Austria Diary

Monday, July 2, 2001

 

I leave today on my hiking trip in the Austrian Alps. My goals are to get some vigorous exercise, enjoy the nature and practice speaking German. I’ve been taking German lessons since January and do okay reading novels and newspapers, but haven’t yet had the experience of conversing with a native German speaker (not counting the wonderful teachers at the Goethe Institute who get paid to smile at me while I massacre their mother tongue).  In fact, the inspiration for this trip came from a photograph in the course textbook that showed some people hiking up an Alpine forest trail.  This picture was so seductive that I couldn’t stop thinking about it until I finally made my travel arrangements.

 

The itinerary is to fly to Munich then take a train to Salzburg where I spend the first night.  From there I take a bus to the village of Lofer, an hour away in the Pinzgauer Saalachtal region.  I’ll stay in the region for seven nights with six days of mountain hiking.  The arrangements are exceedingly civilized.  The program, called “Hiking Without Luggage”, gives me a map, a trailguide and seven nights of lodging at various village inns. I spend my days walking from one village to the next while the innkeepers’ elves transport my luggage ahead of me.  I’m travelling alone, because my wife, Irene, is now five months pregnant. BUT no, I did not abandon my pregnant wife to go off on some reckless swashbuckling adventure.  I wanted her to come with me, and although she has no business in her condition rappelling off the Matterhorn, I was hoping we could have a couple of nice weeks together in Europe even if I spend part of the time wandering through the forests on my own while she treats herself to the spa or something.  Irene, on the other hand, claimed that the fetus vetoed the thirteen-hour flight and the nine-hour time change.  She was perfectly happy to stay at home and catch up with work and girlfriends while I satisfy my pre-partum Wanderlust. The only conditions were that I’m gone for no more than ten days and that I return with shopping-bags full of chocolate.

Tuesday, July 3

 

If you’re on an intercontinental flight that departs on Monday and arrives on Tuesday destination time, which is still Monday local time at home, at what point exactly does the date change? In other words, suppose that Irene came with me and accidentally gave birth during the flight.  How would we know which day was our son’s birthday?

 

I arrive in Munich airport all prepared to make my way through Mitteleuropa speaking nothing but German.  I approach the counter to buy my train ticket to Salzburg, and proudly recite the line I’ve been rehearsing for weeks.

“Einfach nach Salzburg in der zweiten Klasse, bitte” I say to the young lady.

“Forty-eight Marks” is her reply.

Undeterred, I fumble for the rest of the words to ask for directions to the actual train.

“Ah, Sie sprechen Deutsch!” she smiles, then rattles off something which I don’t completely understand.  I wander around for a while trying to follow her directions, and then miss the first train.

 

I arrive at the Salzburg station a few hours later and take a cab to my hotel. The lederhosened café waiter, who is also the hotel desk clerk, approaches the taxi.  Before I can open my mouth to say “Ich habe eine Reservierung,” he says “You must be the one from Hiking Without Luggage”. 

Wednesday, July 4

 

I’d been to Salzburg on an earlier trip, so I planned for only a morning of sightseeing before my 12:30 bus to Lofer. I walk through the old town near the large yellow row house where Mozart was born.  I go to a bookstore and buy some novels in German -- a couple of Austrian mysteries and Erich Maria Remarque’s All’s Quiet on the Western Front. The old town is squeezed in between the Salzach River and the cliff wall of a small rocky mountain.  On top of the mountain is a large castle, the Festung Hohensalzburg, that dominates the view from the city. The castle was the historic home and headquarters for the Prince-Archbishops who ruled the city from the 16th to the 19th centuries and is now a museum. I walk up the path to the castle entrance, and cut to the head of the ticket line in front of a group of 5-year-olds. I take an audio-tour through the rooms in the living quarters.  In the “Torture Room”, the stone walls are covered with various metal implements.   The guide on the tape explains that the large heavy wheel hanging from the wall would be placed on the prisoner’s chest until his bones were crushed, at which point he would be tied to a stake.  The guide reassures us that these devices were never actually used to extract confessions inside the castle, because there was never a courthouse within its walls.

 

I escape from the castle with my bones intact, check out of my hotel and somehow manage to find the bus stop.

 

Part of the bus ride goes through Germany near Berchtesgaden, a park in the Bavarian Alps where Hitler had his mountain retreat  On a forest trail outside the town of Bad Reichenhall I see a line of German soldiers on an exercise march wearing full backpacks and carrying automatic weapons.  NATO allies notwithstanding, I have mixed feelings about heavily armed Germans in uniform.

 

I get off the bus at the Lofer tourist office. At the Hotel Dax I’m greeted by proprietor Stefan Dax (Stefan is a common name in these parts.  I contemplate immigrating to a German-speaking country if for no other reason than I would never again have to teach anybody how to spell or pronounce my name). My room is comfortable and modern with cable TV and an excellent shower.  I have the afternoon to relax and make final preparations before the morning’s Big Hike.  Lofer village, at 2,000ft. above sea level, lies in a broad flat part of the Saalach River Valley surrounded on all sides by various mountain ridges.  The most striking of the ridges is the Loferer Steinberge,  a great wall of stony bald snow-capped peaks, that reaches 8,200 ft.  The village itself has 1,900 residents, nearly all of whom seem to work in support of the tourist trade, which is greatest during ski season.  Most of the buildings are chalet-style, and in the center is an 18th century church with an onion-domed tower.  The Saalach River itself runs just outside the village, but running through the center are at least three tributary streams, and the sound of rushing water is everywhere.  After lunch I find a bench in the shade by the stream and read to the sound of a waterfall.  On the walk back to the hotel I see the wall by the church with the memorial to “Lofer’s Fallen Heroes from the Two World Wars”.  Of the two dozen or so fallen from WWII, at least 3 were named Dax.

Thursday, July 5

The big first day. I’m out on the trail by 9am.  The day’s destination is an inn at Loferer Alm, only 2 1/2 miles northwest of Lofer as the crow flies, but also 2,500 feet closer to the stars.  Alm means “mountain meadow”, and this particular Alm is used during the winter as a ski slope, so there is a year-round cable car that runs from Lofer village up to the top.  The recommended route in the guide book is to begin the day with a hike that loops starting to the southwest, returning to Lofer and then taking the cable car to the Alm.  The loop has a 1,400 ft climb, and is estimated to take about 4 hours.  The guide book also suggests two alternatives to the cable car ride. In both variants I would still start with the loop.  The first variant, recommended “for hard walkers”, takes the most direct trail from Lofer to the Alm, and is estimated at 3 hours.  The second variant, which is “reserved for diehards”, adds a detour and an extra 1,200 ft of climbing to reach the peak of “…rocky Grubhörndl mountain (careful! Very steep to the east!)” for a total of 5 hours. I didn’t fly my trekking poles half way around the world in order to carry them up the hill in a cable car, so I decide to take the second variant “(careful! Very steep to the east!)”.  Stefan Dax offers to give me advice on the trails. I tell him that I’m contemplating the most difficult route.  “Why don’t you see how you’re feeling after the loop,” he cautions, but I’m determined to go for it.  After all, when I take day hikes in the Bay Area, I’ve found that when the guide book estimates “4 - 6 hours”, I finish the hike in  2 1/2 or 3 hours.  Therefore I estimate that an “8 hour hike” should take me no more than 6 hours, especially if the times are calibrated for people who ride the cable car when they should really be walking.  The guide book says “ATTENTION! VERY IMPORTANT! If you are unable to continue the route you have chosen for any reason whatsoever, you are requested to notify us immediately.  Otherwise the rescue squad will start searching for you!”

“I’m taking the hardest variant,” I say to Dax on my way out the door.  “If I don’t make it to the next inn on time and they send out the rescue squad, that’s where they should look for me.”

He smiles skeptically.

 

The weather reports for the coming week have all warned of thunderstorms.  The day is actually warm and clear. My outfit consists of T-shirt, shorts, wool socks, Löwa hiking boots from REI.  Underwear is mesh, not cotton, designed for wicking moisture, with a liberal dusting of Gold Bond talcum powder to reduce chafing. I’m carrying a daypack on my back, containing a nylon jacket, 3 liters of water and a couple of ham sandwiches.  Around my neck is a camera.  In each hand I hold a trekking pole.  Poles are not terribly popular in the U.S., but widely used in the Alps.  I just bought them a month or two before the trip and tried them out on a few day hikes, before being convinced.  They are especially useful on long walks on steep hills.  They effectively turn your arms into a second pair of legs and give you extra power to climb up, and extra support and braking on the way down. They work best on a dirt surface, less well on gravel, and on a paved or concrete road they’re a handicap.

 

I start the walk on a shaded, paved promenade along the stream.  Just outside the village the trail changes from blacktop to dirt. At a fork in the trail a sign points the way toward the Maria Kirchental church by way of the 3,400 ft summit at Wechsel.  The trail sign has a pictograph of a high-heeled shoe in a circle with a slash through it and says “Nur für Geübte und Schwindelfreie”, which means “Only for the experienced and vertigo-free” Hmm.  Am I an experienced hiker?  By whose standards?  I don’t know whether or not I’m free of vertigo, as I’ve never been in a situation where vertigo is sufficiently common that anyone bothered to hoist a sign to warn me about it.  I proceed with caution.  The trail climbs steadily through the forest.  The jangle of cow bells rises from the valley.  The trail grows narrower, and the drop-off on my right becomes higher and steeper.  In several places the trail seems to disappear, yet up ahead there is always a little red-white-red Austrian flag painted on a rock or a tree to point the way.  The discomfort I feel when I look down to my right is getting worse. The mountain is mostly soft forest floor, so I probably wouldn’t suffer too much damage even if I did lose my footing. I cross a thin stream that trickles down the mountain over a bed of rocks.  The trail that crosses the rocks is barely wide enough for one of my feet at a time and the wet rocks are a little slippery.  The rock bed tumbles far down the mountain to my right and it looks like there could be severe and painful body damage if I should say, slip on a wet pebble and plunge down the rocky chute.  I keep climbing up a series of switchbacks, stepping more deliberately, carefully placing my poles for stability.  Just when the trail becomes so narrow that there is barely enough room for me to stand still and rest, there is suddenly a little widening with a wooden bench.  I’m breathing heavily from both exertion and trepidation. I look into the long steep drop-off that unfolds beneath my feet and sit on the bench. The bench wobbles violently.  I stand right back up and walk for a few more yards.  Directly ahead of me is another little stream trickling down a bed of wet slippery rocks, and beyond the stream the trail looks like it’s getting even steeper.  I’m not enjoying this anymore.  I freeze.  My heart beats uncomfortably hard and fast.  I look to the right and now I think I’m beginning to understand what they mean by “vertigo”.  I breathe quickly, my palms sweat and I start to fart uncontrollably.  I refuse to go forward. I look behind me and the way back down looks even worse than the way up ahead.  It’s barely 10:30 in the morning, I haven’t seen any other hikers on this trail, and the rescue squad won’t be out looking for me for another 8 hours, at which time they’ll be searching the wrong mountain (“careful! Very steep to the east!” – as if this one isn’t very steep). Furthermore, if this is the trail for the people who are supposed to ride the cable car, how will I survive the trails for “hard walkers” and “diehards”?  In short, I’m pickled and I didn’t even get around to taking care of my will or buying life insurance before I left home. 

 

Since I don’t have any viable options I might as well keep climbing up the Trail of Death.  I take it very slowly, one calculated step at a time, poles first if and when the trail is even wide enough to use the poles.   And I never, ever look down to my right.   Only a few minutes later, I think, I arrive at the Wechsel summit. There’s an altitude sign with a little metal box that contains an ink pad and a rubber stamp attached to a chain. It’s widely known that the German peoples have a fetish for credentials.  My packet from the tour people includes a card which you’re supposed to stamp at certain moutain peaks and other designated points of interest.  Each location is worth a certain number of points and if you collect enough points you can earn a Bronze, Silver, Gold or Oakleaf medal, depending on the number of points and your age and sex.   I stamp my little card with “Wechsel 1057m” in green ink.  6 points.  Only 44 more and I get a Bronze medal.  Now the trail goes down the other side of the mountain in more or less a mirror image of the trail I just came up.  But a steep descent is never as much fun as it sounds because (a) gravity can only help push you down faster than you want to go and (b) you can’t help but see how far you could possibly fall.   The poles at least provide stability and spare my knees. I have one more “oh, shit!” incident on the way down where I freeze for a moment, but I finally get myself off the mountain and come to a bright green meadow with the Maria Kirchental pilgrim’s church.  For perhaps the first time in my life I feel relieved to see a church and I almost go inside and offer a prayer of thanks.

 

The rest of the loop back to Lofer is a mild descent on a wide path. I finally see other hikers, and all of them look like they’re at least 60.  The old man ahead of me is wearing a three-piece suit and dress shoes.

 

I arrive in Lofer at 12:30. Somewhere along the way I lose the lens cap from my camera. 

 

After a lunch break I’m back on the trail by 1:00.  The morning’s loop was pointless, really. I’m back where I was four hours ago and I still have to climb another 2,500 ft before I’m allowed to take a shower.  Having survived the Trail of Death I reassess my plans for the afternoon. The only thing I have left to prove in life is that I can be a good husband and father. I will waive my claim on being a “diehard”, but don’t you dare allege that I’m not a “hard walker”, and you will find it easier to stuff me into a coffin than to coax me into that cable car. I’m hiking up to the Alm, but I’ve lost my urgency to conquer rocky Grubhörndl mountain (“careful! Very steep to the east!”).

 

The trail out of Lofer is no less steep then the Wechsel climb, but without the unsettling drop-offs. At each switchback on the way to the Kalvarienberg church there is a post with a religious icon, that says things like Jesus muss das schwere Kreuz tragen (“Jesus must bear the heavy cross”)

 

The best part of the day is the trek up Bräugföllalm, a wide, steep, high meadow that’s shaped like the bowled blade of shovel. The green grass of the meadow is sprinkled with wildflowers of various colors.  When I was a little boy growing up in Wisconsin we had exactly the same kind wildflowers on our front lawn.  We called them “weeds” and my father spent a great deal of time and money trying to get rid of them.  Here on the meadow the wildflowers are delightful.  At the top of the meadow is a little stone chalet which is my immediate objective.  There’s supposed to be another rubber stamp and ink pad there that will give me another 5 points toward my Bronze medal.  High above the meadow to the west is Grubhörndl and I see the cliff that is said to be “very steep to the east!”. I am confirmed in my decision not to attempt death there.  The hills are alive with the sound of cowbells and the noise grows louder as I climb the switchbacks toward the chalet. The trail is quite narrow, and as steep and high as the meadow is, it looks too soft and cuddly to seem like a dangerous place to fall down and get killed, so I feel only a little bit terrified. I pass by a twisted hunk of rusty metal.  The sign says it’s a fragment of an aircraft bomb from WWII.  I reach the stone chalet which is guarded by a group of 8 or 9 cows, their bells all cling-cling-clinging.  The view down the meadow to the Lofer valley 2000 ft below and over to the mountains beyond is the best photo opportunity I’ve had all day (and although I didn’t know it at the time it was also the single best shot of the entire trip).  I have to change my film to get this, and while I’m fumbling with my camera one of the cows sitting there next to me apparently decides that I’ve been standing in her zone long enough, thank you very much. She gets up and starts marching toward me slowly and with terrorism in her eyes.  This isn’t exactly a stampede and I’ve never actually heard of a grown man getting thrown off a mountain by a cow, but why take unnecessary chances?  I grab my things and with my open camera I walk very quickly up the hill past the other side of the chalet, the cow hot on my tail. I end up having to forfeit both the photo shoot and the 5-point stamp.

