Kramerspitz -- this time all the way to the top

So, yesterday I went back to Garmisch to climb the Kramerspitz again.  While it was the right decision to turn around on Tuesday, given the (accurate) predictions of rain later in the day, I couldn't shake a slight feeling of irritation at having not completed the hike.  Yesterday the weather was (accurately) predicted to be fine... so off to the mountains I went!

And here are the photos....

This is a little bit along from where I turned around Tuesday.  The trail crosses the upper snowfields -- if you look closely you can just see a couple of hikers starting across one of the middle traverses.  For those with a tendency to worry, a couple of reassurances.  First, it looks worse than it is -- the snow was stable and previous hikers had made footholds that I was able to use.  Second, it is still quite early in the season:  I'm not expecting us to have to cross anything like this on the H3H.

And now this is looking back across the same terrain.  The previous photo was taken from the top of the grassy peak to the left.  Gotta do something about the ubiquitous finger!

This is shortly before the summit.  I've caught up a little with those two hikers from the first photo (you can see them down and to the left of the cross).  I found a better route to the right of the snow and so didn't have to cross that last snowfield.

The view from the summit.  The Zugspitze across the valley was wreathed with clouds all day and it was a little hazy... but those are quibbles:  it was spectacular.

During the descent I came across this bench.  The inscription translates to "Oh you land of my mountains, how beautiful you are".

Tough to argue with that when you see the view.

A short while later I arrived at the Stepberg Alm.  There are places like this where hikers can stop for food and drink scattered high up all over the Alps, -- they are one of the reasons why hiking here is better than hiking anywhere else in the world.  You'll notice that there are hardly any customers -- that's because the hut's website said that they would only open for the season tomorrow.  Since tomorrow is a) Saturday, b) the first day of a three day weekend, c) the first day of a two week school vacation, and d) supposed to be beautiful weather, the place will be packed.  But today it was peaceful -- here and on the trails:  in six hours I saw a dozen people.

And here, with views to the Zugspitze, is the well deserved "Kaffee und Kuchen"!

Feel like hiking yet?

H3H Training Hike -- Kramerspitz bei Garmisch

Went for a practice hike today -- up the Kramerspitz above Garmisch opposite the Zugspitze.  Took about 4.25 hours for 8k, +/-1010m.  Wasn't carrying a full pack, but I'm still pretty happy with the time (for H3H purposes I'd estimate the hike at 5.75h).  Started off sunny, Bavarian blue skies, scattered clouds, but then clouded over.  Stayed warm and pleasant though.

I had originally thought I might do a 6+ hour hike but when I got up to 1800m there were snow patches and fields in gullies and on north-facing slopes... which is where the trail to the peak goes.  I don't mind walking on snow, but trudging up a steep trail in snow is another, less enjoyable, story... and I know this trail:  there would have been a fair amount of that.  So I sat in the sun and had an early lunch before turning and descending by the same route I had climbed.  Not too much of a sacrifice -- it's a beautiful trail with spectacular views.  Since I had the time, I took the opportunity to explore a side spur to the Königsstand -- more beautiful views!

Legs felt a little tired by the end of the descent, but not excessively so.  No knee issues.  Back in the car before the rain started.  So, all in all, an excellent day!

Here are some photos....

This is the Zugspitze on the other side of the Garmisch.  The sky really was that blue....

And this is one of the less salubrious hikers on the trails today....

This is the sort of trail I was hiking along for much of the time....

This is on the ridge at 1800m looking towards the peak.  As you can see, despite my finger, more and more snow the higher one goes. What you can't see well is that the trail dips down to the right (the north slope)... where there is much more snow.

So after a light lunch I went back down and followed a side trail to a lookout point from which there was a beautiful view up the Loisach valley to the northeast.

The Alps are such a gorgeous place to hike....

Fri, Sept 16th -- Shanghai... last day

Sights: none, unless you count shopping as sightseeing :-)

Our last day in China was planned from the outset to be a free day...
our first since arriving two and a half weeks ago. We had a lazy
morning, then met a venture finance colleague of mine, who had
recently relocated to Shanghai, for lunch at an excellent dumpling
restaurant in a trendy area of restaurants, cafes, boutiques, and
galleries called Xintiandi. It reminded us of Quincy Market in
Boston, which was, my colleague told us, not unsurprising: it was
designed by an architect who also worked on Quincy Market.

My colleague's fund has a number of investments in Shanghai startups,
one of which is doing a high-profile IPO and another of which, at the
same time, is going out of business... so he is a busy guy at the
moment. It was interesting to hear his description of the business
world in China: in a word, cut-throat. The winding down of the
second company shouldn't affect the IPO of the first -- VCs always
have companies that are going out of business, it's the nature of the
game -- but in China such a thing if it became known would be seized
on by competitors of the company doing the IPO to cast doubt upon its
financial viability and motives for going public... and this, whether
logical or not, might spook potential investors. So, after lunch he
left to do some dancing on eggs.

Afterwards Madeleine and Lidia wandered around Xintiandi and
Tianzifang (another similar area), while I weighed the alternatives of
doing some more sightseeing, or going back to the hotel and reading
and finishing up blogging the trip. No prize for guessing which
alternative won out :-).

Around 8PM the intrepid shoppers showed up, having (as they had pre-
announced) bought very little, their goal having been to see what was
fashionable in Shanghai and to get a better feel for the city.
Shortly thereafter Bella arrived to shepherd us to the maglev train to
the airport, which we had decided to take in preference to the
minivan. The fastest train in the world, the maglev takes under seven
and a half minutes to go 30km from the outskirts of Shanghai to Pudong
airport, hitting a top speed of 431kph (268mph). It was
simultaneously exciting and underwhelming, since, as I had sort of
expected, you can't really appreciate the speed from the train,
particularly at night.

The formalities were handled quickly and efficiently, and after a
dinner of noodles and fried rice in the business class lounge, at
11:40PM our plane took off for the eleven and a half hour night flight
back to Munich. Our Chinese trip was over.

I'm a little zonked as I write this, a few hours after getting home
after the night in the plane, so I'm not going to try to draw any deep
conclusions or to generate brilliant insights at this time (unlikely,
I'll grant you, even when I'm not zonked!). I'll just give my spur of
the moment response to the question I posed, and gave an interim
answer to, before Xi'an: would I come back to China again? And the
answer is (Madeleine is going to love this): yes and no. I didn't
really have any negative experiences, other than finding the poverty
and grime off-putting, so I would feel quite comfortable going back to
China, but I don't feel like I either have to or particularly want
to. On the one hand, I had enough positive experiences, particularly
in Xian, Chongqing and Shanghai, to outweigh the initial negative
impressions of Beijing and Shanxi, but on the other there was nowhere
I fell in love with, nothing which I really want to see or experience
again. I'm glad I went, it was thought-provoking, I saw some
beautiful things, and many interesting things, but given a week to
spend in Paris (or London, or the Alps, or northern Italy...) or a
week to spend in China, I'd go to Paris.

Thu, Sept 15th -- Shanghai

Sights: Shanghai Museum, 88th floor observation deck, Old Town, Yu garden, Huangpo cruise, acrobatic show, nightime walk along the Bund.

Despite the number of sights, Bella had suggested a later start -- 10AM -- so we were well rested by the time we got into the minivan the next morning. On the way to the museum she proceeded to tell us most of the things that she had told us the night before on the way to the hotel, so when we arrived and she proposed letting us wander around by ourselves for a couple of hours (saying that there were English labels and information panels) we didn't suggest that she accompany us to provide more explanation. A pity, because while the exhibits did indeed have English labels, they generally didn't provide any context or explain why the exhibits were important and/or interesting. On the other hand, with her version of the IvyIvy disease it isn't clear that it would have been better with Bella....

After a feeble lunch (not a tragedy because we had eaten breakfast... and buffet breakfasts followed by generally good restaurant lunches and dinners each and every day have been doing a number on my waistline -- as soon as we get back, I'm going on a diet!) we crossed the river to Pudong to be lofted to the 88th floor of a building for a panoramic view of the city. First, however, we had to negotiate a rather small revolving door, which wouldn't normally have presented much of a problem, had it not been for a gaggle of Chinese tourists (from the provinces, I'd guess), who were trying to enter at the same time.

Now, the Chinese, despite their many and manifest talents and achievements, have never learned how to queue, so despite the fact that there was no rush (the inside lobby was empty) they were all pushing and shoving to get into what should have been a one person at a time revolving door, with the result that, when six managed to cram in to one section together, it jammed. Sigh. I think it's about time to go home.

Eventually, though, we did manage to get in and up. For practically the first time during the whole trip the skies were blue and visibility excellent, so the views were stunning... except to the east, where an even taller building (another 22 stories, I believe) was in the way. And shortly the view to the south will also be affected, where yet another "tallest building in Asia!") is under construction. From which you may conclude that Shanghai is yet another Chinese city being modernized and developed at hyperspeed.

