Marcin Morawski: hikes

Hiking the Haute Randonnée Pyrénéenne (HRP)

2026-09-11T00:00:00Z

Background #

The Haute Randonnée Pyrénéenne (Pyrenees High Route, HRP) is a through-hike of the Pyrenees, a mountain range that forms the border between Spain and France. There is no single HRP "trail". The spirit of the hike is to traverse from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean across the mountains while staying as high as conditions permit.

The HRP is well documented elsewhere. In this post we describe how we prepared for it and how our hike turned out. We hope you will find this a useful reference if you're considering the HRP yourself. The guidebooks we used are listed under Planning; refer to them for detailed information.

Vibes #

The HRP was fun, and we'd recommend it to anyone looking for a longer hike in Europe. The route-setting is superb. You pass many of the hallmarks of the Pyrenees (Aneto, Cirque de Gavarnie, Puigmal ridge walk), and avoid roads and crowds as much as possible. You meet lots of wildlife (marmots, vultures, ibex, isards, salamanders). 10/10 route.

Time & difficulty #

We hiked the HRP in August 2026. We took 30 days, including rest days. We walked 10-12 hours a day at a comfortable pace. Technically, the hike was not particularly difficult, but there are quite a few scrambly sections where you have to pay attention. Many of the bits described as difficult or improvised in the guidebooks have become popular day hikes (e.g. the western ascent of Canigou), so most of the route is now on good paths. The most challenging aspect for us was the heat.

Weather and wildfire risk #

The weather was nice most of the time, as expected in France/Spain in the summer, but we encountered many hailstorms and had multiple days where we drank over 8 litres of water per person to cope with the heat. However, we were hiking during a historic heat wave.

Wildfire is a significant risk that we did not see mentioned online or in guidebooks. We had three days of very poor visibility due to smoke. On the penultimate day of our trip, the temperature was 33°C and there were high winds, so the government closed the Albères massif that we had to cross to get to Banyuls (the terminus). You can (as of 2026) monitor the closure status at https://www.risque-prevention-incendie.fr/. The website updates daily.

Wildfire in the Pyrenees. This valley is filled with smoke, not fog.

Surviving the sun #

To shield ourselves from the sun, we carried plenty of sunscreen, wore full-coverage sun hats, and used backpacks with back ventilation. We brought plenty of electrolytes and salty foods to replenish the minerals that we lost due to perspiration. Hyponatremia is a real risk during long-distance hikes in the heat. If you would like to learn how to avoid it, watch this video from GearSkeptic.

Those sun hats may look silly, but we were very happy to have them. The ponytail hole is a DIY mod.

Camping #

We camped on 27 out of the 29 nights. In general, bivouacking is allowed in the Pyrenees. What bivouacking means changes throughout the route. In some sections, you can only camp from 7 p.m. to 9 a.m., in others only above 2000 m. Those rules are usually signposted when you enter a restricted area. We did not encounter mosquitoes, and the weather was usually great in the morning and evening, making packing up and setting up the tent a breeze. There are some spectacular campsites on the HRP.

Campsite at the foot of Aneto, the tallest mountain in the Pyrenees

Many hikers on the HRP walk from refuge to refuge. There are many shelters along the route, both manned and unmanned. We enjoyed stopping at them for lunch, and we did a full rest day at the Refugi de Juclar in Andorra. The vibes in the huts seemed to be great, but we prefer camping.

Planning #

We used three guidebooks:

Cicerone's Trekking the Pyrenean Haute Route: the standard English-language reference for the trail, a must-have. Splits the route into 45 days, which we found quite conservative. Assumes that you want to stay in a shelter on most nights. We consulted it every evening while planning the following day's route. But for choosing where to camp, where to get water, and which variant of the HRP to follow, we used...
Whiteburn's Wanderings HRP Pocket Guide: very succinct, lists water and bivouac points along the route, allowing you to choose your own adventure. Many more variants than the Cicerone guide. Provides GPX files for all the variants, which we used for navigation
Walking the HRP 2026: in theory, serves as a yearly update to the Cicerone guide. However, we found that the updates were often not in sync with the guide. Extensive comments on the quality of refuges along the route. Worth a read if you plan to do a refuge-to-refuge hike

We used GPS on our phones for navigation. The GPX tracks from Whiteburn's Wanderings proved very accurate. We tried to pick variants that avoided roads and stayed high wherever possible. Most of the route follows established paths, so there are usually blazes to follow. We used the GPS mostly to double-check when switching from one trail to another.

Food #

It's hard to find vegan food in the Pyrenees. The huts don't have vegan options (although we were told that they may cook vegetarian sometimes if you call ahead), and the shops are not well stocked. We chose not to rely on local infrastructure. Instead, we prepared food parcels, which we posted to campsites ahead of time. Of course, we contacted them to make sure they'd accept a delivery. We typically carried a week's worth of food, which is more than most HRP hikers, but we made sure to pack lightweight meals (our average calorie density was over 5 kcal/g), and our base weight is pretty low, so we didn't suffer too much. We recommend this video from GearSkeptic if you're interested in optimising your hiking food for weight and nutritional value.

Each of these boxes weighs around 8 kg and contains a week's worth of food for two people.

Water #

If we had one complaint about the HRP, it would be the amount of livestock in the mountains, especially in the beginning, in the Basque country. In addition to being noisy, eroding the landscape, and making sure nothing taller than grass ever grows in mountain valleys, livestock pollutes water. The mountain rescue gets called to evacuate someone with diarrhoea every day. To stay healthy, we treated stream water both chemically, with chlorine, and mechanically, with a Sawyer Squeeze. We did not experience any gastrointestinal problems. In general, water availability is not an issue on the HRP. The guidebooks warn when there are longer sections without water. We had 3 litres of water carrying capacity per person and we rarely used more than half that between refills.

End remarks #

There really isn't much to say about the HRP that hasn't been said already. For us, it was the longest hike that we have ever done. Our previous adventures were more difficult technically, but shorter. We used the HRP to test whether we enjoyed longer through-hikes. Our conclusion - there is little difference between hiking for two weeks and hiking for a month. After a week, your body and mind adjust to walking 12 hours per day and it feels like you can keep going indefinitely. Given how difficult it is to take 30 days off, we will probably stick to shorter hikes for a while. The next step may be a 6-month through-hike, where you really put the rest of your life on pause to walk. We're still curious what it's like to hike the CDT/PCT/AT, but it will be a long time before we get the chance. For now, we leave you with some pictures of the Pyrenees. Thanks for reading!

Cloud inversion when you first see the sun after climbing above the clouds that cover the Basque country at the beginning of the route

These karst landscapes were one of our favourite bits of the hike

Cirques like this are characteristic of the Pyrenees

In late summer there is almost no snow on the HRP, but this is the highest pass on the route - it has snow all year long

This was (for us) the most technical part of the hike - an off-path descent on the 'adventure' variant after Héas

Guess which way we went here :) (it was a perfectly fine path)

Hiking the GR20

2025-11-29T00:00:00Z

Sunset at a pass near Ciottulu di I Mori

This October we went to Corsica to hike the extremely well documented GR20 - an ~180 km thru-hike across the mountainous and unpopulated heart of the island. As usual, we won't say much here that can be found elsewhere - except to agree that it is truly spectacular.

This post is brought to you by my hiking buddy Hamish, who took the responsibility of writing up this trip report.

We split the stages as recommended here. On some days we walked a little further, or stopped earlier, but in general we found it to be a good guide. Where possible, we took the 'high route' alternatives described in the Cicerone guidebook, blazed with horizontal yellow stripes. These were some of our favourite days of the trip, and we highly recommend them. Blazes abound on the GR20; if you haven't seen one for three minutes, you've gone wrong and should backtrack. We didn't carry a paper map, and used the GPX track on our phones only once. We took the aforementioned guidebook, downloaded on an e-book reader. While it was nice to have an idea of how long and high the stages were, we did not rely on it much for way-finding. Indeed we found out when we got home that Stage 4 has been changed since our edition of the guidebook was published (2012), and we had totally failed to notice. This is mostly because a lot of the early stages have very similar descriptions - a long, steep, rocky ascent, followed by spectacular views and a ridge walk, descending to a charming hut in the evening. A lot of people describe the route as tough. We found it fine - there is a lot of scrambling, but nothing that felt sketchy. However, we can well imagine that for people off-balance with their 20 kg backpacks (we met a decent number of these), or in the rain, these sections could be tricky.

Accommodation - huts #

Wild camping is not permitted on the GR20, understandably, given how many people trek it annually, and the erosion-prone soil. The huts offer camping spots, and are luxurious, with free cooking gas, warm showers and (not free) three course dinners. All of this is flown in by helicopter. Hiking in October meant the huts were only officially open the first four days of our hike. Booking in advance gives a 50% discount (at least for camping). After the huts were shut, most left open a winter room, but closed their toilets and showers. On the day the season officially ended, we witnessed the extremely efficient operation of a team of six Corsicans and one helicopter lifting out tons' worth of gas canisters, and lifting in vast piles of wood for the winter. The helicopter came and went six times in the time it took us to eat breakfast. It was quite a sight.

Off-season hiking in October #

We found early October to be a perfect time to hike. We saw around ten people each night, compared to hundreds in high season. Water is described as a problem in many people's trip reports. We had a water filter, and capacity to carry 5 l between the two of us. We never ran out. The weather was mostly sunny but cool in the high mountains. On two days it was cloudy and rained a little. The only extreme weather we experienced was a night time thunderstorm, while we were camping at Refuge de Ciottulu di I Mori, an exposed hut just below 2000 m. The campsite had several new rivers in the morning, running through camping spots - luckily not ours - and we met one person whose tent had ripped apart. We were grateful not to have been hiking during that time. Mostly it was perfectly calm, to the extent that we slept one night without a tent under the stars.

Nutrition #

We hiked fully vegan, as always. Before starting the GR20, we visited the post office in Calenzana and posted a package of our food for days 6-10 to la Halte du Prince, a campsite in Vizzavona that generously agreed to accept a parcel for us. Our menu is becoming standardised. This time we aimed for 3500 calories per person per day and took:

Breakfast: granola with powdered coconut milk Lunch: crackers with vegan kabanossi and schmalz - a German lard-like spread with onion and apple - sounds disgusting but is surprisingly good Dinner: jackfruit mince Bolognese with powdered mashed potato / fancy vegan ramen with soy strips / Thai curry with couscous / peanut butter noodles (all containing a lot of oil) Snacks: a mountain of nuts, chocolate, pringles and bars

We wish we had known... #

Super stony ground #

The ground in the Corsican mountains is extremely stony and dry. This is hard on gear. We broke three stakes, and bent several more. After scavenging some abandoned string from campsites, we started using a lot of rock anchors in places where it was impossible to get a stake in. Our tent footprint had so many holes by the end of the trip that we threw it out, well aware that its sacrifice had saved the tent itself. We carry a repair kit, and used more of it than we had on any other trip; partially on the footprint, partially on a friendly neighbour's air mat which had holes from drying it on a rock, and partially on the following tale.

Foxes #

On the third night, we woke up to find the tent bag (with the tent inner inside, which we had not used that night) a few metres from the tent, full of claw holes and smelling of fox urine. This was very sad. We had, in fact, been warned about the foxes by a fellow hiker the day before, but hadn't noticed we'd left the bag just outside the tent in the dark of the previous evening. Luckily the tent inner, which was the only really important bit, had just a few holes and had escaped the urine. Beware of foxes!

Hitchhiking and Bastia #

We hitchhiked up to Bastia from the end point of the hike, Conca, as there are no buses on Sundays. It took a long time for someone to stop and we were very lucky our new friend was going all the way there. It doesn't seem like Corsicans are that into hitchhikers. We had done zero research on Bastia, and had a day there before travelling home, as we had left some buffer time for the hike which we hadn't needed. We were delighted to discover what a lovely town it is, with twisty alleys, colourful buildings, and the still-warm sea lapping the beaches.

Conclusions #

A lot of people don't have the best time on the GR20 - the reported dropout rate is between 50% and 85%, depending on who you ask. We probably got lucky with the weather, but it seems like many of the things that people complain about - getting up at 4 a.m. to avoid scorching midday sun and queues at the more difficult passes, overcrowded huts, litter, lack of water - can be avoided by going just after the end of the season.

The GR20 is an interesting route. On the one hand, there are few places in Europe where you can walk for days without encountering substantial civilisation. On the other, it is very accessible - we set out on two weeks' notice, spent a day on preparations, and still felt very well equipped. This relative accessibility encourages many people to do it as their first long-distance hike, which we would not advise. But if you're a somewhat experienced hiker, you'll experience great nature with a very low prep-to-hiking-day ratio.

Hiking the extended & athletic Lofoten Long Crossing

2024-12-13T00:00:00Z

The place #

Lofoten is an archipelago in the north of Norway, some 200 km above the Arctic Circle. It is warmed by sea currents and Atlantic winds, which make it very cosy relative to its latitude; in the summer, mean daily temperatures are around 12°C. The islands are gorgeous, with sandy beaches, fjords, jagged ridges, a ton of greenery, picturesque fishing villages, and more berries than you could ever wish for. It's also pretty easy to get to, thanks to Norway's excellent transport infrastructure.

In short, Lofoten is a popular holiday destination. The islands are very sparsely populated - permanent population is 25,000 people (20 people per square kilometre), but they're visited by 1 million tourists every year. Most of them, however, travel by car along the crowded international E10 road. This leaves the excellent hiking trails that crisscross the islands largely unoccupied, except in the vicinity of villages and parking lots, of which there are not that many.

We travelled to Lofoten in August 2024, with the intention of hiking The Long Crossing, a through-hiking route which traverses the archipelago. We were drawn by the remoteness of the islands and Norway's permissive outdoor access laws. This is a summary of the things that we wish we had known before we started the hike.

