Thursday, April 14, 2011

The 1931 Polytechnic Tour to Grindelwald, Switzerland 4
















Guides and glaciers today, and more of the same tomorrow. The pictures of the glaciers may seem boring, but as they recede, old photos and paintings become the only visual record of something that once would have seemed as permanent as anything imaginable. Mountain guides, once locals learned that foreigners saw mountains as something to explore rather than ignore, organized themselves in guilds, with the residents of local villages agreeing that only members of that towns group would be allowed to lead tourists into the mountains. Today, many countries require that licensed, local guides be hired to lead trips into the mountains. The White Hell of Pitz Palu, co-directed by Arnold Fanck, and G. W. Pabst, and starring Leni Riefenstahl, featured mountain guides in a daring rescue of a party of stranded mountain climbers. Navigate back to my post of 3/26/11, Tony Manns at the Wintergarten for information on G. W. Pabst. (And if anyone cares about my taste in movies, go to my blog, www.greatmovieslist.blogspot.com ) I wonder if Eve or Ja (Jim) took the pictures of Fritz the mountain guide.

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