The Trift Glacier

Since I titled this blog "The Travels of Garmisch", I figured I'd better take Garmisch on at least one of our travels this year! We usually don't have room for him in our backpacks (and we have to be able to carry everything on our backs on our hikes) but this time he fit! Well, I made him fit. And he had a great time, in my opinion.

Here he is hanging out at the bottom of the Trift Glacier hike. We were waiting for the cable car to bring us to the start of the hike.



Martin was also waiting for the cable car. We had to wait an hour before we could get onto the cable car, which only takes 8 people up at a time. I hate to think what the crowds are like during the peak summer months! You must have to wait about 3 hours before you can get up ... and that's only to the start of the hike.



The hike itself was nothing too serious, from the cable car station to the glacier it only took us a little over an hour. We chose to walk all the way back down to the parking lot afterwards to avoid waiting for the cable car again. So the way down took us about 3 hours but it was worth it. The bottom part was gorgeous - we walked through forests and fields and all the trees were changing and there were lots of neat clouds in the sky.

Anyway, here's the glacier:



It looks impressive in that picture but it used to fill this entire basin (the lake used to be all glacier as well) back before it started melting:





Sorry the pictures of the glacier look black and white. The sun was directly behind the glacier and we don't know how to handle that with our camera so our pictures are all washed out. But you get the idea.

You can view the glacier really well from the Trift Bridge, which is Europe's longest suspension bridge at 170 meters. We walked across it. It swayed a lot in the wind and was pretty shaky but we survived.







And some views from our hike back down to the bottom.

We saw some more glaciers:



And some mountains with neat clouds around them. And fall colors, though most of the trees that high up are pine trees:



And a lot of pretty scenery. I think this hike was the prettiest hike we've done all year: