A Few Details

Cable Car

These photos are from our cable car ride up to the Weisssee, taken with the small camera.  Looking at these photos now more that two months later I really want to go back!! 

Flowers and Butterflies

We came off the cable car back at the bottom and were greeted with lots of lovely flowers and butterflies enjoying the break in the rain.

More from the Cheater Hike

Several of these photos were taken from the cable car.  It was great to have a birds eye view.

Weisssee

The day after our huge hike we decided to take it easy and took a cable car up to this amazing glacier lake the Weißsee or if you don't have a German keyboard the Weisssee.  Actually we were all still exhausted and didn't have the energy for another big hike which was a shame because once you rode the cable car up there was a lot of land to explore.  Although, even if we'd had the energy, I don't think we had the equipment for this hike.  Everyone we saw had at least ski poles.  But all of that aside you can see that we had quite an amazing experience.  There was a thick fog (or cloud?) on our arrival that seemed destined to swallow us up.  It shifted back and forth as we walked and then it opened wide up and let in the sun.  The lake, which was pretty fabulous before the sun, was downright amazing.  I took a gazillion photos of the water, the ice, and the reflected mountain.

Austrian Animals

My only disappointment in Austria was the lack of visible wild animals.  Most of what we saw were domestic: horses, cows, sheep, and goats.  There are a number of pretty amazing animals that live up in the alps but maybe we weren't spending enough time in one place to actually see them.  On the other hand the marmots made the final (exhausting and painful and straight up!!) climb on our Pasterze Glacier Trail a bit more fun.  We heard a scream I thought would be a big eagle or vulture and looked up to find two marmots tussling on the side of the mountain. 

Mountain Wildflowers

If I had told Matt at the beginning of our hike that I was going to stop every 30 seconds and take a photo of every wildflower he probably would have declined to come.  So I didn't tell him.  These are just some of the wildflowers we passed and a few of the reasons it took us more than 4 hours to do this hike.

Vertical Views

More shots from the Pasterze Glacier Trail.  I cannot overstate how fantastic this trail was for us to hike.  It feels like something we need to do again. 

Pasterze Glacier Trail

A few photos from our most incredible hike.  I'm going to let them speak for themselves because classes start tomorrow and I have a last minute addition for which I need to prepare.  But I did take a photo of nearly every wildflower and rock on this trail so you can look forward to more photos and descriptions soon.

Great Rocks