Dutch Mountain Trail Hike Preparations

As mentioned in another post we are planning to walk part of the Dutch Mountain Trail this year. So; not the complete 100km but a little over half of it during 3 days. And we will walk sections, returning to our hotel every day. Some of the preparation started with a hotel found in Heerlen and ordering the official guide book. Delivery was fast, within a week of ordering it I had it in my mailbox. It has a handy, small format so we can take it with us during the hike. It has maps and directions, plus information about places along the route. The complete title of the booklet is ‘Dutch Mountain Trail and the Seven Summits’. The official 7 summits are the highest mountains on the 7 different continents. They form the ultimate challenge for real mountain climbers. The Dutch 7 summits are of course not of the same category but they are the peaks of an otherwise flat country. The 7 summits came first and the Dutch Mountain Trail followed, it passes all 7 summits. They are our backup plan in case the weather is really poor, then we can still do some shorter walks climbing only these summits as those hikes are between 5 and 9km. As the trail is not well marked I also downloaded the gpx route from the DMT site. Which means we’ll have to make sure we take a powerbank with us as well to make sure we don’t run out of battery and still get lost on the trail. We still need to figure out the public transport and other details but slowly we are getting prepared as the trip gets closer.