On paper it should have been a nice Fall trail day with some great elevation and amazing scenery, but it turns out the line between Fall and Winter is razor thin in the Alps! I abandoned my original plan to summit Speer peak after I reached white-out conditions about 1000 feet below the summit; I opted to play it safe and live to fight another day. More pics once I get them onto Flickr, but until then here are four that tell the tale:
3 hours in and things were going fine . . . great view back down the valley, but you can see a hint of snow on the rock in the foreground.
I was gaining tons of elevation and the weather turned . . . and where did my trail go? This picture was taken about 15 minutes after the previous one.
This was taken by accident, but it sums up my state of mind: I was having doubts about summiting Speer today.
The visibility was like 30 meters at the base of the final push to the top. With an hour or more to the top, and uncertain conditions and terrain, I called it a day. Maybe the solitary cross was a divine message?