Alpine Wild Camping Gone Wrong! | Trekking in Georgia 🇬🇪

On our first morning in the mountains, we woke up to clear skies and sunshine. How's your hot oats? Pretty good. Yeah? The route that we're following is not an official trail, or even a trail at all most of the time. It's a set of GPS tracks from a fellow trekker that follows old shepherd's paths and ridgelines and goes through largely unexplored areas. This meant another hard day of climbing and slower than usual kilometers as we spent time reading the landscape to find our path. We spent most of the day hiking above 3,000 meters with sweeping views of the surrounding mountains, including into neighboring Russia. We hoped to make it to a small alpine lake before dark to set up camp. The trail that we need to take does not go up to the top of that thing. It's meant to go this direction, but there's nothing there besides weeds. You alright? You didn't roll something? You didn't roll an ankle or anything? Oh no. Hogweed equipment on. To get through all of that. Look at it all. It's everywhere. Hogweed hell again. Well, that's exciting. I think the thing I've learned about hiking in Georgia is that there are simply no easy miles. And a report is like, yeah, it's 70 kilometers, but it's going to take you four days. There's a reason it's going to take four days. Like, yeah, we're on a 70 kilometer stretch and the notes said like four days, and we're thinking like, there's no way it's going to take four days. Like, that's on a normal trail, that's a two day stretch, maybe two and a half. But yeah, no, I think it's going to take us until the fourth day to get into El Malo. So yeah, it's just a lot of work. Yeah, it's pretty. Not sure if this is what we're calling a wooden bridge, but that's where it's meant to be. There we go. Slightly bigger. Shepherd's hut out here. Sheep. There's a tap, water. There are our shepherd friends. We're climbing yet again. This time we have no trail. Just up a mountain. Russian border. Pretty close. Yeah, right? Very close. Well, I don't want to go climb up it, but yeah, pretty close. Russia. I think this bit going down here is back in Georgia. We found a really nice trail that we thought was going to take us beside all the hard stuff, and it did for a good long while. And then it just disappeared, stopped, and then dropped us in these terrible gullies that we couldn't really pass. Then we had to climb straight up to get out. So it was a good time. But we made it. Yeah, we're on the top now. And then we have to go down again and then back up again. I know that's like technically the definition of hiking, but like ----. We have to go this way. If we can't go this way, we'll go to Russia. That's illegal. Stop. I know. Oh, there's a tiny lake. Yeah. You see the shepherds way out there? Ha! We were there for lunch. Ridiculous. There you go. Nice. I thought I was filming you filming me. Got to slide down a spree field, which is pretty fun. Getting pretty dang close to the lake now. Man, I was so tired for like the first two thirds of today. Brutal. You know, this wonderful thing about being a woman on trail. Sometimes your hormones are not working in your favor and they make you real tired. That was today. I'm so fatigued. Like my brain was like, let's go. And my body was like, no. Anyway, so for whatever reason, the last big climb of the day was, I don't know, I should give myself a pep talk and pull it together and just like locked in for a few kilometers. Made it to the top so we could get up and over to the lake. And now it's beautiful and the wind is not really on this side. There's a chill squeeze slope on the way down. It's much better. Yeah. Then we're going to camp early-ish. Well, it's like, I don't know, it'll be seven o'clock when we get there, I think. And then, yeah, we'll have an hour and a half of daylight, chill out, eat some dinner, maybe eat a second dinner. I don't know. I'm pretty hungry. But that's where we're at. Ooh, these are pretty flowers. So we just came down from up there. Nice little scree slide. So peaceful and quiet. And there are no other hikers literally anywhere, which I can kind of understand. This route is not for the faint of heart. Which way are you opening up? I guess it's that way. Are you opening up this way? Or that way? No, because this is the only door that's that way. Yeah. Where's it going to go? Where's it going to go? We've got like Princess and the Pea over here. Look at these clouds. Classic ramen and tuna. Is it still raining? Or is it just dripping? Ooh, that's loud. Before we left, we checked all the forecasts and we all said, no bad weather. Okay, great. But we've been sitting, eating dinner, watching lightning get closer and closer. It's across the ridge, like on the other side of the ridge. So I'm hoping it stays over there, but it's been like slowly creeping closer. It still sounds far away, but I don't know. We'll see what happens overnight. But yeah, it's hard to say. We're kind of in a bowl at the moment, the bottom of the bowl. So I don't know. There's really nothing to do. We can't go anywhere else. Wow, that like rumbled all the way around. So the rain came in pretty heavy, but it's dying down and the thunder's coming from the other side now. It literally sounds like it's everywhere. Yeah, right. Yeah, I didn't like that. Didn't like that? That was scary. Is it over? I don't know, but it kind of feels a little bit over. I hope so. Yeah. Yeah, that rain picked up and then... Yeah, and then I was like, oh ----, oh ----, oh ----. That was closer. That was only four seconds. Six seconds. Literally everywhere. Yeah, yeah. All the way around us.