Kestrel in flight

Well Readers, as you might imagine I was feeling a bit down in the dumps after my fall yesterday, but it was an excellent opportunity to sit outside and pay attention to what was going on. The two kestrels who nested at the Hotel Olympia have returned, although I’ve seen no sign of chicks – they raised three last year, so maybe they’re having a year off. Here are a few photos from last year, so I’ll see if I can do a bit better this year.

But I spent half an hour on the balcony photographing the sunset, and here are the edited highlights. I love the ways that the colours changed. No photoshop jiggerypokery or messing with the colours, I promise.

A helicopter was searching on both sides of the valley – I hope someone hadn’t had a fall or been taken ill on the higher paths around here. Interestingly (to me at least) most ordinary travel insurance doesn’t cover you for the higher altitudes around here (the village of Obergurgl is already at 1930metres, so most walks will be higher than that, so we take out insurance with the Austrian Alpine Association, which will whisk you off in a helicopter in the event of disaster.

Anyhow, I had a surprisingly excellent night’s sleep, and although my ankle is now painted in colours reminiscent of the photo above, it wasn’t too sore. So, we decided to head off to the lift over the Rettenbach Glacier, the ‘Schwarze Schneid’, translated by Wikipedia as ‘The Outer Black Cutting’, which is a little strange. Anyhoo, it’s the highest point achievable by lift in. the Oetzal Valley (at 3255 metres), has the longest ski run in Austria, at 15 kilometres, and slope 31 has a maximum gradient of 65 degrees. Blimey. Anyhow, we got the Glacier Bus up to the lift station. You can see how parts of the glacier are protected by what I always think of as waterproof duvets – these are becoming more and more prominent in the Austrian Alps, as climate change takes its toll.

It’s always important to suss out the refuelling options before you head up in the lift. The ‘Market Place Restaurant’ here is cavernous, but then it would need to be to deal with the thousands of skiers who visit in the winter season.

The last time I went up this particular lift was in the 1990s, believe it or not – my initial visit to Obergurgl was with another chap that I dated for nearly eight years. In those days, the lift was not a gondola but a single chair lift, and very scary it was too. Normally, this lift is closed when we’re in Obergurgl and its sister lift, over the Tieffenbach glacier, is open instead. This year, the Tieffenbach lift is getting some much-needed refurbishment, so we had the opportunity to see what this lift was like.

The lift is in two parts, but there wasn’t much need to get off at the middle station, and so we went straight to the top. It’s surprising how breathless those few hundred metres of altitude can make one.

The windows on the gondola were very scratched, so not many photo opportunities while we were actually travelling, but it was interesting to see the patterns that wind and water had made on the glacier below.

And so, we headed off for a tea and a slice of Black Forest gateau, and then caught the bus back down. And now I’m back at the Hotel Olympia with my leg raised. Hopefully I’ll be back in full operational order soon!