(as usual, the we meaning me and my hiking buddy)

The hike - practicalities #

The Long Crossing is a well established trail. It goes from the village of Å in the south to a beach in Delp in the north. The hike is extensively documented at Hiking Lofoten (who invented the route) and Cam Honan's The Hiking Life. We're not going to repeat the information on those websites. We'll focus on our modifications to the hike, and on the information that is not available elsewhere on the internet.

Duration #

The hike is split into 11 sections, but we felt like we could do it in 8-9 days. We had two weeks of holiday, so, to prolong the journey, we modified the trail a bit. We also hiked at a leisurely pace. If it rained in the morning (which it did on most days), we stayed in our tent until noon. So close to the North Pole, it never really gets dark in the summer. If you set out late, you can easily hike until midnight. We hiked for 12 days, of which 8.5 was spent on the actual Long Crossing (including a rest day in the middle).

Our (modified) trail #

We hiked the trail south-north, because that fit our ferry and plane schedules better. In addition to the Long Crossing, we decided to start as far south as we could get, and to do as many side trips on the way as possible. Most of our side trips came from the Athletic Trek, another great hike put together by the good folks at Hiking Lofoten.

To go to the southernmost bit, we went from Moskenes to Å, and walked along the Ågvatnet lake, through an unnamed pass, to Gjerdvika bay, and then along the sea to Refsvikhula cave. We would not recommend that anyone do this, for reasons which we describe in the section on Danger.

For the first bit of the crossing proper, we followed the Athletic trek, climbing up Stovla, Moldtinden and Hermannsdalstinden. Then, we went off-trail to skip the Forsfjord Ferry.

Bypassing Vindstad ferry #

View from the bottom of the little-used pass near Helvetestinden

The original trail asks you to take a ferry from Forsfjord to Kjerksfjord. The ferry goes 2-3 times a day, and sometimes doesn't stop where you'd like it to. Cam Honan's blog post mentions that it's possible to bypass it by walking through a saddle near Helvetestinden. That's what we did. There is a faint, often disappearing trail leading down from the saddle towards Kjerksfjord. It was OK in good weather, but there was strong evidence of rockslides, and the ground was often unstable.

Here, we publish, for the first time (to our knowledge) on the Internet, a GPX file for that section: link. Again - hike at your own risk! Never blindly follow a random stranger's GPX trace (foreshadowing).

After Kjerksfjord, we followed the canonical route, with minor excursions for supplies and small side trips.

Danger #

Overall, we agree with Cam's rating of this hike as moderate-advanced. The level of danger/difficulty increases (in our view) from bearable in most conditions for The Long Crossing, to only safe in good weather for the Athletic Trek, to not safe at all without mountaineering gear for our version.

The Long Crossing #

This route is not a good choice for inexperienced hikers. You will find reports on the Internet of people abandoning mid-way after witnessing the sketchier bits; we met people who had turned back during our traverse. Especially worrying are the sketchy ropes used for support in some sections. Here is a photo of a typical case - worn-down dynamic rock climbing rope with exposed core, running over sharp rock without any protection. There are a lot of those on the way.

Dangerous rope used for support on the trail

The Athletic Trek #

Some bits of the Athletic Trek are only safe in good weather, when snow has completely disappeared. The ascent and descent of Stovla/Moldtinden especially feature many exposed slopes with no handholds, where the only thing preventing you from tumbling down the mountain is the friction between your shoes and some rock (we know this is technically true for every hike, but you get the idea).

Going down south #

The most dangerous part of our hike was walking from Å to Gjerdvika bay. We had some extra time, so we could start the hike as far south as possible. We found a trace on AllTrails that suggested that you could walk all the way from Å to Hellsanden, which is the southernmost beach on the island, and we decided to give it a go.

Unnamed pass on top of the Ågvatnet lake

The difficult bit is getting over an unnamed pass on top of the Ågvatnet lake. There is, as far as we could make out, only one chute going up it. It's hard to find, requires crawling under a rock to access, and once you get in there, you realise it's full of sand and scree, and nearly vertical.

The climb on the other side is a bit better, but also almost vertical in places, with nothing but vegetation to hold on to. Once you get down, the walk from Gjerdvika to Refsvikhula is quite nice. However, at some point, you have to go under a cliff leading to Steinberget and, if you're there at the wrong time, you may get cut off by the tide, and forced to camp somewhere you'd rather not (ask us how we know). Finally, the pass at Gongskordet seems to be prone to rockslides, which make it well... impassable.

Rockslide at Gongskordet pass

This is the point at which we gave up on Hellsanden. We were very stressed out about getting back to Å, because scrambling down vertical chutes is much more dangerous than scrambling up them. Luckily, we found 40 m of sturdy polypropylene rope that had washed up on the beach, and used that to perform a body abseil down the most dangerous bit. The safer section of course turned out to be more than 40m away. Do not go there without mountaineering equipment.

Having said that, the southern bit of the island is decidedly the most beautiful place we saw in Lofoten, if not in our lives. And there is literally no-one there. We feel very privileged that we got to explore it for three days. That photo in the introduction - that's Gjerdvika bay. We put it here again because it's just so pretty.

The typical way to get there is by boat, which we highly recommend.

Gjerdvika bay

Accommodation (wild camping) #

Norway is a great place for hiking due to its extensive right-to-roam laws (allemannsretten). You're allowed to walk and camp almost anywhere, so long as you stay 150 m away from occupied buildings, and don't stay in one place for more than two nights (source). This is the main reason we came to Lofoten.

We camped throughout the entire journey, except for our zero day, which we spent in the lovely Kræmmervika Rorbuer, a hostel in Ballstad. The hostel is located in an old fishing hut, and the fastest way to get to the grocery store is by rowing their boat. Highly recommended.

It's not easy to find good campsites along the route. The ground tends to be quite boggy, and it's rarely flat. Camping on the beach can be difficult due to the wind. We were glad we brought a footprint for our ultralight tent.

Weather #

Hiking in Lofoten is, in many ways, similar to hiking in Scotland. It's beautiful. There are barely any people. You can camp anywhere. But it rains, a lot; it rained on 10 out of 12 days we spent there. And it's pretty windy. We had to abort a beautiful ridge walk from Hestræva to Napp, because it was impossible to walk in a straight line. Bring good rain gear, and have a system to protect your stuff from getting wet. We used a multitude of plastic bags, which worked great.

On a positive note - we encountered almost no mosquitoes on the trail!

Typical hiking weather in Lofoten

Travel #

We flew to Bodø, and then took the ferry to Moskenes. On the way back, we took a bus from Delp to Svolvær, and then a fast ferry back to Bodø. We booked the fast ferry in advance, for the slow ferry we just turned up a little earlier.

As we said in the introduction, Norwegian infrastructure is great. It took us 14 hours, all in, from our doorstep in Berlin, to the first campsite, including a one hour hike up the first mountain. The Bodø - Moskenes ferry is free, and the bus driver on the way back from Delp drove us for an extra 30 minutes all the way to Svolvær, just so we didn't have to wait in the rain for the next bus.

