Friday, January 16, 2015

Nepal Photo Book

And this is the latest photo book. It is a photographic compilation of pictures from our Nepal trip, trekking around Dhaulagiri, attempting Dhampus Peak (and surviving storm, freezing temperatures and acute mountain sickness for my part), and finally hiking to the Annapurna Base Camp. Included are also some pictures from Kathmandu - a city I somehow enjoyed quite a bit - and pictures from the Buddhist village of Marpha in the Kali Gandhaki valley where we had the huge luck to be right there at the annual lama dance festival!





Greenland Photobook

If there's anyone interested in a photographic Greenland-Book, see this page for more details. There's a hardback with many pictures and pages available as well as a quite cheap softcover with less pictures and a short introduction in English.




Monday, January 5, 2015

Sumava X-Country Ski Tour

The Bohemian Forest, known as Sumava in Czech, is a huge mountainous region with vast wood areas extending from the Czech Republic to Germany and Austria. In the Czech Republic, a large area is a national park and while on the German and Austrian side, backpacking and staying outside in a tent in the wood is not allowed, it IS allowed on the Czech side as long as you stay on one of the emergency camping places that basically enable a full crossing of the national park area from north to south. Since Bernhard and I think of doing a longer ski-backpack with heavy luggage, most of all wanted to know how many kilometers we can cover per day on the skis we have and to check our snow gear for such circumstances. We do not have what the Norwegians would call cross-country skis, we have only alpine style backcountry skis with skins and quite heavy full plastic mountaineering boots. We do have recreational cross-country skis, but for ski traveling they have to be stronger with metal edges, and they have to be wider to walk on deep snow rather than just slide on nicely graded cross-country ski runs.

Anyway, we packed our alpine skis, mountaineering boots, our smallest tent, a full bottle of gas and our heavy duty backpacks and went for a three day snow fun touring through the Bohemian Forest, starting in Modrava and climbing mount Poledink, and even camping out there in a heavy snow storm.


This is one of the emergency camp grounds, where it is officially allowed to stay for one night from 6 pm until morning.



Always the same hassle with the skins ;)



My snow lion :)



Still on the cross-country track.



It's actually quite nice here.



Touring.



But breaking your own trail in this winter wonder land is much more fun.





River Crossing!









It gets a little bit frosty here.







You need good reading stuff for long winter nights in the tent.