Daily Archives: Friday, 26 May, 2006

Near Sankt Moritz we pass Sils-Maria where Friedrich Nietsche was depressed and still managed to write some of his books. I don’t understand how you can be depressed when you are surrounded by all these beautiful mountains. It surely doesn’t have that effect on me. Au contraire!

We hike to and past the glacier of Morteratsch. It retracts with alarming speed and is almost a kilometre shorter than 150 years ago, before the industrial revolution.

One of the mountains in the back is the Piz Palu. I once tried to climb that mountain when, higher up on a glacier, one of my rope partners jumped in instead of over a 1 metre wide and 40 meter deep crevasse. She almost fell to the bottom while dragging me and my girlfriend at the time with her. Fortunately we just managed to stop her fall, but at that time we were both dragged through the snow to just 2 metres shy of the edge of the crevasse. Fortunately there were a lot of other climbers nearby that helped us to pull her out. My ex-girlfriend burned her hands severely from the friction of the rope that even melted her gloves. No more climbing for her that year.

But enough of these bad memories, we’re on a holiday now, and enjoying the nice scenery.