Your author heading towards the first campsite above Moskenes. This is what 10 p.m. looks like in Lofoten in August.

The trail has short sections on which you have to travel by car (when you're going through tunnels), and longer sections which go along the road. Including the busy, loud E10. We don't like walking along the road, so we hitch-hiked those parts. It was very easy to get a ride; the longest we needed to wait was 30 minutes, and that was on a tiny road around Horn, with barely any cars passing.

Food & veganism #

Lofoten is not a great place to be vegan. In the few restaurants that we visited, people's response was Vegan? What's that?. If you're less picky about your diet, you can resupply in the local shops and cafes, but we brought all of our food with us.

We subsisted on a mix of:

fancy ramen noodles with cold-soaked soy strips
vegan bolognese with pea & jackfruit mince and mashed potatoes
peanut butter noodles
Thai curry with couscous and outrageously expensive red peppers bought at resupply points

Of course, when you hike, most of your calories actually come from snacks, so that bit of the menu is irrelevant from a survival perspective. However, a nice, warm evening meal is very important for morale. Following GearSkeptic's awesome 6 hour youtube series on backpacking nutrition, we managed to get a respectable 4.9 kcal/g (139 kcal/oz) out of our food. This allowed us to comfortably carry 6 days' worth at a time. We brought all our rations on the plane, and sent half of them from Bodø to Ramberg in a parcel. The Norwegian postal system seems to be very robust, even in the far north - the postal workers were confused when we asked if our parcel would reach its destination within the promised 5 days. It was a bit difficult to find someone to accept a parcel in Ramberg. We spent two hours calling every Ramberg phone number that we could find until someone agreed to take it. If you'd like to do the same - don't give up!

A highlight of our food experience was Maloca - a vegan cafe in Bodø. A bit too hippie and spiritual for our tastes, but they do have amazing cake and coffee, which are, again, important for morale. Other than that, the few times that we ate out, we were confined to that all-time vegan travel favourite - French fries.

Conclusions #

We'll leave you with an anecdote. Norwegians really love cloudberries, which are sort of golden raspberries that have the taste and texture of a tart quince jam. They say that once you find a patch, you keep the location secret from everyone except your best friends. Well, this trail is literally covered in cloudberries, from start to finish. So I guess we're friends now. Enjoy!

A beach in Delp - the end of the hike

Hiking in the Julian Alps (incl. intro to the Alpine hut system)

2023-10-04T00:00:00Z

I try to do at least one longer (>200 km) hike a year, but this year I couldn't do it. I hurt my knee, and my hiking buddy had work commitments, so we decided to do something shorter and closer to home than usual. It was a perfect opportunity to do that hike in Slovenia that we had been thinking about for a while. It was my first long-distance hike in the Alps, and my first experience of the Alpine hut system. If you're planning to go, here are some things that I wish I had known before setting out.

Trail #

Location #

We hiked a subsection of the Slovenian Mountain Hiking Trail (Slovenska planinska pot), which some claim to be the oldest hiking trail in Europe. We did the portion that traverses Slovenia's only national park - the Triglav National Park. We started in Mojstrana, and finished in Črna Prst. The journey was around 125 km long, and took us 7 days, including a rest day. We cut out two large peaks (Prisojnik and Jalovec). If you want to climb those, you need to budget an extra day. The trail is very well documented elsewhere on the Internet, so I won't be posting detailed maps.

Getting there #

... is very easy. A bus from Ljubljana to Bohinjska Bistrica (southern starting point) or Mojstrana (northern starting point) costs 1.90 EUR and departs every hour from the main bus station. We travelled to Slovenia by a long-distance bus, which conveniently stopped in Bled, a picturesque town at the edge of the national park.

When to go #

We went in early September. The weather was beautiful for the entire week, and the trails largely empty (except for the more popular ones during the weekend). Around the third week of September, many huts close, and some buses do not run, so you may need to plan accordingly if you want to go later.

Qualitative description #

The path is very exhaustive. It meanders and winds back on itself a lot in order to cover all the major landmarks in the national park. Sometimes, it's a bit frustrating to hike for three days and end up 500 m away from where you started. However, every single peak and pass on the way is worth visiting; going in a straight line would get you out of the national park in no time, and you'd miss a lot. Going the long way also means that you can avoid towns; the trail stays high throughout the whole length - you only descend into a valley once.

The route (and the national park) can be divided into two main sections. The upper one, from Mojstrana to Trenta, stays around 2000 m, and is mountainous and dry. The lower one, at around 1500 m, alternates between small coniferous shrubs and a lush mixed forest. Both parts are excellent in their own ways. The upper one has many fun climbs, with a lot of infrastructure (cables, spikes), which makes almost all major peaks accessible without intense mountaineering gear. The lower one is very green. You will meet many ibex, alpine choughs and eagles in the upper sections, and (if you're lucky) marmots and vipers in the lower ones.

Landscape in the higher sections

Landscape in the lower sections

Do not underestimate the complexity and difficulty of the higher sections! This is not your typical through-hiking trail. Unless you're extremely fit, you will not average 30 km per day. The time required to traverse a section is independent of its length. Sometimes you can do a 10 km section in 2.5 hours, but, if it features a hairy vertical climb, it may take a day. Most people we met on the way were wearing helmets, many had harnesses. Some scoffed at our trail runners and shorts. There are many exposed sections which could be pretty scary in bad weather. Climbing is very rewarding, and there is a lot of hardware to help you when needed, but in many places a stupid mistake could get you badly hurt.

Having said that, we met many children and elderly people on the route. It's very accessible in the right conditions, you just need to be careful, and realistic in your planning.

Hardware to assist in a descent

The entirety of the trail is on a well maintained, well-marked path. We carried a Sidarta 1:50,000 Julijske Alpe map that we bought at the local tourist infopoint. It was useful for planning, not for navigation. As far as we could tell, more detailed paper maps are not available. We used a smartphone here and there when we were unsure, but most of the navigation is very straightforward, you're simply following the blazes.

Sleeping #

Hut below Triglav - Triglavski dom na Kredarici

Walking from hut to hut #

You have to stay in huts, which Slovenians call koča. Camping is not allowed, and the authorities do enforce the rules. There are many huts, but they are not evenly spaced along the route. This means that on some days you have to hike for ten hours, and sometimes you must stop after five. How far you can walk on a given day is largely determined by the time required to reach the nearest hut. Those times were listed on the back of our map; they are also written on the sides of each hut. For some reason, they don't seem to be available on the Internet. Times on our map were pretty accurate; we usually took 70-80% of the listed time, but we had really good weather. Carry a map for day-to-day planning!

