Eisriesenwelt Trail, Alps. Near Werfen, Austria. July 19, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Hikers descend the trail from the ice caves of Eisriesenwelt above the town of Werfen, Austria
Over a period of three weeks, our July 2013 visit to Europe took us to parts of Germany and Austria, and to London before that. The London portion of the trip was almost wholly and urban experience, but the time in Germany (with side trips into Austria) was quite a bit more varied. One significant difference is that while we hit our share of tourist areas, that’s not all we did since a) we were visiting relatives who are long-time residents of Germany and b) we traveled, as we often do, without a specific advance plan about what we would visit – at least beyond our fixed plan to stay in certain places on certain dates. Perhaps for this reason, and because I travel as a photographer as much as a tourist, the photographs from this trip may seem a bit eclectic and will cover a wide range of subjects.
This photograph was made at a popular tourist attraction not far from Salzburg and above town of Werfen, the Eisriesenwelt, also known as the Eisriesenwelt Ice Cave. There is a lot to say about this place – too much for this post – but I’ll give a bit of background. The cave is located far up the mountainside – more of a cliff, actually – above the town. The popular tour visits amazing underground ice formations near the mouth of the cave, though I understand that the cave system goes much farther back into the mountains. After driving up from Werfen, you walk uphill a short distance to a ski-lift style cable car system that takes you up the steep face almost to the cave… but you still have an additional uphill walk from there to the cave itself. (This being Europe, though, you can stop at the parking lot, the lower end of the tram, the upper end of the tram, and the same places going back down to sit, have a bite to eat, and drink a beer!) The trail between the upper tram station and the entrance to the cave is quite something. It traverses terrain that would scare the life out of people not used to very high and very exposed places – though a very civilized path has been built along the edge of the void, covered in some places for protection from rockfall. In this photograph, a section of the trail winds around a promontory with the deep Salzach Valley and Alpine ridges beyond.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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It is, in fact.
Dan
Dan,
Is this another example of “atmospheric recession”…?
Thanks,
Jerry
Thank you for the response. That was very interesting. I hadn’t considered that the human development of the Alps has much to do with thousands of years of occupation by a native culture that hasn’t been displaced by outside peoples with a different agenda about the function of the mountains.
I went to the Alps when I was 11 years old, but that was so long ago and I was so young that I really have no basis for comparison to the landscapes of the West. I was definitely overwhelmed by their majesty, particularly since it was winter and we were on a cozy train of the Glacier Express in Switzerland.
From a Galen Rowell book….
“At an American conference on the mountain environment, I shared the podium with the great mountaineer Reinhold Messner, who spoke against commercial development of the world’s mountains. When someone asked him why his home mountains, the Alps, were nowhere near as wild and well preserved as those of the American West, Messner simply answered, “You had John Muir.”
This story has always stuck in my head. I’d be curious to hear your take on how wild the Alps really appear compared to the Sierra or other ranges of the West.
This is an interesting question, and I thought about it quite a bit while I was recently there.
We did have Muir, and some other folks as well – we might include Thoreau, Leopold, a number of those involved in managing the Parks Service, and even some photographers such as Adams whose presentation of these places helped. I don’t want to diminish the importance of Muir or the others – many of whom are heroes of mine – but there’s more to it than that, I think. Much more, actually, than I (a person who is far from an expert on these issues) can cover in a post like this – but a few ideas…
While both Europe and North America have been populated for many thousands of years, it is probably fair to say that the “native Europeans” were having a far bigger impact on their environment than the “native Americans” and “first peoples” and so forth in what has been called “the new world.” By the time people like Muir came along, to find what seemed like a vast expanse of largely untouched wilderness, similar areas in Europe has been “civilized” and put to use for many centuries. Even the seemingly natural areas that I traveled through to go from Heidelberg to the Salzburg area are highly constructed – farmland and forests that are not “primeval,” and very different from vast areas of the USA that still are essentially pretty much as they were hundreds of years ago.
