Archives for November 2020

Chronicles of Existential Dread: Episode XIII: Partial Failure of the European Illusion

The story behind this flight began in January 2003. It was an unpleasant time in life as I found myself driving south on New York Route 16, from East Aurora to Arcade, in route to what may have been the most miserable term of employment in my existence. I was comforted by the fact that, after not seeing the sun for months due to continuous lake effect snow pummeling the area south of Buffalo, it was a resplendent clear day. To assuage the misery of my commute to the gallows, I tuned into CBC Radio 2 out of Canada, to listen to a cultural radio program. I wanted to give myself hope that life couldn’t possibly suck as bad as it did into perpetuity, or maybe I wanted to drug myself with the illusion that, if I was listening to above average intelligence radio content beamed from outside the United States, somehow rural backward depression in front of me wasn’t happening.

The program spoke of travels to Bern, Switzerland, the capital of the country. The presenter had spent an inordinate time in the old section of town, beneath the many “arcades” present in the city. While I was duly intrigued, it was a slap in the face that the place where I was serving my [purportedly voluntary] work camp sentence was….Arcade, New York. At any rate, I managed to not forget about that radio program and the associated ‘road to Golgotha’ now 17 years later.

The genesis of this flight was ultimately a need to go flying while solving the problem of boredom. “Boredom?” you might ask. The weather has been positively Pyrenean: weeks of relentless dry and sunny weather which, at first glance comes off as a gift, as the transition to winter on the north side of the Alps has the meteorological finesse of a raging Scottish storm. The problem then in Spain and now in the Alps is that mountains lacking clouds, snow, or anything interesting happening get really fatiguing after about 10 days. So…what to do? I negotiated with myself that I have two projects that I have wanted to work on, though have managed to avoid actually doing much about, at least with regard to the parts over the Swiss Plateau: the Aare River and the Saane River. The Aare departs from the lakes around Interlaken, flows right through Bern, and then the Saane joins it, which I decided I would follow in reverse back to the airport.

The flight over Bern was admittedly quite spectacular. The old section of the city is perched on a peninsula sticking out into a strong bend in the Aare River, high up on a cliff, with views of the Alps behind. The old city, with its over wrought “arcades,” is larger than Google Maps would have one think. The spire of the old church and the Parliament building, seat of one of the possibly only countries in Europe to avoid centuries of bloodshed, sits large and proud.

Bern ATC was rather cooperative to my requests to “follow the Aare River,” “perform continuous S turns,” and to orbit right over the capital multiple times. I am told by another pilot that I should consider myself lucky, and indeed I do, as many national capitals, the United States included, would rather not allow private pilots to circle overhead. Anyhow, the flight was very special, and I decided that it was time to visit the old city on the ground.

Bern, Old City.

In the shadows at the base of the buildings, one can find the cockamamie “arcades” that have tormented me since 2003.

This is where the wheels come off the idea. I have had many people gush with some form of awe at the idea that I live in Europe. I realize where they are coming from; it is an exotic continent which has enough appeal that it seduced me to endlessly self-punish and move here, yet, as I told an acquaintance “nothing about Europe that you think is good is the reason we stay. It has all turned out wildly differently, albeit somewhat net positive, though for reasons nobody would expect.” As usual, people are surprised to hear this notion, though that would make sense. Is not everything that I have written thus far confirmatory of the European illusion, from the depressing misery of wintry, rust belt, rural Americana to the illustriousness of flying an old airplane over top a beautiful old capital?

Prior to COVID, I had anticipated riding the train into Bern, as it looks too chaotic with a car. Given that the pandemic should reduce traffic coupled with the fact that I did not want to wear a face condom (mask) on the train, I made the ill fate decision to drive.  What first greets a person when entering from the west is nothing short of a ghetto. The outer section of the city, at least where I was driving, was positively gross, which is admittedly not that unusual. Most European cities, including the ones of the Disneyland/once-in-a-lifetime/oh-honey-we-must-go-there/tourism sort, are surrounded by filth. “No wonder they hate foreigners,” my wife quipped.

