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:

Riederalp - Switzerland

The first week of August i went to Switzerland. For me it had been many years since i was in that beautiful country. Via a colleague, Lieve, i heard about this plan to do a 2-day glacier trekking at Riederalp (which is in the south of the country) and spend in total around a week in "Berghaus Toni". The glacier is no other than the Aletsch Glacier, the longest in Europe.
The story is that a friend of Lieve, Sven, had recently bought the hotel Toni and is planning to run it from now on. He has been going to the region of Riederalp ever since he was a child, he even speaks the swiss german dialect.

So i hooked up with two other people who were going to Riederalp and we started of together in a car. The plan was to join a family that was also on their way towards Switserland and we were to meet up somewhere in the Elzas. We ended up together on a campground in Kandersteg, only a few dozen kilometers from Riederalp.
The next day we took advantage of our position to do a very lovely walk around the Oeschinensee (with 'see' being the german word for lake, not sea).

It was so nice to see the impressive mountains again. It had been from when i was 17 that i last saw them (then i went skying, the last time i actually walked in the mountains of Switzerland was when i was 14 years old).


I was also thrilled to see the typical cows, with their enormous bells around their necks. I always feel a bit sad for them, it must be maddening to run around the whole day with that noisy thing around you.

It was a lovely day, sunny and the swiss national holiday. The forest around the lake provided us with some shelter from the sun and made for a lovely hike.

Once we arrived in Riederalp and settled in the hotel the fun began. It was a very lively group with very creative people among them (actors, musicians, ...), which means there is always someone around to entertain the group. The evenings were filled with songs and music, since we had a couple of very skilled guitar players in our midst (one of them only 11 years old!).

And a plan was unfolding to create a movie about our adventures in Riederalp. Did i mention already we had creative people in the group? Still haven't seen the end result though, looking forward to it.

In the picture below you can see on the left side the little town of Riederalp. As you can see Riederalp is situated on the mountain and can normally only be reached via one of the two elevators. There are no cars in Riederalp (with the exception of two electrical cars that are used for all kinds of things, amongst other a kind of taxi service for people who don't get around easily). Just imagine, if any construction works need to be done, they need to haul all the equipment up by elevator.


We scouted the surroundings with a little hike to the nerby Riederhorn (horn being the name for the mountain peaks).
There was one day of rain, but to be honest i didn't even mind too much. I spend it in good company playing some games and learned an entirely new one, called 'jungle speed'.
On sunday we went and watched the 'yodel mass', i kid you not :-)

The next day, we went on a beautifull walk through the mountains.
The path took us to a breathtaking bridge, that we needed to cross.
And it gave us our first clear sight of the glacier we were to climb within two days.I was really excited for the coming 2-day hike.

Iceland - the final chapter

Still dazed by the experience of the whale whatching, we set of towards Akureyri, the biggest city in the north and forth biggest city in the whole of Iceland (but only around 20.000 inhabitants). We basically only stopped there to get some late lunch which only found after touring half of the city. There were some festivities because of the national holiday of Iceland (17th of June).

Apparently the city is known for its botanical gardens but we didn't really care about it and drove further towards Sauðárkrókur where we stayed for the night. It was one of the finest guesthouses we had along our journey with a very nice living room and kitchen which we had more or less to ourselves. We took advantage of the nice setting to have a relaxing evening with a game of chess.

The next day (day 5 already) we set off, driving further east. In the mean time some red light had started to blink indicating that we needed to check the oil level. Well, we did, and we couldn't see anything wrong with it so we simply continued. Need I to remind you that neither of us has any idea about car mechanics, but we felt relatively okay.

We drove through the surprisingly green and fertile lands of the Húnavatnssýsla county.
We continued towards the Borgarfjörður district. This district is largely dominated by a big valley and again nice and luch to behold. The roads are pleasently winding through the countryside. We stopped at Deildartunguhver hot spring. It doesn't look very special but the hote water is tunneled over towards Borgarnes and even Akranes (34 and 64 kilometers away) where it provides all the hot water and a lot of the heating.

Still following the valley we arrived at a historical site called Reykholt. There there is since recent years a big museum and site dedicated to Snorri Sturluson. Apart from having a very funny name it is one of Iceland most famous writers and especially there best known historian.
There was a interesting museum there and although the girl that greated us was very cute, we didn't really feel like running around a museum for a few hours.Instead we continued following the valley and river until we came to the Barnafossar and Hraunfossar waterfalls. These are very beautifull and although we had seen many warfall (fos) before in Iceland, these really appealed, but difficult to describe and as they say: 'a picture says more than a thousand words' (yeah i know, a strange thing to hear me say)
Instead of turning around here, i had one more thing to visit here, something i had been looking forward to for a while. Starting to leave the least signs of civilisation and the last parts of paved road (although the policy of our car rental said clearly we had to stay on paved road with our 2x4 car), we found the lava fields. We had seen these rugged landscapes before, but this time there were lava tubes in these fields that you could actually visit.
Again you could see the naturally formed basalt stones that look like they are created by humans, this time in such a vast amount that the church floor (see before) looks pathetic.Luckely we had a flash light, because the cave was very dark, which made it a bit of a challenge to take pictures. Above you see the entrance to the lava tube i took, as you might be able to see it goes downwards rather steeply. I didn't just wanted to take pictures from the rock of the cave but especially of the beautiful stalagmites made entirly of ice. The temperature in the cave was rather chilly which is why the stalagmites survived even in June.
This last one is really dark, taken from inside the cave where i could still see some daylight (i went just beyond the point where i had some idea of where the exit was and then i turned around since i was by myself and with only one flashlight, i had no redundancy :-) ).
We stayed overnight at the town of Borgarnes, which is located nicely next to a great lake. The hostel was outside of the town, and after a nice swim in the Borgarnes swimming pool we enjoyed our dinner at the guesthouse (payed for since we had to be in the city center but they were booked out due to a visiting motorcycle group).

