Bernina Range

From left to right: Piz Cambrena, Piz Palü, Bellavista, Crast‘ Agüzza, Piz Bernina (thumbnail), Piz Morteratsch (in the clouds). Piz Bernina is the highest with 4049 m, the other peaks range from just over 3600 to just under 4000 m. 

This morning I finally took the cable car to the top station Diavolezza, to enjoy this stunning panorama up close, before the weather gods would draw their cloudy curtain over the peaks again. As you can see, the plan worked perfectly. 
I treated myself to a hot drink on the restaurant terrace, watching climbers make their way across the gigantic snow fields of Piz Palü.

For the second part of the day I had planned to walk along a little river that flows down from the Berninapass and forms a series of very pretty waterfalls. But then I realized that the hiking path has effectively become a biking trail (extra 3), and trying to walk there stopped being fun very quickly. So I took the train most of the way to my next destination, the Morteratsch glacier. 

Now that was a bit of a shock. In the first extra, you see a metal pole. It marks the end of the glacier in 1985. I have been there in the early 1980es (still with my parents), and several times since, and every time the glacier had retreated, so the path leading to it got longer and longer over the years.

But the last years have taken their toll on the glacier like nothing before. The path now ends in the middle of nowhere. There is nothing to see but a rocky cliff, and water flowing down from somewhere on top of it - where the glacier now ends. More than a kilometer from where I saw it once. 

To end this journal entry on a positive note: I finally spotted some flowers in the Morteratsch valley - yellow alpine poppy, alpine toadflax and alpine willowherb (extra 2).