We got the necessary permission and entered the Vashlovani National Park.
What a place! It’s super beautiful!
We drove up a hill and had a beautiful view. In the permission office a lady recommended a specific track to drive down to the main camp.
This track got crazy off-roady. And it got smaller and smaller. So small that at some point Rosinante did not fit anymore on the track. I’d say this track would only maybe be possible with a cross bike.
So we turned around and took the main route to a beautiful camp at a river.
When we continued the next day, we saw very beautiful landscapes, did a hike in a cove and saw some gazelle running through the steppe.
We went to another climbing area. There were not so many routes and the rock was often not very stable so I won’t share a link or something.
We found a super nice camp spot and had a funny sheep with one black ear visiting us with her friends.
At the end of our first day there, we left some of our quickdraws on one of the routes and the next day two of them were gone. I was so pissed. We asked the construction workers who were working close to the route but they did not know anything. Still I was pissed. I mean these quickdraws were more than four meters in the route so you have to really put in some effort to get them.
In that area we did a crazy difficult route. The beginning was so hard. It took us more than an hour to get up the first three meters. When I was close to the anchor (top) of that route I was pretty tired and it got very difficult for me.
At one point I had a pretty good position and wanted to clip in my rope into the next quickdraw. I stretched myself up to reach the quickdraw with my rope because I was craving for some rest after clipping. Doing so was of course not the best idea because pre-clipping like that adds a long distance to the distance I would fall. At first my position felt stable enough but with more stretching it felt less stable and when I needed just half centimeter more, I lifted my right foot just a bit more and suddenly lost all the friction and started falling.
I was not shocked about it but after a split second of falling I realized that the rope started wrapping around my right pointing finger. I felt the heat of the friction of the rope running around my finger and intuitively I tried to shake it off my finger. It just worked before the rope started to tense up and I was super happy. And I was still falling and falling and started to see the quickdraws racing by in front of me. It felt like watching railway sleepers passing by when watching down on the rail between two train cars. And from somewhere the sound of these racing pods from Star Wars Episode One came into my head. After about four meters the rope started to break my Fall, tensed up and I was sitting in the rope. All good. Happy. A bit of blood on my finger.
Racki and I took our friend Zdenko with us from Batumi to the airport in Kutaisi to pick up my friend Serpentine from Germany.
I was super happy that Serpentine visited me again in my new nomadic traveling life. It’s just so cool to hang around with people you know for a long time and Serpentine and I had awesome ideas for her time in Georgia.
Together the four of us went up in the Caucasus mountains to Mestia in Rosinante and Thor.
We found an awesome camp spot and on the next day we went on our first hike up to the Koruldi Lake. The hike was nice and a friend of Zdenko had joined us as well.
The next day we started our multi day hike from Mestia to Ushguli. It was super cool. We had our big backpacks with clothes, food and tents and the weather was perfect. On the way we managed to buy some additional supplies which turned out to be not so easy. There were only a few small shops of the locals where we could buy a few things.
The second day we hiked until a famous river crossing. During the day I felt that tension arose in our group. The hiking pace and styles were pretty different and so we decided to split up and meet again later on the route. Although we found a way that worked, I did not feel so good about the dynamics of our group. But I did not manage to verbalize my concerns that good.
After Racki and I had arrived at the river crossing, we helped a young couple crossing that river. It was pretty tough and the girl, who was standing in the hip-deep, ice cold water was pretty much fucked up, shaking and absolutely grateful that we’d help them.
We stayed next to the river crossing and made the plan to cross it the next morning because in the morning it would be less deep and less hard to cross.
After I woke up on the third day, I wanted to go out of our tent to pee but could not find my shoes! I asked Racki if I had put my shoes on her side of our tent but they were not there as well. Together with Zdenko and Serpentine we searched the whole area but could not find my shoes. They were just gone. Including the socks which were lying on top of them. We thought that maybe the stray dog who had accompanied us last night took them, but we did not find any traces.
So I had lost my nearly new, super awesome (and expensive) La Sportiva hiking and mountaineering boots in the middle of our multi day hike. We never found out where my shoes had gone but started believing that a cow fell in love with a goat and to be able to follow her love in the mountains, she needed my mountaineering boots.
We did not have any spare shoes apart from Serpentine’s Flip Flops. So I took these in combination with my winter socks. Pretty good setup for the next 30 kilometers.
After searching for my shoes and breakfast we managed to cross that river. Even in the morning the water was so fucking cold! I used our gas stove to heat them up again. More and more people came to cross the river. Some did good, some not so good. Zdenko helped a lot by giving them out walking sticks. My feet were just too cold to help them! The locals came with horses and some hikers took that comfortable but more expensive approach.
One of the guys passing the river looked as if he had nearly my size of shoes. And he seemed to have special shoes only for the crossing. So I asked him if he would borrow me his shoes and he agreed! That was a pretty good upgrade: from Flip Flops to “water sneakers”. The soles of them had holes which did not help in muddy parts of the track but my feet never got sweaty in them. We had a nice dinner in a restaurant and found another nice camp spot.
Komoot had an error and deleted our third day.
The next day we continued our hike to our destination: Ushguli. It was a nice village in the mountains, famous for its stone towers.
After some sightseeing and cake we took a taxi back to Mestia. The drive was hilarious. Our drivers were about 24 years old and racing their Delica van over the gravel construction site roads. Deep cliffs on one side, high slate walls on the other. We had a lot of fun and motivated the guys to go faster. But only until we recognized that another guy who we had taken with us had become very silent and was not looking that good anymore.
