Tomorrow: Saturday 6th: Aperer Feuerstein in fog from Nurnberger; Nurnberger to Sulzenau
Today dawns fair, which seems a shame as it would have been more useful yesterday.
Looking closer, I can see the Z behind the WP, but it doesn't look like itself, so to speak. After a leisurely breakfast Anna and Tobias and I head up the WF side of the glacier, at their request; they aren't quite as blase as I am about crevasses, and who knows they may be correct (My pic shows us all roped up in the mist, I'd forgotten that). However, by the time we actually get up onto the snow - you can traverse straight from the back of the hut, don't descend first via the way I came up. The GPS trace would show this except I forgot to turn it on to start with - the cloud has come up again and we can't see a thing, so crevasse avoidance is a bit random. Here's a last view of the hutte before the cloud closes in:
Up to the wetterstation, and then down the what-I-think-is-familiar path, but as usual whenever I think that there's a twist, and in this case the twist is that in the poor viz I've missed that whilst you can usually plunge down the nice snow instead of the nasty rocks, when you get to the last band before the "snow bowl" you need to make sure you don't descend too far. We do descend too far. Were I alone this would be no problem - I could just forsake the path, descend to the unnamed lovely lakes at ~2488 below the Urfallspitze, and follow the river down; a pleasant route. But A+T are going to the Sulzenauhutte and so need to get to the Seescharte, and I can't abandon them having lead them astray, so we slog back up, only about 50-100 m, well all right nearly 100 m says the GPS, cross the rock band and get back on track. And finally to the scharte where we parte:
A little lower down I get a view across to the (as far as I know un-named) lakes, the un-named ridge behind it rising up to the Hohe Wand I think:
On the way down I hear and see marmots, which is not unusual, but I also get close enough for a not-just-a-pixel photograph, which is unusual, so here it is:
And then ein Grosses Radler at the hutte, and sit out reading The King in Yellow, which is weird (the initial story is definitely weird, but good. A later one does indeed turn out to be about the siege of Paris, as I guessed. And then the book segues into romance, which is odd. There is linking, in terms of style, and of characters, but the overall transition from horror to romance is unexpected). Ah, but I can now look it up, which I couldn't then. The Guardiennes remember me and smile, which is nice. As are the hot showers.
Some Frenchmen beg my pardon and ask about the WF. They seem astonished when I suggest it may take them 6 hours. Was it OK? Yes, if you don't mind a bit of snow on the path and steep snow slopes higher up; if you take care not to get lost in the cloud, which is easy; if you're fit; and so on. Its almost impossible to give useful advice.
Oh yes, and in the evening number one: food: six Nurnberger sausages on sauerkraut, with wine!
and number two: music:
That didn't happen every evening.
No comments:
Post a Comment