Vorarlberg, Austria: August 26 - September 7, 2005
Evan and Lisa took a hut-to-hut hiking trip in Vorarlberg, Austria a week after the worst flooding in over a century had damaged much of Europe. Arriving during the tailend of the catastrophe, instead of disaster, the hiking turned out to be spectacular.
story by: Lisa Schroeder and Evan Tick
8.26.05-8.27.05 Friday & Saturday
Our flight to Zurich, via Amsterdam Schiphol (JFK-AMS-ZRH) started at 6 pm New York time. Evan watched Hitch and tried to read the book The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. We had a few hours to kill in at Schiphol but made the mistake of not eating anything there.
We got to Zurich late Saturday morning. Since we knew everything would be closed from late afternoon until Monday morning, it was imperative to buy lunch food for hiking and a map of the Austrian alps. We took the train from ZRH to Zurich Haupt Banhof and bought one-way tickets to Schruns (52 SF each). We had an hour or so to kill, enough time to go to a nearby gourmet supermarket and buy hiking food (56 SF). We got enough food for about 5 lunches for two people, but got ripped off on the price. If we had explored a bit more, we would have seen there was a huge COOP supermarket right across the street from the station, with cheaper prices. It wasn’t possible to buy Austrian maps in Switzerland, so we jumped on the train and started our frustrating journey to Schruns. Normally there is a 2-hour train from Zurich to Schruns with perhaps one transfer. Because of the recent heavy rain and flooding, this route was disrupted. We knew there would be problems, but were assured before we left that there was some way to get through. In reality, each step of the journey was a mystery.
There was no sort of communication infrastructure between any of the train stations. The guy who sold us the original tickets at the Zurich Flughafen looked at an email message printed out and said that we just had to transfer in Feldkirch to a train to Bludenz where we would then hop on a bus to Schruns. Sounded simple enough and what we were expecting since that is what the Tourist Info office had said before we left.
Waiting in the Zurich Hauptbahnhof for our train to be posted on the big board, we drank yoghurt drinks and tried to wave off the smoke that everyone was blowing at us since we had inadvertently sat in the smoking section. Close to train Abfahrt we got up to look at the big board. There was a little note posted by our train, so Lisa looked up what it meant (in a dictionary) and it was something about not running! A little panic ensued and Evan asked a train guy in a neon jacket what to do. He told us to get on the train to Sargans, transfer to Buchs SG, making sure about the “SG” since there were a lot of Buchs, and then transfer to Feldkirch. He even wrote it down on our ticket. So we hopped on the train and were relaxed for an hour traveling to Sargans. A lot of other people also got off at Sargans so we mimicked what they were doing and got the next connection to Buchs SG with no problem. At Buchs SG, suddenly everyone disappeared and there was an announcement in German that Lisa couldn’t quite understand. We were waiting on the track for the next train but it didn’t show up, and no one else was waiting there either… an ominous sign.
Very stressed out Lisa went to go ask the ticket guy what was going on while she made Evan wait outside. The guy was nice and made some phone calls and looked in his computer and many printouts. He explained that we had to take a bus to Schaan, and at Schaan to transfer to another bus to Feldkirch, where we could catch the train to Bludenz. He printed out another schedule and Lisa went to explain the situation to Evan. We had a while to wait so Evan bought some tuna sandwiches, juice, and chocolate cookies (“just like the Prince ones except these have a Mexican guy on them”) in the Kiosk. Eating our sandwiches and relaxing a little bit we noticed that Buchs SG was a popular teen hangout with all the kids showing off their cars by driving back and forth really fast.
We went over to the bus stop (right near the train station) but weren’t sure which bus we needed so we waited by the stop with the most people. A bus showed up and Lisa asked the driver if they were going to Schaan. He said yes. So we got on but looking at the map on the bus we realized that there were a several Schaan stops and weren’t sure which one to go to. The schedule said Schaan Post and Lisa went to ask the driver again if he went there and he sort of looked at Lisa like she was an idiot and said “JA.” Going on faith we crowded into the bus and got off at Schaan Post.
