We’re here in the season between seasons. The shoulder season is half of April and all of May. Summer goes from June through September. It’s apparent on our hike today that winter is ending quickly. We witnessed icicles melting, hiked down a ski slope and road with sloppy mud and patches of slushy snow, and passed by slopes eroding in front of our very eyes due to the high volume of snow-melt runoff.
We had a lunch picnic by a frozen glacial lake. Glaciers and their creeks and rivers have the most magnificent blue-turquoise color. The river through Zermatt has a gray-turquoise hue, and much of the soil high up on the mountains is gray with spots of blue. Some rocks have the same color. This alpine environment sometimes seems like a moonscape.
On the news this evening, there was a story about ethanol. It takes the equivalent of one year’s worth of food (for a small family, I think), about 500 lbs of corn, to make one tank of ethanol! I don’t know how big a tank is, but that sounds pretty inefficient no matter how big it is. They also had a story on biodiesel, which I believe is much more environmentally-friendly. A group of students at the University of Central Florida are making biodiesel to save money on gas. It burns more efficiently than gasoline. I think that’s because it burns at a higher temperature. I wonder how much energy- and what kind of energy – goes into making ethanol. The answer to that question seems to be a source of contention; I’ve heard vastly different estimates from different sources. The amount of energy used to make ethanol bears great importance on its environmental impact and how it compares to other alternative fuels like biodiesel.
We’ve encountered a few creatures and various biomes on our hikes in the Alps. We’ve gone from the town streets to meadows where cattle graze to pine forests to high meadows above the tree line. I breathe a sigh of relief that we’re able to hike straight from town; we don’t have to drive anywhere for access to countless great trail heads! We saw a couple mountain goats on top of the Gornergrat, a couple groundhogs that were about to mate until we so rudely interrupted, and some dark-colored deer with large antlers. We even saw a couple para-gliders today!
The post office gave numbered tickets for the line (or “queue.”) That’s the way I understand the Swedes do it too. People were able to walk around and not worry about anyone jumping in front of them in line, and there was no question whose turn it was when the numbers came up on the board. It’s much more orderly this way; I wish we did that in the US.
 |
| Switzerland Videos |
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
This morning was perfectly clear except for some clouds coming off of the Matterhorn, a perfect day for a hike. We were out the door at 0930 and took care of some business first, like checking train schedules for tomorrow and sending off postcards from Die Post. You had to get a numbered ticket there and go up once your number was on the board. We headed up towards Findeln on a very familiar trail above the railway bridge. Along the way we saw some deer prancing about and a couple marmots being frisky. Findeln and the other villages up there were completely vacant and we only saw two other people before lunchtime. We had lunch next to the iced over Leisee (lake) just below Sunegga Paradise. It was a great spot with a picnic table, a stream, and a flawless view all the way from the Gornergrat to the Matterhorn. At 1300 or so, other people started to show up in the area, just as we left to head back down. A lot of the lesser trails through the woods were closed because of snow, so we were forced to take the access road from Sunegga almost all the way down. It was completely flat to the village of Tufternalp then finally started dropping after that. I made good use of the snow-covered slopes by rolling huge snowballs down the hill. The access road looked like it was the ‘easy way down’ for the ski resort, but today it was a miserable mix of snirt, mud, ice, and running water. We bailed off the road at a trail that cut over to Zermatt before Reid, which turned out to be one we hiked on last time I was here. It was a nice descent through a pine forest with spots covered in snow/ice with pine needles on top. The trail eventually came back into Zermatt where Ashley’s apartmenthaus is, another familiar spot. We headed over to Hotel Astoria and paid up since we are leaving early tomorrow and the hotel is on the other end of town. Next up was a visit to the Mini market were we bought some food for tomorrow since it will be such a long day. We then went over to the train station to but return tickets to Visp. The station attendant asked where our finally destination was, and was able to hook us up with both train reservations required to get to Siena, all in one transaction, very impressive. We might get the remaining reservations we will need in the morning we do we don’t have to worry about it in Italy or Slovenia. Dinner was the apartment again (no rosti for me this time), pasta with Camembert cheese sauce, zucchini, and peas with some bread on the side. We listened to German radio while writing in the journals and packing up for tomorrow.
 |
| Switzerland Pictures |
