And the next morning

Over night the weather turned perfect. The first rays of the sun illuminate the peak of the mighty Ortler, the highest rock there with almost 4000 meters. Then the morning sun brought color to the valley to encourage the early mountain hikers....although some of them were still too sleepy to enjoy ;-)

Evening impressions

From the second evening...it was wet and a bit dull that day.

On the road to Italy

A couple of pictures from September 9th, when we were on our way from Berlin to the mountains. First break from driving was a late breakfast after about 300 kilomters in a restaurant which is a bridge over the Autobahn. The weather was fine and the coffee surprisingly good.Several hours later and much closer to the border to Austria it was time for lunch. I decided to have a rather sweet lunch and a coffee, again.:-)Then we entered mountain territory...following the endless flood of cars driven by people with similar intentions...

A curiosity by the way: the Italian goverment decided they need a storage lake near Reschen in the middle of the last century. So they just flooded a valley, including a couple of villages. Just the medieval churchtower is still visible...a strange view. (at Wiki)

Ready to go

Ready to climb the Everest or whatever comes ;-)
This is the place where we entered the glacier, there's ice under the snow. So we put on our climbing irons and the rope.
A couple of hours later I looked different....somehow not so ready anymore... :-)

Between heaven and earth

It wasn't only cow watching. Maybe not the most physical challenging but the most thrilling uphill trip was the climbing of the Suldenspitze, 3376 meters high, by crossing the Sulden glacier with its deep crevasses (up to 80 meters), which were dangerously hidden under 30 centimeters fresh snow from just that morning. So a rope is necessary....
...just like other equipment. With two of these ice axes it's at least theoretically possible to climb out of an crevasse...if you don't break your neck during the fall... We trained this the day before, just in case :-)
The reward is an amazing vista point, almost at cloud level. In the back is the beautiful green Sulden valley, the starting point. In the foreground our track is visible in the snow, pretty close to the crevasses :-O

Sleepy cows

Sometimes they take a rest from grass-eating. Then it looks like this...

Happy cows

Back again from Italy. This time it was the far North of it: Südtirol, or Alto Adige or South Tyrol, as you like.
Even though the Alps are invaded by lots of millions of tourists (like me) every year part of it looks still pretty untouched or at least still pretty. Especially the part around the Stilfser Joch, which is a protected national park area.
The peaceful grazing cattle on more or less green pasture in front of high snow-topped mountains looked truly happy. Even despite the fact that they have to wear cowbells all the time...which created the ambient bell sound of the valleys.