We come, at last, to the final photos from my glorious four days in Zermatt last year. The last photo at the bottom here shows you the view from my upper-deck front seat window on the bus down valley from Täsch back to Visp (who up-valley journey we documented closer to the time), whence those various trains via Domodossola to the lovely lakesides villages & cities of Ticino. And just FYI, I’ve made a preliminary decision that I’ll aim for 400 posting days in a row on this swing, meaning you (and I) will be taking a break from the daily one-or-more posts near the end of this month.
The first “source” entry was a photo I took in Ticino, nearly a week after I took these ice-sculpture photos inside the glacier at the top of the “Little Matterhorn” last November 1st – but seeing the glacier, ice, snow, rivers, frost on the grass around Zermatt in the mornings: all of those experiences helped me decide I’d need to try this series out. What else can be both shelter and sculpting material, cushion if you wall into it when it’s still soft, exercise medium when we swim, absolutely necessity for and source of the life-forms we know here on earth…and so many other things? There are more ice sculptures to come, from Nordkapp. But I figure first I’d show you the ones from Zermatt :-).
Nearing the end of my photos from Zermatt at the end of October and the first days of November last year, so we’ll soon be showing you more of the snowy mountains of Norway instead of the sunny and snowy southern Swiss alps. But we do still have more from Ticino, rich in both lakes and mountains! 🙂
Last in this series from the gondola trip’s last leg down to Zermatt. We’ve shown you some of these houses above in a prior post or two, but I found this view from the air captivating.
We could also title this post “37 Views of the Matterhorn,” because these should be the last 37 views of this beautiful mountain that you’ll see for now. I arrived in Zermatt after dark on the 30th of October and posted my very first Matterhorn shots the next morning, so today is precisely three months from when I posted the first of many Matterhorn shots. I did many long and wonderful walks / hikes during my three full days in Zermatt, as well as sitting on benches drinking tea in the morning while waiting for the sun to peek around the facing mountains to shine directly onto the peak on at least one morning. So these show the mountain as seen from various directions and elevations. I’ve edited out quite a few, but find these that remain so lovely each in a slightly different way that I’d feel I’m failing to share the joy of beauty if I didn’t post. And Steve always reminds me that folks can glance quickly and then move on if they want. Hugs & may the coming month bring love, joy and some mountain tranquility to your daily life.
All these shots come from the viewing platform at the top of the building into which the gondolas arrive, and from which skiers ski down year ’round, because indeed up here there’s year-round skiing, though when I was there only as far as the middle station. In the right-hand shot with me just above, I’m pointing at a mountain I sort of thought might be Mont Blanc because of how big it is both in height and mass. I couldn’t get anyone to solidly confirm or deny my idea. And yes, that pyramidal mountain on my other side is the Matterhorn seen from the southeast and not too far below its peak. On the left, notice the sign showing which mountains are which. As I recollect, the similar sign on the other side was weather-worn enough that one could not definitively confirm or deny my hypothesis.
Honor between blogger and reader: I might have given you the impression that you wouldn’t see more mid-air photos from the gondola ride between Zermatt & the top. I just re-read that post and I did, fortunately, tell you I was posting the last photos taken during the ride from Zermatt up. Which was true: I don’t have any more planned from the ride up! So if you go to that last post, you will see a similar photo to the one just above – but with noticeable differences linked to the fact that, just above, I’m nicely positioned at the very front of a gondola that’s just begun its descent from the top to the middle station. You’ll see probably one more post, from the middle heading down.
This is the closest I got to the actual mountain; as you see, it’s actually starting just across this lake. The last “From the Air” claimed I was posting all the remaining gondola-ride photos from the trip up to the “Little Matterhorn,” which may be technically true, but then there was also the ride back down, from which you’ll see one shot below and likely more in future iterations of “From the Air.” In any case: during that ride up, I stood just next to a rather strikingly red-headed chap with whom I struck up a conversation and turned out he lives in San Diego, a city I know fairly well. Since we were both solo travelers, he and I then shared our explorations up top, and then decided we’d jointly wander over to this lake just downhill from the bottom of the first transfer station going down. He’d packed beer and snacks with the hope of having his photo taken drinking beer in the snow, but up top there weren’t good spots so we found a suitable spot with just enough snow here, lower down. You’ll see the pics he took of me enjoying one of his beers lower down, as well as a gallery of air bubbles trapped in ice around the lake as well.
This is the closest I got to the actual mountain; as you see, it’s actually starting just across this lake. The last “From the Air” claimed I was posting all the remaining gondola-ride photos from the trip up to the “Little Matterhorn,” which may be technically true, but then there was also the ride back down, from which you’ll see one shot below and likely more in future iterations of “From the Air.” In any case: during that ride up, I stood just next to a rather strikingly red-headed chap with whom I struck up a conversation and turned out he lives in San Diego, a city I know fairly well. Since we were both solo travelers, he and I then shared our explorations up top, and then decided we’d jointly wander over to this lake just downhill from the bottom of the first transfer station going down. He’d packed beer and snacks with the hope of having his photo taken drinking beer in the snow, but up top there weren’t good spots so we found a suitable spot with just enough snow here, lower down. You’ll see the pics he took of me enjoying one of his beers lower down, as well as a gallery of air bubbles trapped in ice around the lake as well.
(so much world, so little time....) 