As in Xi'an, however, the urban planning department seems to be excellent. Pedestrian areas and small parks have been left along the riverside in many places, trees have been planted throughout the city, many of the new buildings are very attractive, and there are some lovely early 20th Century commercial and residential streets that have been left with plane trees on both sides. Shanghai, or at least the tiny part of it that we have seen, seems to be a very liveable city.

After an ear-popping descent in "the fastest elevator in China!", we drove over to and then wandered around the Old Town, a bazaar-like tourist trap of largely new Ming and Qing style buildings. In the middle of it, however, is a genuine Ming dynasty garden with a maze of paths, pavilions, rocky outcrops, and pools packed into two acres that achieves the unlikely feat of seeming much larger while remaining claustrophobic. The mid-afternoon heat and swarms of visitors didn't help -- this was one of the few times in China that we have felt crowded. Crowds aside, the garden was interesting, but not my style. I like rocks to be smoothly rounded and massive, points of interest in a garden of trees and plants, whereas the Chinese like their rocks full of holes and rough karstic surfaces, with the trees and plants as the foreground figures framed by artificial rocky outcrops.

One interesting thing that we did learn from Bella, however, is that the Chinese, among their many other superstitions, believe (or in this case, perhaps, believed) that zigzag paths are lucky because ghosts can only travel in straight lines. And just outside the Yu garden was a pool crossed by a nine zigzag bridge. Quite lovely.

Another superstition that the Chinese have is that the number four is unlucky. So, rather like with with the number 13 in the west, buildings don't have a fourth floor. But the Chinese go much farther. For example you rarely see a car license plate with a "4"... It would have near-zero resale value That is of course relatively harmless, but when expressed as an obsession with the healing properties of parts of rare and endangered animals such as tigers and rhinos, their superstitious nature can be very pernicious... Chinese demand for traditional medicinal remedies is one of the main forces behind illegal poaching the world over that is driving some species to the brink of extinction.

Next we took an hour-long cruise along the Huangpo River, with lovely views of the city from angles complementary to the panoramas we had seen from above. Here too Bella left us alone, explaining that it was hot outside on the open top deck, which is where we wanted to stand because it had the best views, and that anyway she had taken the cruise many times before. Not going to get the Guide of the Year award, I'm afraid....

Dinner was better than lunch, although not wonderful, and then we saw the acrobatic show which was. Wonderful, I mean. Cirque de Soleil caliber acts... entrancing. And we finished up the evening with a walk along the Bund -- the old European waterfront promenade that is the best place from which to watch the light shows on the Pudong skyscrapers on the other side of the river. Many other people, mostly Chinese, were doing the same, a few street vendors plied their wares, brighlty lit boats went back and forth along the river... and if it hadn't been for the incongruous larger than life statue of Mao, one wouldn't have known that one was in a communist autocracy.

Sent from my iPad

Weds, Sept 14th -- Three Gorges Dam and travel to Shanghai

Sights: the DAM

Last morning on the boat. Last batch of 7AM announcements. I don't think I'll miss IvyIvy. We packed and I settled the bill and decided on tips. Our itinerary for the day kindly laid out what was expected from us (about triple what the travel agency had told us should be the maximum), justifying their figures with a crew number (125) that had to be at least double, and maybe 4x, the actual crew size. In addition they wanted us to compensate IvyIvy separately... which wouldn't have left her a rich woman if she had not had a conversation with Lidia in which she explained what a hard life she had (which we believe -- she seemed to work around the clock), and which rendered her human in our eyes.

After breakfast we set off for our tour of the DAM... by many measures the largest in the world. After the amazing locks yesterday night, I was hopeful... but once again it was foggy/hazy, so we couldn't see that much. For example the other side of the dam was invisible, which rather limited its size wow factor. And the already poor visibility was not helped by the fact that the viewing sites were set quite far back from the dam itself. What we could see looked impressive, but I wasn't blown away. And the information center was (typically for China) primarily focussed on selling us stuff. So, disappointing.

We were met at the boat by our new guide Daniel, who reminded me a little of a relative of mine who can't stay still -- always jumping up and down or fiddling with something. He didn't have much to do -- basically to ferry us through town to the airport -- which was probably just as well, because I'm not sure that we would have gotten much of interest from him if he had had sights and history to explain to us. We are supposed to fill out and sign assessment forms for each guide, then sign and seal them in envelopes (with another signature over the seam) and give them back to the guide to be sent to the travel agency. Few guides actually followed through on the entire procedure... usually withholding the envelope, which left one a little inhibited about giving unvarnished feedback. Daniel was the winner in this department -- he just wanted the signature... said we didn't have to fill anything else out. Efficient, I suppose....

