Zichron

It's been a while since we last hiked due to many different factors - Shira went to England, Yona and Yael(i) got married, Zvi and Rachel got engaged, Halleli was born. We were also a little scared of the heat of the summer. We're back now though. 

We discovered that the shvil is constantly changing. They added two hikes to the beginning. Ahuva has decided for all of us that since we already passed that part, we are not obligated to go back and do those hikes. When we planned today's hike using Google maps, we had decided on a starting and ending point and I told Adina, my sister who lives in Zichron. She told me that we were literally passing by her house. I looked at the map and saw that we would be within a kilometer or two of her house but weren't exactly passing her house. She assured me though that we pass right by her house so I looked at the app that I use during the hike. Turns out they changed the hike and it now goes right through Zichron. It added about three kilometers to the original plan. 

Adina and Eric thought about joining but ultimately decided against it. So I went to shul in Zichron with Adina and then we met at the end point at 7:30. We started the hike a half hour after that. In the beginning it was uphill a bit but the hike got much easier as we kept going. A lot of the hike was on dirt roads or on streets. When we got to Zichron, Adina and Eric came out to meet us. Then we walked through the streets of Zichron, including along the midrachov and then walked right past their house. Near the end of the hike our app said one thing but the signs showed something else. We had to go with the app to get to the car. The whole thing is a little confusing since it changes so much. 

Overall, it was a pretty easy hike and the weather was great. We walked about 18 kilometers in just over 5 hours so we were able to make good time. Hoping that our next hike will be soon. 

Should have been an easy hike

 We continued on our path in the Carmel and it looked like it should be an easy hike. We decided to only do 16 kilometers since it was hot. We chose a Sunday for the hike again so we were under no pressure and only met at 7:30. The drive from one end to the other was only 12 minutes and we started the actual walk before 8 AM. The hike would be mostly parallel to highway four going south and didn't look very hard. The only problem was that usually after I choose our end point I put it in Google Maps and find the exact path that we will follow and measure it exactly. I couldn't do it this time because Google insisted that there was no way to walk directly on shvil yisrael and at some point we'd need to cut across to highway 4. 

The good news is that it really wasn't that hard... at least at first. Right at the beginning, we had to climb a bunch of steps up but it wasn't bad. We had the energy and it wasn't so hot yet. It wasn't scary at all but was good exercise. The terrain wasn't terrible - was slippery and rough at times but not impossible. There were no scary cliffs - a few climbs up and down but nothing we couldn't handle. Normally, I could estimate how much longer we have on the hike but I was having trouble on the app I usually use and Google was clueless because it didn't think we could walk where we wanted to. 

At some point, after we had walked more than 10 kilometers in less than 3 hours, I tried figuring it out but it seemed like we still had more than eight kilometers left. I refused to believe it. We kept on going. It was starting to seem like the hike would be further than I thought. The heat wasn't helping. It also took us longer because some of the shmoozers kept stopping to talk to every person we passed but it was becoming clear that we wouldn't finish as early as I'd hoped. I had wanted to visit my sister in Zichron after the hike but we also wanted to be home by 4. 

Finally, we neared the end. We got to highway 7021 and we had parked at a Keren Kayemet L'yisrael parking lot right off that highway. So we knew that we could just turn right on the highway and walk to the road and then walk to the car. Would be less than a kilometer. We were exhausted but the official route said to cross 7021 and to walk on a path parallel to it until you get to the car. It didn't look any longer and we are rule followers so we went that way. It was clearly marked and we were doing fine. Then all of a sudden the path seemed to end. I mean, we could see a path but it was covered by thorns. We kept on going. It was a few hundred meters of walking through thorns until it was cleared again. We were on the right path the whole time. It's the first time we've experienced anything like that on our hikes. We came out a little bloody and with lots of stuff attached to our shorts, shirts, skirts and socks. Soon after that we got to the car. We walked close to 21 kilometers in about six hours and I'm really not sure how it was only 16 on the path. 

We only saw cows one time on the hike and really didn't see any other animals. For the first couple hours we didn't see any hikers. About halfway we got to a shvil gift shop with cold water fountains and gorgeous bathrooms (maybe not gorgeous but they were clean) and the women were thrilled to actually be able to use a clean bathroom. That was the first time we've come across something like this on the shvil. There we saw a family hiking. We also saw an 18 year old boy hiking by himself. We saw a large group from a school with at least 50 kids and lots of staff. There was a woman, seven months pregnant who was one of the leaders of the group. It was a hot day but she had a camel pack and seemed like she was doing really well. Of course we had to stop and talk to all of them and took pictures with some. 

Overall, the hike was much harder than we expected because of the heat, the thorny paths and the unexpected length. I think next one should be easier and we'll be better prepared. 

