Sardinia Day 4: Punta la Marmora (1832m) and Su Barone Orosei

 

Happy Easter everybody! We're spending this day by doing what we love the most - hiking. I mean, you saw it coming, right? Being on Sardinia and not to hike the highest mountain on the island? Naaaah :)
Punta la Marmora (1832 m) was supposed to be a walk in the park for us. Surprisingly... We didn't make it to the top! You didn't see this coming, right? I didn't at least!

When we arrived at the car park it was below 0°C and the trail was covered with snow. We were below 1600 m over the sea level and the conditions were already bad. But OK, we enwrapped ourseleves with whatever at hand and set off on an adventure.
Almost immediately we started struggling with snow, cold and wind. In the beginning it was not too bad but with time the conditions became more and more difficult. Radek suffered from cold as he didn't take his head band and needed to improvise by tying his shirt around the ears. I was lucky to have my gloves in the pocket.

We hiked below the ridge of the mountain, a bit on a side and the wind was already very very strong. When we reached a col the wind was almost unbearable. I needed to lean in against it so that I'm not knocked down. It was extreme, but terrain in this place was wide and safe so we decided to go past the col and continue on the side until we are closer to the top. But this plan didn't work for long. The wind got only worse as we proceed and well, if you wanna reach the summit eventually you will have to hike up the ridge somewhere. When this moment came Radek went ahead to check out the conditions. He was like 10 meteres above me, crouching at the ridge and clinging to some rocks. I watched him struggling with wind and shouting to me something but I couldn't hear a word. I was fighting myself not to be knocked down by the wind, I can't imagine what it was like at the ridge. He showed me to turn back but I was afraid to move alone so I asked him to come down to me. He took a path behind the rock and for a minute or two I didn't see him and it felt awful. Fortunately, he rejoined me after a moment and said that he hadn't been able to stand up on the ridge due to very strong wind and we have no other choice to turn back. Well, it doesn't happen often and I surely didn't expect it on a T2 hike on Sardinia! But it was an extreme experience for us and I took the lesson that one should always be humble in mountains because in the end it's often the mountain that decides if you will be able to reach the summit or not.

As we reached our car it started to rain and the weather stayed unsure untill the end of the day. In the evening we ventured a walk on the Su Barone Orosei beach where we took a couple of wet drops on our heads but nothing too serious.