The plane was delayed an hour (which makes three of four flights in China -- something to bear in mind if you are planning a trip there), but once again books and iPad made the time (even if not the plane) fly. In Shanghai we were met as reliably as always at the exit from baggage claim by our next guide, Bella, one of those ageless Chinese women who could be 25 or 40. Her English seemed fairly good, but what we have come to call a "Chinese conversation" on the way to our hotel revealed limits.

A "Chinese conversation" is one in which you ask a question, and you get an unclear answer that leaves you unsure whether or not the question was understood. So you ask again, with different phrasing to try to make your question clearer... only to get another, usually different, response that leaves you as confused as before. We went around three times on the question as to whether she had ever taken the Maglev train from Shanghai to the new airport before I gave up. We've had a lot of these conversations during the trip....

We ran into some traffic on the way to our hotel, which was on the edge of the Old Town in the center of the city, an experience that was repeated several times the following day. Although Shanghai has clearly been building and widening roads at a frenetic pace, it hasn't kept up with traffic growth. Lots of of lights and color on the buildings, lots of advertizements for global brands... the first impression was that it was glitzy, but we couldn't see too much in the dark. We checked in, had an OK dinner in the hotel, and then spent the rest of the evening catching up on the world after three days without Internet access.

Tue, Sept 13th -- Yangtze

Sights: Gorges, Shennong Stream, Locks on Three Gorges Dam

We were woken again before 7AM by the dulcet tones of IvyIvy announcing breakfast (four times -- twice in Chinese, and twice in English). Since we weren't planning to go on the morning excursion to the nearby city, we could have gone back to sleep... except that we knew that there would be at least a dozen other announcements before the excursion left at 8, that breakfast would be cleared away by 7:45, and that lunch wasn't going to be until 1PM. So we threw on some clothes, had breakfast (with everyone else, none of whom planned to go on the excursion, but who had reached identical conclusions)... and then we all went back to bed. I'm not sure that repeat visitors is one of the metrics that the cruise ship company tracks....

We started the passage of the first gorge around 10:30AM, but I have to say that although I liked it I didn't find it dramatically more impressive than the river valley upstream. There were two main reasons: first, it was particularly foggy/hazy (as opposed to just normally foggy/hazy) so we couldn't see very far, and second, the dam downstream has raised the level of the water by 60-80 meters in the gorges, which perhaps isn't that much compared to the at times several hundred meters high rock walls, but which has eliminated any visible current, making it more like going through a fjord than a river gorge. On the other hand, perhaps it was just a case of having too-high expectations.

After lunch we went on an excursion up what was described as an idyllic side valley, first on a fair-sized ferry, then on a small wooden boat rowed by four or five men from the Tujia "minority people". The side valley and turned into a canyon and was quite scenic, although it too was much less impressive (at least in the parts we went through) than it would have been when the water level was much lower, and the men instead of rowing would have stripped almost naked and pulled the boat up rapids (as shown in the photo on the front of the brochure we were given...). Not the first time sights in China have been oversold.

And the idyllic nature of the area was also somewhat impacted by the astounding concrete towers (which soared at least a couple of hundred meters above the river) that are being built to support a new superhighway that will cross the side valley just before the entrance to the canyon. On the other hand, the construction was truly impressive!

The most interesting thing about the excursion was perhaps the thoughts it provoked about China's minority peoples. To start with, it may be a bit of cliché, but at least to this outsider they really do all look the same... or at least, similar: there's enough variety in appearance among the Han majority that (with a couple of exceptions) I wouldn't know that someone was a member of an ethnic minority unless they either dressed up in traditional garb or told me so.

Next, I suspect that for many members of minorities (with a couple of major exceptions, such as Tibetans or Uigurs), their ethnicity is irrelevant except in so far as it confers advantages. For one thing, it allows them to make money in ways that normal Chinese couldn't (such as by rowing boats up the Shennong stream... which may be hard work, but almost certainly is less hard and significantly more lucrative than working in the fields, which is probably what these guys would have been doing otherwise). For another, they are permitted two children instead of one (although this might be a bit misleading, since the one child policy was relaxed some years ago in the countryside (i.e., outside of towns and cities)... which is probably where most of the minorities live).

In sum, there may be pervasive discrimination in other ways against minorities in China, although I haven't seen or heard that this is the case, but on the surface it seems like their situation is not bad.