Carmel Forest

 In honor of Memorial Day in the US, we decided to do a Monday hike (that and the fact that the Seiferas had a busy travel schedule for the last few weeks). They had a wedding up north in the evening so we made the hike a little shorter than the original plan. I had to find a minyan to say kaddish so we couldn't (and it will be like this all year) start as early as we had become accustomed. It's a good thing we shortened the hike because it took a lot longer than we expected. According to Google maps the hike would be 20.6 kilometers starting from Kfar Chasidim and near the Western end of Carmel Park. 

The hike started off easy enough and we were going at a nice clip. We covered about 2600 steps in our first full half hour. When walking fast on regular streets with no break by myself, I usually get about 3500 steps in a half hour so 2600 isn't bad. Then we went through a tunnel under highway 75 and the hike got a little harder as we entered Carmel Park. It still wasn't bad yet though and we had a little reprieve when we got to Isfiya (a small Druze town in the middle of the Carmel). 

Once we got out of Isfiya though we were climbing mountains. We had what seemed to me to be our most sustained steep hike (in my memory only Har Arbel was close but that didn't go on for as long) and we definitely slowed down considerably (down to about 1600 steps per half hour). The problem was that what goes up must come down. The best for the downhills is when it's not a steep decline. You get the benefit of the downhill without the fear or difficulty of climbing down. This was decidedly not gradual and it was difficult. In some places they had bars or rails which made it much easier. Other places were difficult and very scary for some of us. We went really slowly down the cliffs and in our last full half hour we covered only 820 steps. For most of the hike, I walked with Shira and Gershon walked with Ahuva (we usually do men together and women together and usually we're within earshot of each other). The Greenstones were much slower on the hike down and the Seiferas' got to the car at least fifteen minutes before we did. 

The hike ended up taking us about eight hours (we ended up walking about 24 kilometers - even if we only covered 20.6 of the trail). Gershon and Ahuva didn't have time to drive to their hotel in Herzliya to shower before the wedding so my sister Adina was kind enough to host them in Zichron for showers. 

We don't stop to look at sites for more than a few seconds but did get a picture with a cannon that was used in the late '60s. We do stop to talk to people though (apparently I'm outvoted 3-1 on that). We saw more shvil hikers than we've seen before. On Fridays, we often see big groups who do the shvil in parts like we do but don't see many individuals or small groups doing the entire hike in one shot. This time we saw a few and stopped to talk to some of them also. In particular we saw two single guys who were each doing the hike from the south to the north so they were almost 80% done and they were doing it alone. Probably left shortly after Pesach to finish before the summer makes it impossible. Nice guys and we had fun talking to them (even if it was for much longer than I'd have wanted). 

It was not a very exciting animal sighting day. We saw some horses right at the beginning and then not much of anything. I did see two snakes - one of them was huge - but nobody else saw them. We saw only one cow and we were not close to it at all. Lots of birds and a few lizards but that was it. 

Continuing the trek west

 Despite the fact that I got up from shiva for my father on Wednesday, we hiked on Friday. That was the original plan and there was really no reason to delay it. I had been sitting around too much and really wanted to walk. I preferred to daven shacharit though at my regular minyan in Bet Shemesh which meant that we'd get a late start. I initially thought that we could still do 19 kilometers but Ahuva rightly pointed out that would be too much for a Friday so we cut it down to 15.6 kilometers on the trail. 

We met at 8 AM in Kfar Chasidim which would be the end of the hike and then drove together to the Arab town of Kaabiye. We started hiking at about 8:40 and I was hoping that we'd be done no later than 1 PM. Unfortunately it wasn't to be. As per usual we got "lost" a couple times on the hike. The word is in quotation marks because we weren't exactly lost but somehow fell off the trail. Actually at one point, we were on the trail but were somehow going backwards. We're really not sure how that happened and it was just luck that we realized as soon as we did. I always walk with the Israel National Trail app open on my phone but I don't necessarily look at it all the time. I generally check, if we haven't seen a marker in a while or if we're not sure where to turn. That wasn't the case this time since we were on the trail and we thought we knew. I happened to look at it though and realized we were going backwards. It took us a while until we confirmed that's what we were doing and figured out the right way to go. It all worked out but we ended up wasting about 20 minutes. 

There were a couple other times when we got confused that cost us a few minutes. The hike was not  particularly difficult but it wasn't super easy. There were no really steep inclines but there enough hills that made it difficult at times. Ahuva and Shira made the decision to leave their hiking boots in the car since we didn't anticipate a difficult hike. That may have been a mistake as there were times that the terrain was tough. On the other hand, Gershon did wear his boots and the laces got caught and caused him to trip. So not sure that was the right decision either. 

