Plank Road: Ridge Walk

Forget about what I said about our accommodations being very quiet, ha! Yesterday a large family group of middle aged and older people from Barcelona arrived for the weekend. Our hours of operation are diametrically opposed to the hours of the locals. To complete long walks, we have to be up early, like 7:00 a.m. or so, then we can have breakfast and get to the trailhead at a decent time.

The locals will think we are totally cracked for eating our dinner at the ungodly, early hours of maybe 6:00 to 7:00 p.m., but then, we don’t eat lunch or snacks, so we need that dinner. The locals however, eat a ginormous late lunch and then eat dinner at 10:00 p.m. or thereabouts. The American family that was here was bemoaning the huge lunches, telling us that the ‘first’ is large enough, but then comes the even larger ‘second’ and then desert and coffee, wine is likely thrown in there as well.

Anyway, this is really funny, the group from Barcelona came in with shopping bags, and unloaded the contents, all of which was cava, into the frig. They sat in the common area and drank some cava, then headed out for dinner as we were going to bed. Sometime in the night, they came back and although we are on the second floor, we could hear a huge racket as they tend to talk loudly, no, they bellow, and they bellowed until about 3:00 a.m. or so. When we got up early and went to get our food from the frig for breakfast, there was no cava to be seen.

So, yeah, we are cracked, they know how to live, we don’t. We know this, but cannot seem to stop ourselves, we behave like Calvinists, pedal to the metal, have to climb up bloody mountains and eat nutrient dense food or else. Speaking of mountains, we went on a tremendous ridge walk today with blue skies and warm sunshine.

The approach to the trailhead was up a super steep, narrow road, high into the mountains, eventually reaching a large parking area. The road was paved very well, but deteriorated near the end, sadly, it was better than most major highways in Sask.

As we walked along the trail, we noticed major digging in the dirt and the throwing of fairly large rocks, we determined that it was the work of wild boars. They have tusks and are obviously very strong considering how much earth and rock they move. Apparently, they hang out at night so are rarely glimpsed in the daytime. On our return, we wanted to take a photo of their excavations, but the camera battery died and the spare completely failed a few days ago, so that was that.

It is quite cold here at night, colder than normal, but it quickly warms up in the sunshine. The beginning of the walk was cool, but as soon as we made the ridge and were in full sun, it was really nice and there was virtually no wind, the perfect hiking conditions.

The vegetation at the lower elevations is the typical low Mediterranean plants, but at the higher elevations there are pine, cypress looking trees and grasses that are wiry and a lot of other plants, all vegetation is drought tolerant. The higher elevations are very beautiful and far greener than one would imagine.

We also saw a couple of birds of prey soaring overhead, then they flew right over us. John had quite a time trying to get a pic of them as they are very high up and move fast, he had to click the shutter slightly ahead of the birds to photograph them.

The trail was unbelievably rocky with a lot of loose rock. In one area under a cliff, it was obvious that rocks come down off the cliff, as one large rock was sitting in the middle of the trail. On our way back, the whole trail was blocked by very large rocks that had come down since we first came through, we hurried through the area.

We did not encounter any other walkers on the trail, in this area it seems common to have the whole mountain to yourself, even on a nice weekend day. The best visibility is early in the day, the locals burn something all the time, the haze is smoke from small fires.

If you click the pic to enlarge, you will see our lonely car in the parking lot