Surviving the Alps OR How Could I Be THAT Stupid?
This 2007 vacation actually started in 2005. Rose found an offer for a cheap week in Kufstein, Austria for herself and her son Patrick and Karen, KH and I all tagged along. While there we took a guided day hike into the beautiful Kaisertal, the last inhabited valley in Austria with no road access. You hike about 300 log stairs to get into the valley. The cars the locals use to drive around in the valley are either winched up, brought up in pieces or lifted in by helicoptor. Since then, I wanted to go back and hike the area more extensively. I'd heard there are huts in the mountains you can use to sleep overnight, some pretty simple and some essentially like bed and breakfasts with shared baths. Hiking hut to hut in the Alps became a goal; something about it sounds so idyllic and beautiful.
Finding out information about these huts is not very easy. There are lots of them but most of the information I found was in German. Most are run by various branches of the Alps climbing clubs and don't do much marketing, especially in English. Another problem is that most of the huts are dorm style with large groups of strangers sleeping together in one big room. This had no appeal whatsoever so I only looked for huts with single rooms. I finally found a suggested route in the mountains around Kufstein for three nights which seemed to be a nice, short introduction into hut-to-hut hiking in the Alps. However, I changed the middle hut to another one in the area since the one on the suggested itinerary I had found only had dorm rooms and the one I substituted had individual rooms.
Karen and her sister Teresa flew in from the States on Sunday. They, KH and I drove to Kufstein on Wednesday, August 8th. Teresa's husband Peter was driving from Bratislava and was going to meet us either on the trail or at the first hut. We got to the trailhead at about 3:30 p.m. and headed up the several hundred wooden stairs to the trail. The estimate I had to get to the hut was between two and three hours. After the steps the trail is pretty level for awhile. At one point I saw what looked like a tunnel and a local hiker confirmed what I had earlier read; they were finally builing a road into the valley. It would only be for use by the inhabitants, she said. ( I have since found a NYTimes article about the tunnel and will copy it at the end of this.)Eventually we came to a choice with one trail taking more time and the other less. We chose the quicker one although Karen claims she objected. I honestly don't remember that. Here shorter apparently meant steeper. Teresa, being the youngest, skipped ahead most of the time but once waited for us to catch up to her and commented, "This trail is challenging!" Uh huh, that it was. Pretty wide and easy to navigate, but very take-your-breath away steep. We went up quite a bit and got a serious cardio vascular workout which was fine with me. We were almost to the hut when Peter caught up with us (hey, he's only 26!) at a tiny chapel similar to so many you find all over southern Germany and Austria. They seem to often be constructed by particular families as symbols of gratitude. At one point Teresa came back to report cows had made the path impassable. By the time we got there they had moved aside. Cows became rather a recurring theme. KH, Karen and I struggled in behind TeresaandPeter with me crossing into the yard of the Vorderkaiserfelden Hut at about 7:30 p.m. I had taken me about TWICE as long to get there as the Austrian plan had estimated. And I hadn't felt like I had taken it particularly easy.
Calling the places we stayed "huts" is ridiculous. They are much more what I would call lodges. However, you can really only get to them by hiking. When we walked into the Vorderkaiserfeldenhuette there were about 15 people sitting around the dining room eating or playing games. At least five of them were small children. They only way in was to hike so that must be how they got there. We were the last arrivals. We checked in and our rooms were long and narrow with two single beds against the wall and a small table attached to the wall across from the beds. We were expected to use sleeping bag liners under the quilt and we all had them along. (I knew this from my research. We had silk ones as they are the lightest.) I think there was a chair and there were hooks on the wall. The toilets and sinks and shower were down the hall. Everything was wood and I think the "hut" was something like a hundred years old. There were dormitory beds with basically just matresses on the floor one floor higher and a family from Holland (one of the groups with kids) was staying up there. These are essentially open areas so we could go up briefly and have a look. Our "private" rooms had no locks. KH and I propped a hiking pole against the door that night just for the heck of it.
We had a great dinner and beer. The view out over the mountains was spectacular but it got dark pretty quickly after we arrived so we didn't get to see it for too long. Karen was curious about the ethnicity of the people running the restaurant. They were different from the people in charge of the rooms and did not look Austrian. Eventually the guy told us he was from Nepal. Apparently there is some exchange between the Alps and whatever mountains they have there. He also had jewelry and hats for sale he had brought with from Nepal so Karen and Teresa both managed to get some shopping in on the top of a mountain in the Alps and best of all the stuff they bought was from Nepal. Talk about globalization.
I really liked this lodge although the woman who ran it was not the friendliest person I have ever met. As mentioned, most of these "huts" are owned by the Alpine club and they get people to basically rent them and run them. I think is a lot of work and a rather isolated job although I suspect having internet access has helped quite a bit. Here is a link to information about this hut if you are interested: http://www.vorderkaiserfeldenhuette.at/. Unfortunately it is only in German but at least you can get a feel for what it looks like. Oh, yeah, the going price for these Alpine club huts is 22 Euros per person per night. Showers are an extra three Euros. The food had average restaurant prices and was consistently good.
