Gergeti Church and Gergeti Glacier

It was another early morning by Georgian standards and we discovered the incredible taste of sour cherry jam - so yummy. Our guest house served us a huge and delicious breakfast to fuel us for our hike.

Next, we had a taxi bring us up to the church which felt like cheating, but we ended up doing about 16 miles with over 5000' of elevation gain, so it felt reasonable to cheat. Plus, it was a pretty exciting taxi ride, with some wild 4 wheeling, a water crossing, a sketchy bridge, and dodging cattle.

Ok. So I might have taken about a billion pictures of the church - in my defense, it is super striking. Visiting it was an excellent experience - churches on mountains are pretty cool. We had the place to ourselves because it was early. Plus, we got lucky and were there for mass (there were only 2 priests there and us and lots of lit candles). The Gergeti Church was built in the 14th century - considering that it is at the top of a mountain, it was quite a feat at the time. Which makes it even more ironic that we took a taxi up.

We took the "scenic route" up to the Gergeti glacier and the "classic route" down. The weather never actually cleared, but there were moments where we had beautiful views as well as being socked in by clouds and rain. A few times we were shocked by something almost right in front of us because of the clouds and weather. There were flocks and of herds of cattle and horses (very friendly) which also translated to hiking through lots of poop. At the mountain hut, we had some strudel and hot cocoa - yum. And we picked up some awesome trail dogs - so cute!

Getting to the glacier was tricky as the path wasn't exactly clear and there were several stream crossings. And once at the glacier, it was pretty steep which made Fallon nervous. We were told that you could go up a ways on the left side (and we had seen horses come down which confirmed it for us. So I went up the ice and Fallon skirted along the side. It was her first time on a glacier!

On the way down, we saw some awesome waterfalls and chatted with a man with a Ukrainian man with a prosthetic leg who had just summited Mt Kazbek. We also had an enjoyable conversation with 2 men from Hamburg Germany. As we made our way down the mountain, the sun even started to come out. 

We wrapped our hike by stopping by the same restaurant from yesterday and had a yummy meal before returning to our guest house and hitting the hay.