The last ISC trip of the season was a skiing trip to the Giant Mountains. Like the last trip to Krkonose, I was the only Union person, but this time I was the only native English speaker. In fact, a full three-quarters of the people on this trip were French speaking; there was also one Czech and two Germans, one of which spoke Czech. Much was said during our stay that I did not understand.
There was no snow when we left, so we didn't expect to ski at all. When we arrived on Friday, it was still above freezing, and altho there was a little snow, most of the trails were still grass-covered. We did go down the mountain under the power of gravity, but it was on an alpine slide. Incidently, I've cut down the size of many of the images for this trip to speed up downloads. If anyone wants hi-res versions of any pics, let me know.Saturday, we woke up to rain. It appeared the weather gods wanted to ensure that we had no fun on the trip. But by 10:30, precipitation ceased at the elevation of our lodge, so we decided to try a hike. It turned out to be quite the adventure.
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The first shot is us just before we set out. The temperature had dropped significantly from the day before, but we had warm clothes. The white stuff looks like snow, but it was actually vicious little missiles of ice that would fly towards our faces at tremendous speeds. The trail was sound, but icy, and hiking was not made any easier by the great wind gusts. From time to time, we found a slight relief behind giant rocks like the one in the last image.
As we climbed, the projectiles lessened as all ice present was caked on the trail instead. But higher elevation brings higher wind. We didn't make it to the summit of the highest peak for this reason. The speed easily exceeded 60 km/hr, and the force was enough to knock us off our feet or pull the backpacks from our backs. We made it off the mountain just as night fell and the temperature dropped. Fortunately, there was a sauna in our ski cottage.
By Sunday, there was real, honest-to-goodness snow. And there were few clouds. For the first time in several weeks, the sun could be seen. The day was a little warmer, and there was no wind. There wasn't enough snow for downhill skiing, so we went cross-country instead. Taking advantage of the low temperatures, the ski hill was snowmaking all day long.
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The days are short here, especially with high mountains all around, so evening came by 15:00. The weather remained favorable, and the moon and stars appeared--all the more impressive since they haven't shown themselves since before the last full moon. It has been very cloudy in Prague.
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vu/~stodolan / Prague / Krkonose II
Updated: 8-DEC-2003
Webmaster: Nathan Stodola