We had breakfast the next morning, packed our packs and with a tra-la-la headed out at abut 10:30 a.m. It was wet but not pouring. We had a hiking map of the area but the trails were generally well marked with signs and estimated hiking times. We saw two different signs for the Anton Karg Haus, our next hut, and chose the one with the slightly longer time (something like three hours) because we thought the trail would be less steep. I remember thinking it was kind of a narrow trail when we started out but thought it might widen up as we went further along. Well, it didn't. Actually, as Karen said, when you thought it couldn't get any worse, it did. Much of this approximately six inch wide trail was covered by interlacing tree roots which were wet since it had rained and was still drizzling and thus EXTREMELY slippery. If there weren't slippery tree roots there were boulders. Or just fields of rocks with this tiny, tiny path carved out of the extremely steep slope. Or steps minimally carved out of a rock face. Sometimes I would look up and think, YIKES! That's steep! I tried not look down but when I did I had to force myself not to freeze up with fear. It was a long way down and at many places if you had fallen you would have just keep going. This was a really, really bad and perilous trail. Karl-Heinz and Karen each fell twice. Karen actually fell off the trail once and I'm still not sure how she managed to stay alive. "Just about killed myself" was what she yelled back and it was not an exaggeration. I didn't fall because I moved like a turtle and slowed us all down. But I feared twisting an ankle and really causing problems. I had no idea how anyone could rescue me if I was hurt. I mainly looked down at the path in front of me and the only wildlife I saw were ants crossing my path. First we went up, up, up and then we went down, down and down some more. At one point I thought I would burst into tears from fear but decided it wouldn't help so didn't. Did I mention it was DANGEROUS? I felt like I was on some weird survival trip, perhaps our plane had crashed on the mountain and our only way to survive was down this wicked path. Karl-Heinz would stop whenever something extraordinarily bad was on the trail to help me through. Without him I would not have survived. I am not kidding. (Thanks, dear.) However, it meant I began to dread seeing him stop. It meant something terrible was coming. We crossed streams on half-submerged stones and wobbley logs. We walked on miniscule ledges with extreme drop offs to the side. We never met ANYONE else on the trail because the locals and anyone with a lick of sense were way too smart to try it. Rose had thought about coming with us and I just kept thinking how grateful I was she had not since she is afraid of heights. Ha! I am NOT afraid of heights and I was afraid. The trail went on and on and on. At about 3:30 p.m. Karl-Heinz looked out over the mountains and shouted, "Where's the damn hut?!" TeresaandPeter were quite a bit ahead of us but had some issues as well. Finally at about 5:30 p.m. we saw the hut with TeresaandPeter on the terrace just getting ready to come back and mount a rescue. The "three hour" tour took us about SEVEN hours. I was starting to notice a trend with the "estimated" times. I was delighted we had all made it out unscathed. I think we were extremely lucky and had experienced a miracle especially since about five minutes after we got into the hut it began to pour. I cannot imagine how we would have made it out of there in a downpour. But we were obviously making mistakes. We needed more information about any trails we would take in the future.
The first hut we had been in was high in the mountains. We had pretty much hiked down to the second one so now we were in a valley. This hut was also all wood and huge. We checked in (nice rooms for that sort of place) and then went for dinner. Trying to be smarter, I checked with the waitress about the trail we had taken and the one we had planned for the next day. We could have aborted the trip and taken an easy trail back to Kufstein. She agreed the one we had taken was bad and said the one for the next day was fine although somewhat steep. We all agreed to continue onto the next hut. After the five out us had a nice dinner in the dining room alone she asked when we wanted breakfast. She asked if we could have it a bit later since we were the only guests and that meant they could sleep in. This "hut" can sleep approximately 100 people and we were the only guests! ( We has assumed everyone else had already eaten. Hikers tend to be early to bed types.) It was during the week (Thursday night) and the weather wasn't very good but it was still a bit strange to be the only guests in the giant wooden hut in the mountains. Karen says it made her feel like she was in an episode of "Scooby Doo". We had the dining room to ourselves the whole night and played poker with puzzle pieces. Karl-Heinz basically never bet and Karen basically never stopped.
At breakfast a different woman waitressed and I checked about the trail again. (I wasn't going to make the same mistake twice!) She said it was an o.k. trail, steep at first, then level and then steep again. And she asked if we had good shoes. I had read that the Anton Karg house had been closed for awhile and asked her about it. She said the previous woman who had been running it had psychiatric problems and had to leave. Go figure. Isolated in an Alpine valley. More Scooby Doo. Now the woman speaking to us said her family was running it but only from May to October. Here is something about the Anton Karg hut, again in German: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton-Karg-Haus OH, and in this place you could even lock your door.
