Melting MoutainsPage 2
Train Travel Theatrics
Early this morning, we once again found ourselves biding Auf Wiedersehen to our hostel as we left Zermatt and traveled to Grindelwald. Though we have ridden many trains during our thirteen days of travel and could almost, by the most liberal of definitions, be considered experts at navigating Swiss railway stations, our journey was slowed […]
Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, Ain’t No Valley Low Enough
Today we hiked down a glacierized watershed. For all you non-hydrologists out there, a watershed is an area or ridge of land that separates waters flowing to different rivers, basins, or seas. We started as close to the base of the glacier as possible and started our downward decent. We came across a small glaciated […]
Picture Time
Today we rose for breakfast and were on the road by 8:00. We had a full day of hiking and outdoor class discussions on the Matterhorn glacier trail hike. We started with an ear-popping ride up the gondola and began our hike by moving along the ridge and discussing the location where the remnants of […]
Double the Struggle
The previous two days have been the most challenging, but also the most exciting days of our month long endeavor so far. It was full of hard-work, sweat, rain, ice, and very little sleep. However, it was also full of beauty, learning, and great food. Yesterday we started our day with a wonderful complimentary breakfast […]
Survey Says…
Today, we traveled up to the Glacier Paradise, a tourist attraction with a view of the Matterhorn and the highest point we will visit in this course, via gondolas. The main purpose of our visit to Glacier Paradise was to survey tourists to study glacier tourism in Zermatt. We met early in the morning to […]
A Day in the History of the Mountaineers
In the morning, we visited the Matterhorn Museum in Zermatt, Switzerland. This museum gave us insight into early life in Zermatt as well as how tourism and mountaineering has shaped the community in recent decades. Zermatt is home to one of the most technically challenging mountains in the European Alps, the Matterhorn. The first climbers […]
Toblerone
Today, we traveled from Chamonix, France to Zermatt, Switzerland on four different trains. Although we had seen many of the views before on the way to Chamonix, they were still breathtaking. Zermatt is higher in elevation and is more chilly than we have been used to. There are no cars in the city, only bikes […]
A Day on the Col de Geant
On today’s adventures, we traveled to the Col du Geant. Crossing into Italy and traveling via the gondolas in order to reach the top and begin our hike. One of the goals for the day was to see how the glaciers are being not only affected by climate change but the differences between the top […]
Glacier Traversing 101
Today we had our glacier traversing 101 class today on the Mer de Glace in France. We started on the same train we took yesterday, and proceeded to make our way down the side of the mountain. It was an adventure for sure! In small groups we were strung together with a rope as we […]
“That’s a honkin’ big hunk’a ice”
Our main activity of the day was descending into a valley to reach the Mer de Glace glacier, and entering an ice cave that had been carved out into the glacier. One of the most astonishing things about our first up close and personal interaction with the glacier was the almost incomprehensible rate of melting […]