Hut etiquette #

There are many articles online on the rules and etiquette of Alpine huts. I recommend the original one from the Alpine Association of Slovenia. Some points which were not clear to us before we set out:

If you're a member of an alpine association, hut prices range from 26 EUR for the more expensive huts up in the mountains to 15 EUR for cheaper ones in valleys. Prices are standard, set by regulation. The more people in your room, the cheaper it is. The membership gives you 25-50% off the room price, depending on room type, and pays for itself after a few nights. It also provides rescue insurance. We're members of the Austrian Alpenverein.
To sleep in huts, you need to have your own bedding (or pay an extra ~5 EUR per night). They do not allow sleeping bags - they have issues with bed bugs moving from one hut to another. Most people just use a sleeping bag liner (which in German is called a Hüttenschlafsack - literally a hut sleeping bag)
In busier times, you need to make a reservation to guarantee a place in a hut. We usually did not, because we were unsure where we would end up each night. This was only a problem during the weekend in the most popular area of the park (around Triglav). During the week, we were often the only people in a hut. However, we hiked in September; during the summer, there may be more demand. I'm still not sure what they do if there are not enough beds. Most people seemed to find it obvious that you would book a place weeks in advance, but we did not meet any other through-hikers. There is phone reception throughout most of the range, so we tried to call ahead once we were sure where we would end up on a given night.
Huts also offer food (or half-board accommodation), at fairly affordable prices (~10 EUR/dish). Not much of it is vegan. We tried eating at a hut once, and we were offered barley soup and a strudel, which was obviously not enough calories after a day of hiking.

Food #

We cooked our own food every night. This meant that we carried food for 7 days. There is a shop midway along the route (in Trenta), but it's not well equipped. The museum next door may, however, accept a food parcel.

A major problem along the trail is the availability of water, especially in the upper bits. For most of the way, the only sources of water are huts. Tap water in huts is not drinkable, but they will sell you (very expensive) bottled water if required. We brought a water filter and drank filtered hut water. There are sections (e.g. Koča na Doliču -> Pogačnikov dom na Kriških Podih), where you need to carry enough water for 6 h of hiking in the scorching sun. We brought 2 l of bottle capacity per person, but upped it to 3 l per person on day three.

Gear #

We did not meet any other through-hikers on the trail. Most people were day-hikers in mountaineering boots, long trousers, with helmets and harnesses. We were very comfortable in our regular hiking outfits - shorts and trail runners. None of the sections that we did required clipping into a via ferrata. We did not carry a tent - the handful of legal campsites on the way did not justify the weight.

Summary (incl. obligatory environmentalist rant) #

The Triglav National Park is stunning, and absolutely worth a visit. Just like most places where I've hiked, it's (sadly) worth going as soon as possible; the area is being developed for tourists' convenience, and destroyed in the process. On the way, we saw half a hillside being levelled to make way for a luxury ski resort. There is often a brass band on top of Triglav. Every day, you (and all the animals who live there) are disturbed by helicopters full of people who want to enjoy the view without making any effort. The huts are becoming fancier and larger, but many still don't have waste treatment facilities. Go, but (unlike many) do your best to leave no trace.

A (supplemental) guide to the Cordillera Blanca Traverse

2022-10-29T00:00:00Z

In September 2022, we did the Cordillera Blanca Traverse (CBT), a through-hike in the Peruvian Andes. The CBT is a scenic route through some of the prettiest mountains on the planet. It starts on the north side of the range, in the tiny village of Hualcallan, and zigzags all the way through, ending at the Pastoruri glacier.

It was first proposed by Cam Honan in 2014 on his blog The Hiking Life. Since then, a few other people have attempted it, but information on the Internet is still scarce, and there have been changes on the ground since the original post was published. In this guide, we'll give you some updated information on the route, and describe how we tackled it. Of particular interest may be our data on some of the scarier, undocumented high passes in the middle of the route. We will not repeat things that you can find on Cam's blog or in guidebooks; please treat this post as a supplement to those.

This post was written in collaboration with my hiking buddy, hence the liberal usage of 'we'.

Stats #

The route is around 350 km long, and involves about 18 km of total ascent. It can be completed in 16-22 days. We took 18, but on two of those we only walked 4 km due to altitude sickness and food poisoning. Including rest days, you should budget about three weeks, plus acclimatisation.

To navigate, we used three main sources of data:

Cam's Quick and Dirty Guide has GPX points from his 2014 attempt, many of them with useful tips.
Alpenverein topographic maps 0/3a and 0/3b cover the entire range. They're, sadly, only available in 1:100,000 scale, and were made in 2006, so some information is out of date.
The guidebook Peru's Cordilleras Blanca & Huayhuash - The Hiking & Biking Guide covers a large portion of the trail. They also provide GPX points. It's well-written, and useful for getting around, finding information on public transport, shops, restaurants etc.

We loaded the GPX points into a navigation app, and used our phones most of the time, with paper maps and a compass as backup.

On the way, we created a fourth resource - we recorded our tracks on the entire trail.

Our GPS tracks and photos

Entire route

Individual days: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

PLEASE DO NOT THINK YOU CAN JUST FOLLOW THOSE EXACTLY. There were times when we did not follow the best route. We tried to mark those bits, but we cannot guarantee accuracy. If you need a precise trace to follow, you should not be doing this hike. The waypoints are more accurate, but still not perfect. Some of them have photos though!

Stage 1 #

Stage 1 is almost entirely on trail. For the first few days, it follows the well-trodden Alpamayo-Santa Cruz trek. This trail is covered in the guidebook, and the paths on the map, and in most navigation apps, are accurate. After departing from the Santa Cruz trek around the village of Colcabamba, CBT follows the Ulta-Yanama trail, which is also featured in the guidebook.

Sunset from Alto de Pucuraju

The only exceptions/difficulties are:

The forest at (-8.82601, -77.57188), near Laguna Sactaycocha. Cam claims there's a trail there, and so does the map, but the forest is terribly overgrown, which makes the path impossible to follow. We went right by the lake, and then took too long to rejoin the main route, which necessitated some steep climbing afterwards. Make sure you join the main path as soon as you leave the forested bit, and then follow it precisely. The valley afterwards is cut by multiple tall gorges, and ends in a cliff down which there is only one, narrow, difficult to find path.
As you're about to reach the village of Jancapampa, at (-8.85127, -77.54876), contrary to what Cam says, there is no bridge. Follow the edge of the valley until you're able to cross and reach the road. It's very boggy, so don't try crossing straight on if you want to keep your feet dry. Right after (at (-8.85571, -77.53100)), just before the village, there's a new 4x4 track leading up to it. The trail in the app is now completely wrong, and so is Cam's point at (-8.85514, -77.52797).
There is now a new 4x4 road at (-8.92321, -77.50935), leading up to Laguna Wicrococha. You can follow it to get to the lake. This makes the old path on the map/app obsolete.
We did not find a good path to climb up to the tunnel at Punta Olimpica. Cam's original trail starts on a nice path, which quickly becomes overgrown, and then disappears, at which point you scramble up to the road, and then walk for 3 km on asphalt. There is apparently another path, which starts on the 4th bend in the road, and then ends right next to the tunnel. It may be worth inquiring about. To descend from the tunnel, we hitched a ride, as we did not feel like walking for 18 km on a busy road.

Stage 2 #

Stage 2 is the most fun of all, but it also has a number of poorly documented passes. For some of those, we found out the optimal route. For others, not.

