You Go Nate!

From Autumn in the Alps

AUTUMN DAY IN THE ALPS

It was a beautiful Saturday in October and my friend Alex had organized a trip to the Alps with me and his friend Manu, from work.

Manu and Alex picked me up in Manu's car from my apartment and we drove through the morning fog to Garmisch.

By the time we reached Garmisch, the fog had melted away to reveal a beautiful Autumn morning with a dusting of snow on the mountaintops.

We parked near the old Olympic Ski Stadium (from the 1936 Olympics)...

...and then headed up the short trail to the Partnachklamm.

The Partnachklamm is a very narrow gorge where the river cuts through the mountain. A walkway was built into the mountainside in the 1930's or something and now people can see the gorge for themselves.

We paid our two euros and entered the gorge...

Misty waterfalls sprinkled the trail from above as the sunlight danced in the changing colors of the trees...

Manu and I...

Did I mention it was narrow?

...you can see how the walkway was built by tunneling through the mountainside itself...

Here's Alex on the trail...

The trail hugged the rock while the river raged below...

Here is Alex (from the future apparently) and I in the Partnachklamm...

We then left the Partnachklamm behind...

And found stunning colors looking off into the Alps...

We hiked a bit above the Partnachklamm and found a few guest houses and huts scattered about...

And a little chapel...

We hiked back to the car where I took a peek inside the Olympic Stadium...

..and got a glimpse of the ski jump...

Then we headed off towards the other end of the Garmisch valley. We stopped in the town of Grainau for lunch at a Bavarian restaurant. Outside was this little guy parked beside us...

We then drove to Eibsee, the same lake that Alan and I hiked around a few weeks before. While I was able to get some great shots then, this time around was very different, but also very pretty.

Here are Manu, Alex, and I on the other side of the lake...

The wind was calm, the temperature was just right for a walk around the lake. The water was very clear and you could see quite deeply into the lake.

Hi there!

The little islands on the lake were especially cool...

"I can takes pikchures!"

This island was my favorite. The sunlight was hitting it just right so that it glowed in the middle of the lake.

The lone island showing her trees in a butterfly-wing of color, as if all the world could be idealized upon her modest soil and reflected back in a reward of water and light...

Lovely day for a kayak ride actually...

Though the sun abandons them on its unending quest, the father mountains and mother waters hold them in embrace yet reveal them in glory, these quiet islands of the lake...

Nate on the dock...

Like mortal men against the immortality of a fairy-tale race, the dying deciduous shone forth their august beauty against the stalwart hues of the evergreens while the gods of gray rock watch them from above and below...

The evening sun, after a day of harsh reflection, consoles the top of the Zugspitze with bath of dewed light. You can even see the tram here on its way to the top. Yay trams!

Though the shadows of evening had staked their claim to the south, one pond defied them as it shone back the light from the mountains above in its spotless surface of glass...

The evening shadows soon stretched across the lake, though the trees seemed to glow ever brighter. The lonely boathouses, put away for the winter, also bid their daily adieu's to the sun.

The waning sunrays cast their final feeble force across those giant's Alpine parapets in a vain effort to wipe away their maturing snows.

We got back to the car and had a pleasant ride back to Munich.

I thought this would be my last Autumn day in the Alps for the year, but I was wrong. Though bad weather came, in the following week was a reprieve of gorgeous weather and I went once again out, into the bosom of Europe's great stone towers - THE ALPS!

...but that's another blog entry for another day.



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