As we approached the train station that we would have ridden in on, it was total chaos, with cars and people everywhere. Apple Maps sent us the wrong way, which turned into a fiasco much like driving in Manhattan. By the time we were done nearly getting into multiple collisions, we inched our way toward the old city. My plan was to just find a parking ramp and deal with the annoyance of it, instead of illusions of that perfect parking spot in front of one’s destination. Well, there was no parking ramp, so I followed the one-way streets, driving ever so slowly, snaking our way past Starbucks, through a crowded giant square, and then promptly getting ejected from the old city. The place was swarming with people and cars, and nowhere to park them.

I turned toward the terminus of the old city peninsula, where it was evident that there was neither a parking ramp within 2 miles, nor a parking spot. We were taken down to the river, across it, and out of the area we wanted. “Just get out of there. This is nuts,” my wife said. “Oh no, we don’t! I drove past a Starbucks and I will be damned if I don’t go!”

That resulted in another two miles of driving, this time through a totally unmarked intersection where six lanes converge. No traffic lights, no signs, no yield, no stop. Just standard Swiss rules where the person on the right as the right of way, although bicycles weren’t keen on listening. After some horn honking and restraint with the middle finger (illegal in Switzerland), it was over the bridge back to the old city, which revealed that the two parking ramps were full, with 10 cars in line, simply waiting until someone exited the parking ramp, so they could go down multiple stories into the bowels of hell to drive in circles and ram their car into a spot that is too small, followed by walking two miles to the old city to invariably stare at quaint [closed] shops while contracting COVID.

By this point, I started just driving…anywhere but where I was. Finally approaching what appeared to be a key intersection, I was still hell bent on doing what I drove 90 minutes to see, and my wife ever so kindly demanded that I “get the hell out of here or take me home, now. I don’t care!”

Presented with Fribourg and Interlaken as options on the road sign, I made a flash decision toward Interlaken. Some minutes later, we were on an expressway, with the Jungfrau in the background, me ranting and declaring that “I am never going to visit a city again, ever!”

Out of instinct, we went to the nearest place with a positive memory, which is Schloss Schadau, an illustrious Biltmore style castle on Lake Thun, with the Alps in the background. We had been there a week before, as I discovered the place from the same flight. This time, we decided to get something to eat inside, for which we were seated at a table with a view of the lake and the mountains.

Schloss Schadau, inconveniently blocking the view of the Jungfrau behind it.

View from my table, with the Jungfrau in the background. It is an iPhone shot with minimal retouching and looks like a fairy tale.

“This view pisses me off.”
“Why?”
“Because it is so pretty, which is just a slap in the face after the dehumanizing experience I just had. I just hate that if I share this with anyone, the experience in Bern cannot go with it. Everyone will just think it is ‘just wonderful’.”
[No response]

After consuming fish and chips ($78), said pile of fried food in my stomach revealed that I must have had low blood sugar, as my bitch fit entirely abated. Gazing at the famous peaks of the Eiger, Mönch, and Jungfrau from my table, I said to my wife, filled with warm fuzzy feelings: “It is hard to believe that just 3 days ago I flew over the summit of the Jungfrau. See that illuminated ridge, that is the one where I sent you the video flying right by it.”

“I didn’t watch it.”
“What?”
“You sent me two. The first was good enough.”
“Seriously? The first one was from the Jungfraujoch. The second was sideswiping the summit.”
“What do you want me to say? I got the idea from the first one.”

The video she watched.

The video she didn’t watch. “Mountains. Seen one, seen them all.”

Summit of the Jungfrau, also visible from Schloss Schadau (albeit at a distance).

Jungfraujoch. Schloss Schadau is at the far shore of the lake in the distant center of the image.

At our belated lunch, my wife ordered Moroccan mint tea, a favorite after discovering it at some freakish hippie joint in Vancouver, Washington some years ago. At the exit area of the grand lobby, I noted that tea boxes were for sale, for which she grabbed one. I thought I heard the price, and after we got in the car, I asked “What did that run?”

“7 something, I think.”
“I am pretty certain it was 17 something.”
Pulling out the receipt, “Oh, you’re right 17.20 francs.” ($18.90)

The Swiss are a kind culture. Even if you’re a foreigner that does not speak their language and you arrive in their country, burdened by the obligation to have liquid assets, whether paper bills, coinage, or money in a bank anywhere in the world, the Swiss very kindly will drop everything and aid anyone that is beleaguered with the fatigue of possessing it. They dutifully will take it from you and then you don’t have to worry about having money anymore!

