Moonlight
Wish there was a bit more snow, but what can you do. Hopefully it will stay clear for tomorrow night as well and maybe I’ll think of some place interesting to go…
Spring snow flurries over Stamsund
One of the cool things about the north is how quickly the weather comes and goes. One April morning after a night of snow I woke up to nice sunny weather. First thought of mine was to head up Steinetind (the mountain in the center of the first pic) and take in the view. Around the half way point, while I was climbing a smaller middle peak the winds picked up as some clouds blew over and brought about 20 minutes of snow. I huddled down among some rocks and waited for it to pass. And soon enough, as quickly as it arrived, it was over and I was looking at nice blue skies again and a gently breeze. now back on my way up the mountain…
Saint Coloman Festival
On our way out of Schwangau on Sunday we ran into a detour. We didn’t think much of it until we were in sight of St. Coloman church and had a fireman basically put us into a farm field turned parking lot. Well, it turns out that we ran into the festival day of St. Coloman church, with a Catholic Bishop and all. There was a cool parade of Lederhosen and Dirndl wearing Bavarian’s on horseback set among the scenic background of the Allgäu mountains. I left the spectators and spent some time walking and photographing among the horses. Pretty cool sight to ‘accidentally’ come across.
Zugspitze
Took this back in April from the same place as the time-lapse video I made. Zugspitze is on my list of climbs in the near future, maybe in the autumn if I have time.
In the Mountains again
Down at the German/Austrian border. Mittenwalder Höhenweg Via-Ferrata.
Midsummer: Austrian Style
While the Germans like to build one big ass fire, the Austrians seem to prefer hundreds of small fires, which they take up into the mountains. I’m not quite sure how they coordinate it, and if every fire is a person, or one person has several fires which they maintain, but it is truly a marvelous sight. At about ten o’clock someone shot off a flair from one of the mountain peaks, and then moments later the hundreds of little fires lit up on all the surrounding mountains.
Our cabin was one of the buildings near the cow’s butt. Up at about 5,000 feet with a pretty good view.
Random Photo…
Sabine posing on the summit of Ben Nevis (highest mountain in Scotland).
This photo was chosen at random from one of my flash cards. I can’t download anything to my computer until I free up hard drive space, but I’ve got several other projects that I need to finish first, unfortunately.
We were so unbelievably lucky with the weather! For the whole 3 weeks, we had no more than about 3 hours of rain, total, and way more than our share of sunny blue skies (albeit a bit hazy a lot of the time). The days were so long, with the sun heading down a bit after 10pm and the morning starting all too early! On some of our hikes I was even complaining that it was too hot and I shouldn’t need to wear sunblock in Scotland. After about a week of sunshine and temps in the 70’s it was pretty funny to see about half the locals walking around with sunburns.
I think we managed to find just about every tick in Scotland. Each night, just before bed, we would have our “tick check.” So one night, Sabine found one crawling up my leg, and then another one on my other leg. This led me to check my shoes, where upon I found about 7-8 more. Then I checked my pants where a few more turned up, and then we found a few more crawling around the van on and on my camera case. All in all, we spent about an hour, searching the van at midnight with our headlamps looking for ticks. They are actually easier to find at night because they are a bit shiny and will reflect in the light, but most of them were so unbelievably small, often no larger than a pinhead, that we didn’t want to think about how many we couldn’t find. Then next morning we took just about everything out of the van, finding another 5-6. So all and all, for this one incident, we came up with about 30 ticks! Awful. This happened in the middle of the trip, so we spent the second half completely paranoid and checked ourselves religiously whenever we got into the van. And even being quite careful, on a short little walk (about 20 feet) to the edge of a cliff, I managed to collect 7 on my shoes and pants.
And due to the mild winter here in Europe, Germany is predicted to have a large amount of ticks this summer. I already managed to get the first one on Saturday (less than 24 hours since getting back) while out climbing.
Allgäu in Winter
Made a short little road trip down to the Allgäu region over the weekend, or in other words, to the mountains. The trip was also to test out ‘the van,’ which we are going to take on a 3 week trip to Scotland next month. Weather was hit and miss, but managed a few photos between the snow and rain…
Zugspitze
Time lapse of clouds over Zugspitze, Germany’s highest mountain.
This is my first attempt to embed video, so if you have any problems seeing it, please comment!
Up To The Hills…
By last Monday the news was basically forecasting the end of the world in California from the “massive” storm headed our way. All reports were warning of 8-10″ of rain in the lowlands and 6-10 feet of snow in the mountains. When my buddy Tim said he and a friend were making a trip to Mammoth, I couldn’t help but ask to come along. If there was too much snow and we couldn’t make it I could at least take some pics, and if we got there it would hopefully be some awesome conditions.
Friday night we drove up to Bishop, arriving by midnight after hours of heavy rain and high winds, making the journey a bit longer than usual. By 5:30am we were on the road north to Mammoth. When the lifts opened at 8:30 we were near the front of the small line and cutting fresh lines through powder a few minutes later. Running through the trees, I had an encounter with one which did some damage to my leg and took me out of action in the early afternoon, unsure of what I could do on Sunday. Sat night we drove through blizzard conditions which required a police escort up the 395 to June Lake. Waking up on Sunday morning and looking out the window of our cabin, I saw beautiful blue skies and snow covered peaks in every direction. When we arrived at June mountain for a day on the slopes, I had to suck up the pain in my leg, and get out there, it was just too good! So we spent all Sunday running black and double black diamonds in awesome conditions, and there was hardly even anyone out on the slopes and never a line for the lifts! I think it will be hard to ever beat a day like Sunday. I took a few pics, but preferred to spend my time enjoying the conditions.
Saturday night at June Lake
Sunday Morning at June Lake
Pano from the top of the first lift at June mountain; June lake in foreground, Mono lake in background (click to see larger)
Tim on some steep slopes
Seth cutting through some fresh stuff
Too much fun!
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