 

The last part of the day is up a very steep section of meadow which in the winter is a ski slope. The view from the top looks like the opening scene from “The Sound of Music”.  It’s not far to the inn following the path of a chair lift which is hibernating for the summer.   Cattle graze next to the lift cable towers.  I get to the inn, Haus Gertraud in der Sonne, at around 4pm.  The whole day took seven hours, just like the guide book said it would. This walk was harder than I thought it would be. I should have realized that hiking times in American guidebooks would be calculated conservatively in order to protect the publisher from lawsuits by couch potatoes who get heart attacks just by standing next to a mountain.  On the other hand, hiking guides over here are apparently calibrated for people who climb mountains well into their 70s wearing three piece suits.

 

For dinner they serve roast venison with currant jelly. My back is killing me, mostly from the weight of the water.  The blister on my right big toe, which developed on the practice hikes that I took at home before the trip, is growing.  I fall asleep by 10:30.

Friday, July 6

I wake up to the sight of cows looking into my window. My goal is for this to be a German-only day. The innkeeper lady blew it for me when I asked her to repeat something more slowly and she said “if you need more coffee, please tell me”.  Except for that one English sentence of hers, I managed the rest of my breakfast, departure and directions to the trail entirely in German. Today’s destination is the village of Unken, 6.5 miles to the northeast as the crow flies. The actual trail is about 12 miles long with a net drop of 2,800 ft. and an estimated time of 5 hours. I’m on the road by 9. The day starts with a one or two hundred foot climb through the cow pasture.  Most of the day is on an unpaved road through a forest and largely in the shade. For most of the time the only sounds I hear are sweet bird songs and the clank and crunch of my boots and poles.  The road then follows the Unkenbach stream and in a few places the stream falls down through waterfalls. In spots I have to cross various wooden bridges that look like they could just as easily crumble to pieces and fall dozens of feet into the current below.  The particular hiking itinerary that I’m on is called the “Route of the Gorges”. Today I go through the first two gorges, the Schwarzbergklamm and the Eiblklamm.  (Klamm = Gorge).  I cross the cool and well-shaded Schwarzbergklamm by way of a solid wooden bridge.

 

When I get close to Unken I take a shortcut where I climb out of the narrow valley cut by the stream, go through a forest and then down through a large hilly meadow that is something of a suburb with lots of chalet style houses.   I see the village ahead of me, and beyond the village to the north is a collection of lumpy mountains that look like big scoops of green mashed potatoes. I reach my hotel, the Gasthof Kirchenwirt, by 1:00.  My luggage is waiting for me. It’s a hot day, and after lunch I go to the village health club which promises a swimming pool and a massage. I swim laps.  My back is killing me and I want a massage, but the masseuse has already left for the day.

 

My hotel is directly across the alley from the village church, which has the same sort of onion-domed bell tower as the Lofer church. My room looks out onto the churchyard cemetary. Each grave has an elaborate flower garden, and villagers with big green sprinkling cans parade through the yard to water their loved ones.

 

I manage to take care of all of the day’s business in German, at the hotel, the swimming pool, the café at lunch and the grocery store, and except for the innkeeper at breakfast, nobody I spoke with said anything to me in English.

 

It stays light until after 10pm.  I try to watch TV and fall asleep, but the church bell across the alley rings every fifteen minutes.  I finally doze off at midnight once the ringing stops.

Saturday, July 7

The sound of the church bell comes crashing through my window at 6am, lifts me out of the bed and throws me across the room.  As it shall turn out, this will also cause me to wake up precisely at 6am every single day for the rest of the trip.

 

I spend half my time at the breakfast table trying to open a little plastic balloon of soft cheese. Neither knife, fork nor spoon are sufficient to penetrate the tight casing.  I finally bite a tiny hole in the plastic and squirt the cheese onto my bread in a fine jetspray of silly-string.  The innkeeper ruins my “German-only-day” plans again by speaking to me in English, even though I specifically told him the previous afternoon that “Ich verstehe deutsch”. I was tempted to play a trick on him and pretend that I spoke no English, only Hebrew and Russian, but I didn’t think of that until several days later.

 

Today’s itinerary is to head northeast into Germany, where I visit gorge #3, the Aschauerklamm, then back into Austria to see gorge #4, the Innersbachklamm, and spend the night in the village of Reith.  Reith is only a mile and a half to the south, with no net elevation difference.  The paper-clip shaped route is about 7 miles, with a thousand foot climb, and is supposed to take 5 hours. The guidebook says “For this round you don’t have to take mountain boots; shoes with profile soles will be sufficient,” so I figure it’s going to be an easy day and leave my poles in the big suitcase that gets sent ahead.  The guidebook also suggests carrying one’s passport for the crossing into Germany.

 

I stop in the grocery store to buy food for my daypack. The old man behind the cash register glowers at me with severe malevolence because I didn’t know that I was supposed to weigh and price my own apple back at the fruit section before presenting myself at the checkout, and on account of my subversion the entire line of two whole people is brought to standstill for ten or fifteen seconds.   At least he grumbles at me only in German.

 

I start the walk on a shaded park trail along the bank of the Saalach River.  It’s another hot and sunny day, again defying the weather forecast.  I pass a sign that says “Attention! National Border”, without indicating which country you are entering, and there is a little abandoned hut that must have once served as a customs station.  I look around desperately trying to find a guard to show my passport to, but without success. Had I known it was so easy to slip across the frontier I would have organized an operation to smuggle contraband.  Ten or twenty yards later I cross a bridge back into Austria and walk through some farmland for a mile or so.  I see a farmer mowing hay with a scythe. I cross into Germany again. This border crossing is even less imposing than the earlier one as nobody even bothered to erect an abandoned hut.