So with Karl-Heinz yodelling we were off again on another hike to another hut. What we shortly came to realize is that what is "somewhat" steep varies greatly between mountain folk and us flatlanders. There were steps that were suspiciously simlar to ladders. After several hours, Karl-Heinz did mention that all he saw ahead was sheer rock and wondered where the trail was going but I chose to ignore those comments. It was a much better trail than the preceeding day and I never actually feared for my life, at least until Karl-Heinz, stopped, turned back and said, "Um, here is some of that iron stuff." Oh great. They hadn't mentioned that and it wasn't on the map. It was a bit of a Via Ferrata ( Iron Way) which is hiking on rocks aided by iron steps or ladders pounded into them. It means that you are pretty much in an area that can't be hiked and has to be "climbed". This was the rock Karl-Heinz had been seeing. So we packed out poles in our packs and used the cables on the sides and the iron rebar steps to help us over the rock. It wasn't as bad as it looked and still not as bad and the trail from the preceeding day. A bit farther up I heard Karl-Heinz saying, "Welcome to the other side." He wasn't kidding. We had just climbed over a mountain and were now in an entirely different valley. The first one was dramatic. The one we entered looked like something out an animated Disney cartoon. Cute Alpine houses, cows with bells, flowers. I expected to hear flute music. Just a different world. The rest of the way to the Kaindlhuette was a cakewalk. However, it still took us about twice as long as the trail sign said. We rolled in sometime in the late afternoon. TeresaandPeter were already there sitting on the terrace as were several other people. It was now Friday and we were closer to the town than we had been before so this hut was MUCH busier with maybe 30 people staying there. It was also privately run and smaller than the other two with much more limited bathroom facilities and no showers. For 50 Euros per person we got dinner, rooms, and breakfast. Dinner was served family style with them bringing the food to our assigned table. There were quiet hours and I sort of felt like I was at summer camp for hikers. There were also farms in the area and it was much less isolated than the other two. It was nice as well but I liked the other two huts better. This was another one without locking doors. Here is it's website: http://www.kaindlhuette.de/. Everything they serve there seems to be organic which we don't care but some people do. That evening we had a few rousing hands of the children's game Memory.
The next day I took a chairlift back down to Kufstein while everyone else hiked. I was hiked out and chair lifts can be fun. I was the only customer. So ended a quite remarkable experience.
At the huts there were brochures available describing various hikes. The ones we had taken were recommended for experienced, surefooted hikers. NOW they tell me, I thought. For anyone interested there is also a website with several hikes mapped on at http://www.huettentrekking.de/ but again only in German. I unfortunately did not have the brochures nor had found that website before we went.
Now that we've been there I know what easy trails to take if we ever go back to that valley. And we probably will. If you like to hike, it is hard to beat these so-called huts, at least the ones we stayed at. We thought they were generally nice although clearly not luxurious. The food was good and everything seemed very reasonably priced to us. That is at least partially because they have been around so long and are generally owned by the various branches of the Alps clubs. However, unless you don't mind sharing a room with strangers, you need to find the ones with private rooms which is challenging.
On Saturday we drove back into Germany and onto Garmisch. I wish I could say our week in Garmisch was uneventful, but no, we took yet another of what Karl-Heinz calls our "murder" hikes and again it was unintentional. By then TeresaandPeter had gone back to Bratislava. We had never been through the Hoellentalklamm which is a high gorge up from Grainau just outside of Garmisch. We thought it would be a pretty short hike so didn't hurry and got started about noon. We hiked through the gorge and should have turned back. But we kept going, without water, and ended up crossing another mountain. We missed the gondola we wanted to take down since it only ran until 5:30 p.m. So after going up one side of the mountain we walked down the other, the last half an hour in dark. At one point I tried to convince Karl-Heinz and Karen we should just sit down until morning but they insisted we continue and we slowly made it down using our hiking poles like blind people use their canes. If I could hike faster we probably would have made it down in the light. Karen wants to train me to hike faster billy goat style. Hmmm...we'll have to see about that. How we were that stupid after our other adventures I'm not quite sure. This is especially bizarre considering I ended up hiking out of the Grand Canyon with Chris for an hour in the dark in May 2006. I really gotta start taking along a flashlight whenever I go hiking. (I know, the brighter hikers are all shaking their heads in astonishment.) Here is a link to some pictures of what I believe is a similar hike. http://www.germanhikes.co.uk/hike05/2005oct/Oct04/Oct04.html The hike this person posted pictures of looks like essentially the same hike we did only we missed the gondola and had to hike back down.
This is getting as long as some of the hikes so I'm stopping. Thanks to TeresaandPeter, KH and Karen for tolerating my ignorance and slowness and to KH for basically getting me off that killer trail. Never again! O.k., again but not the same trails. There is a good chance at least KH and I will be back in Garmisch and maybe Austria next August again so if anyone wants to come they should let me know. You need to be in pretty good shape, however. Sometimes I felt like a cartoon character with my heart beating OUT of my chest. Oh, and it helps not to be afraid of heights. Really. And see below for the Times article about the Kaisertal.
