Riederalp - the Glacier

Finally the day had come. Packed and ready, with a incredible amount of warm clothing we set off in the heat of august towards the elevator taking us to a high point from which we were to decend towards the glacier. The first part was okay and i was rather beginning to wonder why we had all these clothes with us. But as we stepped onto the glacier the temperature dropped spectacular. And by the time we came to a stop somewhere in the middle of the glacier, on one of the moraines, it was really cold. The Aletsch glacier has two moraines which consist of lots of rocks that are pushed forward by the individual glaciers that form the Aletsch (see further down as wel) and when they merge, the ice doesnt really mingle (since its not liquid), so the edges of the individual glaciers are still visible.
The guy trying to keep himself warm is actually one of our guides, and he's use to it!


It was an adventure to be walking over the ice with our ice shoes on. But it was not without risk. A few people fell down on the ice, which is rather sharp and scafed their hands and knees. Walking for hours over a gigantic white ice sheet starts to hypnotise you. It's almost as if you are no longer in this world. As if time doesn't really have any meaning.
We were rudly awakened from our dreams by the last steep climb towards the mountain hut were we spent the night.
The hut looks over the Aletsch glacier, which is very spectacular. Basically consists of three glaciers, joining together and continuing their journey as if three very slow rivers of ice join together.
As you can see above, the hut is supplied during the summer by helicopter.
In the picture below you can see the part of the glacier we had already walked the first day. Here you can see very clearly the moraines.
The next day, we started very early in the morning. After a nice descend via a ladder (which was rather steep), we started immediately.

What goes up, must come down. After the initial joy of reaching the highest point of the day, we realised we had a very long way down yet. In total we were to descend some 1400 meter.


And although the way down seemed smooth at first, it proved to be a real challenge, giving us the roughest terrain of the whole trip.
After hours of descending we entered the valley of Lötschental.


Everyone was happy to be there (the whole group was rather tired as well), although it took us the better part of the next hour to get to the rendez-vous point where the bus was going to pick us up to get back to Riederalp. Looking back it was rather impressive what we had accomplished that day!

But the cows couldn't care less: