Hi everybody,
the trip to TI-157 last Wednesday, July 22nd., was very nice indeed. Despite a few raindrops around noon the weather had been nice and warm all day. I started in the village of Bach (Lech valley) at 05.00 local time in the morning and after about 2 hours I ran into this impressive view of the Allgäu Main Ridge: Error 404 - Page Cannot Be Found
I reached TI-157 summit at 09.30 and left again about one hour later with 47 QSO in the log. Half way back I took a short refreshment and had just opened the bottle when I noticed some kind of movement on the ground. I kept as quiet as possible and to my pleasure a small head appeared out from a hole less than 2 meters away. I slowly put down the bottle and turned around to fetch my camera out of the rucksack. When I turned back to the hole, the head was gone. I switched on the camera, focused the hole and didn’t have to wait too long, when first the head, then the whole body appeared again:
http://qsl.net/dl4cw/marmot.jpg
an alpine Marmot (Marmota marmota), obviously a “growing lad”, which to my disappointment disappeared again as soon as the shutter noise had faded, I guess I was lucky enough to be able to take this single picture. I waited for another 5 minutes but the marmot wouldn’t show up again.
I decided to not wait any longer but to proceed towards TI-368, the second (and last) summit for the day. TI-368, the Jöchlspitz is a typical Allgäu grass summit with a very rich flora at its flanks, the activation brought in another 29 QSO. There is a nature trail with all kind of alpine flowers on which you can walk along, which I did while descending back to the car. I saw a beautiful exemplar of a Turk’s-cap lily (Lilium martagon) there: Error 404 - Page Cannot Be Found
I reached the car at 16.30 in the afternoon, exactly 11.5 hours after I had started - quite tired but at one with the world.
73 Bernhard DL4CW