Terry
KAISERTAL JOURNAL; Modernity Drills Through RockToward an Alpine Hamlet E-MAIL Print Permissions Save By MARK LANDLERPublished: April 24, 2007Years from now, if Sarah Leitner ever wants to regaleher children with stories about her daily walk toschool, she will not have to embellish, even a little:this plucky 8-year-old must hike a mountain to get toher home in this remote Alpine valley. True, there are 300 wooden steps winding up the steepslope. And her mother, Ursula, waits for her at thetop, in a rusty, mud-spattered car that bears nolicense plates because it never sees a regular road. The Leitners live in the Kaisertal, one of the lastinhabited valleys in the Alps not connected by road tothe outside world. In this isolated mountainsettlement, food and fuel are carried in on an aerialropeway. Its few vehicles were winched up the stairsmany years ago, and are now stranded there, in anArcadian landscape of fields and farmhouses, circledby jagged, snow-capped peaks. For the 30 people who live in the Kaisertal, there hasalways been one way in and one way out: on foot. Next March, however, work will be completed on a2,690-foot tunnel through the mountain, and thevalley's splendid isolation will come to an abruptend. It cannot end fast enough for Sarah Leitner. ''I'll be really glad when the road comes,'' she saidthe other day, trudging up the steps, her backpackbobbing like a buoy in a choppy sea. ''Finally, myfriends will be able to come visit me.'' The decision to build the tunnel was made afterdecades of dispute over whether to make the valleymore accessible, and it is still arousing complexemotions among people in this gentle land ofgingerbread houses and onion-domed churches near theGerman border. Residents of the Kaisertal generally welcome theconnection, citing the ease of shopping, going to adoctor or seeing a movie, without having to put onhiking boots and go on a wilderness walk. But nature lovers who savor such pursuits say thetunnel will bring taxis and tourists, followed by realestate development -- spoiling one of the last trulypristine valleys in the Tyrolean Alps. To prevent that, Ebbs, the town that includes theKaisertal, plans to limit access to residents,emergency vehicles and service people. It will issuethem a plastic card, with an encoded chip, that willopen a gate at the mouth of the tunnel, next to thetown. Over time, however, critics predict that thelimitations on access will be relaxed, particularly asthe economic incentives of opening up the valley tooutside traffic become more tantalizing. ''This region is an El Dorado for people who live inBavaria; they can drive here in an hour,'' saidNorbert Wolf, an environmentalist who has campaignedagainst the tunnel for years. ''I'm very skepticalthat this tunnel will only be used by the people wholive there.'' Today, the 30 residents subsist on farming and runningsmall guesthouses, which also sell beer and applestrudel to passing hikers. The valley's population wasonce about 70, but it has dwindled as residents,particularly young ones, have left for opportunitiesin the outside world. Josef Ritzer, the mayor of Ebbs, said the remainderwould eventually have packed up, too. Showing visitorsaround the other day, he pointed to an abandonedAlpine house, clinging stubbornly to a hillside. ''Without the tunnel, the rest of the valley will endup like that,'' Mr. Ritzer said. ''We want people tostay, but to do that, we have to give them the sameopportunities as people in the town.'' The project is budgeted at nearly $9 million, of whichthe province of Tyrol is kicking in roughlythree-quarters. Austria specializes in highlyengineered tunnels, and this one has its own marvels,including a 180-degree curve in the middle. Workers are blasting a path through a ridge to connectthe tunnel to a dirt road in the valley. Theirjackhammers echo noisily off the mountains, somethingnot lost on the project's critics. Mr. Wolf does not dispute that the residents neededsomething more convenient than a winding staircase.His solution would have been to replace the aerialropeway -- a rickety contraption -- with a moderngondola that could have carried people as well asprovisions. He noted that other places thrive while banningprivate cars. The glamorous Swiss ski resort Zermatt,for example, requires visitors to park outside townand take a train or taxi the rest of the way. In the Kaisertal, however, people have simplerdesires. Ursula Leitner said she would like to be ableto carry her groceries home, rather than putting themon the ropeway. She would like to go the annual ballin Ebbs without having to hike down with her shoes andgown in a bag. More important, the family could get prompt access tomedical treatment. Last fall, Sarah became violentlyill with a stomach virus and had to hike down to adoctor. A group of walkers, not understanding thegirl's distress, poked fun at her as she and herparents hurried past. There are longer-term drawbacks to life in theKaisertal. Young people struggle to find spouseswilling to move here. Failed relationships are common.Loneliness hangs in the thin mountain air. Yet there is also romance and idealism to living inthis Alpine version of Walden Pond. Neighbors takecare of one another. Each Monday, they gather at oneof the guesthouses to play cards. It's like one big family, though, as JosefSchwaighofer, 43, the owner of the guesthouse, notes,''None of the families is related.'' Pausing, he addswith a twinkle, ''that we know of.'' Mr. Schwaighofer, who grew up here, has neverconsidered leaving. But he said fewer and fewer peopleappreciate the valley's slow rhythm of life. For them,the tunnel is an escape hatch. ''They want to get intotown quickly,'' he said with a hint of sadness. ''Lifetoday is getting faster and faster.'' ____________________________________________________________________________________Need
Finding out information about these huts is not very easy. There are lots of them but most of the information I found was in German. Most are run by various branches of the Alps climbing clubs and don't do much marketing, especially in English. Another problem is that most of the huts are dorm style with large groups of strangers sleeping together in one big room. This had no appeal whatsoever so I only looked for huts with single rooms. I finally found a suggested route in the mountains around Kufstein for three nights which seemed to be a nice, short introduction into hut-to-hut hiking in the Alps. However, I changed the middle hut to another one in the area since the one on the suggested itinerary I had found only had dorm rooms and the one I substituted had individual rooms.
