There are some things that no amount of photography can really do justice to. They tend to be the bigger sights – mountains, waterfalls, glaciers. The photo might give you an impression of the scale and something of the drama but unless you see it for yourself it’s hard to convey the gut-punching impact of a mighty thing taking your breath away. You need more senses than just vision alone. So it was with the Matreier glacier. Reaching it required a long, steep at the end walk from our car-park/camping area – one of the places we discovered that even though you are not technically supposed to stay, no-one really minds if you do. P asked the attendant whether staying the night was allowed. He smiled and mimed the three wise monkeys routine.

The sun warmed our backs as we set off past farming settlements, cosy on the valley floor. It was nice to put the rain behind us. Or so we thought…

After so much rain in the past few days we were surrounded by rushing water.

We re-traced the route of the meltwater steeply up the side of the mountain. The roar was all-encompassing until we went over a ridge and it abruptly stopped, leaving an unexpected silence. Ahead in the distance was the glacier spilling down the flanks of the rock wall.

The weather was in flux with speckles of rain and sunshine trying to burst through. The cliffs echoed with the whistles of an unseen bird of prey.

The track levelled off for a bit and we stopped at a church built into a cave.

As in Bavaria, there is a lot of religious iconography in this part of the world – shrines, chapels and crosses in unexpected places. It’s a reminder I suppose that people have been putting their stamp on these mountains for a long, long time.

The huge silent glacier went from being distant, to right there; both sides of it threaded with silver meltwater.

It vanished below the landscape again and we climbed the rock it had left behind, worn unnaturally smooth by the tons of ice scraped over its surface for millennia. It felt as newly smooth as a shaved head.

It was hard to believe that this grubby tongue of ice was responsible for carving out the whole valley, pulling up huge boulders and casting them aside. Glaciers don’t work quickly but they do get the job done.

At the very tip of the glacier, still some way off, the scene was almost industrial. Two ice-caves spewing meltwater and grubby bergs floating folornly in a milky grey pool. We contemplated walking further to get to the tip but in these landscapes, everything is bigger and further than it seems.

Thunder was rolling in the distance and we still had a mountain to climb (down).

We picked up the pace to avoid the rainstorm. No chance of that. We got drenched.

Everything about these mountains makes you feel insignificant, from the great grinding glacier carving the valley to the rolling thunderstorms lashing out wherever the mood takes them. Rain in your face and a cool wind off the ice. Pictures don’t quite capture any of that.