I drove up into Switzerland via the Maloja Pass, which was absolutely stunning. I passed through a few different little towns as I climbed...each more charming than the next. Wildflowers blanketed the slopes of the switchbacks and ruins dotted the hills...it was so dreamy.
I didn't take many pictures from the drive as I was focused on the road and not killing myself, but I checked into my hotel in Maloja and then drove up to some of Europe's largest glaciers, the Pers and Morteratsch glaciers. I took the gondola up and hiked around for a while, completely dumbfounded by the sight. When I first got up there, it was still relatively sunny and then clouds began to accumulate, shifting the light as it was cast upon the glaciers and the mountains. It was constantly changing and I couldn't get enough of it, so please excuse me as I post 4000 pictures of what looks like the exact same thing.
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| You get a little packet of Ricola with your gondola ticket |
Then I stopped for a snack at the Refugio. Apple strudel, a cappuccino, and a bottle of water cost $40! I've been to Switzerland 3 times now and I don't remember it being quite so expensive. To be fair, it was the most delicious apple strudel I've ever had. But I typically budget $30 per day for food when I'm on vacation and I was already over budget, so that served as my lunch and dinner that day.
Next was a hike up to the tongue of the Morterarsch Glacier...which was really incredible.
I've never been that close to a receding glacier with chunks of ice and rocks falling off and audible crunching and scraping as I touched the ice. Along the trail to the glacier were markers of where the glacier reached since they began tracking it's movements in 1878. It has shrunk by an average of 98 feet per year since 1900, and over a kilometer in the last 10 years...averaging 328 feet per year. That's not even counting how much it's volume has melted...it's lost about 1/3 of it depth. It will be completely gone in the next 3-5 years :( I took notice of how the trail started out going through lush greenery and slowly became more rocky as the landscape was more recently created, until I cross the glacial river and came to a massive boulder field.
I began my hike early in the morning, and as the sun rose up over the ridge and hit the ice, I could hear it moving. It was spectacular and creepy and sad all at the same time. I had it pretty much all to myself for about an hour and just sat on the freshly exposed rock and watched and cried.
There was also a huge ice cave that I could have easily gone into, but I was actually kinda scared. With it being so warm and with so much activity of the glacier itself, I really thought that it could collapse at any point and, as I was just getting started on my adventure, I wasn't ready to die just yet. But what a cool way to go, right? I can hear Brian now, telling everybody that his late wife was crushed by the ice of a melting glacier while hiking in the Swiss Alps, and how badass is that?! But there's also the reality that I was the only person there and if I died, how long would it take anybody to find me or to figure out what had happened? If another hiker strolled up to the glacier and found the cave collapsed, how would they know that it had literally JUST collapsed and that someone could be inside? I didn't tell anybody where I was going and Brian was 11 hours away so it was the nighttime for him and he wouldn't check my location until the next day and even then, if he called and I didn't answer and he spotted me at a glacier, he'd just assume I was hiking and distracted. I was over an hour from my hotel and wasn't scheduled to return my rental car for another 12 days, so who would notice that I was missing and how would they know where to look? Plus, there is a mountain hut up there that I could be staying at overnight. Would the parking lot attendant notice my car parked overnight and that I'd only paid for 6 hours of parking, so I wasn't planning on sleeping up there? Anyway, these are the sorts of things I think about when I'm mulling over an especially sketchy quest.
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| A tears-streaming-down-my-face and blood-shot-eyed selfie |
As I hiked back down the trail I passed THOUSANDS of people going up there...I couldn't believe it! I was so grateful that I'd gotten up early and could experience it alone in all of it's glory for a solid hour...it felt really special.
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I had to stop at 1985 for a photo on my way back
I stopped at a Refugio at the trailhead for a beer and a croissant and then spent a couple of hours walking around St Moritz and the beautiful lakes near my hotel.
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