Karen and her sister Teresa flew in from the States on Sunday. They, KH and I drove to Kufstein on Wednesday, August 8th. Teresa's husband Peter was driving from Bratislava and was going to meet us either on the trail or at the first hut. We got to the trailhead at about 3:30 p.m. and headed up the several hundred wooden stairs to the trail. The estimate I had to get to the hut was between two and three hours. After the steps the trail is pretty level for awhile. At one point I saw what looked like a tunnel and a local hiker confirmed what I had earlier read; they were finally builing a road into the valley. It would only be for use by the inhabitants, she said. ( I have since found a NYTimes article about the tunnel and will copy it at the end of this.)Eventually we came to a choice with one trail taking more time and the other less. We chose the quicker one although Karen claims she objected. I honestly don't remember that. Here shorter apparently meant steeper. Teresa, being the youngest, skipped ahead most of the time but once waited for us to catch up to her and commented, "This trail is challenging!" Uh huh, that it was. Pretty wide and easy to navigate, but very take-your-breath away steep. We went up quite a bit and got a serious cardio vascular workout which was fine with me. We were almost to the hut when Peter caught up with us (hey, he's only 26!) at a tiny chapel similar to so many you find all over southern Germany and Austria. They seem to often be constructed by particular families as symbols of gratitude. At one point Teresa came back to report cows had made the path impassable. By the time we got there they had moved aside. Cows became rather a recurring theme. KH, Karen and I struggled in behind TeresaandPeter with me crossing into the yard of the Vorderkaiserfelden Hut at about 7:30 p.m. I had taken me about TWICE as long to get there as the Austrian plan had estimated. And I hadn't felt like I had taken it particularly easy.
Calling the places we stayed "huts" is ridiculous. They are much more what I would call lodges. However, you can really only get to them by hiking. When we walked into the Vorderkaiserfeldenhuette there were about 15 people sitting around the dining room eating or playing games. At least five of them were small children. They only way in was to hike so that must be how they got there. We were the last arrivals. We checked in and our rooms were long and narrow with two single beds against the wall and a small table attached to the wall across from the beds. We were expected to use sleeping bag liners under the quilt and we all had them along. (I knew this from my research. We had silk ones as they are the lightest.) I think there was a chair and there were hooks on the wall. The toilets and sinks and shower were down the hall. Everything was wood and I think the "hut" was something like a hundred years old. There were dormitory beds with basically just matresses on the floor one floor higher and a family from Holland (one of the groups with kids) was staying up there. These are essentially open areas so we could go up briefly and have a look. Our "private" rooms had no locks. KH and I propped a hiking pole against the door that night just for the heck of it.
We had a great dinner and beer. The view out over the mountains was spectacular but it got dark pretty quickly after we arrived so we didn't get to see it for too long. Karen was curious about the ethnicity of the people running the restaurant. They were different from the people in charge of the rooms and did not look Austrian. Eventually the guy told us he was from Nepal. Apparently there is some exchange between the Alps and whatever mountains they have there. He also had jewelry and hats for sale he had brought with from Nepal so Karen and Teresa both managed to get some shopping in on the top of a mountain in the Alps and best of all the stuff they bought was from Nepal. Talk about globalization.
I really liked this lodge although the woman who ran it was not the friendliest person I have ever met. As mentioned, most of these "huts" are owned by the Alpine club and they get people to basically rent them and run them. I think is a lot of work and a rather isolated job although I suspect having internet access has helped quite a bit. Here is a link to information about this hut if you are interested: http://www.vorderkaiserfeldenhuette.at/. Unfortunately it is only in German but at least you can get a feel for what it looks like. Oh, yeah, the going price for these Alpine club huts is 22 Euros per person per night. Showers are an extra three Euros. The food had average restaurant prices and was consistently good.
