As bonus, here's the pack that I carried up into the mountains as we worked on the water system. That's about 30 pounds of PVC pipe lashed with cord to a frame that my uncle built from a kit sometime in the early 60s.
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Backpacks and blisters - the walking thread
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Glorious late autumn weather here, and we're on holiday, so no option but to go walking. Today I went to the Sulov hills, west of Zilina. They are modest in height, but have weird limestone formations in the woods and good views over the valley and Sulov village.
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I'm fairly used to having a bad knee the day after a hike, but last night and this morning I have coupled this with a very painful hip which must also be related. Fuck aging. It wasn't even a strenuous walk - I had to get home because I was delivering trainings in Peru from 6pm yesterday (sadly I was not in Peru, only the people being trained) - I think we walked less than 15km and only about 400m elevation.
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Do you use hiking poles, Ad Hoc? I don't get on with them really, but feel I ought to give them another try as they take a lot of strain off the joints, especially going downhill. I have psoriatic arthritis, but the odd thing with that is that I can suffer pain in the hip/ankles/soles of the feet after a walk of 0.5-1km! It's better after 15-20, but downhill on rocky surfaces can be a problem.
Hope this won't be a long-term issue for you, as you have some gorgeous country to keep exploring there.
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Try looking for a support strap for offending knee. Everything is connected from ankle to hip, so if one part is not working correctly the others can be affected. Right insoles important too.
I have various knee straps, some support lower part of knee, other are placed above it when i get issues with IT band (pain on external side of knee).
Growing old sucks indeed...
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A wintry walk today up a nearby peak called Polom. Its lower slopes are a limestone quarry, at the top is a monument to important battles towards the end of WWII. Groups of Slovak partisans were based in these hills, and other remnants of the fighting (cannons, graves of unnamed soldiers etc) still remain. The early part of the walk offered views over Strecno, where there's a castle, and where the River Vah cuts through the middle of the Mala Fatra range.
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My neighbour and a bunch of his mates have a December tradition of hiking up Mincol, our nearest peak. I joined them last year for the first time, but today was more rewarding. The skies were dishwater grey in Zilina, and for most of the climb up. Then 100 metres or so off the top, we had blue skies and sunshine, with inversion visible from the peak itself.
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