This hike looks way easier on map than it really was on the ground. Pretty straightforward to think about overcoming 600m of elevation in 4,5kms: a bit steep but not too much, it seemed.
The truth however, is that this place fights against you with all it has to pin you down. The beginning from the road is not a proper trail but more like a hastily made track that very rarely sees the passage of man. It is tortuous, incredibly narrow and hard to follow. You slowly progress while looking around to numerous false directions while the overhanging and overgrown vegetation bashes you as it often criss crosses the track. The ground is not welcoming either: unstable rocks, soft mud and thick roots make progression even more slow as you negotiate the multiple obstacles coming from all directions. The occasional cairn warms your heart a little, but they are never enough to keep you on the right direction for long.
If you manage to overcome this part and finally get over this densely vegetated slope, you end up on this flatter but somehow trickier part on the ridge of a hill. While it is a more open area and finally you can have some looks at the surroundings, it doesn't help a lot as numerous paths cross each other continously. To make things even more difficult, the frequent large pinnacles of granite that dot this ridge have really no distinguishing features, they all look almost the same so you are unable to ascertain your exact position by trying to reference them on the map. However at this point you can see the higher, densely forested slopes of the mountain ahead of you so at least you roughly know where probably you should have to go.
After scrambling over some large rock piles, finally proper guidance resumes as many cairns are now easily detectable in the distance. It descends quickly, and after a few minutes you dive again in thick forest and cross unto this saddle to reach a well signalled pass with signs and trail numbers etc. where you think the worst is passed, but it's not.
A nice winding trail under a mature forest welcomes you: it starts wide and clear, the environment is characterized by tall trees with no undergrowth so while the sky is covered you have a very good view ahead and around you. After this short nice part, the trail starts crumbling on itself and the nice progression has to stop continously. The gradient becomes tough quickly, the only indications are some painted ones on trees and rocks and thin white and red stripes hanging from some branches, most of them pretty old and discolored, others partially wrapped by the wind away from where you can see them. Now you find yourself in a huge, confusing forest where you can't see a trail, as any ledge seems like one, or signal, as those painted on the side of trees are few and far between and the stripes you are looking for are probably covered by some intervening trunk. Took a lot of time in backtracking and in crossing offtrail in a general direction to give sense to this day. Many times I ended up finding a higher section of the trail I was looking for, just to loose it again after a few minutes. Maybe I didn't see a signal between the hundred trunks around me, maybe I didn't get a sudden turn at some point; in the end I did a lot of guesswork and proceeded following the best path of "least resistance" I could find.
The ridge itself at round 960-1000masl is still densely forested but the trail over there is somehow in better shape and easier to follow. I expected something better thought though, as it did not follow a well studied direction, to reduce turns and ups and downs, but instead looks like it tries to follow any possible bump to stay on the true ridge. Needless to say, this means it gets longer and more tiresome than it should have been, without giving much in terms of views because you are still mostly under trees cover.
When you finally get to the final meters, a clearing opens in front of you revealing two separate cairns marking the highest points. One of them, in dubious fashion, hosts a crossroads sign pointing at different trails "maintained" by the alpine club that apparently dipart from the summit.
At least the views are breathtaking; it is something to fight the dread you are feeling about the way down, knowing how many places you saw where you could get lost again and again. The way back was punishing almost as the way up.
Great day, I loved it.