There were two buses luckily waiting there so we got on the one going to Feldkirch. There was a woman who transferred with us and told Lisa that we would get off at the last stop. We crossed the border and Lisa felt better that at least we finally made it to Austria.
In Feldkirch we got off the bus with a guy that looked like George Michael and went to see if the train was running. It was and we went to go wait at the track. They were doing construction on the tracks so it was a little confusing but there were only two tracks open so it made it easier for less mistakes of getting to the wrong track. But the train didn’t go all the way to Bludenz! They made us get out at Nenzig 15 minutes later! At Nenzig we had to get on another bus to Bludenz. Evan met the George Michael guy in the men’s toilet and found out that he was going to Innsbruck, a difficult task since all the roads there were pretty much closed, all the road signs had big red slashes through them. Finally we got on the final bus to Bludenz and saw George Michael by the side of the road trying to hitch a ride, Evan gave him a thumbs up.
At Bludenz we had to wait for another bus, and while waiting a huge convoy of cars honking and driving really fast and then braking came by. It turned out to be a Turkish wedding party. We had already noted the two donner kebab places right by the station, but had no time to grab something to eat since our bus was due soon. Evan bought a hiking map at a magazine shop but could get only 1:50,000 scale, which was to plague us in a few days. We got on the final bus and off we went to Schruns.
Finally arriving in Schruns at 6 or 7 pm, we realized that it had taken about 5.5 hours to get there from Zurich. Tired and weary we found the hotel in the very picturesque town. Everything was closed except the hotels, restaurants, and a gas station. Ironically, the gas station has a mini-market that sold just about everything we bought in Zurich and hiking maps.
We walked to our hotel (Lisa booked it from the U.S.) and checked in. They gave us an apartment suite, which was very nice, but we were so tired we couldn’t enjoy it much. We ate dinner at nearby Hotel Krone (Lisa had a super-gigantic wiener schnitzel that was very delicious and Evan had pork cutlets with sauerkraut. Evan also accidentally ordered a Radler thinking it was beer, but in fact it was half Sprite, half beer – and completely disgusting.) We got back from dinner and tried to watch cable TV (EuroSport was showing ski-jumping on grass) but felt asleep by 10 pm.
8.28.05 Sunday: Schruns to Wormser Huette
We woke up early and had breakfast at the hotel. There was a older British couple there who were chatty and introduced themselves. We told everyone our plan was to hike to Wormser Hutte as a warm up, since it was listed as only a few hours, with a road the entire way up. In fact, there was also a cable car to go up most of the way if you wanted. The hotel proprietress said it wouldn’t take more than 3 hours. (Later we believe that she must have been thinking “3 hours from the top of the cable car.”)
We started walking around 8 am. Long story short, we walked until around 2 pm when we hit the ski station at the top of the cable car. Prior to this we stopped by the side of the road to eat a short lunch of pepperoni and cheese. The road was a series of long switchbacks and quite steep in places. We saw a few mountain bikers going down and some going up. The ones going up were having a rough time – most were walking. The road started in suburbs of the Schruns and then pine forest. The ski station was a huge, modern building with a restaurant. Lucky for us they not only had apfel strudel and hot chocolate, but also an oompah band playing. Relaxing there for a while, we washed up, used the rest room, and started up again. We noticed that there was a children’s playground with an enormous green blowup frog that kids were jumping around on, no time for that though.
From the station we continued on a road (there was an optional, shorter route by trail, but we didn’t see it immediately, so kept to the road). The road went through the world’s longest ski tunnel, over 500 m long (and dark cold. Evan commented that we might have to sleep there tonight if we couldn’t make it to the hut!). After the tunnel we had to keep walking for a while.
We started to get worried because we never saw the Wormser hut until the last possible moment, when it materialized out of the fog right in front of our faces. It must have taken about 7 or 8 hours total.
The hut was very nice – small with a friendly owner who introduced himself and the cook. We got a private room. And the hut had heat and hot water! That turned out to be very rare indeed. Lisa ate Spaghetti Bolognese, Evan had Tortellini, but we were still hungry so we ordered another plate of sausages and bread. We realized too late that we should have ordered the daily special like everyone else (natural schniztzel with rice and asparagus wrapped up in bacon). We were exhausted and fell asleep right after eating.
A note about hut names: they are generally named after cities in Germany. Historically this is because the German Alpine clubs started the huts and still subsidize them. According to various people we spoke to, the huts don’t break even from the fees they charge. So it is important for them to each be sponsored by a town. For example, the town of Worms sponsors the Wormser Huette, and the Worms chapter of the alpine club fixes the trails around the hut, patches up the hut, etc.
total distance: 12.5 km
total elevation: 1615 m
total time: 8 hours (8 am to 4 pm)
high-light: sipping hot chocolate and listing to the oompah band
8.29.05 Monday: Wormser Huette to Neue Heilbronnner Huette
This leg is reported to be “8 to 9 hours” by the guide books and trail signs. The owner of the hut said that it takes up to 10 hours. We knew it would be a long day so we ate breakfast early and started hiking at 7:30 am sharp. The weather was perfectly sunny (as it was every day of the trip) and a bit cool. The entire hike is on the “Wormser Hoehenweg.” The beginning of the hike was through the ski runs on the back of the mountain, facing away from Schruns. Then you wind south and east around a long mountain range to the north. All the way you are hiking high above the Montafon valley with the towns Schruns, St. Gallenkirch, Gaschurn and Galtuer.
The centerpiece of the range is Valschaviler Maderer (2771 m). We started to see this mountain around 1 pm when we stopped for a short lunch. At that point we thought we were more than halfway to the hut, but discovered at 3 pm where the true halfway point was at Madererjoch. The map (being 1:50,000) was inexact so we couldn’t predict the climbs, etc. After the halfway point we were thoroughly dejected and trudged straight east on a long stretch called the Rosberg Alpe. The sun was beating down on us all day, and at this point, around 4 pm, Evan realized his neck and arms were seriously burned. He tucked a zipped off pant leg under his cap to protect his neck (far too late) and put on long sleeves.
We were now hiking on bloody stumps, way past 8 hours into the trip. The sun was still fierce out of the west shining on our backs as we headed into the bowl at the end of the Rosberg Alpe. This dead end is surrounded by 2500 and 2700 m peaks, so it was pretty depressing late in the day with the hut nowhere in sight. We had totally misread the map as to distances and effort involved, because we kept thinking that the hut was going to appear any minute, whereas we were still kilometers away. The climb up and over the bowl (the Valschaviel Joch) was a steep narrow path on the side of a boulder field. There was a beautiful set of natural steps with wild flowers all over, but it was hard to enjoy. When we finally summited, around 5:30 pm, we were sure the hut was going to be visible.
No luck. The descent on the other side was gradual and we came to a signpost that indicated another hour. So we knew at that point we would miss the required 6 pm dinner order! It was cow pasture on the other side and swampy in places. We intersected a mountain bike road coming up from the valley. At some point we saw our first human in hours – a kid who appeared to be a cow herd. Coming around a corner we finally spotted the hut way in the distance. Right before we got to the hut we encountered a friendly Austrian with the traditional felt hat on. He asked us how long it took us to get there, when we said 11 hours he smiled broadly and said “gut.” After being greeted by some cows, we finally arrived at the Neue Heilbronner hut at 7 pm completely exhausted. We both agreed it was the hardest day of hiking we ever did – exceeding the difficult day in New Zealand. Evan decided it wasn’t as hard as the time he had biking up the Stelvio, but it was close. He compared it to the Davis Double Century, which usually took him around 14 hours to finish. Unlike the Stelvio and Davis, we ate fairly well while hiking, so bonking was an issue. We were just tired of walking.