 

As I enter the nature preserve with the Aschauerklamm, I see a sign that says “Nur für Geübte. Benutzung auf eigene Gefahr” = “Only for the experienced Use at your own peril” Great.

 

This gorge seems out of place here.  Whereas the other gorges and forests were densely wooded and had rich, moist, dark brown soil, this one is sparsely wooded and has white chalky rocky soil.  Even though it is criss-crossed by little streams, it feels parched. It evokes California or the Mediterranean more than it does the heart of Europe.  The trail climbs steadily following the Aschauerbach up to the summit. The river runs over a number of small waterfalls.  The trail is fine for the most part and not very steep.  I’m waiting to discover just what is going to happen that I am using this at my own peril.  The trail itself narrows and climbs higher and farther from the river as the gorge narrows, and I’m basically walking on the edge of a cliff.  If I were to slip, I would fall into the abyss.  I have to say that I don’t tend to slip very often when I’m at home and, say, walking along a sidewalk.  It’s not like I expect to slip and fall off the curb everytime I leave the house. Still, I’m concerned about the possibility that I might slip and fall off the cliff. I also wonder what might happen if I were to encounter another hiker coming in the opposite direction. There isn’t enough room at this spot for us to pass each other or even turn around.  Would one of us have to walk backwards until we either got to a wider spot or fell off the cliff? Would we stand and stare at each other until either the trail widened on its own initiative or until one of us got tired of the stalemate and hurled the other or oneself off the edge?

 

And then the trail just takes a hiatus. One moment there is a trail here, then there is nothing but a large boulder that forms a continuous knob protruding out from the cliff, and on the other side of the boulder there is also a trail. In other words, the only way to make forward progress is to manoeuver oneself across this boulder at a 180º angle to the horizon, in such a way that one’s hands and feet are stretched across the boulder and neither is touching the ground.  The penalty for failing to accomplish this stunt is immediate death by acrobatic displacement. I have another one of those moments where I sweat and fart and stand there freezing up like Dan Quayle at a press conference and resolve not to go on with this any more.  Then I decide that if I’m going to die anyway I might as well just get it over with. I pack my camera and any loose items from my pockets back into my backpack and hoist the backpack back onto my back.  I mentally transport myself back to the happy and safe meadow, and allow my hands, feet and any other necessary body parts to shift into auto-pilot and do whatever it takes to get me to the other side of the boulder of death, as quickly and safely as possible.  I have no memory of how this was actually accomplished, all I know is that I found myself back on the path, unharmed, and with the boulder behind me. My heart and lungs are pumping uncomfortably.  On the other side of the boulder the path is wide enough to walk on again, and somebody had bolted a metal cable handrail into the rock wall, now that it’s no longer needed to save anybody’s life.  I grip the handrail anyway, and hold it tightly for its entire length, after which time I inch my way forward by grabbing onto the rock wall one hand at a time, even though the path has long ceased to be a credible threat.  Then the path for some reason decides to cross the gorge again, and the only way to do this is by way of a wobbly creaking wooden bridge with a railing on only one side. There’s probably a fascinating view of rapids and waterfalls if one chooses to look down into the gorge, but scenery is the least of my worries at this point.  I quickly cross the bridge, climb out of the gorge and make my way to the relative safety of a forest, and the Austrian border.

 

When the forest breaks there is a meadow and a view of snowcapped mountains in the distance. I stop to eat my lunch at an abandoned farmhouse that has a bunch of weathered wooden tables and chairs on its front porch. It also has a horsehead fountain that serves pure, ice-cold drinking water.  There are a few other hikers at the house.   There’s a couple who’s leaving at the same time that I arrive and the guys says to me in a friendly way “I know you”.  I have no idea who they are.  Then I remember them after he explains that they saw me in the dining room at Haus Gertraud the night before last. They are from Holland and doing the same tour that I am. We are scheduled to be at the same hotels on a few of the nights, including tonight.

 

The rest of the day’s walk is a steep descent along an unpaved road following the Innersbach river. It is still hot and sunny.  There is a forest on my right, but not much shade.  I am hot and sweaty and cranky when, delighted, I get to the sign that tells me its only 10 more minutes to my hotel, Zu Den Drei Brüdern (The Three Brothers).  All I want to do at this point is to go to the hotel, drink some cold water, take a hot shower, and change my clothes; not necessarily in that order.  Unfortunately, the guidebook forbids me to take the short route to the hotel and instead requires me, under threat of unspecified punishments, to take the other fork, i.e. to go out of my way to visit another gorge, the Innersbachklamm. I’m in a perfectly foul mood from the long walk in the hot sun, and one dangerous gorge is enough for one day.  I agree to postpone my hotel arrival, but only reluctantly.  “And this better be good,” I warn. I see the Dutch couple a few hundred yards ahead of me, and they’re taking a different turn than I am.  “Perhaps they know something that I don’t”, I think to myself.  My chosen path takes a short, quick descent down switchbacks.  I grumble to myself, knowing that I’m only going to have to climb out of this again. “This better be really good”.  I finally get to the Innersbachklamm and it is really good. 