We’re used to it, which meant that, after savoring some of the [expensive] and illustrious tea, we ordered other flavors, which arrived in a box 19 hours later, one of the advantages of paying 4 times the normal price. It is admittedly rather good.

The whole trip is representative of many dimensions of our European journey. Going back to 2003, I was fantasizing in delusion about the “arcades of Bern,” came here with an airplane, drove myself to the point of both insanity and an automobile collision, left without seeing the damn arcades (or the old city for that matter), had a positively memorable lunch, where we could discuss my recent wanderings, flying at nearly 14,000 feet over the Jungfrau. The experience so far has been very similar the journey to Bern: a mix of transcendence and scathing fury, so yes, come to Europe. It is both like a vacation to Disneyland and Afghanistan at the same time.

For a while I have been kicking an idea around in my mind, which turned more into a philosophical question: can I write a book from the photographs taken in one flight? The airplane will only fly 3 hours (plus reserve) at a speed of roughly 75 miles per hour, which means that it isn’t going to go too terribly far. While I am capable of producing some images which aren’t awful from the airplane, would there be enough?

The philosophical musing gave birth some months ago to the perfect flight. I didn’t plan to write a book from it in advance; in fact, the idea didn’t pop into my head until about the two hour and twenty-minute point in the air. The only alteration I made to the rest of the flight was to extend it to the last-minute possible fuel-wise and extract every tidbit of variety from the descent process, where I normally would have called it quits sooner, out of fatigue and a strong desire to urinate.

There are many factors into what is sufficient for a book. Variety is one, geographic coverage another, quality ever present, beauty a must, and naturally the question of the subject. While there are many beautiful things on this planet, there is also a lot of drab, temperate, mildly undulating, repetitive, and uncompelling scenery along the way. My typical pursuits that result in a book are a result of some sort of fixation either attacking a smaller subject area until quality and variety is adequate or spreading that subject area over geographic distance and some sort of time constant to make it worth it.

The subject matter here, the northern edge of the Bernese Alps of Switzerland, has a component of “geography is destiny” to it. The area simply has such a profound quantity of dense variety that these variables and constraints happened to come together by chance and result in the yet another book, one that I am somewhat surprised as to the image quality.

Apparently, I leave myself a bread crumb trail from prior flights. In this case, I had mentioned in my “Mons Silvius” post how I “do not spend enough time” in the Val Ferret, which reminds me of Jackson Hole. Part of the problem relates to the fact that it is down in a hole of sorts. I must pop over a pass somewhere, descend a few thousand feet, wander around without smacking into a gondola or pile of rocks, and then climb in a circle to get out. While that is not my standard definition of a flight in the mountains, it is outright impeded by my own Greek approach to time. I simply do not like to go flying these days unless it is the late afternoon or evening. That is a deal breaker for this valley, as the largest mountain in Europe stands like a wall, blocking the evening light, which turns this attractive place into a literal “vale of deep shadow.”

It was up until about 18 months ago that I viewed the best time of day to fly as smack in the middle. Blue sky was the deepest, whites were brightest, light was full, haze diminished, and everything was generally resplendent. That was my modus operandi in the United States (where haze is a fraction of Europe to begin with), and became the initial fixation in the Pyrenees, as luminosity was stunning. Slowly but progressively, I began to find midday to be brash, refractive, and dull, whereas evening would come alive with shadows, hazy mystique, and splendid colors.

Like everything that I do, there is one setting: too much. Thus, I began overdosing on evening flying, excluding the middle of the day entirely, which meant that I wouldn’t notice such things as the Val Ferret as “it is always dark so why bother.” That continued until, like a crow [or a monkey], I found something else shiny to occupy my attention. Considering 2020 to be practically a failed year when it comes to autumn (most of them are, to be honest, since 2013 in Colorado), I had a hankering to chase some remaining tired larch color. Connecting the dots that a “vale of deep shadow” in evening would mean a ‘vale of deep sun’ in the morning, I quit the Greco-Spanish flying schedule and drove over the airport before lunch.