As predicted, we missed the start of dinner, so we couldn’t order from the menu. We got spaghetti Bolognese and spaetzle with schinken sauce for dinner. Evan ordered kaiserschmarren (fried dough with apple sauce) as a second dish.
On our way out of the dining room at 8 pm we bumped into the two men from the previous hut, they had finally made it too! The bald one said to us that the route was “schwer.” Difficult… to say the least! There were also some mountain bikers at the hut, the first that we had seen at a hut.
Evan asked another guy (also from Wormser) about the trail to the Friedrichshafener Huette. He assured us that it was a little steep but nothing we couldn’t handle. That night we slept in the bunk room, but our section of the room was empty. We both picked top bunks and fell asleep around 9 pm. total distance: 18.5 km
total elevation: 920 m
total time: 11.5 hours (7:30 am to 7 pm)
high-light: stone stairway with flowers going up Valschaviel Joch
8.30.05 Tuesday: Neue Heilbronner Huette to Friedrichshafener Huette
This was an easy day. We left around 8 am after saying “tschau” to the guys that got to the hut after us last night and started by climbing the little uphill behind the hut. The top of the hill was very flat with boulders and some little lakes. Evan said it looked like the moon. We hiked around this and then started a gradual down hill that went along the side of the Schrotten-K. This was marmot central – lots of marmot holes and marmots sunning themselves.
At the end of the valley we spotted some people making the ascent of the steep hill in front of us. The hill had some switchbacks and didn’t seem too bad from a distance. At the bottom of the hill we pumped some water and then started up. It wasn’t too steep at the beginning, then became very steep with only dirt and gravel all the way up (steep enough so that you felt like you were falling backwards on the flimsy dirt trail). Evan lent Lisa one of his hiking poles and we made it to a flat spot near the top very quickly. We took a break and proclaimed that it wasn’t too bad.
We then climbed over the top (Mutten Joch at 2620 m) and started the rocky down hill. The people ahead of us had stopped in a cow pasture so we stopped above them on the trail by the snow and had lunch. It was really early, only around 11 am and we were almost to the hut, a much easier day than the previous. We started down and met the cows. Two of them were very friendly and when Lisa started scratching one of the cows head, it butted her with in a cute gesture. After the mandatory pictures we continued down the trail and hit the final approach to the hut – a road.
Walking on the flat road was easy and we remarked how we hadn’t had any accidents. There were some pretty purple flowers by the road side and Evan decided to take some “nature shots.” He started to walk off the road, and Lisa said “why are you going down there, why don’t you take the picture from the road?” He said “You have to crack a few eggs if you want to make an omle-ahhhhhhhhhhh!!!?????” He slipped on some grass that was covering a large flat rock, proceeded to flip over onto his backpack, camera and camera cover flew in opposite directions. Looking like a giant twitching cockroach, Lisa bent over surveying the scene and asked if he was ok. He was fortunately ok, except for a little superficial scratch on his palm. The camera landed on some grass and was ok too. He stubbornly took the picture of the flowers and scrambled back up to the road, muttering that his backpack had thrown him off balance. Glad that he was ok, we joked around proclaiming every now and then that you have to “crack a few eeeeeeeegggggggssssssss…..” The Friedrichschafener hut was just a few more minutes away and was loaded with day hikers drinking steins of beer and enjoying the blazing sun.
Since it was so busy for the lunch rush we hung outside before we got our room. We were sitting in the sun next to an older German guy who lives in Switzerland who started chatting to us. He belonged to the Swiss Automobile Association who organized his trip. They were visiting Galtuer and went on day hikes from there. There was also a pompous young German guy with weird grippy shoes from Sweden. When he walked around it sounded like he had a million little suction cups on the bottoms of his shoes. Someone asked him about his shoes and he took one off and showed the bottoms and proceeded to explain that they would cling to moss or something of that sort…
We got our own private room, a four mattress zimmer and had goulasch for dinner. We went to bed at 9 pm because it was so cold in our room we couldn’t do anything but snuggle down into the blankets. This is where I believe we first noticed that the blankets had a fussenende.