Camping below Paso Huapi

Portachuelo de Honda #

There are two ways to cross this pass. We chose the western side, because it saves a few kilometres of walking down the road. This trail is on the Alpenverein map, but it is not featured on any of the navigation apps that we checked. The path here can be quite difficult to find, but by following Cam's waypoints and sticking to the overgrown old, wide road, we managed to get a very smooth, easy going for the entirety of ascent and descent. Feel free to be inspired by our GPX trail here.

Paso Urus/Akilpo #

This trail is in the guidebook, but it's not well described. The ascent is very easy, just follow the cairns. For the descent section, cairns are misleading and hard to find. The guidebook simply tells you to scramble down carefully, which is not helpful. The final 200 m especially is on a very steep slope. It seems like one of the popular navigation apps has just added a trail for this section, which may be worth exploring.

Ishinca pass #

Again, there are two ways to do this one. We chose the Ishinca/Ranrapalca col. pass, which involves walking across a glacier. Definitely try asking people in the shelter underneath if it's safe to cross, but we got conflicting advice there. It seems like the shelter was handed over to a new team, and they don't have much experience in the area. Walking up the glacier follows a well-established mountaineering path. It's important to find a good entry point onto the glacier. The point marked on Cam's GPX - (-9.39592, -77.41831) - is no longer viable. Probably due to the glacier melting, ground there is no longer covered in snow, and the section immediately behind it is icy. We scrambled further south, and entered the glacier in a nice, snowy area. It's incredibly beautiful. We headed straight across the glacier, shooting for the obvious notch on the other side, and avoiding crevasses and steep slopes. We crossed using just microspikes, which is not the correct equipment for this kind of traverse. We were fine, but your mileage may vary. Also, Cam's location of the pass is incorrect, it's actually slightly further north, at (-9.40109, -77.41177). The descent is not unpleasant, but it is long. We followed cairns which led us to L. Perolcocha on a roundabout trip to avoid a steep cliff. It seems like for this pass there is now also a trail on a certain popular navigation app.

Paso Huapi #

Cam calls this one Choco pass, but it's universally known as Paso Huapi. It is in the guidebook, and all the navigation apps have good trails for crossing it.

Stage 3 #

Stage 3 is the most challenging of all, because it involves two passes that are completely undocumented, and fairly technical. One of them is, arguably, not safe to cross without mountaineering equipment in certain years.

Low-lying clouds below the Cashan Pass

Shallap pass / Paso Huamashpunta #

We're pretty sure that we took the wrong way down this pass, so we can't really help with crossing it. Two campesinos (local farmers) that we met under the pass told us that there's a good path, if you can find it, and that this pass is pretty easy. We found a good path at (-9.49540, -77.35956), after the buildings next to the lake. The path appears and disappears constantly, but it's quite easy to get to Cam's GPX points on the ascent. The descent, however, is pretty hairy. There's a lot of scree and sand; you're basically sliding down the slope, hoping that you'll manage to stay in control. There may be a better way. Some agencies in Huaraz offer a tour across Paso Huamashpunta, it may be worth asking them which way they go.

Also, OpenStreetMap-based navigation apps (i.e. most of them) say that there's a refugio (shelter) next to Laguna Rajucolta, after the pass. There isn't.

Cashan Pass #

The same campesinos who told us that Paso Huamashpunta was easy, said that we were muy bravo if we intended to cross the Cashan Pass without mountaineering equipment. In 2021, they said, they used a 20 m rappel to do it. They may have been colouring things a little.

Ascent to and descent from the pass are smooth and pleasant. You start by following the Yahuaraju trail, and then at some point shoot southeast towards the pass. It's a nice, meandering path through grassy fields. It's easy to follow Cam's GPX points.

The last 200 m of the ascent are pretty tough. You're scrambling up a field of loose scree. One of Cam's GPX points says:

Angle here to base of cliffs, ‘easier’ walking

Do this as soon as you can. Walking below the cliff is much more stable. At points it makes sense to climb over bits of rock, rather than follow the edge.

Once you get to the top, you reach possibly the most dangerous bit of the whole traverse. Even in September, the first 20 metres or so of descent were covered in snow. The only option to get down was a 1 m wide chute at the base of a cliff.

Descent from the Cashan Pass

We descended in microspikes, kicking steps in with trekking poles. The scariest bit was at the top, where you need to boulder in order to enter the chute. Many rocks were weathered loose, so we needed to check every handhold and foothold.

Once you're down the chute, the path is clear and easy to follow all the way down to Q. Rurec. If you need to rest in a shepherd's hut on your way down, its actual location is (-9.57515, -77.34324), not (-9.57880, -77.34362).

We think that we followed a good route through this pass, but the crossing itself did not feel safe. A few weeks prior, it had likely been impossible without an ice-axe, crampons, and rope. The alternative route (down Q. Rajucolta and then across) may be longer and less scenic, but we'd consider it, especially if hiking earlier in the season. One tour agency in Huaraz (Turismo Galaxia in Parque Ginebra) offers the Cashan crossing on their website, so it may be worth asking them what the conditions are before leaving for stage 3.

Way to L. Querococha #

The way from Q. Rurec to L. Querococha is straightforward, along pleasant, rolling hills. Cam recommends walking along the lakeshore, and indeed, there is a very nice path there. We decided to follow the high path above the lake before descending to the shore around (-9.71229, -77.32749), as this way has better views. A local we met along the way recommended doing the same.

Stage 4 #

There isn't much to add to the information already available for stage 4. Around half of it is off-trail, but along very easy terrain. Cam's GPX points are more than enough here. A few minor points:

Midway between the Gajap passes

Q. Pamparaju #

This valley is really boggy at the start, after the river crossing. Try to stay high and join a good, wide path around (-9.76101, -77.35080).

Q. Raria #

There are two paths in this valley, one on the north side, one on the south. The southern path is not on the Alpenverein map, but it's much drier. To reach it, we recommend taking the obvious path down from L. Acococha, passing through (-9.87051, -77.28287), which will take you almost to the road at the bottom of the valley. Then join the better path, which is marked on most apps, around (-9.87232, -77.27634 ) (we joined much later, which required an awkward stream crossing). This way through Q. Raria is also described in the guidebook.

Landslide pass #

There are two ways to finish the CBT. One involves going through the Gajap pass on the eastern side of Q. Puchua, one through a notch at its south end, which Cam called the Landslide pass. This area had a major landslide back in 2014, and the locals advised Cam not to cross it then. In 2017, Ryan "Dirtmonger" Sylva was given the green light. None of the people we asked knew about this pass. The locals seem to regularly use the Gajap pass, which takes you on a pleasant walk to the beautiful L. Japrucocha, which is a great lunch and swim spot. You do walk on a 4x4 road for an extra 8 km this way, but it's a quiet one with really good views.

Other tips #

Here are some random things that we wish we had known before starting.

Air in the mountains is extremely dry #

Definitely bring lip balm, consider skin lotion if you've got dry skin or like hiking in shorts.

