13 mile day walk in the Sumava region, Czech Republic

[Dabberty]

Past saturday I decided to go for a day walk in the Sumava region, which is a big national park in the south of Czech Republic.
I couldn't find anyone to join me, since it was a quite last minute decision.
In my backpack I had 2 small bottles of water, a silky saw, knife and firesteel, wind/rainjacket, small tarp against sun/wind/rain, trailmix of nuts, and a first aid kit.
After the almost 6h walk in the sloping hills in 79f, a cold beer was very welcome :-)

If you would like to see 8 minutes of "my backyard", feel free to click on the link below.

[wsdstan]

Nice country Dabberty.  It does look a bit dry there in places. 

Interesting to see the corduroy trail section.  In the American Civil War you will frequently find comments about how they corduroyed a road section to get across a swampy section.

I noticed a lot of dead trees.  Many look like they were snapped off in high wind. Some tornadoes came through the Black Hills area a few weeks ago and for several miles hundreds of pine trees are snapped off.  Currently they are working on removing all the debris.

[Dabberty]

The dead trees are the result of the bark beetle, that has grown into a large population. They decided to deal with that by cutting down the dead tree's and plant new ones..
And yes, we had a few big storms end of last year, that caused some damage as well.
But somehow it is beautiful this way, pure raw nature, sort of.. :-)

[wsdstan]

We have a lot of pine beetle infestation in this area.  They are part of the same family bark beetles are in I think.

[wolfy]

Those bark beetles are a real problem in pines and some of the other conifer-heavy forests.  We don't have many conifers here in the eastern parts of Nebraska, but the ash trees are susceptible to the Emerald Ash Borer which is beginning to hit the southeastern portion of the state and, according to the Omaha World Herald, is now less than 100 miles south of us.  It is devastating to all species of ash trees and apparently unstoppable.

[wsdstan]

A few years ago the large maker of baseball bats started stockpiling ash as it was feared that what they use would be gone soon. They did say it was unstoppable.