total distance: 7 km
total elevation: 462 m
total time: 4.5 hours (8 am to 12:30 pm)
high-light: “You gotta crack a few eeeeeeeeeegggssssssss”
8.31.05 Wednesday: Friedrichshafener Huette to Wiesbadener Huette
We decided on an early start because we weren’t sure of the bus situation in Galtuer. The Swiss/German guy had told us that there was a path from Adamsberg down to Galtuer but the cook said there wasn’t one. Since it wasn’t on any of our maps, we decided to descend at Friedrichshafener. We went down through the trees for the first time in three days. We saw some mushrooms and when we took a break there was a little tick crawling on Evan’s pants creeping him out a little bit. It was hot and not too exciting.
At the bottom we started walking along the little road running parallel to the paved road. We saw some mudslides and also noticed that some of the houses had huge concrete or stone walls to protect them from avalanches. While this looked good for snow protection, it did nothing for flood waters! We took a picture by a gasthaus that had a lot of garden gnomes and came to a part of the road near town that had been washed away. There were a lot of bulldozers and trucks moving the mud and rocks around. A lot of the houses and hotels were damaged, some had huge cracks running down the sides, many were boarded up, closed and abandoned.
In town we stopped at the first (and only?) supermarket to buy supplies, sunscreen being a big buy, a yoghurt drink, a bar of soap, chocolate bar, and a bag of gummi bears. We went into town, bought another map and waited for the bus. There were three Dutch guys waiting too. They were going to the Saarbrueckener Huette and then into Switzerland. They asked Evan to take their picture while they were still “all there.” They gave us confidence that hiking up high near the glaciers might not be too difficult.
The bus came about an hour later than it was supposed to but got us to Bielerhoehe quickly. This place was run amok by package tourists and the road to the hut was the most busy we were to see the whole trip.
A packed dirt/gravel road goes the entire way from Bielerhoehe to Wiesbadener. It circles the lake and then ascends a few hours to the hut and surrounding glaciers. The road was packed with hikers also, not as crowded as the lake. The route is fairly steep – we saw at least one mountain biker who was walking on the steep spots. We even bumped into the Swiss/German guy from yesterday, who was descending by then. A few times we had to move over for mini-trucks carting up many kegs of beer, and carting down empty kegs. Right before we finally got to the hut, some drunk descender said that the hut was still “sechs stunden weiter” (6 hours away). Not really understanding and him realizing it, he said, “zehn minuten mehr”10 more minutes.
We made it to the Wiesbadener hut, but realized it housed a million jokesters like that guy, we didn’t like the atmosphere too much. It put Lisa in a grumpy mood, made grumpier still by having to share a bunk room. We tried to hike out to the glacier, starting out at 4 pm, but there were too many wild streams to cross. The closest glacier was much farther away than it first appeared and it wouldn’t be easy to get there and back for 6 pm dinner. Not wanting to miss ordering dinner again, we retreated about half way to the foot of the glacier.
Dinner that night was knoedel and sauerkraut for Evan, and a ham omlette for Lisa. Our two bunkmates were very quiet and went to bed before us.
total distance: 12.5 (6 km to Galtuer, 4.5 km to hut, 2 km towards glacier)
total elevation: 487 m
total time: 6 hours (2.5 to Galtuer, 2.5 to hut, 1 towards glacier) (8 am to 5 pm)
high-light: first seeing the Piz Buin glacier floating above the valley
9.1.05 Thursday: Weisbadener Huette to Saarbrueckener Huette
We wanted to leave this hut quickly because it was big and impersonal – too many guys with ice picks and crampons. At that stage neither of our two maps showed all the Swiss trails in the area. So we were committed to Saarbrueckener for lack of a better objective. In hindsight, if we saw the Swiss options we might have fashioned a more interesting route in the “high country” around the border. In addition to map trouble, we were still worried about hiking near glaciers. So we chose a conservative route to Saarbrueckener – one that descended all the way to the lake. (Once we got to Saarbrueckener we realized that an alternative trail would have been more exciting, going along the edge of a melted glacier, with no descent).
