Hum, 583m ... it doesn't sound much, but that was a bitch of a climb ...

The prognosis was wonderful, so, alarm clock set early, beautiful husband kissed plenty and a fuckload of chocolate eggs from yesterday packed, Barky et moi set south-bound to find and climb a steep mother of a hill above Laško - the town model for Startracker...

Overall Laško is a neat little settlement with a town castle, a hilltop castle and a beer festival, and I've been wondering for a while now what becomes of my fav river road. I've mapped it now from Ljubno to Laško, approximately a 56 km span. The road today was marked at 13 km, though the phone said we did 19, 27.000 steps. The first 12 were super easy, especially with new shoes and finally spring weather :*

Starting out, just as the river clouds roll in ..

The view behind us ...

Great scene of the sun vaporising dew off a shed shingles

Valleys I've last seen in snow ...

That's where we were heading, river on our right ...

Can't really mark the true ascend and descend paths here, but this is close enough ...

Award for the neatest settlement of 2016 :D

Some said to be blessed spring

The hot springs spa

Climbing up ... Waaaaay to high for my comfort O.o

The General was off to place salt on trees in his hunting realm, with some of his mates. I ran into one large lose dog that noticed us - some that didn't care - and Starbark was very chill when I pulled her up into my arms. We both stared in the opposite direction from the dog and marched on. After two hours we made it to the hill and began climbing. It was a steep, narrow ordeal, but well maintained and not really dangerous (not fatally at least, though it would have been a nasty roll down if one slipped), and we got very high very quickly.

View from the 'pulpit'

Summit

One of the false tops - a cross

Once on top, we had a bit of a rest, but the top was actually quite busy, so no real mood for a poem and a snack. A lady carrying up a sleeping baby as if it's nothing (some people are very brave..) told me about the opposite path - one a lot nastier and longer, but more scenic. Of course we took that one on the way down.

Parts of it were deceptively flat and neat, parts were few stories steep way down

The ridge guardians

The other fake summit

Slowly the scenery changed to a forest

.. and we made it to a neat, mossy, grassy clearing, where the path ended

Some navigating and telling the General where we probably were later, I found another improvised forest foot trek cutting between the two roads to the road that would originally take me to the hilltop castle, where we agreed to meet a the end of the hike. But he beat me to it by a few minutes, picking us up and taking us home a mile from the finish line ... 

        Later, after my nap, I took Barky down to pee and she was ecstatic, energized and exhilirated, so 'tis hard to continue suspecting she hates our trips. She really seems to not, though the Instagram video suggests she hates the girdle :D