French Frolics

Heading out - Heading Home
An alpine dawn.  Always a magical time with sublime colors and a silence that sounds like eternity.  Butt cold though!!
Crevasses, creaking and groaning as it tears its way down the valley.  Path to a spellbinding terrain and disaster waiting for a climber to get distracted.
Stirring air makes clouds appear and disappear in moments.
Time to head out.  Warm jackets were quickly put away when the sun hit the ice and the glare kicked in.
Look ma! No hands!
Be big, be bold, and if you miss your landing you'll be shivering in the deep, deep cold
Safe and sound off the glacier but still robbed of a view of the Matterhorn.  Alpine storms can be very isolated and very particular.  Get up and down QUICK and you'll live to tell about it.  This storm was there all day blowing hard on top.
Matterhorn is a HUGELY popular site with Japanese tourists on any European tour I was told, they invaded the valley like... Japanese tourists.
My Grandfather stood here some 70+ years ago and took this very same photo.  We have it hanging in our house.  It is in his memory that I wanted to get to Zermatt and try to find the spot of this photo he took as a young man on a trip home to the "old country" the last time he was able to visit family before WWII.  His village no longer exists.

Bruno Moritz Schmidt  1900 - 1970
Almost back.  Zermatt is still a long (knee jarring) way down.  Not that I'm gettin' old, but the knees must not like Swiss cheese i guess.
"I'm so hungry I could eat a ...."
Back down, safe and sound.  Time to head on home and continue on with whatever else life's journey has in store for me.  
Thanks Mom and Dad for the ticket.  Best gift ever!!!

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