantastic mountain stream fountain, with absolutely delicious water.

On the way up. The forest was beautiful, and I'd like to do this trail again in the summer,
because I'm sure it would be great then, too.

Huge wolf tracks, which we began to see close to the top.

Signing the guestbook at the top -- 1 092 m (3 582 ft).
It lives in a plastic bag inside that metal box to my left.
Up there, in the sun, it was already 1o°C (50°F).

Resting at the trailhead after the descent, which took exactly an hour.
I was pooped.

I have a couple of mental exercises which I perform while doing these rather strenuous walks (this one was strenuous only because of the excessive mud and then snow, which required great effort to walk through), and one of them (I won't give them all away) is rather reward-based. So halfway down, I was already thinking about the kolbasa and beer I was going to have (which caused my pace to quicken a bit -- I was nearly running at some points). The kolbasa and beer place was a bit smoky and they didn't have quite what we wanted, so we went elsewhere and I had goralský gulaš and bryndzové pirohi. Oh wowowow -- and a perfect replenishment of calories after such a workout.