I have added another RSS newsfeed. Apart from blog entries and photos, you can now keep up-to-date about the mountains I have climbed. Just look for the Firefox newsfeed icon on the above pages, and use your favorite RSS reader to subscribe.

I still go mountain climbing and photo shooting without GPS, but the Google Maps API looked too interesting to be ignored. The API allows a site to control, interact with, and extend Google Maps. After a little programming, you can now track my hikes via satellite.

As an example, take the Schinder. The map link on the trail page will take you to a satellite map centered on the mountain. All interesting locations in the area are marked, and clicking the markers will give you information about each location. You can also view a list of all locations.

This cannot replace a hiking map. But it gives a nice spatial view of the trails database, which previously could only be navigated by browsing discrete, and sometimes arbitrary regions.

The Google Maps API and OpenACS made it very easy to implement this custom application on top of Google Maps. The geographic coordinates and all additional information for the locations are stored by this site, and integrated into the map with a few JavaScript lines. Defining a new location involves not much more than clicking on a map - you don't even have to know the difference between latitude and longitude. If you are interested in the source, let me know.

It's been a month since I last climbed a mountain. First, I had to scan all the great photos I took during my Dachstein vacation, and then winter paid its first visit to the Alps. It came with such force that one unlucky mountaineer had to spend three nights in a snow storm before he was rescued. Otherwise, deep snow at the end of September is pretty normal.

Today, the snow was gone at 2400m, the sun was shining, and the trees looked like they do in autumn. I didn't feel like exploring a new mountain, so I paid a visit to the Sonnjoch. Even my place at the summit was the same as in 2001.