There was no Friday in October that worked for all of us because of the chagim and travel schedule so we all agreed that we'd do a Sunday. This worked to our advantage because it gave us a longer day and was right after we changed the clocks and gained an hour. It also helps that we are closer to home than we were when we started.
We agreed to meet at our endpoint at the Dalia Tavern in Migdal at 5:10. The drive was less than two hours for us so it meant that we could sleep until almost 3 which was the old 4. Not too bad. We met the Seiferas' there and then drove together to Kever Rashbi where we davened, ate breakfast and started the trail at 6:15. Because of the extra time we had, we decided that we were going to do about 22 kilometers according to the websites we were using.
The first two or three kilometers weren't too bad. It was nice that it was pretty cool when we started (Gershon and Ahuva even had on sweatshirts). Some hills and lots of rocks but nothing too strenuous. Then we came to a big warning sign that said that the next 9.5 kilometers are extremely difficult and only fit people should plan to do the hike. We decided that the four of us are in good enough shape that we could do it. We did pretty well overall and our problems weren't caused by the fact that we're not fit enough. We really had two major problems. The first was that Shira is terrified of heights and doesn't go downhill very well. This meant that she went very slowly every time we had to climb down and she was really scared. She did it though (some sliding down on her tush)! The other issue was that at some point Ahuva twisted her ankle and by the time we had finished about 60% of our hike, she couldn't walk on it anymore.
We were at a parking lot right next to highway 85. She could not continue. We had two choices: 1. Take a taxi/tremp to one of the cars or 2. Shira and I finish the hike and pick up the Seiferas'. The only reason the second choice was even an option was because this entire hike is part of yam l'yam and they just did that hike with some of their family a few months ago. So even if Shira and I did it ourselves, the Seiferas' will still have done the entire shvil. They said that they really didn't mind waiting so Shira and I went to finish the last 10 km.
Google Maps assumes you can walk 5 km per hour so it said it was a two hour hike from there. When walking on a road, that's no trouble at all. Luckily, the last ten miles of the hike was easy (at least relative to the previous 10k) but it's still on rocks with a little climbing. We didn't stop and tried to walk as quickly as possible but it still took us a little more than 3 hours to finish. Shira twisted her ankle and fell at one point but she got right back up and wasn't hurt badly. We then went to pick up Gershon and Ahuva and drove back to the beginning point.
We only saw one cow (and it was missing a horn - or maybe it was a fat unicorn) and a bunch of wild boar. The first time we saw them, someone pointed them out to us and said that there were chazir bar over there. It sounded a little like he said Ribar but alas it was just a bunch of wild pigs. Then Shira and I came pretty close to one later in the hike. We saw more people than we'd seen on previous hikes - most people aren't dumb enough to hike in the summer heat. We saw a Swiss woman who was doing the entire shvil yisrael by herself over a few weeks. We also saw a group of girls doing the entire shvil. We saw a few people doing yam l'yam also. We even passed a group of school kids eating lunch.
Shira ordered special t-shirts for us for the shvil Yisrael. We only gave them to Gershon and Ahuva at the hike and it was too cold to change so only Shira and I wore them as you can see in the picture.
