First stage today! We were quite nervous that the weather would be good enough because rain and thunderstorm were predicted in the afternoon…
But the morning started perfectly. We had a great breakfast at the Pension Bergkristall (really recommendable) and the sky was blue. We could see the Großglockner up to its top just fine.
At 8 o’clock Taxi Fleissner picked us up to drive us to the Kaiser Franz Josefs Höhe for our start. Our driver was perfectly in time and made a great guide throughout the drive all the way up.
Arriving at the Kaiser Franz Josefs Höhe we made a few pictures and then down we went!
The first part was very steep and quite challenging but the view was a great one! All the time we could see the Großglockner against a nearly blue sky, you couldn’t wish for more. The whole way down was so beautiful with its landscape, flowers and animals and the air was so fresh and smelled of ice and glacier.
I liked the swing bridge at the Sandersee and the gorgeous Margaritze Stausee.
Only a few kilometres from Heiligenblut we stopped at the Sattelalm but it wasn’t really nice. The innkeeper was quite unlikeable so we continued very quickly again.
Back in Heiligenblut we bought some food for the evening because our host at the Mühlenstüberl, our second accomodation, would return quite late. While my parents drove my backpack and the food to our accomodation for this night we continued hiking for another 6km. With the first raindrops we made it to the Mühlenstüberl! Later this evening we had a lot of rain and thunderstorms so we were quite lucky! The Mühlenstüberl is one awesome place with direct view to the Großglockner and a very nice host. Since there were no other guests we had the first floor all to ourselves!
Some figures on day 1:
- 21,3km
- 740m up
- 1571m down
- Hiking time: 5h 41m