The gorge is only 80 meters long, but a narrow gorge with water rushing down with great speed and noise. A well-built set of wooden stairs and walkways carries one up to the top.  It was cool and refreshing.  The Inn, in the village of Reith, is only a few hundred yards from the top of the gorge.  I arrive by 3pm. Reith is a collection of a dozen or so buildings, mostly chalet-style farmhouses and a tiny church in the middle.  The “Three Brothers Inn” is in a house that was originally built in 1760.  I am greeted by a shriveled, bent-over old man, who looks old enough to be the grandfather of the original 3 brothers. A young woman, I believe the old guy’s great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter-in-law, checks me in and maintains a safe distance until I propel my sweaty dirty stinky self up the stairs.   My blister has continued to grow larger and more colorful. I take the longest shower of my entire life.

 

I try to use my laptop but I discover that I am without my adapter plug that fits an American appliance cord (long thin prongs) into a European electrical outlet (round prongs).   The last time I used it was at the Hotel Dax in Lofer, 3 nights ago.  The people at The Three Brothers didn’t have an adapter plug for me to borrow.  The inability to use my computer leaves me feeling naked and disoriented. I call Dax to see if he can find it for me, but he tells me to call back when the chambermaid returns on Tuesday.

 

It starts to rain, the first storm of the trip.  I walk around Reith after the rain stops.  It is cool and pleasant.  I take pictures of the sheep in the farm across the street, and their adorably playful little lambs.  My thoughts turn to rack of lamb, medium-rare, with garlic and rosemary.  I also watch cows being herded right past me, down the main (that is the only) street of the village.

 

For dinner I have garlic soup and spaetzl with onions and mushrooms. The Dutch couple is sitting at the next table. They tell me that they never made it to the Innsersbachklamm, because even though they saw me take one path, they took the wrong turn and got lost and should have followed me after all. Their names are Wim and Trees, they are schoolteachers from Eindhoven.  He teaches high school math and physics.  She teaches Kindergarten. Their English is quite good.  At another table is a German couple with their daughter, who looks 7 or 8.  When the waitress asks them what kind of soup they want, the little girl whines that she doesn’t want any soup.  “Ich möchte keine Suppe,” she wails. This reminds me of the tale in The Struwwelpeter, a famous German children’s storybook, the tale about the little boy named Kaspar, who refuses to eat his soup and then starves to death.

 

After dinner I watch TV.  The Austrian channels have various programs with people dressed up in traditional costumes and playing folk music on the accordion and dancing.  There are also American hits, such as E.R., Nash Bridges and even Seinfeld dubbed into German.  (how can you possibly translate Seinfeld?) There are also locally produced medical and detective shows.  I can understand much, but not all of the dialogue.  My favorite show is Flughafen Klinik, an E.R.-like drama that takes place in an on-site hospital at an international airport in Germany.  In the opening scene, a nurse who looks like Helen Hunt is crying to her paramedic boyfriend, who also looks like Helen Hunt.  She tells him that she’s pregnant.  He tells her that it’s no big deal because -- and I wasn’t exactly sure what he said -- either (A) “We can always get married” or (B) “You can always get an abortion”.  Whatever it was that he said, she became even more upset.  (Hint: Guys, if your lady tells you she’s pregnant, the only correct response is “Honey, that’s wonderful news!!!”.)

Sunday, July 8

 

I wake up at 6:00 sharp and eager to get an early start.  I show up for breakfast at the advertised time of 8:00, but the breakfast lady didn’t show up until 8:20, and she looked like she had had one hell of a Saturday night. Her coffee is too weak to be drinkable. I’m on my way by 9.

 

It is cool outside. The sky looks like it’s about to rain. I walk through farmland toward the village of Au. Wim and Trees are several hundred yards ahead of me. Across from one old farmhouse I pass a tombstone-like memorial, dated 1648.  “There was a great plague at this site, and only a little girl survived”, it said. In the center of Au there is an onion-domed church from the 1600s, with great stony mountains in the background.

 

From Au I took the path up through the Mayersbergklamm, yet another gorge where you don’t want to look down while climbing up.  From the top of the gorge I climb up a steep path through a moist brown-floored forest, and continue steeply up through the Auer Wiesen meadow.  I feel a couple of drops of rain, but only a couple. At the top of the meadow is a freshly paved road with meadow on both sides, and high mountains in the distance.  Along the way is a promontory called Jägersitz (Hunter’s Seat), with a sweeping view from the northeast down on the villages of Au and Lofer.  The church at Au that I passed earlier in the morning is a little dot on the valley below. As I mentioned earlier, the Germans have a fetish about credentials. Their other fetish is to inscribe poems on little signs and on the sides of buildings.  There’s a sign at Jägersitz with a verse that translates to:

“Don’t hurry, don’t rush, take a rest at Jägersitz! Happy and cheerful, you’ll hike some more!” At least in German it rhymes. A little off the road is a restaurant called Knappstadl. My map and guidebook seem to indicate that this is my last chance to eat for several hours, so even though it’s only 11:20 I stop for lunch.  A little while later Wim and Trees happen to walk in, and they join me at my table.  After the meal we hike together for the climb to Kematsteinalm, until our itineraries fork off. Trees points out some wild strawberries growing on the edge of the trail. These berries are tiny, the size of a pinky nail and taste like familiar store-bought berries, but more intense.

Wim takes my picture at the Kematsteinalm summit.  “If we don’t see you later,” he says as they split off, “I hope you have a beautiful baby.”.

