Day 5: Lärchenhütte – Erlacher Haus

There was such an utter silence at the Lärchenhütte and we slept so well that I for the first time wasn’t awake before the alarm went off…

The hut lies in the forest near a stream and at night it was pitch black and so quiet that you couldn’t hear a single sound. No typical city noise, not even a fridge, no clock… I loved it!

 

 We got up at 6.30 a.m. and outside the night’s fog just began to lighten and the surrounding became better visible. The forest smelled of damp wood and pine needles and we only heard the soft tingle of the cows’ bells.

We had a small breakfast with homemade bread, jam and butter and since we drank all the hot tea yesterday we had lukewarm water to go with it. 😂

As I said it’s a hut in the forest, no electricity, just solar power and the heat from the wood stove. And since we didn’t know how it worked we didn’t dare to light a fire and set the whole hut ablaze. 😳 So, lukewarm water it was. 😜

When we closed the door behind us we were surprised to find two hikers already passing by. And we thought we were the only crazy ones.

But we overtook them rather quickly and found out that they were hiking the AAT and wanted to reach their destination also before the forecasted rain.

Then we headed on. The sky was cloudy but miraculously no high fog. We saw mountains, summits, how awesome!

The ascent to the Falkert, our highlight for today at 2.308m, was rather steep but we made the 700m of altitude very easily and were flashed by the view.

 The summit cross was rather strange, I suppose someone must have won a price somewhere for the design. 😅

 We also saw down to the Falkertsee where we might have wanted to hike to but after seeing the muddy puddle surrounded by resort-like hotels we happily decided to omit it. We have surely seen so many better lakes on our trail last year.

Funny thing: beneath the cross someone must have left two still closed bottles of beer behind for thirsty hikers. 😂

Since we saw that the fog started to drift in from behind we headed down again and met once again the AAT hikers. We all complained about the fog which really could become a pain in the ass.

The path led us alongside two other summits, Klomnock and Mallnock, but since both were hidden in the fog we didn’t go up to the top but continued our way hillside.

A view back to the Falkert (which got dipped in fog shortly after):

 It was very enjoyable to hike, we still had good views and the fog was mostly behind us. We heard a lot of marmots and even saw a few speeding up and down the mountains. And we saw this lovely pair:

 

After passing all the Nocks, a while to the other side, we suddenly saw other people. Many of them. At least 10! That was weird because these days it was just the two of us in the Nockberge. And then we saw the reason: a cable car went up not far away! And it was Sunday. So no wonder that it suddenly felt like hiking up the Kahlenberg. 😂

The path on the other side was as lovely:

 And after the only serviced hut nearby was left behind we were suddenly alone again. For the rest of the way it was just the Nockberge and us.

We arrived at the Erlacher Haus rather early and our room wasn’t yet ready. So we sat outside and had lunch. At first no one but us sat outside (it wasn’t the warmest of the summer days, mind you) but then a few other guests also dared to sit rather in the fresh air than inside. Every once in a while even the sun came out.

 

For the rest of the day we wandered around and planned the following hiking days. Unfortunately breakfast won’t be before 7.30 a.m., so no early start for us tomorrow. The Erlacher Haus unfortunately isn’t the same hikers’ hut that it was 2 years ago. Also there were guests late into the night drinking and making a lot of noise that definitely weren’t hikers. 😕😒

Some figures: