Absent from official training hike #3 this week due to a long weekend in Ishigaki-jima with the olds. Suffering snailwalker withdrawal, and spotting an interesting hike described in the rough guide I managed to convince my poor mum and dad and long-suffering wife into a small tramp up a mini-mountain. The snailwalker B-team packed a day-pack and headed off for that nobbly mountain in the middle of this picture (when I remember the name of it I’ll update this post)
While the vertical height climbed was only around 250m, it covered some pretty hair-raising terrain… slippery, muddy, clay-rich soil, tropical surrounds and humidity with beasties and insects to match. hurrah! a legitimate use for my Indiana Jones hat! The largely overgrown path turned out to indeed be “rather steep” as the rough guide quaintly put it. About the last 100m of the ascent is all like the picture above. For about an hour, that rope up the side of the path was all that was standing between us and a recreation of that bit in “Romancing the Stone” where Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner slide down a mountain jungle on their arses.
The 360 views at the top were truly spectacular, with incredibly steep drop-offs on every side, but the real thrill was getting back to the start of the trail in one piece. This turned into one of those walks where the descent actually took longer than the climb up. Well done mum and dad – true troopers for making it up and back down ths challenging little mountain. They’ll never trust me again when I suggest a little walk in the woods 
.
bring on training hike #4….
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