Day 13 Pfitscherjoch

Stuck at Pfitscherjoch. Had been anticipating bad weather for several days, it arrived today. Heavy rain through the night, thunder lightening, all gone in the morning but very low cloud, cold north wind and visibility down to a few metres.

Big decision in the morning, should we go or should we stay. Not easy, we had a tough walk ahead - my notes said "don't do this walk if you're not sure of the weather" but there was a general exodus from the hutte and staying was not exactly going to be fun. It also meant rearranging our schedule.

We stayed and the weather didn't start to improve until early evening. Had a good rest and luckily this is a very good hutte. I think we did the right thing, better weather tomorrow will provide a full vindication.

Interesting the number of the walkers on a trip that goes from Munich to Venice. Pfitscherjoch is a stop-over on the route and we met a group on the trip last night and there are another two groups on the same trip staying here tonight - surprisingly this is about the half way point.



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Day 12 Pfitscherjoch

Just as yesterday was worse than we expected, today was better. It's all about expectation management. We are busy turning tomorrow into a nightmare.

We decided yesterday that getting a bus to Ginzling was a better start than an endless walk up the long valley. That meant staying in Mayrhofen in a fairly luxurious ski hotel at a bargain rate. The only trouble was their internet wasn't working and I was hoping to get onto the Via Alpina web site and go through the itinerary again. It gets a bit complicated over the next few days.

The decision to get a bus was a good one. I'm sure the route from Finkenburg to Ginzling would have avoided the road wherever possible but it's still a long valley bottom walk and there is plenty of that to enjoy after Ginzling.

Easy trail up from Ginzling

Day 11 Finkenberg

Bad day on the walk - sometimes it doesn't work and today was one of them.

Two problems: somehow we had not realised that it was a big walk, we had both somehow concluded that it was a stroll down the hill and, secondly; the weather was bad.

Looking back to Rastkogelhütte

Day 10 Rastkogelhutte

Many thanks for Christine's guest blog describing yesterdays' walk, always nice to have another perspective. In the interests of completeness there are just a few things I'd like to add.


Firstly Christine failed to mention that at the point we emerged from the trees and started along a "precarious" ridge we also started, after 8 days of walking east (for me) to head south. Quite a significant moment; after almost constantly tracking and crossing the border between Germany and Austria we are now crossing Austria and in a few days start to track the border between Austria and Italy.

Christine also failed to mention that the underlying geology has changed transforming the scenery. After days of dry but dramatic limestone landscape, with jagged peaks and cliffs, we are now into a wetter greener terrain with plants and vegetation suited to an acid soil. Looking south its clear that we will soon be back into a limestone landscape. Perhaps we are crossing an older alpine core which has lost its limestone cover through erosion.

The weather has also become more unsettled with afternoon and evening storms, apparently a feature of the Alps in August. These storms are savage and I would hate to get caught in one in an exposed place.

Apart from that I thought that Christine's blog was quite good.

Leaving Kellerjochehutte with its prayer flags

Day 9 Kellerjochhutte

Guest blog from Christine.

Another day another huge climb, but good news is my knee seems better.

Schwaz is nothing to write home about. It's just down the road from Innsbruck but at 600m it's somewhat too low for alpine walking. Stayed in the modern StayingInn Hotel, clean functional and stylish and no dried flowers or gnomes in sight. John managed to find his way out of town without the usual backtracking and soon we were walking through hay meadows up a zig zagging road. This went on for 2 hours then we struck off steeply through trees till we reached a bilberry covered rocky crest with spectacular views. We picked our way precariously along the rocky edge to Gratzenkopf (2069metres) marked by a cross. The weather was blowing up and big clouds were fast approaching so we hurried on along a dramatic rocky path that clung high to the mountainside. On the ridge itself the wind was ferocious.

Climbing up to Gratzenkopf

Day 8 Schwaz

The Falkenhutte was excellent, perfect location and friendly staff (not a universal feature). I'm used to slightly odd arrangements and slept well but Christine, who for the first time had to share a tiny space with six other people, didn't. There was a huge thunder storm and someone shut the window to stop the rattles, it got very hot.

Leaving Falkenhutte

Day 7 Falkenhutte

Day 7 for me, day 1 for Christine, and her first "strike" of the trip; she stopped and wouldn't go any further.

After all the wonderful walking of the last six days, I was worried things were about to fizzle out. Yesterday was dull and the limited research I'd done on today's walk suggested it might be the same; a long walk on a forest trail, a climb over a shallow pass followed by a long trudge down the other side and a final climb up to the Falkenhutte. My information was right but it didn't do justice to the scenery. The second part after the pass was just wonderful. The horizon was a long line of jagged limestone peaks, scree underneath and then open alpine pasture populated with little herds of cows.

Karwendeltal Valley