SKUTA - KR.RINKA and over its subordinate ridges on the eastern side
We set the tour in nice weather quite ambitiously with big mountaineering or, in the last part between Skuta and Kranjska Rinka, already alpinistic goals, and almost too extensive for the now too short autumn day: warm-up over Veliki greben (between Žmavčarji and Gams.skret), then to Sleme under Skuta and then over Streža and SE ridge to Skuta. In a pretty fast pace and with a lot of fitness reserve and the fact that we had already known those ridges before, from parking V Koncu to the top of Skuta in just over 6 hours, which is pretty super for younger retirees!? But a new story starts at the ridge traverse from Skuta to Kranjska Rinka, where much more protection and technical knowledge was needed and there was no time for looking at the watch, as the traverse demands full concentration and offers plenty of climbing challenges.
The difficulty of the descent from Skuta down is average II, but due to bad rock, friability and scree loading it rather increases a bit in places than decreases. Above the window there is a fairly demanding slab, below it also narrow and hard. The detail of climbing over the steep, exposed and nasty slab just above Konj seemed to me personally very hard too – but now there is a prepared anchor for abseil there, we abseiled also over Konj (opposite direction up approx. IV, approx. 7m, down without rope would of course be even harder). The continuation over the intermediate part, from afar seemingly more level part between Skuta and Kr.Rinka, still presents a whole bunch of up-down climbing over narrow edges and pointy peaks with abundance of exposure (like financiers in miniature). Retreat is possible from the middle onwards to the south side, but even those few narrow and loaded ledges demand full focus. Then follows the ascent itself, somewhere to 3/4 to the top of Kr.Rinka in difficulty also around I-II, but the ridge soon becomes wider and transitions into broader terrain, so it loses a bit at least on exposure, but still due to crumbly nature one has to watch especially for slipping.
From Kranjska Rinka down to the bivouac on Mali podi and then to the valley there are already known hiking paths and they are currently without any specials, although the consequences of this summer's thunderstorm in these areas are still very visible, but luckily not on the paths over Gamsov skret and over Žmavčarji.