Covid-19 continues to dominate the world and yet many things changed in the last couple of weeks. While my spring was widely shaped by an office closure resulting in a lot of freedom which I used for uncountable hikes, the following early summer has been characterized by extremely busy (home) office days. Fortunately, not only work return but also open borders: Due to cancelled flights I was not able to visit Cracow, but together with friends I went to Austria instead. A long weekend in a small guesthouse, located next to Austria’s highest mountain, the Grossglockner, was the perfect contrast to the stressful corporate life.
End of June, we left Germany on a sunny day to arrive in a rain-swept Austria. Mountain backdrop? Negative report! Instead of going for a first little hike, we used the evening to catch up on life while enjoying delicious Austrian food. In the first minutes of the next morning, it was not clear whether the fog was caused by nature or by too many drinks on the night before, but after an extensive breakfast we were set and ready to start our first hike. Destination of the day: The Dorfer Tal, a valley close to the town of Kals. The valley was quite scenic – a fairly wild stream, lots of grazing cows and stunning mountain peaks left and right. After a while we reached the target of the hike, a beautiful little lake, the Dorfer See. With a total length of around 20 km and not many meters in elevation, the hike was a perfect start of more ambitious plans.
Those ambitious plans followed on the next day: Valley and forest hikes can be fabulous but a stay in the Central Alps would be kind of boring without seeing a mountain peak. Our target was the Figerhorn, a mountain right next to the famous Grossglockner. We saw the latter for the first time on our way up to the Figerhorn – what a majestic sight! The Grossglockner is covered all year long by snow and glaciers which give the mountain an emphasized look compared to its neighbours. Yet, the greatest views were still to come. The actual ascent to the peak of the Figerhorn turned out to be unforgiving: steep as hell, no shade-giving trees and a peak which was not really visible until the very end. The last bit was alongside a ridge where I struggled a little with dizziness (donating blood is important and saves lives – do it! – but maybe not just two weeks before such an endeavor). That dizziness faded away after reaching the summit cross. Those views – incredible! Up on 2.742 meters we were able to see all mountains near and far, even the Italian Dolomites, one of my dream destinations since many years. The view towards the Grossglockner did beat everything – breathtakingly beautiful! Alpine hikes have something unique to them, walking up a mountain gives you a good feeling of how small you are compared to earth’s massive scales, a feeling which we somehow tend to lose in nowadays’ world. I also liked the fact that there was no cable car, no guesthouse and no restaurant on the way up: all food, all water and everything else which was needed had to be carried, something which reminded me of Canada’s wild Rockies, something leading to an archaic feeling of discovery. Maybe that is also why I hiked the last five kilometers back to our guesthouse instead of taking a car: for me, the lust for pushing limits became a driver of happiness.
On the next day, it was sadly time to leave Austria again. Fortunately, I turned into an early bird in the past years. So before we had a common breakfast, I hiked fast and without any luggage to the Lucknerhaus from where I had one last magnificent view towards the Grossglockner. While the valley was still calm and dark, the rising sun highlighted Austria’s imperial mountain. What a memorial goodbye – or maybe a “see you again”?
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[…] ever accessing an area with an high infection rate (>50 per 100,000 inhabitants), I ended up hiking in Austria, enjoying southern Bavaria, having a grand tour de France and seeing one of the world’s most […]
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