Sun at this altitude is strong #

Either wear clothing that will cover you up (like me), or carry copious amounts of suncream (like my hiking buddy).

Vegan hiking in Peru #

Food on trail #

We hiked fully vegan. Almost every meal was cooked. This was time consuming, but forced us to take decent breaks and meant we could save weight with more dehydrated ingredients.

We aimed for ~3,300 calories per person per day, splitting them pretty evenly between breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks.

Beans with fritos and vegan cheese - a firm favourite, courtesy of Andy Skurka

Breakfast #

porridge with powdered coconut milk, cinnamon, chocolate and nuts

Lunches #

Long life bread (e.g. tortillas) with

vegan cheese (this didn't last long in the heat, so needed to be eaten close to resupply points)
avocado (these also tragically go off)
rehydrated beans
rehydrated hummus
peanut butter

Dinners #

rehydrated beans with rice, fritos and vegan cheese (thanks to Andy Skurka for the idea)
rehydrated lentils with freeze dried spinach and rice
Thai curry paste with powdered coconut milk, ginger, cashews, vegetables and rice
instant noodles with peanut butter, powdered coconut milk, peanuts, ginger and soy sauce
pasta with dried pesto, dried tomato, freeze dried spinach and vegan cheese

All of the above involved a lot of garlic, spices, and oil.

Snacks #

nuts (so many nuts)
bars (Peru has a great selection of cheap, calorie dense bars)
chocolate (surprisingly hard to find in a country famous for it)
sweets
biscuits

I travelled to Peru via the USA, so we could stock up on vegan cheese, nooch, fast-cook rice, and fancy dehydrated things like spiced beans (excellent, would highly recommend), lentils (fine) and hummus (revolting) from the Outdoor Herbivore.

We carried a Sawyer Squeeze water filter. It was very necessary given the amount of water we were drinking (5 l+ each per day) and the abundance of horses and cows roaming the valleys, making the pristine glacier water somewhat less pristine.

Food drops #

We did three food drops prior to starting the hike. This meant we carried a maximum of 5 days of food, plus a backup day, at a time. The backup day supply was essential: we used it on both stages 2 and 3 due to illness slowing us down (see above). Our first food drop was in Yanama, where we took a rest night at the cheap and friendly Hostal Micky, the second in Huaraz where we took a full rest day, and the third in Chavin, where we languished with food poisoning.

For us, food drops make a lot of sense: they save resupplying during the hike and the associated time and worry, and let you optimise your weight/nutrition/calorie balance. This is especially true as, being vegan, it's unlikely we would be able to find five days worth of lightweight, long life calories in Peruvian villages. However they did mean we spent a lot of our acclimatisation week taking colectivos around the cordillera. A word of caution: it turns out the colectivo to Yanama sometimes arrives after the colectivo back leaves, necessitating an overnight stay. Happily we managed to combine the return journey with a climb of Laguna 69. Upon reflection, it would have been equally possible to do the third food drop in Huaraz rather than Chavin - the point you leave the trail is equidistant between the two. Which you choose depends on whether you consider a rest night in Chavin, which is charming but not markedly more so than other villages, worth the seven hour round trip it takes to do the food drop beforehand.

Veganism in civilisation #

Peruvian cuisine is meat-based to an extreme level. The vegan food that you can easily obtain is limited to:

chips (papas fritas)
crisps (also called papas fritas)
avocado rolls (sold on the street in the mornings)
fried bread (sold on the street in the afternoon)
vegetable soup
many delicious fruits
equally delicious juice bars

In terms of eating out in Huaraz, we found an excellent Indian restaurant (Paulinos), a pizza place with tasty marinara (La Comedia, vastly better than all the other pizza places) and discovered that chifa rice can be vegan if you ask for it, although sometimes they just pick the chicken and egg out of chifa rice they've already made, which we're pretty sure was the source of our food poisoning episode, so be cautious. The gringo haunts, Cafe Andino and Cafe California, do great vegan food and have non-dairy milk. Unsurprisingly, they have European prices and you won't meet many locals there.

Climate change #

The white (blanco) tropical glaciers that give the range its name are disappearing at a ridiculous rate of up to 200 m/year in some places. The valleys are being covered in new roads and construction. The mining operations in Q. Honda and Q. Juitush are expanding. We felt very privileged to be able to do this hike while the Cordillera Blanca was still relatively untouched. For the vast majority of the 2.5 weeks it took us to do it, we were the only people in sight. If this is your thing, go sooner rather than later.

Ultralight backpacking in the Scottish Highlands

2021-10-22T14:26:37Z

I have just finished a 2-person hike of the Cape Wrath Trail - a 220 mile trek across the north of Scotland. Here are some lessons that I've learned.

Before you read this - check out Alex Roddie's mini-guide to lightweight backpacking in the Scottish Highlands - it's a much more comprehensive resource from someone with way more experience.

Lightweight backpacking in the Highlands is totally possible #

When hiking long-distance, gear is important. Not as in having the largest amount of the most expensive gear. Having just the right gear, the skills to get by with it, and nothing else. A lightweight pack and unrestrictive clothing make a huge difference. You can cover more ground, you get fewer blisters, your back doesn't get sore.

On the CWT, however, I was worried that my minimalistic setup would not work in the Scottish weather. A couple we met along the way couldn't believe that we were carrying all of our stuff and six days of rations in those tiny little backpacks, not at this pace. But I never felt like I missed anything, and, if conversations with people we met along the way are anything to go by, we were more comfortable than most CWT hikers. So - lightweight backpacking in the Highlands is totally possible. Still, you can't pack as light as in some parts of the world, because of The Wet.

Embrace The Wet #

The tradeoff #

In Scotland, it's either cold, wet, or midgy, depending on the season. We set off in late September, fully expecting that a modicum of 1 and 2 would offset the plague that is 3. And rain it did - for 13 out of the 15 days that we spent out in the mountains.

One day, we saw 8 rainbows, because the weather changed every 15 minutes. Another, there was hail, no visibility, we went slightly off-trail, and had to scramble up a ~~river~~ waterfall for a few kilometres to get back on track. We still preferred those conditions to having to deal with clouds of the Highland midge - a small biting insect similar to the mosquito. Cloud is just the right word here. If you're unlucky enough to get caught in a cloud of midges, run your hand through the air. You'll feel a slight resistance, some warm fuzziness, and then a lot of pain. During midge weather, you try to walk non-stop to outrun them. In a headnet, so you can't see anything. When you camp, you drop all your stuff into your tent, then jump in yourself, shut the door, and eat cold dinner because you're stuck inside with a buzzing cloud just waiting to get you. Rain and cold are much easier to deal with. All you need to do is embrace The Wet.

