Swiss Alps Photo Galleries: Lauterbrunnen

Lauterbrunnen, Bernese Oberland Switzerland

Recently I’ve been posting images from a trip I made in 2010 to the Swiss (and French) Alps. Temperamental weather (snow! in July!) in Murren, a village at 1,650 meters (5,413 feet) elevation on the green flank of the Schilthorn,   brought on a bad case of hotel-room fever. When I couldn’t take being cooped up inside any more, I would ride the cable car down to Lauterbrunnen, a village on the valley floor. As you can see, the houses and valley walls were just as photogenic as Murren itself…

I’d love to go back, and take R. with me. Between the recent yen devaluation, however, and the spike in the value of the Swiss franc, the chances of a return trip are looking less and less likely…

Swiss Alps Photo Galleries: Murren and Gimmelwald (Fourth and Final Gallery)

Murren and Gimmelwald from the trail to Rotstockhutte, Switzerland

(Part of an ongoing series of galleries created from photos taken in and around Murren and Gimmelwald in the Lauterbrunnen Velley of the Bernese Oberland, Switzerland. Follow these links to visit Gallery One, Gallery Two, and Gallery Three).

As I’ve written previously, in the summer of 2010 I returned to the most memorable spot from my first trip to Europe more than twenty years earlier: the villages of Murren and Gimmelwald above Lauterbrunnen Valley. Unfortunately, I didn’t make it very well with the weather: it rained most of the week I was there, and one morning I walked to the post office through falling  snow. This was early August. On the plus side, a young alpaca watched me pass, eyeing my Gore-Tex longingly. Or hungrily…

On fair weather days I did manage to get out for a few hikes in and around town, including the trail (most of the way) to Rotstockhuette. This gallery, Gallery Four, is mostly pictures from that day trip. I made it most of the way to Rotstockhutte, through alpine meadows and a small herd of cows, but a late afternoon thunderstorm was rolling up the valley from the direction of the hut, and I decided to turn back rather than risk a lightening storm on an exposed mountainside.

I carried two cameras on this trip: The Canon G9 and the original Olympus E-P1. The first PEN model was slow to clear the buffer, had no optional viewfinder and dim LCD, and the settings were easily changed with a bump of the various rear controls. As a consequence, I lost a lot of good pictures. Here are the survivors. For lenses I carried the Lumix 20mm 1.7, and the coveted Lumix 7-14 4.0 wide-angle zoom. Note that the images in this gallery have been processed in DxO Pro X using the HDR Realistic setting and a touch of ClearView to remove haze. The effects look stunning – especially on the screen of my new iMac Retina! Just saying…