St Anton in Arlberg

[Diane Clement]

The most exciting find of the day was a snake on the road.  Armin identified this on the wildlife thread as a viper, sorry for the repeat posting. 

Here's Carol taking its picture,
plus a closer view.  Carol was brave enough to rescue it, using her trekking poles and move it to the side of the road.  I kept a safe distance

[Paddy Tobin]

It looks such a tiny little thing.

Cohan,

Switzerland has the advantage of great numbers of visitors, sking in the winter and walking in the summer, and this makes it economical to have the emenities. The numbers of people in some of these mountain areas is quite astonishing. I imagine you visit areas which are more remote and less visited.

Paddy

[Diane Clement]

Some more interesting sites walking along the road

Echium vulgare growing on a heap of rubble
Moth ID please? 
Campanula scheuchzeri or similar.  I find all the campanulas and gentians very difficult to sort out

[Diane Clement]

It was a very pleasant walk up the valley, the mountain in the distance is Patteriol.  In this fairly narrow valley were lots of waterfalls, and these weren't enough to melt patches of snow which lingered in places that the sun didn't catch

[Diane Clement]

Most of the flowers on this day were woodsy subjects,

Thalictrum aquilegiifolium
Campanula barbata

[Diane Clement]

We had our coffee and cake at the Konstanzerhutte, so time to start back. 

Last look back at Patteriol
and forward back towards St Anton and more snow down in the valley
We looked out for the snake on our return, but saw no signs of it.
This butterfly had not been so lucky and its friend was investigating what had happened.  I think it's a Mountain Ringlet

[Martinr]

Great photos Diane, such a contrast to the Dolomites. I'm relying on you to keep the more voracious members of the forum supplied with their daily fix of Alpine pictures as I foolishly went back to work today which will slow down picture processing

[Paddy Tobin]

Great views, fabulous countryside and a beautiful thalictrum.

Great show, Diane.

Paddy

[cohan]

It looks such a tiny little thing.
Cohan,
Switzerland has the advantage of great numbers of visitors, sking in the winter and walking in the summer, and this makes it economical to have the emenities. The numbers of people in some of these mountain areas is quite astonishing. I imagine you visit areas which are more remote and less visited.
Paddy

paddy--apart fromt the main centres, again--of course banff and jasper have huge numbers of visitors, and even the road between them, is quite busy; the road we take to get into the mountains is long and wide and nearly empty!
the other difference, besides incoming visitors, is the local population of the area--even after rapid population growth of most parts of the province in recent years, the entire province is still a little under 3 million people, and rather few of those live in the mountains apart from tourist centres and resorts, many of which are seasonal..so we dont have the farming villages etc that one sees in the alps... of course that means we have much more intact wilderness... but it would be nice to have cake too

[Diane Clement]

Day 4
We decided to go first to the top of the Valluga.  Three different styles of lift whisked up to the top: gondola, cable car and strange phone box style cabin for the last bit.  This last one reminded me of the "coffin" lift in the Dolomites where you have to run to get in to the shouts of "allez, allez," and jump out at the top.  Here it was easier as the thing stopped to let you in and out.
 

[Diane Clement]

On our way up we had good views:

Some interesting geology on the first pic,

the second picture shows the valley we walked down on day 2

[Diane Clement]

And this was the view of the middle station where we stood on day 2 looking at the snow.  

[Diane Clement]

Some people were doing incredibly tricky walking on the snowy slopes

[Diane Clement]

Once at the top, we had superb 360^o views

[Diane Clement]

Walking wasn't possible from this point, nor the station below except for those happy to walk across steep snow fields (not me!) so we returned down to the lower station and walked across to the small village of St Christoph.  This terrain was different from what we had encountered so far, more boggy and acid.  

I struggled to identify the Dactylorhizas during the week, so please correct if you know better!

Veratrum album lobelianum
Dactylorhiza maculata