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Published: September 1st 2012
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We have been thinking about hiking in Austrian Alps for a while. The Berliner Hohenweg (meaning a hike at high altitute) was featured as one of the top 10 backpacking trips in backpacker.com magazine. That magazine has not let us down yet, so we decided to do part of this. The while trail is 7 - 10 days long, but we decided to spend 3 days on it + 1 day out of the mountains. The area is about 1 hr bus ride from Mayrhofen that ends at a lake. The lake is between 2 main mountain ranges, in a valley. Like almost every alpine lake in Europe, it has been dammed either for electricity or to prevent flooding. That of course takes away some beauty from it, but this dam is not so bad. While researching, Olperer Hutte was rated quite high for its views of the lake. So we decided to make the first short ~1.5hr hike up to the lake.
The hut is at 2389 m, ~500m above the lake. So the hike is all the way up, but is relatively easy. It had been raining for last few days, and today was also cloudy and rainy.
Which means we did not see much views while going up. There was lot of water on the trail, and also in the waterfalls that line the trail. So overall it was a great hike. The hut is quite nice and comfortable. The journey from Zurich had tired us, so we had dinner and decided to sleep early.
August 27th 2012
Surprising today turned out to be opposite of yesterday. We had a shorted day ahead, so we decided to start by exploring the area a little. The views from hut were really awesome. After so many hikes in Swiss Alps where we were not impressed by views (high standards, hmm!), I thought I will have to go to Himalyas to see the next "wow" views. But this place blew me away, and this was just the beginning. The lake and glaciers beyond it were just awesome! We could not stop ourselves from taking photos.
After hanging out at the hut for few hours, we decided to hike back down to the lake. The plan for day was to cross the lake and then hike up other side of the valley. Hike down was easy but felt
Glacier
View of glaciers on other side of lake very different in dry weather. Also its quite stony and not so easy going down. We made somewhat slow progress and took 1.5hr to reach the lake, of course taking lot of photos in the middle. Going around the lake was flat and somewhat boring, though the views were still great as we were getting close to high mountains. Being middle of summer, there were tonnes of waterfalls with lot of water. At end of the lake, we saw some recent flooding that had taken out part of the hike. It was being rebuilt though. There was a river coming directly from glacier, feeding the lake. They had again built a small concrete dam with pipes to let the water into the lake. Of course it got flooded and force of water took out the concrete. You can control nature only when it lets you!
After crossing that part, the hike up to our next destination
Furtschaglhaus (2295 m). The hike up was quite steep, but the views just kept getting better and better so we did not mind. As you go higher glacier get closer. It was just absolute delight. Nice sunny day, blue skies, just made everything
Furtschaglhaus
Dinner with view even better. We reached the hut by 3:00pm with lot of time to hang around. We found a nice stone with good views of Greiner and its galcier and relaxed there.
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