Latschau – Grüneck – Lindauer Hütte (1744m)

One of the most beautiful hiking trips I made so far was from Grüneck to the “Lindauer Hütte”. The breathtaking views of the Sulzfluh (2818m) and “Drei Türme” (2830) are unforgettable.

I recorded the tour with the Garmin 60CSx and visualized it in Google Earth. Due to copyright issues  you are only allowed to show the embedded google map and no screenshot of google earth. A nice way to include your trips on your blog is everytrail.com:

Latschau – Grüneck – Lindauer Hütte (1744m) Trip Details

You start in Latschau where the base station of the Golmer Bahn is. You can buy a 2 sections-card for about 8 euros which brings you to the top called Grüneck. 

Grüneck, Austria

The weather was again perfect, no clouds and fine temperatures. You can choose between 2 ways to the Lindauer Hütte. One is about 3.5 hours and the other more direct way is about 2 hours. We chose the 2 hour way because this time we wanted to spend more time on photography and the landscape.

The path to the Lindauer Hütte leads you through woods, rocks, small rivers but is still easy to walk and very diversified. The best is the panorama of the Drei Türme and Sulzfluh. They were slightly covered with snow and the contrast of the beautiful colors of the autumn trees and the white tops of the mountains was very impressive.

View from the Lindauer Hütte to the 3 Türme. 

3 Türme

I love the next shot which shows the entrance to the Klettergarten and the 3 Tuerme in the background.

3 Türme

Some tour data:

View Trip in Google Earth
More pictures in the gallery
Total time with 1 hour rest at the Lindauer Hütte: 5 hours 45 minutes
Moving Time: 4 hours 31 minutes
Downhill distance: about 10 km

Furkajoch to Portlahorn (2011m)

A very convenient hiking trip is from the Furkajoch via “Blauer See” or “Sünser See” to the Portlahorn. The views and the landscape is very impressive. It is a perfect half day trip and it makes you feel better in the afternoon because you have done something for your health. The air is very clean and fresh in this height and the temperature in autumn is perfect.On the way back you have the opportunity to hike to the Portlakopf as well, which is about 20 minutes longer. It took us 4 hours with a longer rest on the Portlahorn (all in all about 6km). The best starting point is about 500m after the Furkajoch where some parking opportunities are. From there you walk to the Portlaalp and then you can follow the signs.

The following HDR picture shows the “Blauer See”. I think they call it that way because the lake reflects the blue sky.

The profile shows that you are making about 400 meters altitude difference which is not much on a distance of 3 km.

 There was a small pond on the summit of the Portlahorn with a few dragon flies.

Furkajoch to Portlahorn (2011m) Trip Details

Mittelalter Spectaculum Hohenems

It was the first time this event took place in Hohenems, Vorarlberg. I think it was a smaller version of the original spectaculum in Germany because I didn’t see any horses let alone some knights on horses. They promised everything but we got nothing except some gold coins . No it was not that bad.

Drummer in HDR

It was more or less a medieval market with lots of fantasy products like dragons or faries, food stalls, sword & shield stalls and a vast variety of unusual goods.

They had some fakir shows in the afternoon which was not for the fainthearted. With an iron hook in his eyes a man was pulling a woman over the stage…stay tuned to see these pictures in my gallery.

Shooter in HDR

They also had some nice one-on-one and group combats in the late afternoon where I took these pictures. They are HDR versions of my RAW files.

Group in HDR

It was a group from the czech republic I think. They did an enjoyable show…

Western Sydney International Dragway

Western Sydney International Dragway Details

In February we watched some drag races on the Western Sydney International Dragway. There are different categories the cars belong to. The most interesting and also the loudest is the Top Fuel category. In this category the cars run on a maximum of 85% nitromethane and about 15% methanol (racing alcohol) instead of gasoline!

The cars are longer and narrower and they have thin front tyres because they are built only for one purpose: To get as fast as possible from A to B on a straight line.

Top Fuel cars compete in a 0.4km race. The fastest cars complete it in less than 4.5 seconds which is about 530km/h! The acceleration of a Top Fuel dragster from 0 to 160km/h is less than 0.8 seconds. There are huge forces (about 5.7g) the driver has to compete with during this acceleration.

The power of these engines is between 7000 and 8300 horsepower’s and estimates suggest a torque output of 5100-6750 Nm which is a lot. I think the Viper has about 700-900 Nm.

Of course they are not only very fast but also very, very noisy. They create at full throttle a nearly deafening amount of noise (over 150dB), enough to cause some peoples eardrums physical pain. Months after this event I still remember this intense level of sound. It is so intense that it is also felt as vibrations all over one’s body. I tried to take some pictures and to record the burnouts which wasn’t easy because your body automatically reacts to this level of sound and so some of the material is partly unsteady.

Now turn on the volume of your speakers and watch this to get an impression of the Top Fuel cars. Double click the video for full screen mode.

NOTE: You need to install the Silverlight PlugIn if you can’t see the video. I wanted to test the Streaming Service of Microsoft, and so far it works pretty well.

Review: Trump 101 – The Way to Success

One of the last books I read from Donald Trump is “Trump 101“. Roughly said, it’s a summary of his insight’s and advices on how to succeed. Each chapter – and there are 33 – consists of a small introduction into a special topic, a part which is called “Coach Trump”, a part where interesting questions and answers from his blog are discussed and same chapters have included a sort of diary where Trump describes his daily activities in the week where his son Barron was born.

“Coach Trump” is the part with essential advice for various situations. The subtitle “Make It Happen In Your Life” should mean that these advices are not only for your business life but for your personal life as well. The idea of integrating blog discussions in his book is great and also a good marketing idea. The discussions are topical and it certainly will generate a few more clicks on his website.

Chapter 11 is about negotiation. You have to prepare yourself thoroughly for any negotiation by defining your objectives. It’s helpful to know the minimum you must receive to make the deal and the maximum you will to pay. If it’s not possible to strike the deal within that framework, be ready to walk away. Defining these limits during the negotiation is mostly too late.

Another paragraph I want to quote is about the level of perfection a company wants to achieve. When is enough enough ? When is the product finished or good enough ?

When an employee told me, “I think it’s good enough” in reference to an unfinished project, I fired him. Good enough ? It wasn’t good enough for me, and if it was good enough for him, he shouldn’t be working for me. I want people who want more than good enough. I want employees who want great and will go the extra mile for the very best. I don’t want to have to tell them; I want them to do it on their own.

The book is well structured and easy to read. It takes about 5 hours to read it.

Fireworks Fürstenfest 2007 in Vaduz

The 30 minutes firework is every year the highlight of the event. This time we watched the spectacle from the swiss side of the Rhein. It was further but for taking pictures it was clearly the better place to stay. We had a perfect view of the whole castle and fireworks. There were hundreds of people along the Rhein, watching, drinking and relaxing near their campfires.

Fürstenfest 2007

The pictures I took have an average exposure of about 10 seconds so the “path” of the fireworks is clearly visible. For the very bright fireworks I had to reduce the exposure because otherwise you would only see a white area. On some pictures you can see on the bottom the castle and the surrounding wood.

Fürstenfest 2007

I like the next shot because one can clearly see the castle and the beginning of the second part of the firework. Unfortunately the building crane is also visible They had to split it into several parts with small breaks in between because otherwise the produced smoke would be too thick to have a clear view…

Fürstenfest 2007

More pictures