Hi.
My name is Roman, and three of my passions are hiking, photography, and blogging. The middle one is rather new, so you can watch me improve as we go.
After each hike, I post a complete Hike Report here with lots of pictures and useful information, and my favorite photos with short descriptions on Instagram and other outlets. See “Follow Me” for details.
The purpose of this section is to introduce my philosophy on hiking and other topics, as well as to give you an idea of what to expect from my blog, or some background on the reasoning behind various decisions.
Hiking
I see hiking as both a mind-soothing pastime, and as a form of cardio and strength endurance training. As such, I try to make good time on my solo hikes. I also tend to carry more than necessary, especially water. Better to have it and not need it, as long as everything fits in the backpack.
Stopping every few minutes to take pictures stands in conflict with that philosophy of course, but I’ve always liked documenting my hikes, now publicly. I believe there can be a compromise between the two goals.
Usually though, my wife Jenny joins me on my hikes, as you can sometimes see in the pictures. We take a more leisurely pace then, taking more time to enjoy ourselves.
The Blog
The reason I’m making the effort to maintain this website is that I want to share my hiking experiences and of course photographs with anyone interested. I also aim to share as much useful information about a hike and its peripherals, as well as tips on hiking, equipment, etc. as I can.
One thing I won’t do is sell out. I’m never going to recommend something I don’t believe in just because someone pays me to, if we ever get to the point where I receive such offers. If I recommend specific products, it’s because I’ve done a lot of research, selected the best possible option for my purposes, have been happy with its performance, and want to recommend it to others.
I also completely understand using ad blockers. My own choice is uBlock Origin.
Of course I’d like the site to pay its own server bills… Ideally I’d be able to make hiking and blogging a full time job (one can dream). What I don’t want is to plaster my site with ugly, distracting, page load speed slowing ads for random shitty products and services.
As a middle road, I will use affiliate links for products I can honestly recommend so I get a small share of the sales profit at no extra cost to you, the reader/customer.
Environment
Environmentalism is another passion of mine. Enough so that I want to study Environmental Science as soon as I can afford the tuition.
I try to keep my impact as small as feasible, and I compensate my remaining CO2 footprint (for example from driving) by donating to projects that reduce CO2 emissions elsewhere.
The same goes for the ecosystems we travel through. Leave nothing but footprints.
It’s possible I sometimes overthink things, because I am indeed concerned about all the microplastic shavings we leave behind because of our shoe soles. It’s not much, but it’s gotta add up if thousands of people take the same route every year.
I may not be able to do much about my shoes rubbing off on the land, but I try to use natural fabric wherever I can. I’ve found that wool, for example, fulfills all the false promises made by polyester and other “tech fabrics”, including being quick drying, warming even when wet, and odor resistant. You’ll probably read a lot about wool in my “rags” category of product reviews.
Why not polyester? Well for one thing I don’t like supporting the oil industry if I don’t have to. For another, I don’t really like the thought of the softeners leaching into my skin, or breathing the offgassing. Mostly though, it’s about the fact that a large portion of microplastics in the oceans stem from our laundry runoff – because of synthetic clothes, microfiber towels, etc.
You
Last but not least: You, the reader. I hope you find my “Useful Links” useful, my route galleries accurately representative of the trail, my recommendations valuable, and that you may find some of your next hikes among my posts, or that you’ll simply get an itch to go hiking in your own backyard if Switzerland is a bit far. Of course I’m also happy if you just like my photographs 🙂