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…

Swiss Alps Photo Galleries: Murren and Gimmelwald (Gallery Three)

Murren and Gimmelwald, 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, Swistzerland. Follow these links to visit Gallery One and Gallery Two).

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.

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.

Swiss Alps Photo Drift: Murren and Gimmelwald (Gallery Two)

Murren & Gimmelwald, Luaterbrunnen Valley Swiss Alps

In the summer of 2010 I returned to the villages of Murren and Gimmelwald in the Swiss Alps, high above Lauterbrunnen Valley, where I’d first visited some twenty years before, Unfortunately, this return trip, I didn’t have much luck 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.

Where Bear?

In over thirty years of camping and otherwise spending time out of doors, I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen an animal in the wild bigger than, say, the raccoons and porcupines which infest Frontenac Provincial Park.

 

Index Finger: And this one’s set at a garbage dump, which stretches “in the wild” past credibility really. But I’m desperate. Dad and his girlfriend had rented a cottage for the summer near Huntsville, Ontario. One night we followed local tradition and drove out to the dump to watch the local black bears. Ten or so cars lined up, headlights reflecting on a small mountain of black and green plastic garbage bags while a trio of black bears made a mountain out of a molehill. One dude, a tourist, likely, same as us, had to get out of his car for a closer photo. One of the bears sped straight at him ’til the man locked himself back in his car. The bear, point made, returned immediately to eating. Clearly, this had not been an emotional event for him.

Middle Finger: Once, on an early spring hiking trip in Frontenac, my buddy Tom and I came into a meadow where a fawn was drinking water from a puddle. The fawn, surprised, bolted in one direction. And from an explosion in the undergrowth nearby, whatever had been stalking that fawn – a wolf, perhaps – took off in the other, leaving Tom and I to wonder at just what goes on in nature when no-one’s looking.

Ring Finger: One morning on a canoeing trip in Algonquin Provincial Park, Derek and I followed a great blue heron as it kept one bend ahead of us along a river that snaked its way through mile after mile of tall grass. We came around a bend to discover a moose cow standing ankle deep in the water. She watched us warily as she continued to eat, and our awe turned to consternation as we realized that she had no intention of moving for us, which meant we would have to paddle our suddenly vulnerable-seeming canoe within range of her hoofs on this narrow river. Of course, we made it safely past.

Pinkie: Again not exactly a wildlife story, but once again with Derek, while still hallucinating from the jet lag of a flight from Seoul, Korea to San Francisco, we through our sleeping bags down next to the car in a national forest and tried to sleep as cowbells circled our impromptu camp in the dark, mist-filled forest.

Thumb: This summer, heck just last week, while driving on the Icefields Parkway in Banff National Park, my wife Rumi and I spotted first, a herd of elk eating along a distant treeline, and second,  a mother black bear and cub before they disappeared into the roadside bush.

There have been near-misses, such as the LP-sized pawprint of a higuma Hokkaido brown bear (a kind of grizzly), still crumbling from freshness, on a trail through head-high bamboo grass in a remote, mist-shrouded wetland in Hokkaido’s Daisetsuzan National Park…

And oh yeah: a chamois on a grassy meadow in Murren, Switzerland, apparently startled that anyone would venture outside in a snowfall. in July.

But you get the idea. Despite years of camping, hiking, canoeing, kayaking, and otherwise spending time out of doors, I have had very few large game encounters.

All of which is a lead-up to this video, shot by remote camera in Alberta, which shows what I’ve been missing: