My main reason to go to Italy was to trek in Dolomites, blog post and photos to come, but I also spent some time in a few cities as well. I was planning on going from Slovenia straight to Venice, but the woman who hosted me in the mountain hut I stayed at in Slovenia told me she was from Trieste and that I should spend a day there. Trieste was a great place to spend one night, and also a great first day in Italy. Trieste has a lot of history. It was originally a Roman town, and then it became a major port for the Austrian Empire. The main downtown area is architecturally similar to Vienna, and other Austrian cities, and was the perfect place for a blue hour self portrait!

After Vienna, Budapest and Slovakia my next main stop was Italy. On my way to Italy I figured I’d stop in Slovenia for a few days and check out the mountains there. In Slovenia I spent one night in the capital city of Ljubljana and three nights in the mountains, two of which were at a small little mountain hut. The mountains in Slovenia were amazing. My pictures definitely don’t do them any justice. I had a hard time getting myself to the right places at the right times for epic golden hour landscape shots, but I think I was able to pull together a collection of shots that together can show the true beauty of the Slovenian alps.

Slovakia, the land of mountains and castles! And apparently rain. I spent one night in Bratislava before renting a car and driving all over the country for a week. It rained just about every day. This put a bit of a damper on my plans of hiking up lots of mountains and taking photos of beautiful mountain landscapes, but I had a great time none the less. And got a fw decent pictures too.

I just spent 5 days up in the Adirondack mountains in upstate NY. Normally when I go up to the Adirondacks I focus mainly on climbing as many big mountains as I can, but this times I decided to prioritize photography, particularly sunset/golden hour photography. I actually found a nice rhythm of hiking up a big mountain during the day, and then finding a smaller mountain with a nice viewpoint for an evening sunset hike. This also ended up being a great way to test my new headlamp!

On my recent trip to Patagonia I spent a week hiking the O-Trek in Torres del Paine National Park. This is probably the most famous and popular place in Patagonia so there is plenty of info online already, but I just thought I’d share the seemingly unique itinerary I took, and why I really liked it, and fill in some other information gaps that I had wish I had known while planning my trip.

El Chalten, “the trekking capital of Argentina”! With five days in and around El Chalten I got to experience a small piece of what this place has to offer. Other than hiking and camping, the area around El Chalten in also well known for mountaineering, rock climbing, mountain biking, and I’m sure much more.

This winter I decided to try some real winter hiking for the first time. I have been to the Adirondacks a bunch of times in the spring and summer, but with a few days off at the end of December I figured I’d buy some snow shoes and head up for a few days to give winter hiking a try. As someone who has been an avid three season hiker for awhile now, snowshoeing up mountains for the first time has opened up a whole new world to me. Winter hiking can require a bit more planning, as well as more gear, to fully enjoy it. So here’s a quick guide to getting started for winter hiking, alongside some of my favorite photos from the trip.