The results are minimally adequate.

Italian/Swiss border. Solvency (left), insolvency (right).

Grand Goliat. Bleeding off altitude.

Val Ferret with Grandes Jorasses (4,208m). Reminds me of Grand Teton.

Triolet Glacier moraine, beneath Grandes Jorasses. Not a ton of room in here.

This image is not half bad.

Monte Bianco/Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in Europe….

Terminus of Glacier du Miage, with autumn color. Did not expect to see that….

The border again…

Finding Jesus on the summit? I waved the wings back at the hikers….

Eastern end of the Massif du Mont Blanc. For the discerning, there is a ridge in the foreground, with a deep valley behind it. 

“Magna opera” is the plural form of the latin phrase “magnum opus,” which is defined as “a work of art, music, or literature that is regarded as the most important or best work that an artist, composer, or writer has produced.” That a plural form exists at all is indicative of a case of vanity or confusion, as there should only be one “best” work, but here we are, me on the soap box declaring that I have two.

The first magnum opus was “Glaciers of the Rockies.” I had bitten off nearly more than I could chew with that one, flying all of the glaciers in the American Rockies before packing it up and fleeing to the Fatherland (and shortly thereafter packing it up and fleeing from the Fatherland, but I digress). It took two and a half years after I took the flights to get the book out. Since then, I felt that the pinnacle was achieved and that new glaciers were something of a regular “presence” in my life. I had already flirted with a few small remaining glaciers in the Pyrenees, albeit not enough to bother writing a book. Then after the magnum opus, I was off frolicking in the Alps, a comparative orgy of glacial features. Somehow, I got the idea that my then current exploits had integrated with the magnum opus and blunted its impact, meaning that glaciers were a fixture without a noteworthy zenith within.

While that was the sentient background to my pursuit, the glaciers of the Alps were on my mind right after completing the flights for the 4000ers in 2018. Since I had already seen many incredible glaciers while getting the peaks, I had some familiarity. I then had some time before leaving to play in the Bernese Alps, finding that there was a lot to look at. Returning in the summer of 2019, I went bonkers, having decided that my next project would be virtually every glacier in the Bernese Alps of Switzerland.

I chose that subject as all of the glaciers in the Alps as a whole would require 1000 pages. The range is 654 miles long and jammed with small and large glacial features. The Bernese Alps contain the largest glacier in Continental Europe, along with plenty of others of significant size. The valleys that they inhabit are unlike anything I had to date seen; it is second only to Alaska, Patagonia, and the Himalayas when considering overall height and ice mass. While Iceland, Norway, and Greenland have much in the way of glaciers, their maximum height is well below the Jungfrau; thus, I find the Bernese Alps as a suitable compromise. Yes, I am acting like a pompous sommelier of glaciers….

Anyhow, the project is finally done. “Glaciers of the Bernese Alps” contains almost every glacier (there are some technical debates about whether certain features belong) in the range, with detailed maps identifying their location. If I thought “Glaciers of the Rockies” was my best work, well, I didn’t see this coming, so here it is. Oh, and, there are more glacier books coming, so I’ll have to figure out the opus/opera vanity complex.

The flight was supposed to be a chase of autumn color found in timberline larch trees. As I procrastinated and allowed the midday sunlight turn to afternoon partly cloudy skies, I cursed myself for losing the illustriousness of sunlight, which accents well in the evening. I decided to go anyway, to first visit my intended destination of the more open valleys of the western Valais. If sunlight turned out to be a problem, I’d wander over to Chamonix, as the northwest facing Massif du Mont Blanc rarely disappoints. Besides, there are usually some larches over there, which may be behaving differently, even though the webcam for Lac d’Emosson wasn’t promising.

As I repeated the wanderings of 2019 in the valleys of the Valais, I was not compelled by the larch tress. They were still early, and sunlight was fading behind high clouds that were growing thicker. While I had a backup plan with Chamonix, I wasn’t “feeling the Jesus” about it, so I decided to cross the Grand St Bernard Pass into the Aosta region of Italy, determining that I’d make a go at the Val Ferret, on the south side of the Massif du Mont Blanc. While sun angles were not ideal, the valley reminds me of Jackson Hole and the Tetons, and I do not spend enough time there.