The next day we had a very lovely drive towards Reykjavik (going through an impressive tunnel they created as a shortcut). We stopped by the rental company to let them have a look at the flashing light and the mechanic put 2 liter of oil in our car (it was apparently a good idea to make the pit stop).
After that there was one more thing to do: The Blue Lagoon. By far the most visited attraction in Iceland. It is a big geothermal pool, that was blue one day, but due to the huge amounts of white clay that are being used by visitors (because i has a kind of natural peeling effect and is suppose to be good for your skin), the water in the actual pool has turned white. This picture was taken outside the actual pool area and here you can still see the blue color.

The pool itself is big, put very shallow, so don't be mistaken by this picture, people generally are sitting down.

The Blue Lagoon is a very fancy infrastructure, trying to lure a more high end public (than what the hell was i doing there, i can hear you think). Including groups who basically are touring Europe and take in Iceland in one day (which means they quickly tour Reykjavik and swim in the Blue Lagoon), like the group of Japaneese girls we met. In the picture below you also so how the edges of the pool are painted white because of the clay.

By then it was time to head back for the capital where we turned in the car. Then we went for the centre again and had a lovely diner and went to sleep early, the next day we had a plain to catch very early in the morning. The trip back was rather eventless, except that because of poor planning i had to be back in time because i still had my diving tanks to fill because i was scheduled to go on the North Sea the next day. But all ended well ;-)

All in all it was a very filled trip. Although i only spent one week in Iceland (to visit, the other week was purely for work), i really saw a lot, got a good impression and the trip was filled with first timers (whales, lava tubes, geysers, ...)

Iceland - whale watching

There we go again, we continue circling the island.

Day 4: Whale Watching day!!

An extra day especially to go out with a rebuilt fishersboat to go 'hunting' for whales, not to kill them as they did a lot in the past, but to observer them. We set of in the morning going to the end of the bay in the direction of the open sea. The area is very rich in krillwhich is the reason that there are so many whales around, question of course was, are we going to see any?

We immediately took position at the highest point on the boat, and i found myself next to a girl (who's name was something like Fyrerune, which apparently meant something like 'the sign of God' or something along those lines) who works for the whale museum of Husavik. There is some kind of deal between the museum and the people operating the whale spotting boats, and on almost each trip there is someone from the museum to take notes and photographe the whales.

In case you are wondering, yes it was cold up there!

They try to identify as many of them as possible, among others to see whether they are coming back to this bay. This is important since it shows that krill population is still thriving.

It also gave us a direct access to a lot of information on the whales.

But which ones? We didn't see any. We spent at least an hour on the calm water (the few puffins we saw where cute but that was already a long time ago).

Seems a bit wierd behavior for a bird? Yeah, the little guys really are great flyers, they skim over the water but they are good divers and that makes them okay in my book!

And just when we thought we were going to be in that 1,75% of the times that there is nothing to see on the trip (and therefore we were going to get another free trip), it started. First there were rumors, entusiastic people from the company that told us there was a blow to be seen at the horizon: yeah sure, they are probably saying that so we can't ask for another free trip. But then, behold: we saw it, far away still but we could see (especially through the lens of my camera) the back of a Blue Whale, the biggest animal on the planet. The idea that i was looking at this magnificent creature, that can reach a length of 30 meters and can weigh upto 200 tonnes, gave me a very excited feeling.

From that moment on it started, we got reports from everywhere: first the people on watch were shouting instruction to the ever more enthustiastic tourists, they gave us the directions by using the clock reference system (i.e. if the whale was straight ahead it's at twelve o'clock, behind us at six o'clock, etc...)

Afther a while they couldn't keep up anymore and at a certain time they actually called out: they are everywhere :-)

We saw a lot of blue whales, mostly at a respectful distance and then a whole bunch of humpback whales.

Above you can see a humpback, through the water you clearly see his right front fin, which is absolutely huge.And in this one you can see also the two blowholes on its back.

The humpbacks came a lot closer and gave us a nice show, with many fluke fins, the absolute view i wanted to see in my life.
This was already nice but this was wat i had always dreamed of seeing:
'V' for Victory:
This one isn't bad either: And to close it all of: a mother with calf just next to the boat, everyone went wild ;-)

I was taking pictures like crazy, luckely i emptied my compact flash card (2GB) the day before. Suddenly i noticed that Fyrerune (or something like that) hadn't taken any pictures for a while and was basically looking at here camera in stead. When i asked she said her camera appeared not to be working anymore and there was this strange message. It read 'CF Full', which i explained to her meant her memory was full so no more pictures.

I suggested that, also since i had a zoom lens with a better focal length, i would let her copy my pictures. See it as my contribution to science :-)

She was delighted and we went with her to the museum, where they all started looking at my pictures. One guy started looking and when he saw one of the first of the blue whales (and you could just see the back) he simply stated 'oh yeah, saw that one last week'. Apparently they all have a unique pattern of blue and grey on their back, but still, amazing that he could identify them on the spot.

We were allowed free entrance to the museum and it was worth a visit. Have a look at their website: http://www.whalemuseum.is/museum/

Afterwards i started chatting with two trainees who almost finished their intern (one girl from Italy and one girl from the States). Although they were cute girls, Tony reminded me that we needed to move on if we where to arrive at our destination of the day in time. ;-)

One more grand finale (if you wonder whether it's the same: just check the patern of white on the tail to compare the humpbacks):