Where Sasha Went

Hiking Tips – Ireland

If you ever have the opportunity to hike in another country, don’t think. Just say yes.
Is it going to be easy, no.
Are you going to hate it at some point, yes.
But go on and do it anyways. It doesn’t have to be ten days like my friends did or even five days (which turned out to be three for me) even if it’s just a day it is an experience of a life time.

Rarely when one travels do you find yourself away from the busy city life, off the highway and tucked up in some remote corner of somewhere looking at the most peaceful and beautiful scenery imaginable. Getting to this idyllic local is going to be hard, but you can train for that. And do, if you need help check out all my training posts.
You learn a lot about yourself under duress and duress it will be. No matter how ‘easy’ a trail it is, 14-17 miles a day will never actually be easy. These things you learn, mostly about how to overcome the discomfort and instead appreciate your opportunity and surroundings, are things that help make us all better people. Thus pushing these limits is important.

All the difficulties aside, at the end of the day you accomplished a physical feat that will remind you that you are alive and capable and strong. You spent time outdoors, freeing your mind of daily clutter. You spent time with people you love without the distractions of daily life. At least hopefully you love them. You will find out real quick on the trail if you don’t.
Reasons why you should embark on such a trip aside, here are some things to remember if you are thinking of this particular trip.

Research Everything.
Starting with if you want to hire a tour company and which  company. You can manage without a tour company, inns in the area will transport your bags and thanks to online maps you can find your own directions. Figure out what your budget is and what your comfort level of the unknown is. If you hire a company, research. Find out what they offer, what their transport is in case of emergency. For example ours provided extremely detailed directions which other hikers were envious of, I don’t know what company they used. But if instructions are important to you, look at Wonderful Ireland Walking Tours. They were lovely people and treated us like gold the entire time.
Remember the Weather
It’s Ireland, it rains, a lot. Research the weather patterns and rainfall averages. Figure out if you would prefer rain over mosquitos. It’s one or the other.
Pack Carefully
Even if you have transport for larger bags, any bag with any weight is going to get uncomfortable after 6 hours. Get fitted for a good pack and get light gear. Look up Dingle Ireland packing lists and just bring it all. I mean this honestly. The lists are very comprehensive. And very true with regard to waterproof items. My only additional suggestion to the list is to also bring sneakers. Hiking boots are great in rocky or mucky trail, which there is a lot of. But here is also a lot of road walking. Your feet, hips and knees with thank you for the extra cushion that you can slip on when the weather allows for it.
Bring First Aid
This is especially true if hiking the Dingle Way. Not because it is particularly perilous, but because it is remote. Very very remote. There was approximately three towns in five days that had anything close to sun screen or band aids. Only two had actual pharmacies with things like pain killers and blister pads. You don’t need to bring your entire medicine cabinet but a couple of things to get you to the pharmacy is a must. Especially those blister pads. TRUST ME.

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Wonderful Ireland Walking Tours – Tralee to Camp Ireland

The moment we had been waiting for, for a year and a half, the first day of the hike! We started out in Tralee, which meant walking along the harbor toward the hills (which you can see in the distance in the picture below). It wound up being a lot of road walking for the first section which can be pretty hard on your feet. It was also extremely humid and warm. Don’t let those clouds fool you by the time we got to the trail head we were sweating and tired. And we still had a good 10+ miles left in the day.

Once we got on the trail our feet started feeling quite a bit better, but it was a lot of up and down and I at least wore out fairly quickly. It could not have been more gorgeous however. We could see all the way back to where we had started pretty much the entire day and walked toward what seemed like an endless stretch of fields. We went over a few rivers which were lush and beautiful. Though I expected nothing less. We took a few breaks along the way, just enjoying the view and the break from reality. We all work really hard long hours in our real lives so I think we were all very happy to just sit in the sun, disconnected from the world, looking at nothing but grass and ocean and the occasional wayward sheep.

Once we got toward the end of the day we got back down closer to the road and got into some more actively used fields. Enter the cows. No bulls, they are kept behind locked gates with lots of signs. But given the trail is made possible by the cooperation of local farmers, it wasn’t very much of a surprise to cross paths with our bovine friends. There was after all an awful lot of signs pointing to their existence, and by signs I mean poop on the trail. This larger group proved the most difficult, they were full on blocking the trail which was flanked by stinging nettles and blackberries so we weren’t terribly interested in going around them. Some of us, braver then others (not myself), tapped them on the bum so they scurried on, albeit very slowly.

