Skiing and hiking around Zermatt

Skiing in early September, yeah baby! Admittedly, that was a first for me. Usually I wait with the skiing season until late October. :) But this year I found myself on a short, three-day trip to Zermatt, Switzerland. After driving through the night for 8 hours we arrived at Täsch, a small town 6 km from Zermatt, at 5 a.m. As Zermatt is a car-free town, you need to leave your car in Täsch and take a train - yes, with all your luggage and skis and ski boots and everything.
We wanted to go skiing right away, but the cable car wasn't running due to strong winds, and the weather prevented me from taking lots of photos that day, too. Some people spend a week in Zermatt and never see the famous Mt. Matterhorn!


The following morning looked more promising.


Getting to the cable car station meant going down a steep path:


It's funny being dressed in your skiing clothes, carrying your skis on your shoulder, when the grass around you is so green. :) Not to mention it was very warm. But - the cable car takes you to almost 4000 meters above sea level.


I was busy taking photos through the glass of the cable car:


From the top Mt. Matterhorn looks completely different.


The couple of ski runs that were open were full of alpine skiing teams from various countries training for the coming season.


Me and Ivica Kostelić, the best alpine skier in the world. :)


Did I mention that skiing at the altitude of 4000 meters leaves you breathless after a couple of turns? Oh boy, I felt like I had asthma!

By 1.30 p.m. the snow was so soft it was better to call it a day. On the way back to the valley I had to take more photos:






After a hearty lunch back in Zermatt I walked around town a bit. Electric cars, narrow roads, picturesque houses. :)






The third day was a perfect cloudless day from the beginning. Well, a few puffy clouds would actually be nice.


This was my hiking day. I took an underground funicular and a cable car up a mountain on the other side of the valley from Mt. Matterhorn. The views of the surrounding mountains in the morning were spectacular.


But my primary goal was Stellisee, a beautiful lake in an even more beautiful setting.




I hiked down the mountain past some more lakes and streams, with the omnipresent Matterhorn always in view.






Back in Zermatt, it was a 30-minute hike back uphill from the cable car station to the hotel.




As if the trip hadn't been gorgeous enough, I was met with great light on the drive back home.


More photos can be found here.

Sunset and star trails on Velika planina

After a busy summer and hardly any time spent in the Slovenian mountains I hiked to Velika planina one Sunday afternoon after work. It was kind of late as I only made it to the chapel around 5.45, but the light was just getting warm. Almost all Sunday hikers had already left so I was pretty much alone.




Having photographed the ridge trail I climbed the chapel hill, waited for the sun to disappear behind the ridge and then wandered around a little, hoping for after sunset colors.








But then I saw amazing red misty light to the north, rising from the Kamniška Bistrica valley, so I practically ran to the other side of the plateau. Totally out of breath I made it to the top and caught the last 10 seconds of the sun before it set behind Mt. Krvavec.


I had a hunch the colors would only get better, so I found a nice cottage for the foreground, set up my tripod and waited.


I had my tripod, the moon was new, so it made sense to try and take some star trails shots. It was so dark I had huge problems composing and focusing. And fog was beginning to creep in from the valley.


It was the fog that made me give up. The lens was fogging up so badly I ended up with a bunch of useless shots. I did manage to get this:


And an ISO3200 shot of the Milky Way.

Sunset on Island Krk

I had just returned from the US, overwhelmed by the experience and the number of photos I took, and before I could catch my breath, I was off to Zermatt, Switzerland for 4 days to do some skiing and hiking, and then the Croatian beach for 3 days to just lie on the beach. :) Processing photos had to wait. But before I start with too many blog posts about America, I'll quickly show a few photos I took one evening at the beach. The wispy clouds in the afternoon were a good indication the sunset would be spectacular. And it didn't disappoint!


















And then it was all over.

America's national parks

As some of you probably know, I spent three weeks in August in the USA. Partly for work - meeting my employers and coworkers at the SmugMug retreat in Jackson Hole - and partly for pleasure, the whole trip was all about photography and visiting (mostly) national parks. Starting in San Francisco, I made my way to Yosemite and then across Nevada to Jackson Hole, Wyoming where I spent a week working and sightseeing Grant Teton and Yellowstone national parks. The last 9 days were a crazy landscape photography tour of Washington and Oregon states with my friend Ron. Check out his gorgeous photos! More about the crazy adventures with him - like getting up at ungodly hours for the sunrise every single day AND being rewarded with great light - in the next posts. :)

While I'm far from having my photos selected and post-processed, here are a few teasers:

Sunrise in the Grand Teton NP:


Rolling hils of the Palouse:


The Palouse:


Reflection of Mt. Rainier in Tipsoo Lake at sunrise:


Mt. Rainier and wild flowers:


Crazy sunset colors at Ruby Beach:


Be patient! Or check my galleries occasionally to see if there are any new uploads. ;)

Piran

After a busy month of remodeling our living room and barely sweeping away all the dust that covered the whole house, I've spent this Sunday afternoon packing for my trip to the USA tomorrow. It's only three weeks, so don't get too excited. :)
In the mean time, there are a few photos from May that I still haven't posted: a day in Piran, a beautiful town on the Adriatic coast, running from the rain and only partly succeeding. At least the sky was dramatic. :) But in the end we got totally soaked.