The Peaks of Shala: Part III

In which I hike several miles up the Valbona-Theth trail before stopping for Turkish coffee

In Part I of this post, I left our intrepid group at this trailhead below.

If all you require for today is basic context here you go: I’m hiking the same Albanian Alps as journalist Rose Wilder Lane did 100 years ago.

Our story continues:

As we wend up our first switchback, our guide, Errand, promises us Turkish coffee “a little ways” up before pushing to climb.

Up we go. The irony of mountain hiking is that mostly you’re looking at the ground so you don’t wipe out.

Rose wouldn’t have had neatly carved steps. After her horse nearly falls off a cliff with her on it (and as a farm girl, she would have known how to ride a horse), she realizes she’ll have to walk.

I said then that I would walk, but it was not walking. It was jumping, scrambling, dropping. Those mountains were evidently created to be looked at, not to be walked upon. I stopped from time to time to eat a bit of snow, and twelve-year-old Rexh looked at me with compassion. We had walked nearly twenty miles…

Whoa. Wait. Twenty miles? And it’s only the first day? And they aren’t yet done? Eating snow?

Rose was prone to exaggeration, but I will say this — my belief is she didn’t have to exaggerate that this trek. There were no topographic maps, park rangers, or Albanian adventure companies back then. When Rose and Co. decided to hike that meant scant trails made by sheepherders. No hiking boots. No metal hiking poles.

This is a random picture I found of Victorian women hikers and their guides that’s too fun not to share. I’m still researching what Rose would have worn, and drooling over the idea of having someone sew me a 1920s-era travel dress.

Rose says people warned her of 12-inch wide trails, only to discover that 12 inches would have felt like the Champs-Élyseés compared to what she encountered:

I recall a thousand-foot slide of decomposed shale…sloping to a sheer cliff. The stone houses looked like children’s blocks at the bottom of it. Across this we made our way on foot, and at every step a considerable quantity of the shale sped away beneath the pressure and plumped over the edge…But sidewise, crablike, I did eventually come out on the other side and onto a waterfall.

For river crossings, a guide would sling Rose over his shoulder like a “bag of meal.”

My fervent wish for today is that Errand will not have to haul me like a bag of meal. Nor do I care to sidle like a crab across a cliff. Or fall and break a body part. Or die in a foreign country, which seems worse somehow than dying in my home country.

Errand pep-talks as we trudge up and up, explaining each section of the trail to come, always ending with, “And then go down into death.”

Ha ha, Errand.

I got overeager and posted this same pic in Part I, but now the pic is in chronological order. Here we’ve reached our first viewpoint! The grimace comes from me hating to have my picture taken. But I took one for the team. Note my Laura Ingalls Wilder Research Association Shirt!

Rose’s descriptive powers impress me in The Peaks of Shala. I initially dismissed Rose as a commercial writer. I didn’t believe she had that much of a hand in the Little House books because I found her novel, Freeland, too corny. But in nonfiction, she finds a familiar stride:

I had never seen such mountains. Like thin, sharp rocks stood on edge, they covered hundreds of miles with every variation of light and shadow, and we looked across their tops to a far-away wave of snow that broke high against the sky. The depths between the mountains were hazy blue; out of the bluenss sharp cliffs and huge flat slpes of rock thrust upward, streaked with the rose and purple and Chinese green of decomposing shale, and from their tops a thousand streams poured downward, threading them with silver white.

From The Peaks of Shala: THE CHAFA BISHKASIT.

I am about to reach for my asthma inhaler when we reach our first stop.

Everyone talks about European health care. Longer life span. Paid vacation. Hygge and whatnot. But the real European win lies in their vastly superior treat culture.

I’ve hiked the streams, mountains, and canyons of Appalachia, Montana, Oregon, and Utah. I’ve seen massive views, stunning nature — real gobsmacking stuff. Never did anyone offer me a Turkish coffee. Treats on a U.S. hike mean you haul your own Cliff bar, smooshed and probably oatmeal raisin.

Behold this beauty on the mountain, no crab sidling required:

No big plastic cups of sugar. Wood. A ceramic cup. A smiling person. Cold mountain streams chilling beverages. Real seats. Rustic and lovely, no?

I even had the presence of mind to ask if I could take this video, which is hitting the spot on this grey Ohio winter day. Oh, to have one of those coffees this morning. I should have included the man’s face in the shot, but my mortification of seeming too touristy took over.

After coffee, Errand breaks the news to us that the real switchbacks lie ahead. I am so abuzz with caffeine that my confidence and blabbiness are both set to full throttle.

“I know! I know!” I say. “And then we hike down into death!”