A last observation: we saw very little wildlife -- animals or birds -- while going up the side stream... and in fact we have seen very few animals or birds anywhere in China thus far, quite striking when compared with suburban and country areas in Europe or the US. Pollution? Hunting? Avoidance of noise? Too many people? All of the above?

In the evening after dinner we started our four-hour passage through the five-stage locks of the Three Gorges Dam. Each lock is 280m long, 35m wide, has gates over 40 meters high, and can raise or lower ships 20m (for a total of 100m). The scale is awe-inspiring, almost too big to take in until the ship was actually in the lock... along with five other large ships. I thought our cruise ship was fairly large... but it was dwarfed by the locks. Tremendously impressive.

But long, and with another 7AM wake-up ahead of us we went to sleep in mid-transit around midnight.

Mon, Sept 12th -- Yangtze

Sights: the Ghost City of Fengdu

We were woken at 6:45AM by the ships PA system, thoughtfully piped into our cabins, announcing breakfastbreakfast (it was IvyIvy again), and so we (but not Madeleine... are you serious?) dressed and went to the restaurant. We had been assigned to a table, so we got our food and took stock of our table companions (who it turned out we were to sit with for the rest of the cruise). A motley bunch, but, it turned out, quite compatible -- the social interactions were perhaps the best part of the trip.

From youngest to oldest: a German student nearing the end of a two month summer internship teaching English in a Chinese Kindergarten in Chongquing, two tall and very blonde Norwegian nurses in the midst of a three month world tour (they had reached China on the Transsiberian railway), an Australian couple (the quietest of the group... I didn't learn much about them), and a retired American couple from Phoenix, he knowledgeable and charming, she funny, loud, very opionated (but not abrasively so), and very, very social (as she told us, you can take the girl out of Brooklyn, but you can't take Brooklyn out of the girl!). We laughed a lot and also hung out together when away from the table.

About half the passengers were foreigners, and half Chinese, which was good, because although we didn't mingle, it didn't feel like a "made for foreign tourists" experience.

At 8:30AM we left the ship to see the Ghost City, which was mostly a disappointment -- despite being a real Buddhist temple, it felt a little Disneyfied (an impression which was heightened by our useless local guide, whom we abandoned shortly after getting into the site), and then the rest of the day we spent relaxing for almost the first time since getting to China. Madi and Lidia got pedicures or facials or massages or some such beauty treatments, I caught up on blogging (I had fallen behind due to the hectic pace of the previous days and to the fact that I had battled a cold for a couple of days, which left me with less energy for creative work... yes, this is both creative and work!), and from time to time we sat on our deck and admired the views.

The Yangtze is a huge river, and even when it isn't going through gorges, it has cut itself an impressive valley. On top of that, there were many towns along the banks, with stunning bridges from time to time across the Yangtze... almost all of which (towns and bridges) were new, because the construction of the Three Gorges dam (about which more later when we see it) raised the water level all the way back to Chongqing... some 450km upriver... flooding many old towns and roads, requiring them to be rebuilt higher up the valley sides. Officially some 1.3 million people were relocated... but I wouldn't be surprised if the figure was much higher. Although the valley is not as densely populated as other places we have seen in China (the terrain is often very rugged), there were a lot of good-sized towns along the way.

All in all, I found it very impressive... and again I found myself reaching for fantasy and science fiction for comparable images -- I can't think of anywhere else that I have seen in the real world that is quite like it. The books that came to mind was Robert Silverberg's Majipoor series, set on a world with an immense, world-girdling river, along which the main character makes his picaresque way. If you have read them, it felt a little like that. If not, forget this paragraph ;-).

In the evening before dinner there was the captain's welcome cocktail party. I've never been on a cruise before, so this sort of organized social event was new to me, but I suspect that even if I had been on cruises, I wouldn't have seen something quite like this. The captain after being introduced by IvyIvy, stepped forward and barked at us for a few minutes -- more Japanese than Chinese it seemed to me -- before signalling the end of his speech by applauding himself in the best communist style (or at least, so I am informed by Lidia, who saw many such events while growing up in Romania). Then some of the other crew members were introduced, and duly applauded. Then the individual cabins and groups were called up to have their pictures taken with the captain, with a beautifully dressed hostess kneeling on either side in front and holding up a gaudy banner with the name of the cruise ship. It was all quite surreal....

One last thing: unfortunately there is no Internet on the boat, so this, and the previous blog posts I have caught up on, won't be sent until we get to Shanghai. Sorry for the delay....