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.
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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.