Once free of the cows and over all the stiles we found ourselves back on the roads trudging toward our inn for the night. The end of the days walk passed us by a series of very lovely homes, my favorite of which was of course abandoned. I loved the peeling layers of paint and overgrown roses.

All in all it was a moderate level of difficulty in walking. Made mostly hard by the condition of the trail (very rocky) which thankfully were mostly dry. Most of the year it is more bog like, which would have created different difficulties with the added benefit of swarms of mosquitoes. All in all it was a terrific day and I wouldn’t have changed a thing.

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Ireland Hiking – Quarter Three

Wow, how is this already the third quarter of my Ireland hiking training!? In a year the trip will be over, how sad.
In other news we are officially booked with a tour group. We chose to go through a group so that we could save ourselves on transportation, hotel booking and from having to cart our gear around with us. I am the laziest hiker in the world, don’t judge, at least I am hiking. Next step we have to start figuring out flights, which turns out is not that easy going from a small town in Oregon to a small town in Ireland. Once we get more details settled and planned I will start sharing some tips on how to plan a similar trip.
As far as training is concerned it has been a slow summer, outdoor speaking.  I had high hopes of being able to get out over the summer, which I mentioned in my prior training post. But as summer came to a close the wildfires in the area got too bad to really spend a lot of time outside. I am hoping for everyone’s sake that the fires get under control soon and Oregon can go back to being the outdoor wonderland it normally is.
Most of my exercise has been working out via YouTube video instruction. Between Jessica Smith’s barre, and weight training workouts and Adriene’s yoga videos I have managed to really focus on strengthening those knee, ankle and stability muscles as well as getting more strength and flexibility in my arms and shoulders.
I have also managed to find a couple decent routes to walk the dog, which puts us up to about 6-10miles a day (depending on weather). And I have bought my hiking boots and have started to wear them on dog walks now and again to start breaking them in.
(Quarter 3) – September through November:

Continue daily strength and stretch exercises at home (15-45min daily).
Weekly hikes getting longer and adding the daypack with realistic weight.

Hopefully once the fires are squelched and the weather cools a bit we can get back to the woods.

Daily walks outside with dog for 6-10 miles.

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Hiking Joshua Tree

We visited Joshua Tree the first time we went to Palm Springs California. My step-dad actually wanted to hike there. And I chose to do something totally unprecedented and not plan a thing. I didn’t even research it. So going into the park I knew literally nothing, I just let myself experience and enjoy the park with no frame of reference.

Since we were hiking on Christmas Day and the actual ranger station would be closed we drove up a couple days before to get a feel for where we needed to go for the hike that had been chosen.
From Palm Springs you drive up highway 62, through Morongo Valley and through Yucca Valley which looks like driving through Thunder Mountain at Disneyland, and then finally through Joshua Tree. You take a right just past the town of Joshua Tree on Park Boulevard, the road turns into Quail Springs Road where the Ranger Station will be located on the right, you can’t miss it, there is a sign, and a lot of cars.

We stopped in at the ranger station, talked to a couple people about the best day hikes and got a driving map for the park. If you do nothing else at the station I would suggest getting a driving map for the park. It is quite large and cell service is pretty spotty, so I wouldn’t necessarily rely on your phone’s GPS applications to keep you from getting lost.
After our fact finding mission we drove up to Pioneertown. The town was built for filming  early westerns. The town was a lot smaller than I would have imagined but it is worth the drive if you are a movie buff or just like old things. The buildings are nearly all facades built out to scale but you can still interact with them and there are a million places to take pictures. There is also a hotel and a saloon you can eat at. Sadly for us we managed to be there the one day of the week the Pappy & Harriets is closed. But I have heard they have some of the best food in the area and have live music nightly. Next time we head up that way we will certainly plan better.

