Hoge Venen Hike: An Icy Adventure

SO far PhD in IMEC has been like a holiday, may be picnic is a better description. The day I came back from vacation this year in 2009, Tomas sent an elaborated hike schedule for 2009 . He informs me that he already has all of them planned for 2009. I am not sure how much time he spends on planning but I guess it would be at least a tad more than he enjoys traveling during hikes. The first hike this year was planned at biggest national park: “The Hoge Venen” (http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoge_Venen) @ about 700m above sea level, highest point in Belgium. Tomas had warned all of us that it's going to be swampy and be prepared for tougher conditions and be ready for challenges.

I reached the departure venue with a bit of guilt feeling as I was 10 minutes late than decided time of 8:15AM*. We (22 hikers for 21Kms) had to reach the venue by cars as the trains and buses are not that frequent to these isolated locations in Belgium. The day in Leuven was very good, clear and sunny with a bit coldness in the air was perfect and the weather forecast also suggested that we would get lucky with the weather yet again. As we reached the venue, it was mist all over with ice all around in the parking lot. Looking at the weather prediction and also not taking Tomas's mail seriously I (and many of us) were ill prepared for the trip. We did not have adequate shoes and also at the last moment I had decided that the Jacket would be an overkill and chose to carry an overcoat instead.

The chilliness at the destination meant that the faster we started walking the better it is. But, we hardly could. The icy conditions and moreover the presence of sleet than thicker Ice at many places provided frictionless surface and we had to be extra careful not to grass the ass. We could experience how difficult it is to walk on ice and why mountaineers need to train so hard escalating tougher peaks. The surrounding during this hike was an aberration from the typical Belgian landscape too. There were grassy bumps amidst Ice rather than lush green landscape we used to and it was a very nice to walk through them. The wooden planks laid provided safer path in most of the places.

Wooden Track and Hikers

Not so easy...yeah....not so easy

Still some places were very tricky, specially the path that took us above the mountain and down hill. I myself had a close shave 4-5 times but surprisingly did not grass the ass. Arul unfortunately did become a victim once and Amir was excellent capturing it in the following video:

Aaaamir... You are simply great!!!

Jeroen & Xavier# along with Ekhi & Aritz were leading the pack, setting the pace this time while Johny, as an experienced hiker, had assumed the responsibility to tightening the end so that nobody left missing. Tomas as usual was going up and down capturing photos for his post hike slide shows. Xiao, Jun, Mika and Rachel (Liqiu) were his favorite models. Koen with his pony tail was busy bantering all the way. Keskei, Peng and Linke were enjoying their first NBH Hike experience.

At some stages it felt so isolated that Christoph commented "Out of nowhere We are Out in the Nowhere". It was so true. We were so far and so aloof from traffic, town and trains....Chaos in general :) and it was simply wonderful.

Midway through the hike I thought that Jun has improved hiking skills leaps and bounds and informed her so. I had to eat my words when I saw this picture:

Jun and Daniele

An unfortunate (yet hilarious) part of the hike will have to be Sandeep damaging his shoe midway. His shoe sole came out as he was walking though the Ice and he had to follow a short cut highway to the parking lot. It seems his sole came completely out after he left us and had to essentially drag his shoe with him for around 2-3kms. YY and Sabrina accompanying him on the way must have witnessed the ordeal. A golden shoe for the public is available here:

Sandeep's Golden Shoe

At the end it was time to take a group picture. After all we had all survived a path where they say people were lost and never found....

The Group Of Survivors

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* This is the toughest challenge to join the hikes. It's very difficult to get up early on holidays, specially when you have lost a Chess game a night before.

# We did miss Marleen and Steven this time. With them around Jeroen would definitely have been able to maintain a brisk pace (~5-6 kmph) in spite of tougher conditions. Any bets??