 

I continue climbing through the steep, dark forest toward Jochingalm. It is another narrow Trail of Death with long, steep drop-offs and more uncontrollable sweating and farting.  At Jochingalm (elev. 4,250 ft) there is another stamp point, some huts on a meadow and a fountain of clean mountain water, the tastiest of the whole trip.  It’s a more or less level walk through a forest to Hundalm.  From the summit it’s a long descent, first through a meadow then down a steep logging road through a forest.  To the east are the Reiter Alps, mostly rocky peaks but with clumps of brilliant green forest that look like moss.  From there I walk down through the big pastures on steep round hills of the Pechtl farms, and a road with many long switchbacks down to the Wildenbachtal valley that leads to the evening’s destination, the village of St. Martin.  On the road near the Pechtl farms I see ahead of me at a distance a wooden bench on which I look forward to sitting and resting.  When I approached the bench, I noticed that the entire front slat of the seat was missing, so the seat is not large enough to accommodate my entire derriere and it’s not very comfortable.  In other words, it’s just a half-assed bench, but I’m tired so I sit on it anyway.

 

I calculate that it’s only another hour of hiking until I get to the hotel.  Back at home an hour walk seems abnormally long.  On this trip when walking is my normal state of existence, an hour sounds like nothing.  I walk through the small Wildenbach canyon, and then through a park by the Saalach river.  I reach my hotel, the Gasthof Pass Luftenstein, shortly before 6.  For dinner I have Tiroler Knödelsuppe (the Knödel is a ball of flour with inscrutable bits of meat), grilled trout with potatoes and salad, and a beer, followed by ice cream for dessert.

 

It’s only a couple of miles to Lofer.  I’m tempted to walk back to the Hotel Dax to retrieve my electrical plug so I can get back onto the Internet. After dinner I walk towards Lofer, but only get as far as St. Martin village.  In the town square by the church there was a crowd gathered, watching a brass band perform.  The music sounds like oompah polkas, as if composed by Mozart.  The players all wore matching gray shirts and gray wide-brimmed felt hats. The hats are conical, but the tops are flat, not pointed. The women wear long skirts, the men wear knee pants and knee socks. Two young women dressed like the women musicians walked through the crowd carrying shot glasses, and selling shots of schnapps from a flask.

 

Back at the hotel, I engage in conversation with my blister, who is now in brilliant Christmas colors of red, white and green, and bigger than my entire big toe.

Monday, July 9

I wake up in the middle of the night with both my clothes and the lights still on. The blister is reading a novel. I fall back asleep and wake up again precisely at 6. After breakfast I go to the village store and buy provisions -- bread, ham, apples, cookies, candy and a trail mix which the label calls “Student Feed”. The first part of the day’s trail takes me back to the Wildenbach canyon from the previous afternoon. I see a little girl like Heidi playing on a hilly pasture.  The sky looks like it’ll rain at any minute. I fork off onto a new (for me) trail, passing the Mulgrabekapelle chapel and climbing up a steep unpaved forest road to Möserwald.  At an intersection with another forest road I see three couples in their forties. They puzzle over their tour pamphlets and argue in German about which way they should go.  I offer to show them my map, they proudly decline. I sit and rest on a nearby bench.  They come up to me a few minutes later and ask to see my map after all.  They speak no English, so we converse entirely in German. They are from Saxony in the former East Germany. I help them figure out their way.  We are going in the same direction for a while. They apologize for not speaking any English, because when they were in school they were required to study Russian.  I tell them in Russian that I studied Russian in college and they crack up.  “After the war,” one of them said, “the Americans abandoned us to the Russians for forty years.  Then the Germans had to rescue us from the Russians.”  I notice that they are all shorter than I am, not as tall as western Germans and Austrians. Presumably because of poorer nutrition.  They get back on the trail ahead of me.

 

I continue climbing the forest road toward Litzlalm meadow. A mild refreshing rain starts to fall. I reach a small hut. The East Germans are there under the eaves. I join them for a bit and sit on a bench out of the rain. I get some icy cold water from the fountain.  By the time I’m back on the trail it has stopped raining.  The road keeps climbing up to the tiny Eiblkapelle chapel.  There are some cows right on the trail. Then the trail goes up steeply into a forest.  I reach the top and the forest turns into a meadow at Litzlalm.  I see some unusual meadow plants with tall, straight, stiff stalks and little purple flowers at the top.  There’s a hut surrounded by cows. To the northeast there’s a panoramic view of the Reiter Alps.  To the southwest a view down to the bottom of the large rounded mountain at the top of which I am standing. I sit and rest at a picnic table near the cow hut.  There is a sixtieish German couple sitting there with me. For some reason most of the other hikers I meet are much older than I am.  Is this because the younger people are all at work, taking their vacation later in the summer, or am I staying only on the old folks trails?  If the latter, then these old people are in excellent shape, to say the least. I ask the man, using a German sentence I carefully perfected, if he would take my picture.  He agrees to take my picture, but also gives me the same unusual look that everyone else had given me when I asked them the same question.  I realized in hindsight that what I said must have sounded to a native German to be equivalent to “Could I to ask you me please photograph?” But no matter, I always got my point across without getting myself tickled or arrested and my picture always got taken, if not always very well.   In this instance the man did a fine job. I posed myself, hiking poles in my hands, with the big gaping valley behind me, pretending that I was in the act of heroically climbing up the mountain down which I was actually about to descend. We all had a good chuckle over this one.