Tips for dealing with The Wet #

Some people try to fight wet with super waterproof clothing and shoes, but, in Scotland, this is futile. We've developed our Embrace The Wet™ philosophy as an alternative way of dealing with it. Here's how it works:

Warm and dry are not the same thing. Not-warm will kill you. Not-dry is just a minor discomfort if you Embrace the Wet.
Accept that you, and all your stuff, will get wet at some point.
Once this happens, you're unlikely to completely dry off (the humidity is just too high). To make the most of that little bit of sunshine, only use quick-dry gear. This means no cotton. And no heavy boots with waterproof membranes.
Being wet is OK, as long as the water right next to your skin is warm.
Only use gear that will insulate you when wet. This means no down, for anything. Including your sleeping bag.
Keep your sleeping clothes dry at all costs (this is the only exception to rule 2). Even if you need to camp in a storm, on top of a bog, you can stay comfortable, so long as your sleeping bag is synthetic, and your sleeping clothes are dry.
Take good care of your feet. Your skin will absorb water, get soft and prone to blisters. Let your feet get nice and dry at camp, and apply oil to them before going to sleep. Your skin will absorb the oil instead, which will then repel water. We use cocoa butter foot balm, some people use plain Vaseline.

If you're of the Gore-Tex gaiters and leather boots mentality, give Embrace The Wet a go. Our shoes got wet on day 1 and did not dry for two weeks. And we were completely OK with it.

Bothies are awesome #

We felt pretty comfortable during the journey, largely because we could sleep in bothies (on average) every second day. We carried a Trekkertent Stealth - an A-frame tent that pitches with trekking poles. It was great for weight-saving (450 g per person is hard to beat without spending lots of money on Dyneema), and awesome if you can do most of your evening regeneration outside, but when it's raining (which is pretty much every evening), and you've only got 1.3 m² of space, it can feel cramped. You're glad when you get to stop in a bothy for the night.

Bothies are basic shelters (basic - a tiny hut with a table, wooden planks for beds, and a fire if you manage to find dry wood), free and open to all. There are over 100 of them scattered all over Scotland. They're great. Being able to stretch and cook a meal while standing under a roof is awesome. On the CWT, you can in theory stay in a bothy almost every night.

Not having a plan is awesome #

So why, then, not do away with a tent altogether, and stay in bothies and hotels? Well, because it can be dangerous. Having a place to get to by the end of the day (especially if it's one where you've paid for a booking) means you either get there earlier than you'd like to (which means you've just wasted some prime hiking time), or later than you'd like to. In the latter case, you pushed yourself harder than you should have, possibly you hiked through the night, while tired and hungry. This is when accidents happen.

When you set out without a plan, with a shelter and a little surplus food, knowing that you can stop whenever you please, you get into a mindset that can be only described as chill. In regular life, we rarely have nowhere to get to, no goals to achieve, nobody to impress. It's very liberating. Give it a go, it's hard to go back.

Vegan long-distance hiking is absolutely possible #

Many people were surprised that we hiked fully vegan. In fact, just like in all other aspects of life, it's pretty easy to be a vegan hiker. Once you give it a go, you realise that you're really not missing out on anything. Here's how we did it.

Our food schedule #

We ate luxuriously (for a hiking trip), with three proper, cooked, warm meals a day.

Breakfast #

Porridge, with powdered coconut milk, dried fruit, nuts, vegan honey and cinnamon

Lunch #

Usually vegan cheese toasties, sometimes with sundried tomatoes, sometimes with olives, prepared using a variety of long-lasting breads (naan, chapati, roti, pita, tortilla etc.). Sometimes we just had wraps with peanut butter.

Dinner #

A rotating menu composed of:

Microwave curry with microwave rice*
Broccoli/pesto pasta*
Tagine couscous
Tofu scramble*
Chilli and wraps
Noodles with peanut sauce

* - heavy, so eaten close to resupply points

Vegan gear #

The hiking community has embraced synthetic materials for purely practical reasons - they're lighter and dry quicker than natural fibres. The two natural materials still in use are down and merino wool. Even if you choose to overlook the animal abuse factor, those may also be on their way out because they're not that much better.

Down #

As described above, using down when you're sure it'll get wet is a Bad Idea. However, even in dry climates, synthetic insulation is a viable alternative to down. It has improved to the point where it weighs only ~30% more. Unless you're camping in the winter, this makes little difference to your base weight, and it gives you the benefits of lower price, water resistance, and easier maintenance.

The main issue with synthetic insulation, for me, is that it doesn't compress as well as down, but this is a minor point.

For more information on the practical reasons not to use down, see this article from Ray Jardine.

Wool #

Wool is mostly used for baselayers and socks these days. I do own some that I bought years ago, and I love them. It feels better on my skin than synthetic fabric, and doesn't absorb body odour as much. But it's also a lot more expensive, and synthetics are getting better every year. As I slowly replace worn wool gear with synthetic stuff, I really can't notice the difference.

A hiking buddy is the best way to lighten up #

By hiking with a second person, you can halve the weight of your sleep, shelter, and cooking systems, and all your medical/miscellaneous stuff. But it gets better - if you share a quilt, with all that extra heat you can get away with a thinner one than you'd normally use. A hiking buddy is an underutilised source of comfort.

At the same time, with more than two people, sharing arrangements can get complicated. Individual items of gear would get uncomfortably bulky and heavy (if they even existed - I've yet to see a three-person sleeping mat). Two is the perfect number for hiking. If you find a good hiking buddy, hold on to them!

Marcin Morawski: hikes

Hiking the Haute Randonnée Pyrénéenne (HRP)

Background #

Vibes #

Time & difficulty #

Weather and wildfire risk #

Surviving the sun #

Camping #

Planning #

Navigation #

Food #

Water #

End remarks #

Hiking the GR20

The route and navigation #

Accommodation - huts #

Off-season hiking in October #

Nutrition #

We wish we had known... #

Super stony ground #

Foxes #

Hitchhiking and Bastia #

Conclusions #

Hiking the extended & athletic Lofoten Long Crossing

The place #

The hike - practicalities #

Duration #

Our (modified) trail #

Bypassing Vindstad ferry #

Danger #

The Long Crossing #

The Athletic Trek #

Going down south #

Accommodation (wild camping) #

Weather #

Travel #

Food & veganism #

Conclusions #

Hiking in the Julian Alps (incl. intro to the Alpine hut system)

Trail #

Location #

Getting there #

When to go #

Qualitative description #

Navigation #

Sleeping #

Walking from hut to hut #

Hut etiquette #

Food #

Gear #

Summary (incl. obligatory environmentalist rant) #

A (supplemental) guide to the Cordillera Blanca Traverse

Stats #

Navigation #

Stage 1 #

Stage 2 #

Portachuelo de Honda #

Paso Urus/Akilpo #

Ishinca pass #

Paso Huapi #

Stage 3 #

Shallap pass / Paso Huamashpunta #

Cashan Pass #

Way to L. Querococha #

Stage 4 #

Q. Pamparaju #

Q. Raria #

Landslide pass #

Other tips #

Air in the mountains is extremely dry #

Sun at this altitude is strong #

Vegan hiking in Peru #

Food on trail #

Breakfast #

Lunches #

Dinners #

Snacks #

Food drops #

Veganism in civilisation #

Climate change #