Rivers and Roads
"Rivers and roads
Rivers and roads
Rivers 'til I reach you"
-Rivers and Roads by The Head and The Heart
As I said in my last post I want to dedicate my next couple of posts to my family. This image is dedicated to my daughter Avery. Rivers and Roads is the title of a song by the band The Head and The Heart that my daughter happens to be learning to play on the guitar. I am very proud of her for her many talents and spirit, and am very glad that she is sticking to her guitar lessons. The song is beautiful and perfectly captures the heartache associated with constantly traveling away from my family. I was very excited when I found this spot, as it had this perfect intersection of a glacier-fed river, a mountain road and the stunning Swiss alps, and the song title immediately popped in my head. So my dearest Avery, this is for you, I miss you terribly and think about you always when I am away.
As to the image itself, this is the unmistakable Matterhorn as reflected in the river Findelbach that flows off the Findelgleischer (glacier). I had a weekend stay over in Switzerland during a business trip in September so I took the train from Zurich to Zermatt, with the intention of hiking up to the Stellisee lake to get a photo of the reflection of the Matterhorn in the lake. If you search Matterhorn on flickr, this is the classic shot you will find most often. In a nutshell, I underestimated the intensity of the hike and I didn't quite make it there. This shot of the Matterhorn peak bathed in the alpenglow and reflected in the Findelbach is unique as far as I can find. Judge for yourself whether that makes it interesting. It is clearly not the shot I really wanted, and the original composition had several issues. It's one of those images that doesn't quite work at first and you have to step away from it for a while and then patiently work with it to improve. After removing some unsightly gondola wires and cropping it I was more satisfied.
Of course, the intended shot had to be a sunrise or sunset shot. Unfortunately the gondola and funicular train that both go up from Zermatt (at 4,000ft) to the 5 lakes (at 6,000ft) start running after sunrise and stop before sunset. So if one wants a sunrise/sunset shot one has two choices: overnight on the mountain-side, or hike up/down from Zermatt. I chose the hike option because I wasn’t prepared to camp out. To skip straight to today’s lesson: it was the wrong choice. Or rather, I didn’t have the time to properly prepare and half-assing my way up there at 3am cost me my chance at a reflection shot in the lake. Now, that may not be such a disaster because without some decent cloud lighting I don’t think the lake reflection would be any more satisfying to me than this shot. But that hike!! Very nearly did me in. It's about 12km walking at a fairly good incline from Zermatt. But the main reason is actually right in the middle of the frame of this shot. The bridge in the center is the connection between the path up from Zermatt to this particular spot and the road that continues up to the Stellisee. And I was so busy trying to find a composition during the few minutes of pre-sunrise Alpenglow that I missed the sign where the road up to Stellisee forks from the path that follows the river.
I continued to follow that path along the river as it started to slope upward and got increasingly difficult, until I was almost at the foot of the glacier. I was now hemmed in by steep slopes of loose rock on either side and decided I'd clearly misread the map or missed a fork, and it was just too stupid to go any further.
I turned back down and eventually discovered the sign to Stelligsee. The funicular was also up this path just beyond Stelligsee. I summoned my last bit of drive to follow the path (back uphill) until I reached the Grindjisee lake, a few hundred meters before Stelligsee, just to stubbornly say I'd made it (mostly). I took my reflection shot in the Grindjisee for posterity, even though it was well past sunrise and the light quality was bad by that point, so I'll never post it.
