Russ and Sally went looking for replacement / better hiking gear in the morning... and appear to have found it. Sally finally found a rucksack that fitted her, as well as new (slightly larger) hiking boots and orthotics to address her Morton's Neuroma problems -- the result, for the first time on the H2H a pain-free day. Russ bought himself a thin pair of socks and wore only them instead of 2 to 3 pairs simulataneously: the result being that his ankle rash seemed to get better.
In fact, today was the first day that both of them seemed to be having a really good time. As Dave put it: up until now their body language said that they weren't sure that they either would be able to or would want to finish the hike, but today that changed. A turning point? Let's hope so.
On my side today was less brilliant. My Morton's reasserted itself, and I developed a muscle strain my left thigh out of the blue that by the end of the day was giving me some real trouble. 3 ibuprofen solved it for this evening, but I'm a little nervous about the 6 hour hike tomorrow.
Back to Oberammergau: I spent the morning learning poetry and blogging, then the afternoon largely on the phone in a board conference call for one of the companies I'm involved with. Lidia and Madeleine arrived around 2PM and we had lunch together, then they played a couple of games with Russ and Sally before going off to play Minigolf with Richard (who had spent the rest of the day on errands, visiting a local friend, and together with Dave eating boundless amounts of icecream and cake). After I surfaces from my calls around 8:45 we had dinner and then played a game of Zug um Zug before turning in. As you can see, blogging about a hiking day is much simpler... at least then everyone does the same thing.
Another spectacular hike today -- including a small and easy Klettersteig up Kofel, with lunch on top while enjoying spectacular views of Oberammergau There followed a great ridge walk with vertiginous drop-offs that visibly worried Sally, and a great hut at the end: good food, funny and entertaining Wirt (owner / server), "urig" (traditional / ancient) common room, and tremendous view into the upper Ammertal. The fact that there are no showers and only one toilet for everyone sleeping upstairs dampened our spirits only marginally (in large part because it turned out that we are the only ones staying here tonight).
The weather gods continue to smile upon us: no rain, a little cooler than the last few days, a little wind, but overall great hiking weather.
Gotta sign off now: Huetten Ruehe started 7 minutes ago: time to go to bed.