On Christmas Day we woke up early and made our way back up to the park again. The drive through the park is amazing, and even though I don’t love desert-scapes as much as other natural areas I was in awe the entire time.
We had chosen to hike the Lost Horse Mine trail which is a four mile loop out in open desert. The hike wasn’t hard but it certainly wore us out. Being fully exposed to sun for that number of hours is draining, but the views were worth every minute. We took our first break at the mine itself, spending extra time hiking around the area and taking pictures. We continued on the trail to the spectacular views of the park and past the old home site. Then on the easy part of the trail, which was mostly sand and gravel. So while flat it was actually fairly hard to hike through.

It was a good thing we had gotten there early, by the time we got back to the parking lot people were having to park out along the road and hike up to the trail head. We took a few minutes to use the restroom and have a snack and then high tailed it out of there so that people could have our parking spot.
We ended out the day driving around the park a bit and taking a peek at some of the interpretive areas. We got pretty hungry toward the end of the day, cheese and cracker snacks don’t last forever! So we took the long drive back to our rental house and had a nice Christmas dinner. Aside from our trip to Barcelona this was probably my favorite Christmas to date.

Things to Remember when heading into Joshua Tree National Park:

As with all national parks, the lands and wildlife in them are protected for a reason. Be kind and respectful, don’t leave trash, damage plants or walk off trail.
Wildlife here isn’t always nice: cactus, scorpions, tarantulas, rattlesnakes and other large game make their home here. Be safe.
Always back more food and water than you need. It is the desert and it is a high desert meaning you are loosing more water than you realize and can easily become dehydrated with very little exertion.
 Cover your head and wear sun screen. Many people think “I tan well” so you don’t need to protect yourself but sun stroke is very common and covering your head well is just about the only thing you can do to prevent it.

 
Questions:
Have you ever been to Joshua Tree? What was your favorite part about it? Or if you haven’t been what is your favorite California Park?

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Training – Hiking in Ireland

I have mentioned a couple times I am planning a hiking trip in Ireland during the summer of 2018. I thought it might be helpful to post my training schedule leading up to the trip in case anyone else out there is planning a hiking trip in the near future. As I was putting together my plan I realized it is going to be a fairly extensive plan.  I am a “safety first” type of gal so build up is slow and steady over the course of the next year and a half. As such the posts will reflect that progress, so if you are interested in going faster or want some tips for a hiking trip that is prior to mine please feel free to reach out to me.
I should first say that I am not a licensed personal trainer and I hike fairly regularly already. So everything I discuss is to fit my own needs to get to where I need to be in order to safely participate in the hike I am planning. Your current physical state is likely different than my own, and your future hike is likely different than my own, so please proceed with that in mind.
As I mentioned, the general approach I am taking for this training is slow and steady. I hike fairly regularly but if you have been paying attention to the PNW this year you will know our regular “year round hiking weather” has been interrupted by frequent ice storms, snow and record breaking rain.  Needless to stay the last thing that resembled a hike for me what walking around the hills in Lisbon in December, where in normal years I would have been out in the woods almost once a week.
As such, I have started my first month of training in the gym and if the weather continues with the current trend, I will probably be in the gym for another month two before I can start safely hiking in the mountains again. So without further ado here is my year and a half training schedule outline, which I will go into more detail as the year progresses.
(Quarter 1) – March through May:

A mixture of light cardio and strength training in the gym.
Balance and strength focused exercises at home (I like to do quick 5 min exercise breaks while watching tv).
Yoga focusing on balance and stretching.

 
(Quarter 2) – June through August:

Quarter 1 exercises
As weather improves, adding a weekly hike of various lengths and terrains.

 
(Quarter 3) – September through November:

Quarter 1 and Quarter 2 exercises but with lengthened intervals and more reps.
Weekly hikes getting longer and adding the daypack with realistic weight.
Daily walks outside with dog for 1-2 miles.

 
(Quarter 4) – December through February:

Continue previous quarter workouts with added reps and duration.
Moving cardio indoors when weather deems it necessary.
Hiking outdoors with boots and rain gear during lighter inclement weather to get used to gear and conditions

 It is possible that it will rain during my hike. Once I have built up my balance, durance and strength over the prior months I can start getting used to my inclement weather gear in more realistic hiking conditions.

 
(Quarter 5) – March through May:

Continue prior quarter movement but try to take it outside where possible.
Continuing to lengthen duration and difficulty when possible.

 
That’s all for now! Check back once a month for more detailed workout information. I plan to include more detailed weekly plans, specific strength training, balancing and yoga moves as my training progresses.

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