There were a lot of cows along the way including two times that they were in the middle of the path and didn't seem interested in moving. I spoke to them as a friend and they just watched us as we walked past them. We also saw a bunch of roosters and a couple goats. Perhaps, more interestingly, we saw a lot of people. We saw a couple solo walkers doing the shvil by themselves. We also passed a group that is doing the shvil in parts with two hikes a month of about 15 kilometers each time. It should take them about three years to finish. Also, we passed a bunch of other people near Hermit's Mill. It looked like they were picnicking but not sure if that was part of a hike. The woman pictured was one of those people. We asked her to take a picture of us but it took her a long time to figure out Gershon's phone and the pictures didn't come out great. What should have been a 30 second stop turned into 5 minutes instead. 

As we were walking, I realized that we'd soon be passing highway 6 and I was excited. That's a big highway and I was curious how the shvil would do it. We've crossed highways before and there are usually walking tunnels that go underneath but that would be one huge tunnel to go across the entire highway. I was anxiously waiting for it and then suddenly I realized that we were on the other side of highway 6. I'm still not quite sure how we did it but highway 6 must have gone through a big tunnel that we didn't even realize that we were walking above the highway when we did. 

We got to the end of our hike at 1:20 so we really didn't make great timing. We had fun though as usual and it was good to be out on the trails again. 

Pesach tiyul without the kids

We didn't hike in March because of too many scheduling conflicts (travel, Naftali's bar mitzva, Yonah and Yael(i)'s engagement (!!),  Big Adir's marathon, Pesach preparations) so we're hoping to hike twice in April. We decided long ago that we'd try to do one on chol hamoed. We tried to work it out so at least some of our kids could come. In the end though, we opted to do it on the third day of chol hamoed with no kids. We planned for a hike of less than 20 kilometers so we could be home at a reasonable hour and still spend some time with the families. 

After a bit of negotiation on the start time, we decided to meet at the end point around netz (6). The problem was that the end point was in an Arab village called Ka'abiyye-Tabbash-Hajajre. Shira was not crazy about spending a lot of time there davening and stuff so we first met at a gas station and then drove to Ka'abiyye to leave the car. We then drove to Nof Hagalil to start our hike. We got started at 7:13 and walked in the city for a little before finally being put on a dirt trail. The first half of the hike was very easy trails with few hills. So it wasn't bad at all. 

The hardest part about these hikes is staying on the trail. I keep two maps open so I usually know soon after we veer off course. There are also quite a few markers that help direct us. Sometimes, there are markers every 50 meters and it's easy. Other times, there are big gaps and/or the markers are well hidden and we make a wrong turn. Seems to happen on almost every hike but we've gotten much better at finding our way. On this hike there was one point where we were supposed to go straight but it was closed off. It wasn't clearly marked what we should do but we figured it out. It does make our hikes a little longer. 

A cool thing that I mentioned before is the tunnels they make under highways. On this particular hike, we had to cross both highways 77 and 79. Under highway 77, there was a clearly marked path to the tunnel and it was long, wide and easy. Next we had to cross 79 but we couldn't find the tunnel. After some searching, we found the tunnel but it seemed to be full of water. The women noticed that there was a raised path on the side where we could walk without getting wet. The problem was that either we had to walk a couple hundred extra meters to go around the water or walk through the water. Shira got new hiking boots so this was a good opportunity to make use of them. She and Ahuva walked through the water while Gershon and I went around. 

As usual, we did not see many hikers or other people. At one point, we saw a woman who appeared to be Scandivanian hiking by herself. We ran into a couple families who were out for joy hikes. We also saw lots of cows. It was weird because every time we saw cows, there were these white birds hanging out with them. Despite all of our deep knowledge of animals and birds, none of us could identify what they were. Based on a google search, I now believe that they were cattle egrets who apparently like to hang around cows to eat the tics and flies who bug the cow. 

We also passed by the kever of R' Yehuda Hanasi (though somehow Ahuva and Shira didn't realize). Pictured are the four of us on the outskirts of the beautiful (you can't really tell from the picture) city of Hoshaya. 

We finished the hike around 1. We walked about 22 kilometers and knocked off 19.5 kilometers from the shvil. We have now completed about 180 kilometers total on the shvil out of about 1080. 

Three Mountains

Today's hike included us climbing up three different mountains - Mount Tabor, Mount Debora and Mount Yona. Last month, Gershon bought the Israel National Trail book by Jacob Saar and it gives us lots of good information including the altitude. Mount Tabor is about 550 meters above sea level. We then walked down to 170 and back up to 450 and then down to 300 and up to 550 again. So it was a lot of up and down. The terrain was pretty good and the weather was great. Was around 70 degrees F by the end of the hike. 