As a result, I think, the edges of “civilization” pushed further into the reaches of these mountains. I certainly see this if I compare “my” Sierra Nevada – a relatively civilized range these days – to what I saw in Bavarian and the Austrian areas around Salzburg. If I travel to the Sierra from the San Francisco Bay Area, I do begin in a vast metropolitan area, but once I cross the Central Valley and begin to ascend into the mountains I am in a world that seems more natural than constructed even today. Even in the higher forested areas where you can still find villages and so forth, if you leave those main roads you quickly leave this behind. And once you move even higher you arrive in places where you can walk scores or even hundreds of miles without crossing a road. Then continue on and drop down the east side of the range. Yes, there is a road that runs along the range and there are roads running up into it – but there are few people and, again, vast swaths of emptiness. And beyond Owens Valley? I don’t think there is anything left in Europe that remotely approaches the vast emptiness of the western American landscape in places like this. (The fact that these are hard, unfriendly, difficult places to live and travel has also had an effect.)
The mountains I saw in Bavaria and Austria on my relatively short visit are no less beautiful than those of the Sierra or any other range that I’ve known. But the tendrils of civilization have, over a very long period of time, worked their way into the edges of these mountains in ways that time has not yet allowed in the western mountains of the USA, with some exceptions. There are towns filling valleys and spreading right up to the base of the mountains. High in the mountains above the Königssee and in other places are “alms,” meadows cleared of forest for the purpose of grazing stock. Trails go up into these places, often directly or almost so from the towns. There are huts along these trails – perhaps originally for those tending the stock, but now expanded to serve the visitors. Far above, in the highest reaches of the mountains that I did not visit, things look about as wild as they do in any mountain range… but there are huts around the periphery.
I had an odd moment when I first got high into these mountains to hike. We had – of course! – ascended my means of a ski lift to high point from which we planned to hike back down into the valley. My Sierra Nevada backpacker sense that it was wrong to find a cafe at such a place in the mountains was muted by my previous experience with American ski resorts, where similar things are possible. (Though, in the US, few people would go to a ski area in the summer to hike, while that seems pretty normal over there.) Leaving the buildings at the top of the lift, we were quickly in “my country,” the area of high forest not far below timberline and I felt that I was in my element – except that there was hut just ahead, and as I looked down the valley I could see more of them. I initially tried to create photographs the way I would back home – composing carefully to avoid the inclusion of human elements. It only took me a moment to figure out that here the human elements are an intrinsic part of the scene, so I reconsidered and began to include them in the photographs.
Speaking of influences, there is one more thing to consider. Humans have regarded high mountains in many different ways over time. As I understand it, it is fairly recently that we have come to see them in the modern, romantic way – where they are associated with beauty and are places that we imagine we can and would like to go. In earlier times, as I understand it, they were regarded as inaccessible and dangerous and worse. (Come to think of it, there is still a bit of that today. You’ll know if you have ever told a person that you were, say, going on a two-week solo pack trip, only to be upbraided for taking such risks!) But sometime after the Industrial Revolution, when the difference between our constructed world and what we call the natural world seemed so much larger, and when it became possible to hold up this idealized view of nature as an opposite to our civilized state and some began to miss what we had lost, there was far more left to protect in the Western Hemisphere than in Europe. (Unfortunately, there was also far more available to exploit, but that is not the subject of this post.)
As to the “how wild the alps are” question… First I would have to admit that my experience with them is so much less than my experience with the Sierra and other American mountains, that I’m perhaps not really qualified to answer. But given what little I have seen and heard, the answer is complicated. Walking into or looking up at the Alps can provoke many of the same emotions that are evoked by looking up at the American landscape. I certainly experienced that on the many days when I watched clouds form above Der Watzmann and when I arrived at that high point above Königssee. On the other hand, it seems much more difficult, if not impossible, to really get away from roads and civilization there in the ways that I’ve been able to experience in the Sierra.
Sorry for the long, rambling response… ;-)
Dan