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O Faro

A Galicia Blog

Tagged hiking

11 May 2018

Hiking Mythical Monte Pindo, Galicia’s Celtic Olympus

Monte Pindo stands out. It is impossible to miss as you approach it, not only because the mountain is easily the highest geographical feature in the area.

27 January 2016

Camino Sanabrés, in pictures

The Camino Sanabrés is a variant of the Vía de la Plata (Silver Route), entering Galicia from the province of Zamora in Castile-León. The Galician portion of the Sanabrés has seven stages totaling nearly 200 kilometers (125 miles).

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[ 14 April 2009 ] Camino del Norte, Zenarruza to Gernika.

[ 13 April 2009 ] Camino del Norte, Deba to Zenarruza. I spent €2.70 on a sandwich on this day, according to my journal and €15 at the pilgrim's hostel.

[ 12 April 2009 ] I hate mud and this day was full of it. Instead of writing about that, I found my journal I kept on this Camino. I wrote the following three days earlier in San Sebastián: "The little old Basque lady spoke to me at length today, most of which I didn't understand. I did hear her say 'muerte' several times. She also asked me about peace, if I wanted it or sought it. She spoke with such passion yet in a quiet voice—certainly it was coming from the heart."

[ 11 April 2009 ] Long distance hiking is like a long exposure that burns a slowly moving image into your memory. Looking back at these photos, I remember the verdant green grass swaying in the coastal wind. I remember stamping my pilgrim's passport at the makeshift roadside pilgrim registry. I remember slipping my way up the muddy path. I do not remember where I slept that night but I do know I slept well.

[ 9 April 2009 ] The Camino del Norte in 2009 was my first long distance hike. Of all the thru-hikes I've done since, the 2009 Camino was my most lightweight: my backpack was 20L. I had no idea what I was doing. I was going to be on the trail for more than thirty days...with a twenty-liter backpack! However, it never gave me any trouble, rather it made me very quick on my feet.

"It was a luminous day with a young, springy kind of light which glistened on the sea." from All Is Silence by Manuel Rivas.

During Easter 2018, I walked the Rota Vicentina, a long distance hiking route through the southern Portuguese provinces of Alentejo and Algarve. The route utilizes old paths used by fishermen that at times cling precariously to seaside cliffs. The route passes through surfing resorts and quiet fishing villages, giving me plenty of examples of the quaint house fronts that I enjoyed photographing during my time living in Europe.

Peña Ubiña was the mountain I most wanted to climb when I lived in Spain. My eyes had never gazed upon it yet I became obsessed with climbing it, perhaps because of its location next to Babia and my romanticized ideal of that region. In May 2019, I finally visited Babia, in the province of León, with the goal of reaching the summit of Peña Ubiña. I reached the col below the peak by mid-morning, but Ubiña was obscured by clouds and the traditional route to the summit was covered in snow and ice. I did not have an ice axe or crampons, so I turned around and headed back down the mountain. One year later I returned, this time climbing from Asturias. However, instead of ascending via the traditional route, I decided to climb a steeper but more direct route to the summit. Halfway up the side of the mountain, I stopped for one minute to curse myself and let vertigo run its course until it was vanquished by adrenaline. After scrambling over scree and bare rock, I pulled myself up onto the summit to greet a climber who had ascended via the same route. My lungs burned and heart pumped as I scanned the horizon, which reached as far west as the Ancares in Galicia and the Picos de Europa to the east. A local sixty-something mountaineer arrived and offered to guide me down the mountain via the traditional route. We chatted about mountains and the pandemic until we went separate ways at the col, he to León, I to Asturias. With Ubiña once again covered in clouds behind me, I strode down to the valley below through fog and a symphony of tinkling cow bells.

The lighthouse at Cabo Vilán, the first electric lighthouse in Spain, keeps watch over one of the most dangerous stretches of the infamous Costa da Morte (Coast of Death).

Iguazú Falls on the Argentina-Brazil border, circa 2006. The name Iguazú comes from the Guaraní or Tupi words meaning "water" and "big". Legend has it that a deity planned to marry a beautiful woman named Naipí, who fled with her mortal lover Tarobá in a canoe. In a rage, the deity sliced the river, creating the waterfalls and condemning the lovers to an eternal fall.

John Muir on Cathedral Peak: "Yonder, to the eastward of our camp grove, stands one of Nature's cathedrals, hewn from the living rock, almost conventional in form, about two thousand feet high, nobly adorned with spires and pinnacles, thrilling under floods of sunshine as if alive like a grove-temple, and well named "Cathedral Peak.""

The Loess Hills of western Iowa were formed from 20,000 to 10,000 years ago of finely ground windblown silt from the glacial deposits. As the Pleistocene glaciers melted, the Missouri Valley became a major channel for tremendous amounts of water. Each winter season, as the quantity of melt water was reduced, large areas of flood-deposited sediments were left exposed to the wind. Silt, clay and fine sand were lifted by the wind, carried to the east and deposited. The forest is named after the geological formation that reaches its fullest development only in western Iowa and in China.

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