Duerrenstein, Austria

Bernhard and I have finally come back home again - if only for Christmas and New Year and to work a little from home.
We experience a quite unusual warm late December. I mean: we are really used to green Christmas by now, but this year beats it all: we had 10 to 12 degrees Celsius in 2000 meters! That is really not the usual green Christmas any more. A mountain that is on our to-do list for a long, long time is Duerrenstein near Lunz/See, close to home. The thing with this mountain is that it's not really spectacular. It's beautiful up there, it's one of the highest mountains in the area and it's alpine, tree free. But for summer, this is not the hike I'm really into... in summer, I usually aim for higher mountain peaks, glaciers, climbing... So we always planned a winter tour. Two times we tried to go up there, set up a wintry snowy bivouac somewhere only to have rain or snow or fog on the summit day - so we decided to turn around.

But this time, we, instead of getting up there and setting up a bivouac for a night before hiking to the summit, went to the summit first and then set up a bivouac. That really did the trick. And the warm winter also made it very pleasant up there, with higher temperatures in higher elevations than in the valley below. I also have a brand-new flashlight I brought with me, so that was a perfect trip to do some experimental landscape-flashlight photography.

Indian Summer in the White Mountains

Indian summer is this very short period in the year, where all the maple and birch and whatever trees turn into bright yellow, golden and red hues, all over New England. There are many places to experience the Indian Summer, but the White Mountains of New Hampshire are quite close to Boston, about a two hours drive. So we set out, camped in the woods well below freezing temperatures and where just overwhelmed by the beauty of colors.

Acadia National Park in Fall

With Columbus Day last Monday, we had a long weekend that we could spend in Acadia National Park, Maine. It's the second most visited park in the United States after the Great Smokey Mountains, and of course you cannot expect to have solitude in this park, which is also not one of the biggest. There's no backcountry in Acadia, so no possibilities for backcountry backpacking or a wilderness experience like in other parks. But still, it's a very beautiful park, with lots of options especially for photographers. There is also some climbing (unfortunately too crowded for us last weekend - although we brought our gear) on the sea cliffs and there are some 'via ferrata' kind of hikes. They are not exactly what I would call a via ferrata like we have in the European Alps, but they are hikes onto a 'mountain' with the aid of some ladders and iron rungs. Not difficult, but judging from the people who attempt to hike up there, tough enough for most of them.

Anyway, here are some pictures from the weekend.

Jordan Cliffs iron rung trail.















Sunset on Mt Cadillac.













Cooking baked beans the cowboy way!







Morning on the boulder beach.







Ooops... somebody didn't make it into the hammock.



Hiking the Beehive trail, another iron rung trail.

















Back on the beach.