We had breakfast the next morning, packed our packs and with a tra-la-la headed out at abut 10:30 a.m. It was wet but not pouring. We had a hiking map of the area but the trails were generally well marked with signs and estimated hiking times. We saw two different signs for the Anton Karg Haus, our next hut, and chose the one with the slightly longer time (something like three hours) because we thought the trail would be less steep. I remember thinking it was kind of a narrow trail when we started out but thought it might widen up as we went further along. Well, it didn't. Actually, as Karen said, when you thought it couldn't get any worse, it did. Much of this approximately six inch wide trail was covered by interlacing tree roots which were wet since it had rained and was still drizzling and thus EXTREMELY slippery. If there weren't slippery tree roots there were boulders. Or just fields of rocks with this tiny, tiny path carved out of the extremely steep slope. Or steps minimally carved out of a rock face. Sometimes I would look up and think, YIKES! That's steep! I tried not look down but when I did I had to force myself not to freeze up with fear. It was a long way down and at many places if you had fallen you would have just keep going. This was a really, really bad and perilous trail. Karl-Heinz and Karen each fell twice. Karen actually fell off the trail once and I'm still not sure how she managed to stay alive. "Just about killed myself" was what she yelled back and it was not an exaggeration. I didn't fall because I moved like a turtle and slowed us all down. But I feared twisting an ankle and really causing problems. I had no idea how anyone could rescue me if I was hurt. I mainly looked down at the path in front of me and the only wildlife I saw were ants crossing my path. First we went up, up, up and then we went down, down and down some more. At one point I thought I would burst into tears from fear but decided it wouldn't help so didn't. Did I mention it was DANGEROUS? I felt like I was on some weird survival trip, perhaps our plane had crashed on the mountain and our only way to survive was down this wicked path. Karl-Heinz would stop whenever something extraordinarily bad was on the trail to help me through. Without him I would not have survived. I am not kidding. (Thanks, dear.) However, it meant I began to dread seeing him stop. It meant something terrible was coming. We crossed streams on half-submerged stones and wobbley logs. We walked on miniscule ledges with extreme drop offs to the side. We never met ANYONE else on the trail because the locals and anyone with a lick of sense were way too smart to try it. Rose had thought about coming with us and I just kept thinking how grateful I was she had not since she is afraid of heights. Ha! I am NOT afraid of heights and I was afraid. The trail went on and on and on. At about 3:30 p.m. Karl-Heinz looked out over the mountains and shouted, "Where's the damn hut?!" TeresaandPeter were quite a bit ahead of us but had some issues as well. Finally at about 5:30 p.m. we saw the hut with TeresaandPeter on the terrace just getting ready to come back and mount a rescue. The "three hour" tour took us about SEVEN hours. I was starting to notice a trend with the "estimated" times. I was delighted we had all made it out unscathed. I think we were extremely lucky and had experienced a miracle especially since about five minutes after we got into the hut it began to pour. I cannot imagine how we would have made it out of there in a downpour. But we were obviously making mistakes. We needed more information about any trails we would take in the future.
The first hut we had been in was high in the mountains. We had pretty much hiked down to the second one so now we were in a valley. This hut was also all wood and huge. We checked in (nice rooms for that sort of place) and then went for dinner. Trying to be smarter, I checked with the waitress about the trail we had taken and the one we had planned for the next day. We could have aborted the trip and taken an easy trail back to Kufstein. She agreed the one we had taken was bad and said the one for the next day was fine although somewhat steep. We all agreed to continue onto the next hut. After the five out us had a nice dinner in the dining room alone she asked when we wanted breakfast. She asked if we could have it a bit later since we were the only guests and that meant they could sleep in. This "hut" can sleep approximately 100 people and we were the only guests! ( We has assumed everyone else had already eaten. Hikers tend to be early to bed types.) It was during the week (Thursday night) and the weather wasn't very good but it was still a bit strange to be the only guests in the giant wooden hut in the mountains. Karen says it made her feel like she was in an episode of "Scooby Doo". We had the dining room to ourselves the whole night and played poker with puzzle pieces. Karl-Heinz basically never bet and Karen basically never stopped.
At breakfast a different woman waitressed and I checked about the trail again. (I wasn't going to make the same mistake twice!) She said it was an o.k. trail, steep at first, then level and then steep again. And she asked if we had good shoes. I had read that the Anton Karg house had been closed for awhile and asked her about it. She said the previous woman who had been running it had psychiatric problems and had to leave. Go figure. Isolated in an Alpine valley. More Scooby Doo. Now the woman speaking to us said her family was running it but only from May to October. Here is something about the Anton Karg hut, again in German: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton-Karg-Haus OH, and in this place you could even lock your door.
