Module: gallery_album
Item: GomsJanuary2012
Displays the photo gallery for a selected Gallery Album.The New Year started with a bang: massive snowfalls, stormy winds and rising temperatures brought the public authorities to close the high valley Goms in the upper Valais of Switzerland for an indefinite time. But this time I shouldn’t be able to escape from the valley. What a queasy feeling, when you hear giant rolling thunders of falling avalanches and you cannot move forwards nor backwards. Trapped in a small village named Blitzingen, in the middle of the Alps, I made the most out of the situation and celebrated New Year’s Eve together with my fate-companions of the village with my last beer in the hand. Hello 2012.

After a powerful start into the New Year, the region soon turned into a magical winter wonderland with stable conditions. This allowed the whole Spatial Experience crew to enjoy memorable days in steep faces of the Lötschental and never-ending hillsides of the Goms. But the bluebird weather already made room for the next depression in mid-January. Just in time with the snowfalls, our Finnish friend Jari Salo was visiting. Together, we were struggling through meters-high snow in an abandoned ski resort at the foot of the Furka tunnel the following days. Where chairlifts were dangling back in the days, Reto Kestenholz now showed us that rusty cable ropes could also be used in a different way. Due rising temperatures, our powder party ended far too early. Sadly a phenomenon that accompanied us during the whole January: Storms with large quantities of snow and, suddenly, rapid increasing temperatures. This will barely let us forget climate change – even in the deepest winter.

Main Image: The Spatial Experience crew. Photo: Silvano Zeiter.