Would you believe, I was cleaning again. Not inside the cabin this time, but on the outside. It looks godawful, there’s a big pile of junk next to the stairs and bits and pieces scattered around the cabin. It was easier to remove those bits and pieces, but that big pile of junk is another matter. I decided to create two piles instead, I put all the wooden material (planks etc) under the cabin and all the other junk in a pile which I covered with some sheets of plywood to make it look less disgusting (just barely) and stop the lighter junk from spreading around the cabin again.

I had been waiting to see if the sun would come out but it wasn’t quite the sunny day I thought it would be. I wanted to do my hike anyway, I was planning a longer one into unknown territory so I didn’t want to leave it too late. I drove to the Kappruet parking lot, this is a small alpine skiing centre with just one lift and it was up this lift corridor where I started. The trail I was going to take would take off after the lift and the first thing I noticed about the trail is that it’s no summer trail for sure. I was not going to walk through the wet bog so I had find a way around, and that was followed by another bog and another and another… on the map it looked like an easy A-to-B but in reality is was an A-to-B-to-C-etc-to-Z with what all the detours I had to take around small wetland areas. It got a lot easier when I reached the actual foot of the mountain, now I just had to ascend to the top but no more detours. Until on the way down – since I was not following any trail and I didn’t have a GPS because I thought I could rely on SportsTracker which I couldn’t do because my phone battery was dying and I didn’t have a charger… anyway, absolutely no risk of getting lost. Just aim for the radio mast next to the ski lift (the same radio mast by the way which is apparently the reason we don’t get a mobile phone signal up at the cabin).

Well, no matter how much extra hiking I had to do. What matters is that I ”collected” another peak, had a great day and even was lucky enough to catch a sunny break!

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As you can see in this picture, the sky was very dull. I just wanted to take the shot because of the cairns, there’s 3 in the picture but there were 5 at this spot. Now, I understand that the cairns used to have a specific purpose historically speaking, but I find it hard to believe that all these cairns here are built for practical purpose. Which means that hikers like myself have built them, and now I really want to know why. Is it like the scribbling you find on toilet walls? Kilroy was here? Why do people pile up rocks (or scribble on toilet walls, for that matter)? But the really funny thing is that all these cairns are not even on the real peak of the mountain. The real peak is that little nipple in the background, and yes, there was only one cairn up there. So the way I see it, people cheat. They climb up the mountain, notice that they have some way to go before reaching the actual peak, and instead of taking the trouble to reach the top they pile up some rocks instead. Is this some normal social behaviour that I completely miss?

Take only pictures, leave only footprints. I ain’t gonna pile no rocks.