So with Karl-Heinz yodelling we were off again on another hike to another hut. What we shortly came to realize is that what is "somewhat" steep varies greatly between mountain folk and us flatlanders. There were steps that were suspiciously simlar to ladders. After several hours, Karl-Heinz did mention that all he saw ahead was sheer rock and wondered where the trail was going but I chose to ignore those comments. It was a much better trail than the preceeding day and I never actually feared for my life, at least until Karl-Heinz, stopped, turned back and said, "Um, here is some of that iron stuff." Oh great. They hadn't mentioned that and it wasn't on the map. It was a bit of a Via Ferrata ( Iron Way) which is hiking on rocks aided by iron steps or ladders pounded into them. It means that you are pretty much in an area that can't be hiked and has to be "climbed". This was the rock Karl-Heinz had been seeing. So we packed out poles in our packs and used the cables on the sides and the iron rebar steps to help us over the rock. It wasn't as bad as it looked and still not as bad and the trail from the preceeding day. A bit farther up I heard Karl-Heinz saying, "Welcome to the other side." He wasn't kidding. We had just climbed over a mountain and were now in an entirely different valley. The first one was dramatic. The one we entered looked like something out an animated Disney cartoon. Cute Alpine houses, cows with bells, flowers. I expected to hear flute music. Just a different world. The rest of the way to the Kaindlhuette was a cakewalk. However, it still took us about twice as long as the trail sign said. We rolled in sometime in the late afternoon. TeresaandPeter were already there sitting on the terrace as were several other people. It was now Friday and we were closer to the town than we had been before so this hut was MUCH busier with maybe 30 people staying there. It was also privately run and smaller than the other two with much more limited bathroom facilities and no showers. For 50 Euros per person we got dinner, rooms, and breakfast. Dinner was served family style with them bringing the food to our assigned table. There were quiet hours and I sort of felt like I was at summer camp for hikers. There were also farms in the area and it was much less isolated than the other two. It was nice as well but I liked the other two huts better. This was another one without locking doors. Here is it's website: http://www.kaindlhuette.de/. Everything they serve there seems to be organic which we don't care but some people do. That evening we had a few rousing hands of the children's game Memory.
The next day I took a chairlift back down to Kufstein while everyone else hiked. I was hiked out and chair lifts can be fun. I was the only customer. So ended a quite remarkable experience.
At the huts there were brochures available describing various hikes. The ones we had taken were recommended for experienced, surefooted hikers. NOW they tell me, I thought. For anyone interested there is also a website with several hikes mapped on at http://www.huettentrekking.de/ but again only in German. I unfortunately did not have the brochures nor had found that website before we went.
Now that we've been there I know what easy trails to take if we ever go back to that valley. And we probably will. If you like to hike, it is hard to beat these so-called huts, at least the ones we stayed at. We thought they were generally nice although clearly not luxurious. The food was good and everything seemed very reasonably priced to us. That is at least partially because they have been around so long and are generally owned by the various branches of the Alps clubs. However, unless you don't mind sharing a room with strangers, you need to find the ones with private rooms which is challenging.
On Saturday we drove back into Germany and onto Garmisch. I wish I could say our week in Garmisch was uneventful, but no, we took yet another of what Karl-Heinz calls our "murder" hikes and again it was unintentional. By then TeresaandPeter had gone back to Bratislava. We had never been through the Hoellentalklamm which is a high gorge up from Grainau just outside of Garmisch. We thought it would be a pretty short hike so didn't hurry and got started about noon. We hiked through the gorge and should have turned back. But we kept going, without water, and ended up crossing another mountain. We missed the gondola we wanted to take down since it only ran until 5:30 p.m. So after going up one side of the mountain we walked down the other, the last half an hour in dark. At one point I tried to convince Karl-Heinz and Karen we should just sit down until morning but they insisted we continue and we slowly made it down using our hiking poles like blind people use their canes. If I could hike faster we probably would have made it down in the light. Karen wants to train me to hike faster billy goat style. Hmmm...we'll have to see about that. How we were that stupid after our other adventures I'm not quite sure. This is especially bizarre considering I ended up hiking out of the Grand Canyon with Chris for an hour in the dark in May 2006. I really gotta start taking along a flashlight whenever I go hiking. (I know, the brighter hikers are all shaking their heads in astonishment.) Here is a link to some pictures of what I believe is a similar hike. http://www.germanhikes.co.uk/hike05/2005oct/Oct04/Oct04.html The hike this person posted pictures of looks like essentially the same hike we did only we missed the gondola and had to hike back down.
This is getting as long as some of the hikes so I'm stopping. Thanks to TeresaandPeter, KH and Karen for tolerating my ignorance and slowness and to KH for basically getting me off that killer trail. Never again! O.k., again but not the same trails. There is a good chance at least KH and I will be back in Garmisch and maybe Austria next August again so if anyone wants to come they should let me know. You need to be in pretty good shape, however. Sometimes I felt like a cartoon character with my heart beating OUT of my chest. Oh, and it helps not to be afraid of heights. Really. And see below for the Times article about the Kaisertal.