So we started the decent back into the valley and got to the glacial lake. Two guys were fishing and Evan decided not to go swimming as planned the previous day. It looked inviting, but was too cold. We took the path on the other side of the lake this time and got around and started descending more to the Madlener Haus.
The path was not too remarkable as we started ascending again, crossing over the now ubiquitous mud and boulder slides. At one point a marmot was sitting very close to us on a boulder slide, so we admired him for a little bit and moved on. We kept climbing along side the grassy hill and had lunch once we got around to a flatter bit on the opposite side. Not many people were on this path so it was more peaceful than the previous day. That picnic was one of the nicest of the trip, a real alpine meadow with a dazzling view of another lake way below.
Sometime in the afternoon we rounded a corner and saw the hut perched up high on the opposite hill. It looked fairly close but it still took us a while to get there. We came to a small hut and met up with the mountain biking path and immediately saw more day hikers. We had to cross over a rickety bridge that two other hikers had just passed over, one of them shouting when he discovered how rickety it was. We avoided most of the descenders by hiking up a steep uphill path that they avoided for the road. Almost at the top of the path we saw a helipad, and noticed that the hut was built on sheer cliffs on three sides. When we popped our heads over the top of the final switchback in the steep path, we were at the hut deck. A little boy was sitting there with his Dad and older brother, greeting us with a nice “hallo.”
Glad to have made it to the Saarbrueckener hut around 3 pm, we relaxed with apfel strudel and beer. The little boy was part of a kletternstieg family and group. They clipped themselves into the fixed clips attached to the side of the rock face next to the hut and were practicing rock climbing. Later on more people from the same group appeared with their ropes and harnesses having climbed around on glaciers that day. The hut was 100% packed. We had to share a small Matrazenlager with seven other people, the first time that so small a room had been so fully packed with strangers.
For dinner Lisa had the special Rindfleisch with nudeln and salat, Evan had the Bergsteigeressen: noodles with cheese sauce. We sat with a friendly older Dutch couple, a single woman, and two young German guys who were our Matrazenlager mates, they had just come from Klosters in Switzerland that day.
Before dinner Evan talked to three Swiss who told us that hiking over the Jochs to the Tuebinger hut the shouldn’t be a problem as they had come most of the way the day before. He also spoke to a German guy about the route and was reassured that walking down the glacier wouldn’t be a problem. Gaining that confidence, we planned our most advanced hike of the trip for the next day – to ascend to the Swiss border, descend along side the glacier on the other side, then ascend back into Austria, and again descend through a glacier to Tuebinger. This route was more conservative than the standard path between the huts. The standard path did not descend into Switzerland. Rather it made two glacier traversals on the Austrian side, high up. The various people we spoke to told us to avoid these traversals if we didn’t have crampons. It would mean that our route would be a lot longer but safer.
With that plan in our heads, we tried to sleep in the stuffed room. Everyone made a ton of noise and it proved to be the worst night of sleep the whole trip.
total distance: 12 km
total elevation: 668 m
total time: (8 am to 3 pm)
high-light: the kletternstieg brothers practicing climbing
9.2.05 Friday: Saarbrueckener Huette to Tuebinger Huette
Having a terrible time trying to sleep in that packed room, we were the first to wake up, pack and get down to breakfast. The two German guys joined us eating their own breakfast of Nutella and bread. They couldn’t go to the Jamtal Hut like they had originally planned since it was closed, so they weren’t sure what they would do. As for us, our plan was set. After the usual breakfast of bread, meat, cheese and good coffee we said our goodbyes and took off.