At this point my legs were so tired that I just didn’t have it in me to keep climbing, even though it was a 2 hour descent back down to Zermatt instead of a 30 minute hike further uphill. At least I could claim some form of masochistic victory; I had made it to the 5 lakes and had the route scoped out for a future visit. Hiked 20 miles (32km) that day at 4,000-6,000 feet (2000 meters). Climbed and then descended the equivalent of 200 flights of stairs. And lived to write the tale for my wonderful daughter Avery :-)
Rivers and Roads
"Rivers and roads
Rivers and roads
Rivers 'til I reach you"
-Rivers and Roads by The Head and The Heart
As I said in my last post I want to dedicate my next couple of posts to my family. This image is dedicated to my daughter Avery. Rivers and Roads is the title of a song by the band The Head and The Heart that my daughter happens to be learning to play on the guitar. I am very proud of her for her many talents and spirit, and am very glad that she is sticking to her guitar lessons. The song is beautiful and perfectly captures the heartache associated with constantly traveling away from my family. I was very excited when I found this spot, as it had this perfect intersection of a glacier-fed river, a mountain road and the stunning Swiss alps, and the song title immediately popped in my head. So my dearest Avery, this is for you, I miss you terribly and think about you always when I am away.
As to the image itself, this is the unmistakable Matterhorn as reflected in the river Findelbach that flows off the Findelgleischer (glacier). I had a weekend stay over in Switzerland during a business trip in September so I took the train from Zurich to Zermatt, with the intention of hiking up to the Stellisee lake to get a photo of the reflection of the Matterhorn in the lake. If you search Matterhorn on flickr, this is the classic shot you will find most often. In a nutshell, I underestimated the intensity of the hike and I didn't quite make it there. This shot of the Matterhorn peak bathed in the alpenglow and reflected in the Findelbach is unique as far as I can find. Judge for yourself whether that makes it interesting. It is clearly not the shot I really wanted, and the original composition had several issues. It's one of those images that doesn't quite work at first and you have to step away from it for a while and then patiently work with it to improve. After removing some unsightly gondola wires and cropping it I was more satisfied.
Of course, the intended shot had to be a sunrise or sunset shot. Unfortunately the gondola and funicular train that both go up from Zermatt (at 4,000ft) to the 5 lakes (at 6,000ft) start running after sunrise and stop before sunset. So if one wants a sunrise/sunset shot one has two choices: overnight on the mountain-side, or hike up/down from Zermatt. I chose the hike option because I wasn’t prepared to camp out. To skip straight to today’s lesson: it was the wrong choice. Or rather, I didn’t have the time to properly prepare and half-assing my way up there at 3am cost me my chance at a reflection shot in the lake. Now, that may not be such a disaster because without some decent cloud lighting I don’t think the lake reflection would be any more satisfying to me than this shot. But that hike!! Very nearly did me in. It's about 12km walking at a fairly good incline from Zermatt. But the main reason is actually right in the middle of the frame of this shot. The bridge in the center is the connection between the path up from Zermatt to this particular spot and the road that continues up to the Stellisee. And I was so busy trying to find a composition during the few minutes of pre-sunrise Alpenglow that I missed the sign where the road up to Stellisee forks from the path that follows the river.
I continued to follow that path along the river as it started to slope upward and got increasingly difficult, until I was almost at the foot of the glacier. I was now hemmed in by steep slopes of loose rock on either side and decided I'd clearly misread the map or missed a fork, and it was just too stupid to go any further.
I turned back down and eventually discovered the sign to Stelligsee. The funicular was also up this path just beyond Stelligsee. I summoned my last bit of drive to follow the path (back uphill) until I reached the Grindjisee lake, a few hundred meters before Stelligsee, just to stubbornly say I'd made it (mostly). I took my reflection shot in the Grindjisee for posterity, even though it was well past sunrise and the light quality was bad by that point, so I'll never post it.
At this point my legs were so tired that I just didn’t have it in me to keep climbing, even though it was a 2 hour descent back down to Zermatt instead of a 30 minute hike further uphill. At least I could claim some form of masochistic victory; I had made it to the 5 lakes and had the route scoped out for a future visit. Hiked 20 miles (32km) that day at 4,000-6,000 feet (2000 meters). Climbed and then descended the equivalent of 200 flights of stairs. And lived to write the tale for my wonderful daughter Avery :-)