Terry
KAISERTAL JOURNAL; Modernity Drills Through RockToward an Alpine Hamlet E-MAIL Print Permissions Save By MARK LANDLERPublished: April 24, 2007Years from now, if Sarah Leitner ever wants to regaleher children with stories about her daily walk toschool, she will not have to embellish, even a little:this plucky 8-year-old must hike a mountain to get toher home in this remote Alpine valley. True, there are 300 wooden steps winding up the steepslope. And her mother, Ursula, waits for her at thetop, in a rusty, mud-spattered car that bears nolicense plates because it never sees a regular road. The Leitners live in the Kaisertal, one of the lastinhabited valleys in the Alps not connected by road tothe outside world. In this isolated mountainsettlement, food and fuel are carried in on an aerialropeway. Its few vehicles were winched up the stairsmany years ago, and are now stranded there, in anArcadian landscape of fields and farmhouses, circledby jagged, snow-capped peaks. For the 30 people who live in the Kaisertal, there hasalways been one way in and one way out: on foot. Next March, however, work will be completed on a2,690-foot tunnel through the mountain, and thevalley's splendid isolation will come to an abruptend. It cannot end fast enough for Sarah Leitner. ''I'll be really glad when the road comes,'' she saidthe other day, trudging up the steps, her backpackbobbing like a buoy in a choppy sea. ''Finally, myfriends will be able to come visit me.'' The decision to build the tunnel was made afterdecades of dispute over whether to make the valleymore accessible, and it is still arousing complexemotions among people in this gentle land ofgingerbread houses and onion-domed churches near theGerman border. Residents of the Kaisertal generally welcome theconnection, citing the ease of shopping, going to adoctor or seeing a movie, without having to put onhiking boots and go on a wilderness walk. But nature lovers who savor such pursuits say thetunnel will bring taxis and tourists, followed by realestate development -- spoiling one of the last trulypristine valleys in the Tyrolean Alps. To prevent that, Ebbs, the town that includes theKaisertal, plans to limit access to residents,emergency vehicles and service people. It will issuethem a plastic card, with an encoded chip, that willopen a gate at the mouth of the tunnel, next to thetown. Over time, however, critics predict that thelimitations on access will be relaxed, particularly asthe economic incentives of opening up the valley tooutside traffic become more tantalizing. ''This region is an El Dorado for people who live inBavaria; they can drive here in an hour,'' saidNorbert Wolf, an environmentalist who has campaignedagainst the tunnel for years. ''I'm very skepticalthat this tunnel will only be used by the people wholive there.'' Today, the 30 residents subsist on farming and runningsmall guesthouses, which also sell beer and applestrudel to passing hikers. The valley's population wasonce about 70, but it has dwindled as residents,particularly young ones, have left for opportunitiesin the outside world. Josef Ritzer, the mayor of Ebbs, said the remainderwould eventually have packed up, too. Showing visitorsaround the other day, he pointed to an abandonedAlpine house, clinging stubbornly to a hillside. ''Without the tunnel, the rest of the valley will endup like that,'' Mr. Ritzer said. ''We want people tostay, but to do that, we have to give them the sameopportunities as people in the town.'' The project is budgeted at nearly $9 million, of whichthe province of Tyrol is kicking in roughlythree-quarters. Austria specializes in highlyengineered tunnels, and this one has its own marvels,including a 180-degree curve in the middle. Workers are blasting a path through a ridge to connectthe tunnel to a dirt road in the valley. Theirjackhammers echo noisily off the mountains, somethingnot lost on the project's critics. Mr. Wolf does not dispute that the residents neededsomething more convenient than a winding staircase.His solution would have been to replace the aerialropeway -- a rickety contraption -- with a moderngondola that could have carried people as well asprovisions. He noted that other places thrive while banningprivate cars. The glamorous Swiss ski resort Zermatt,for example, requires visitors to park outside townand take a train or taxi the rest of the way. In the Kaisertal, however, people have simplerdesires. Ursula Leitner said she would like to be ableto carry her groceries home, rather than putting themon the ropeway. She would like to go the annual ballin Ebbs without having to hike down with her shoes andgown in a bag. More important, the family could get prompt access tomedical treatment. Last fall, Sarah became violentlyill with a stomach virus and had to hike down to adoctor. A group of walkers, not understanding thegirl's distress, poked fun at her as she and herparents hurried past. There are longer-term drawbacks to life in theKaisertal. Young people struggle to find spouseswilling to move here. Failed relationships are common.Loneliness hangs in the thin mountain air. Yet there is also romance and idealism to living inthis Alpine version of Walden Pond. Neighbors takecare of one another. Each Monday, they gather at oneof the guesthouses to play cards. It's like one big family, though, as JosefSchwaighofer, 43, the owner of the guesthouse, notes,''None of the families is related.'' Pausing, he addswith a twinkle, ''that we know of.'' Mr. Schwaighofer, who grew up here, has neverconsidered leaving. But he said fewer and fewer peopleappreciate the valley's slow rhythm of life. For them,the tunnel is an escape hatch. ''They want to get intotown quickly,'' he said with a hint of sadness. ''Lifetoday is getting faster and faster.'' ____________________________________________________________________________________Need
posted by Terry at 2:27 PM