It was another beautiful day, a little crisper than usual, but the sun was out as we started our steep ascent through boulders to the Swiss border. This climb was steep, sketchy switchbacks through a boulder field. In about an hour we reached the top and stopped to take some photos. There was a little stone house attached to the side of the mountain where a border guard could sit. Also marking the border was a rectangular stone with a wavy line on the top indicating the border and the letter “S” on one side and an “Oe” on the other. It was hard to imagine a border guard sitting up here in the old days, at night (in winter!) at 2,700 m.
Evan sat down because he didn’t like the heights – the crossing wasn’t a broad saddle like most of the passes we did. It was only a couple of meters wide with drops on either side. Sitting there drinking some Gatorade, we heard by a fantastic cracking sound, like a gunshot. Usually there was absolute blissful silence, so this was startling to say the least. We looked toward the sound and saw a huge boulder, probably the size of a car, crack off the Seegletscher and start bouncing down the glacier leaving behind poofs of snow. This was actually an awesome natural experience and left us a little dumbfounded and speechless. It also made us more than a little nervous considering we would now have to descend below similar peaks.
Nervously we started down the side of the glacier. It was a path of enormous, raw boulders. In the past, in the Pyrenees and elsewhere we climbed over a lot of boulders. However, this field was totally hardcore compared to everything we had previously done. The boulders were unstable and out of synch – there was basically no path and nothing flat to stand on. The actual path might have been on the ice itself, but that looked slippery so we walked on the rocks, just beside the ice. Lots of times you could feel the rocks shifting (as in a rockslide) under your feet. Above us were jagged cliffs of rock, ready to avalanche down. This was a new boulder field, not established over thousands of years.
At one point we tried to take a picture of ourselves walking on the glacier, we set the timer on the camera, but the photo didn’t work out. Evan tried to take a photo of me walking on the ice, but he as he stepped on the crud between the boulders and ice, the surface gave way creating a huge hole that his foot went in! When that happened we collectively said “forget it” and decided to move on as fast as possible, no more dilly dallying with photos – we could get killed!
We made it to the bottom in late morning. That valley was moon-like also – mostly glacial runoff, odd boulders, grass, and sand. There was no sign of civilization as far as could be seen down the valley. We got confused as to where the trail back to Austria was. The route we were following (when there was a route) was painted blue and white, but also red. We weren’t sure which represented Switzerland and which Austria. Rather than blindly follow the path, which continued to descend the valley, we started off-trail following the map (this was our good 1:25,000 scale map). We must have been gaining experience because we hit the red marks back to Austria after a short scramble across the outback.
We started ascending again, and it became very steep, climbing up short rocky switchbacks. From a distance, we could see the pass we were going to cross, and it looked like a vertical knife edge, completely unapproachable. But we knew that appearances could be deceptive and that the paths cut into these “cliffs” weren’t so bad once you got on them. The steep climb continued until we were somewhere below the saddle, at the point where we couldn’t see it anymore. The trail now had a via ferrata cable. We appreciated grabbing onto it because there was an almost vertical sheer cliff on the side. Ironically, the path was fine at this point: almost steps cut out of grass. But there was nothing on the side of the steps! Evan was hyperventaling a bit when we got away to a protected spot. That proved to be the most exposure the entire trip.
Right before the top the path turned less steep and we arrived at the broad top at the same time another team of three made it over the opposite side. Again, looks are deceiving because from a distance the top looked like a knife edge, but was actually nice and wide. Evan asked the hikers (who all had crampons on their packs) about the conditions on the other side and they reassured us that we would not need technical equipment, but that it was a little difficult. All of us took a break then. We ate lunch and then we took pictures of each other with the glacier in the background. The other team would go to Saarbrueckener over the more difficult path that the sign claimed took 2 hours (it had taken us 4 hours by then).