As I plodded a short distance westward toward the head of the Aosta Valley, I wasn’t feeling it there, either. Something about the lighting was off, though in limited foreground instances, it was very bright. The larches were now below me, and it was mildly irksome to see that they were in peak color in Italy, yet the sun had gone away, making it very hard to work with them.

Instead of rounding Mont Blanc and returning over Chamonix, my third plan, I noted that some mountains were sticking out above some clouds, to my southeast, toward the Italian Plain south of the Alps. I decided to throw caution to the wind (or better said, rode with the wind), and the closer I got, the more I got distracted by the presence of some sun to my left, illuminating the Swiss border and the large mountains on both sides.

The further I went, the more it seemed that the mountains sticking out above the clouds were retreating away, which was an illusion of the mind. What was happening was my assumption as to their location was becoming more accurate, which involved a bunch of nonsensical Italian restricted areas. I had never ventured this far out of the Alps, as there was no attraction. For that matter, I didn’t even notice these mountains at all; they took on appeal merely because they were sticking out above the clouds.

I continued east, enjoying solar illumination in limited doses of the Alps to my left. I asked myself how far I would go, and I thought “the Matterhorn seems a bit far.” Ten minutes later, I was rounding the bend with the Matterhorn in view, putting the pedal to the metal to climb above Cervinia. There was a notam for a new cable, installed high up on a mountain, in some sections 623 feet above the ground. How am I supposed to make sense of all these Italian (“eye-talian” as my grandfather used to say) towns with some death dealing cable strewn up at 11,000 feet? The only thing I could do was climb higher than 11,447’, the maximum altitude of this cable of doom. In the meantime, the clouds to my south thickened, which I was viewing while circling, reminding me profoundly of the Pyrenees. It may as well have been “that damn inversion” between Cerdanya and Barcelona, which I did no shortage of bitching about, until I realized then as is the case now that the inversion sat against a major mountain range is extremely beautiful.

Finally reaching enough altitude to clear the nefarious cable of doom, I added some more altitude and squeezed over the pass just to right of the foot of the Matterhorn, the mountain known as Mons Silvius back in the Roman era. This pass was the concern of Roman generals millenniums ago; now it means that the sightseeing helicopter from Zermatt might get closer than I’d like again. Wait a second….are they running them with the pandemic?

Mons Silvius, Berg der Berge (“Mountain of Mountains”), is seemingly small and large at the same time. A “horn” in its geological essence, it gets smaller the higher it goes, where it ends as a famous point. Yet, for some reason, I find that a simple photograph is not enough. It should be; yet, it seems each time that I visit that I am not sure what to make of the mountain. It takes on a different personality, playing games with my viewfinder, with its small summit yet monolithic base, which I am for time’s sake relegated to swirling around. I don’t have the 20 minutes it will take to attempt to climb to 14,000 feet to get near the summit, so I stay down at the razorlike ridges that comprise major climbing routes and the border with Italy and Switzerland.

After my surprise trip to one of the most famous mountains in the world, it is time to turn west and head back before sunset. Oddly, the very clouds that were ruining my original aspirations have now made for a perfectly balanced image: snowclad mountains below, illuminated skies above, texture in the entire image. Nothing about the flight went as planned, not even the many improvised backup options that I had formulated. Yet, what turned out to be the best part of the flight was the thing I hadn’t planned whatsoever. That seems to be how it works most of the time.

Valais larches…not feeling the Jesus.

Looking into the Aosta Valley…appears promising.

So I went the other way…Valpelline, Italy.

Some sort of mountain on the south ridge of the Valpelline.

The Matterhorn that I wasn’t going to.

Inversion over the foothills and plains of Italy, viewable while climbing.

Mons Silvius, Berg der Berge. Pass below that concerned the Romans. The nefarious cable of doom that someone strung up is also below, so I guess the stuff that matters is below the airplane.

A more traditional view, albeit the “dark side.”

Western ridge. There is a refuge visible on the ridge.

Dent d’Hérens (4174m / 13,694′), one of the peaks in my “4000ers” book that started this nonsensical attraction.

Pennine Alps in evening light.