On Sunday morning I felt re-energized enough to go back to the mountains. The lift up to Mount Ahorn was like diving into the fog: up in two kilometres, the visibility was only a few dozens of metres. My plan was to take a quick tour of the nature park before returning down to the valley.

It hardly comes as a surprise that while strutting along the path in the fog, I somehow managed to miss a sign and took a wrong turn somewhere. When I realised I was on a longer route than originally intended, I though I might as well keep going. At least the route markers were pretty visible.

My shoes were put to the test when I had to cross a river blocking the path. Balancing on the stones, I delved ankle-deep in the water, but my socks stayed 100% dry! Impressed and delighted by that, I was almost ready to forgive the sneaky bastards for their murder attempt on Friday.

I passed by a mountain restaurant, but didn’t even stop for hot chocolate. For once, I was up early, so I wanted to see how close to the Ahornspitze summit (2970 m) I could get. (Spoiler: not very close)

Skeletons laying by the side of the path started casting shadows on my carefree hike. Eventually, a huge chunk of snow blocked my way. I could no longer see any route markers, and I wasn’t quite stupid enough to follow in the footsteps of a mystery dumbass ahead of me. At the same time, freezing rain started to fall and made the decision to quit a little bit easier.

Oh, the frustration of having to turn back! An old friend once told me about “the bucket theory”, though. “You are born with a full bucket of luck and an empty bucket of experience. You’d better fill up your bucket of experience before your bucket of luck runs out.” The original context of the theory had something to do with skydiving, but why wouldn’t it apply to mountaineering, too. I didn’t test the depth of my luck bucket that day.

Slogging back down, my shoes tried to assassinate me again: tilted, wet stones proved extremely slippery. I still didn’t get hurt, though, so the second murder attempt was as unsuccessful as the first.

The ticket I had bought also included a lift to Mount Penken, so I obviously had to get all my money’s worth and went up there, too. The views of the valley from the top of Penken are supposed to be the best of them all, but visibility hadn’t gotten any better by Sunday afternoon.

After my Ahorn defeat, I was already tired. When I started feeling cold, too, I returned to the valley quite soon.Although many might skip a trip to the top entirely in foggy weather, I found the eery atmosphere well worth the effort. I had already had a nice dose of the scenery on the previous days, anyway.