3 Days - 3 Mountains

We've spent last weekend in Pertisau on the Achensee. I really started to like Tyrol a lot recently and I somewhat fell in love with winter mountaineering. Unfortunately, we had quite a danger of avalanches and couldn't hike up the peaks we originally wanted to. There was a lot of snowfall combined with cold temperatures. We were hiking up the Kl. Gamsstein, the Birgitzköpfl and the Zäunlkopf. You can see a few pics here:

New Year in the Sextener Dolomites

Last year we've watched the night sky over Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, this year we topped that with a nice winter hiking trip up into 2500 meters above sea level. We hiked into the Fischleintal and up to the Rifugio Locatelli/Dreizinnenhütte at the National Park of the Tre Cime di Lavaredo in the Italian Dolomites. We took our tent, as much winter gear as possible, still had to fight against the freezing of all our liquids and toes... and enjoyed three incredible beautiful and peaceful days in snow and sunlight. With dramatic sunsets and beautiful sunrises. And we watched a party of two climbers in the wall of one of the 'Tre Cime'. We kept our drinking water in our sleeping bags and I had to thaw the contact lenses and cleaning liquid before use... but it was worth it - see some pictures:

Schwarzkogel Snowshoe Tour

It's been a while since my last post. I've done a lot of mountaineering and will try to post some more pictures soon, but today was a nice one and since I've just uploaded a couple of pictures, I want to share them. I'm still a terrible skier and so I have to stick to snow shoes in order to go up the mountains in winter. Well... I mean I really have this idea of starting glacier tours next summer and I want to get familiar with snow and ice this way, trying to handle ice ax, crampons etc. Today I was walking up the very easy Schwarzkogel in fantastic winter weather. Nothing spectacular, but some nice fews and ice cold wind in the ridge. The mountains you see here are just about a half hours drive from home, so I guess I will be there more often this winter.