The adventure of a winter waterfall

A rather easy hike turned to be a true dangerous exploring adventure where a reliable tough watch had to stand out.

Ok, let's start from the beginning. This was going to be an easy walk around a well known area I've been a few times in. The natural park of Peñas de Aia in the Basque Country.

I decided to take the Alpinist with me to take some pictures of it with a leather strap. It was cold, so the leather would be ok. Or so I thought. Frosted lichen in the picture.

The area is an old quarry and is full of small roman age mines and caves that make the walk dangerous. The abandoned quarry is being claimed by nature.

A pond we will be studying next year.

We where around 2ºC or 35º F. Verrrry cold.

And then, being the first days of winter, I had rained a lot and most trees didn't have foliage we saw a beautiful waterfall. It seemed there were some paths leading to it so we decided to go there and explore.

But soon we would find that although it seemed there was a way up there, it wasn't such thing. We had to make our path in true exploring fashion.

It was cold but the effort made me sweat so I had to take the Alpinist with the leather off and put the Summiteer with a nato on. Of course.

Here the logs prevented landslides:

The cold nature looked awesome but the path lead us far away from our goal.

The mines have been exploited during centuries. Here the more "modern" but also abandoned mine:

And not far away mines used by the romans. Very dangerous. Fences prevented people to fall inside the pits.

Sun started to shine and temperature started rise. It was even warm.

It is difficult not to love this true adventure watch.

And more with this Mordor like views :D

We started what we believed was the way to the waterfall that took us very much far away and to even discover a new route to reach the natural park.

Defeated after a lot of walking, started to return and my pal and I stopped to eat lunch, put some of our inner shirts to dry and even take a nap under the slightly warm sun.

And take more pictures of the Summiteer ;)

We decided to go back to he car when we heard the sound of water falling fast. It was very near to the spot we where resting. There was no path and thus we had to make our way through steep inclines, fallen trees, pointy bushes and lose rocks.

I fell down and had to grab a bush and now I have a sting still in my left hand. Ouch!

But it was well worth as we finally got to the top section of the water fall:

And ominous caves opened on the sides. We will need to explore that later.

The different metal minerals give distinctive colors to the mines. Very dangerous. We didn't have any suitable material to go deeper, only a Maglite.

Figuring out if there was an easier way out we explored the area with no success.

Finally we decided to head back to the say "way" we arrived here. That meant it was going to be tough.

Before heading back we explored one last cave.

And then... we saw this:

Now, while the colors here are a bit saturated, believe me, this cave was simply amazing. And seemed very dangerous too.

The vertical rusted metal bars prevented the soil and rocks to fall into the cave entrance.

A minute to take a last picture of a place we are sure to return to. Try to spot the Mario in the picture :D.

Going back to civilization wasn't easy because of the steep inclines but this time being going up it was a little less dangerous.

After an hour or so we found our way back to the signaled path and got back to the more modern abandoned mine.

This has been an unexpected aventure and experience and the sleek profile of the Traska Summiteer, with only 10.5mm height, has been a charm.

Hope to get back to this area soon.

And now for something completely different.

How to recognize trees from far away.

Number 1. The Larch: