Summited Spik 2472m in the Julain Alps solo as a last hill of a holiday. This was a good looking hill acheivable stats for a quicker day as my partner walked in the valley.
I read the guidebook to find something without the need of via ferrata. This led me to choose spik and after looking closer at the map i opted to reverse the route from the guidebooks suggestion. The book had a very long climb followed by a steep sharp descent. From experience of 2 weeks in the Julian Alps i knew how steep some of these paths were and found it less enjoyable descending them as climbing. I followed the valley locating a small cairn and heading up through the forest for 800m before leaving the treeline. From here some small rung and wire sections then out onto scree with well trodden path through. The scree led to a coire of boulders before a traversing scramble to a summit ridge and continue to the summit. I reversed the ridge until it leveled and then traversed high. Finding it loose and getting difficult i spotted more trodden ledges below and found some marked route and wire. this led me to skirt an unsafe ridge and climb to the next small summit and drop into the next valley to complete a loop. This path was great and easy to move fast on soft scree. The path split and rejoined with lots of options but was easy to follow aiming for the valley floor. I began a long traverse over scree before dropping down a loose rocky line than made for very fast and easy descending. The trod petered out and i reached dwarf pine forest where evidence of walkers was seen through the trees. Quickly i realised this wasnt a feesible route and the forest was not passable. On looking at the map i had left the traversing path too early. the density of the dwarf pine sprwaling meant i had no option but to reascend 200m, this was tiring on scree, hit the energy reserves after a long holiday. I plodded back through following markers that were few and far between in dried up river bed, through the forest and back to the van.
