Welcome to the website of the Karthaus summerschool, edition 2019, and the 19th edition since the first course in Grindelwald of 1995. This year's course took place from 10 to 20 September 2019, in the beautiful South Tirolean village of Karthaus.
The 10 lecturers gave daily lectures to the 33 participants, mainly PhD candidates, on a wide range of glaciology topics. The topics ranged from numerical modelling of glaciers and ice sheets to ice cores, and from the Alpine glaciers to the Antartic ice sheet, and even Mars.
Atmosphere - ice interactions, ocean - ice interactions, ice - solid earth interations, geomorphology, remote sensing ... all the courses had one thing in common: ice!
On Tuesday 17 September, we had a well deserved break from the theory and computer exercices, and took the bus to the small village of Kurzras. This town is located at then end of the Schnalstal valley (aka Val Cenales),
and is mostly known for its Alpine ski facilities. We took the cable car from there to the Grawand (3251 m), and hiked down on what is left of the Hochjochferner glacier. The adjacent blue ski slope was open, unfortunately none of us thought of bringing their skis.
After a lot of sliding and close inspections of the ice, we stopped to have lunch at the Schöne Aussicht restaurant. In fact we were a bit ahead of schedule, so we had plenty of time to take the bonus trail from there all the way up the Im Hinteren Eis (3269 m).
We followed Olaf's lead for some meters, but then everyone continued on a more human pace. It is only when we reached the top that we could admire the fabulous view over the Hintereisferner glacier. Some of us were even brave enough to step over the Italian/Austrian border (fortunately there was no bordel control).
After lunch most of us hiked back down to Kurzras, but a small group of curious glaciologists thought it would be nice to experiment with turbulent air mixing in what turned out to be the highest outdoor sauna in Europe (Lars Z. et al, 2019) !
Special thanks to the crew of the Schöne Aussicht for opening the sauna for us. Between two sauna rounds we realised there was a webcam filming us (outside, of course). The best part is that the feed from this webcam can be found on the website of the restaurant.
Feel free to have a look to prepare the next excursion of 2020.
A beautiful trail brough us back to Kurzras, where we took the bus to Karthaus. To our great surprise we found Ian halfway between Kurzras and Karthaus. He probably needed a bit more training for his next marathon.
Once in Karthaus we found our fellow glaciologists in the sauna of the Zur Goldenen Rose hotel. It was a great day, but we have to be fit for tommorrow : first lectures on ice cores!
This short Go-Pro video gives a nice impression of the view at Im Hinteren Eis (3269 m). You can see both the Hochjochferner and Hintereisferner glaciers.