We started decending into Austria through a little snow then over to the side of the glacier. It was the familiar craggy boulders that were slow going and difficult. Lisa was afraid that the whole mountain would crumble, but that didn’t happen. The glacier seemed almost all gone, we just saw the snow at the top and then it was just gravel and boulders, something that happens to glaciers when they melt. So we needn’t have worried so much, since the path didn’t even go that way and the glacier had melted so much as to be almost non-existent. It was a little sad that global warming did this, but we were relieved as it made it better for us. At the bottom of the glacier was another snow field that was flat, so we took some successful “glacier walking” pictures. From then on the path was mostly dirt and much flatter. We encountered another robust looking couple late in the afternoon coming our way. They were going to Saarbrueckener Huette and it was already 2 pm! We made it to the Tuebinger hut, got a private room, and the usual snack of beer and apfelstrudel. For the first time there was another English speaking couple there. A British couple where the woman spoke excellent German were sitting next to us ordering kaiserschmarren for snack. As the afternoon wore on, more and more hikers arrived, including a large group of around 50 or more – perhaps from Saarbrueckener?
For dinner we had the halbpension of backerbensen (crispy little puffed corn nuggets or marmot nuts) soup, spaetzle with mushroom and ham sauce, and topfenstrudel (cream cheese strudel). We played chess after dinner. That night we had a private room, it could have slept 5 or 6, but luckily we were the only ones occupying it, so we spread out our stuff, enjoying the space. The hut was large but nice – the first hut to have games and books. This was also the first hut we saw that was resupplied by cable, like a t-bar in on a ski slope.
total distance: 5 km
total elevation: 478 m
total time: 7 hours (8 am to 3 pm)
high-light: boulder cracking off peak and crashing into the Platten glacier
9.3.05 Saturday: Tuebinger Huette to Gargellen
This was a very strong hiking day for us. We both felt in prime condition and did a total of three passes. None of them was major and all were below 2,400 m so it was pretty easy. We were in no hurry because we planned to get a hotel in Gargellen, although we knew we had to get there before the supermarket closed. The weather was a bit cloudier than previous days so it was cooler and we hiked over the passes quickly. We saw no other hikers the whole day. We saw a para-glider hovering above us during lunch.
In the afternoon we descended into the final valley to Gargellen. Walking on a road was nice, but after a while we realized that it hurt our sensitive feet. On the decent down we followed the cow footprints that had been herded off the top of the mountain during the rain. We followed a long a stream that disappeared at one point probably being diverted into energy somewhere below. There were marmots everywhere, running along with their furry black tails sailing behind them.
Everything was eerily quiet in the outskirts of town and we commented that it was like a Stephen King Novel. When we arrived in town at 3:30 pm we went straight to the Spar supermarket. We stocked up on more lunch food, grapes, chocolate, yogurt drinks, vitamin juice, chips, etc. This is where we also discovered what backerbensen was, as they sold bags full of them! We also bought yet another map – a 1:25,000 map of the entire region. This is the only map we should have purchased, if only they sold it when we got to Austria.
The woman in the supermarket told us there was only one hotel, Haus Wulfenia, that was still open – the rest of the town was completely shut down. There were two mountain bikers who arrived at the same time so Lisa scrambled over to that hotel and got us a room before they were sold out. This was the first time that we encountered rain too, it started up when we got there and rained sporadically all night. In the hotel we each had a nice hot shower, then munched on grapes, chips, and yogurt drinks watching the Vuelta on TV. Dinner was excellent: salad followed by meat balls and gravy on mashed potatoes with mushrooms. For dessert was kaiserschmarren.
There were a few mountain bikers and a Swiss couple at the hotel. The owners were very nice to us. Breakfast was very delicious – our biggest spread of the trip with lots of meat and cheese, bread, muesli, juice, coffee, etc.
total distance: 13.5 km
total elevation: 711 m
total time: 7.5 hours (8 am to 3:30 pm)
high-light: seeing para-glider hovering above us during lunch on Mittelbergjoch
9.4.05 Sunday: Gargellen to Lindauer Huette bypassing SillyTuna (Tilisuna) Hut
Having been rejuventated by the hotel, we got up to another sunny day ready for the next hike.