Shira and I carry as little as possible. When it's not hot, we each bring two liters with a couple small snacks. Gershon and Ahuva bring a ton of water and lots of other goodies. Gershon also brings a second pair of shoes. He has very good hiking boots (they each have hiking socks too) and sneakers. When the terrain isn't too bad, he switches to the sneakers since they're lighter. Today he switched back and forth and he really notices the difference. He suffers from plantar fasciitis and the shoes he wears is very important. No matter what, by the end of the hike his feet kill him but he did better today than he'd done in the previous couple hikes. 

We met this morning in Nazareth Ilit (Nof Hagalil) just before 6, davened, ate and drove to the beginning of the hike in Kfar Tabor. We started the hike at exactly 7 and we were quite cold. It didn't take long for us to warm up though once we were walking in the sun. Somehow on the climb up Mount Tabor we got off the trail for a little and didn't exactly make it to the top. We went most of the way to the top (I'd guess up to about 450m) but by the time we realized we were off the trail, it would have been crazy to go back and there was a clear path to pick up the trail again. So we followed that path. We made up for at the end. When we were climbing Mount Yona, we again were off the trail. This time, we couldn't have been more than a few feet from the actual trail but we couldn't see it so we climbed the really steep mountain without a trail as you can see in the picture. 

Gershon's 70+ year old cousin lives in Sharona which isn't far from where we started the hike. They felt badly that they didn't visit him on the last hike and this time made sure to coordinate so they could go after the hike. He was excited and asked if he could meet us along the way. So after we finished Mount Tabor, he drove 30 minutes in his jeep to bring us popsicles. He told us about his experiences when he did the shvil and we had a nice time with him for about thirty minutes. Was a good break. 

Animal update ... We got really close to a bunch of cows who were standing in our path. At first they weren't moving but once I assured them that we were friends, they moved out of the way and let us go. We also saw our first turtle of the trip. Shira wouldn't let me pet it but I got close. While we were stopped with the Udi there were tons of flying annoying bugs that wouldn't leave us alone. We also saw a dead cat and a dead dog. That was kind of nasty (though to be honest, those probably weren't the most disgusting things we saw today).

Overall, we covered about 22 km of the trail (we walked about 25 km total) and had a great time. This is probably the last Sunday hike for a while. With sunrise getting earlier and sunset getting later we can go back to Friday hikes. 

Stress-Free Hike

 A rare Sunday hike for us made things a little easier for most of us. It's much better because we're not rushed to get home for Shabbos. We don't have to get all our Shabbos preparations done by Thursday night. Shira and I went to Zvi's football on Motzei Shabbos so we didn't sleep much. We weren't in a huge rush to get started though. So we only left our house at 4:30. Our meeting point was the gas station in Kochav Tavor. We met there and could use a real bathroom and have a real parking spot. We got there shortly before sunrise so davened there before driving to the starting point. We had to decide if we were going to park where we did last time and walk the extra kilometer and a half to the shvil or drive on paths and leave the car in the middle. Our hike was only scheduled to be 19 kilometers and we had plenty of time so we all agreed to park at the school in Yavniel and walk the extra little bit. 

The truth is that we didn't see the exact point where we left the shvil though I did take a picture of it last hike but we got to the shvil pretty easily and we started the actual hike before 8 from "חיים בטבע." I still have no clue what that is but that is how it is marked on google maps so it's something. We started by going straight uphill for about an hour. The picture was taken at the top (you can also see that Gershon wore the t-shirt for the first time and we all matched). Even though it was pretty steep, it wasn't exceedingly difficult because they were nice paths. We weren't walking through bushes and weeds or on lots of rocks. That was basically true the entire hike. 

We did have to walk through water for about 3 steps. In the past, we have always been able to stay dry by walking on logs or rocks but this was the first time, I think that we had to get our shoes wet. Everyone else went through no problem because they had boots or didn't mind getting a little wet. I did not want to walk the rest of the hike with wet socks so I took off my shoes and socks. I was happy I did but nobody else regretted their decision to leave their shoes on either. So all was good. 

The weather was perfect. It was a little cold at the beginning. Gershon and I both wore shorts and were cold for the first hour or two but it was the right decision. We saw a lot of cows at the beginning and saw two other animals from a distance. I called them gazelle but I'm no expert and am not sure at all that's what they were. 

We finished the hike around noon and Ahuva suggested we go for lunch. When we were driving together back to the starting point, we spotted a kosher Chinese restaurant. That sounded good to all of us so we stopped there and got some good food. Still made it home around 4 PM. We were exhausted but it really was a nice and easy hike.