 

I then walk down the mountain into the valley of the bogus photograph and follow the trail into a forest.  The trail drops steeply.  It is muddy after the rain.  The mud is stickier than it is slippery, but I do slip and slide just enough to make me pay attention to my feet, without actually looking down the hill.  The trail bottoms out and hits a paved road.  I sit on a bench and eat a sandwich.  An older man hikes up to me and we converse in German. “You left your pregnant wife at home?” he laughs.  He’s about to walk up the hill that I just came down so I warn him about the mud as best as I can, considering I don’t know the German words for “mud”, “slip and fall”, or “serious possibility of life-threatening injuries.”  The best I can do is say “Be careful. The floor is very wet”.

 

It’s a steep, but easy descent over road and trail to the Lohfeyer Inn, where I plan to sit and rest and drink some water and read a book.  Along the way I pass a farmhouse whose front porch contains the most artistically satisfying collage of found objects of any front porch I have ever seen --  flowers, an arched wooden door, shoes, a toy truck, a funnel, a broom, a statue of a dwarf, vacuum cleaner attachments, a wicker basket, a live cat, a toilet plunger, etc.

 

I reach the Lohfeyer Inn and look for an outside table, when I see my friends the East Germans.  We greet each other like long-lost cousins. I join them at their table and order a mineral water.  They tell me that they’ve walked 20 km today.  We chat for a while in German, and I’m surprised how well I can manage. They asked me if I knew about the hurricane.  I had not heard about the hurricane, which they told me was attacking the United States.  I explained that San Francisco doesn’t have hurricanes, it only has earthquakes.  [To this day I am unable to find information about any hurricane that struck any where near the U.S. anytime in June or July].  As they leave they pick up the tab for my mineral water.  We have the waitress take a group picture.

 

Immediately outside the Inn is the path to the Seisenbergklamm, following the Weissbach stream downhill through a forest.  The stream turns into rapids and a group of young people in brightly colored protective gear are wading in the water.  Presumably they are swimming in the rapids or diving in the caves. They wear blue wet suits with orange and yellow life vests and red helmets and look like space aliens. 

 

Then the wild part of the gorge happens.  The stream drops suddenly and rushes through narrow crevices in the rock.  The water has carved and smoothed the rock into a series of caverns and tunnels.  It takes several minutes to walk through the elaborate series of wooden steps and walkways that have been constructed through the gorge.  It is quite dark inside.  There is a ticket window at the end of the gorge.  There was no ticket window at the end of the gorge from which I entered.  The ticket one buys here, therefore, is not an admission ticket, but an expulsion ticket. What do they do, I wonder, if you reach the ticket window after normal operating hours or if you don’t have enough money to pay the fee?  Fortunately, I have a voucher from the tour operator which grants me both ingress to and egress from the gorge.

 

My hotel, the Gasthof Seisenbergklamm, is only a few hundred yards from the gorge. I arrive sweating like a pig.  Dinner is something called Cevapcici, a Yugoslavian specialty which is a kind of spicy shishkebabs made from ground meat and served with a sauce like Thousand Island dressing and a side of french fries.  Dessert is an uninspiring fruit yogurt topped with a breakfast cereal similar to Post Super Sugar Crisp.  There’s a special show in the dining room after dinner.  A quartet of young women in local costume play string instruments -- harp, guitar, zither and hammer dulcimer. The lady from the tourist office gives a slide show of local attractions including some of the places I’ve been on my hike and offers a contest.  She hands out sheets of paper with 6 multiple choice questions and the answers are taken from her talk.  At the end of the talk she’ll draw prizes from among those who correctly answered all of the questions. The questions were things like “Q: How many people live in Weissbach? A: 407”  Her talk and the questions were entirely in German.  I didn’t get picked for a prize, but I understood her talk well enough to get all the answers right and that was enough of a prize for me.

 

I go to bed and argue with the blister, who is now making threats about conquering my ankle and also demanding his own per-diem and telephone privileges.

Tuesday, July 10

I wake up exactly at 6am. This is my last day of hiking. The plan is to visit the Lamprechtshöhle cave, then the Vorderkaserklamm gorge and then back to Lofer for one more night, before returning home by way of Munich.

 

The Lamprechtshöhle cave is a short walk from Weissbach.  The cave as a whole is enormous, at 22 miles it is the longest continuous cave in the world. The accessible part of the cave has a 2,000 foot long walkway that actually goes up 200 feet into the mountain (by way of 352 stairs).  In parts the cave is a several yards wide, in other parts I had to duck my head to get through.  The inside temperature was posted: 7º C (45ºF), even though it must have been in the high 70’s F outside. By legend, a 14th century knight named Lamprecht buried a gold treasure in the cave. Many have died over the centuries trying to find the treasure.  If the treasure was ever found, the finder did not publicize his accomplishment. The walls of the cave are covered with graffiti from 19th century explorers, only some of whom were ever heard from again.

 

After the cave I walk over a mostly flat bicycle trail through the dry valley of the Schuttach river to the Vorderkaserklamm, the last of the trip’s gorges.  Whoever designed the week’s itinerary plays with the gorges like motifs in an orchestral piece.  Starting with the quiet Schwarzbergklamm and the modest Eiblklamm on the second day for the slow movement, the tension rises with the treacherous Aschauerklamm and the breathtaking Innserbachklamm on the third day.  The beautifully forested Mayrbergklamm on the fourth day is a relaxing slow movement bridging into the long and dramatic Wildenbachklamm on the fifth day.  The excitement builds with the mysterious Lamprechtshöhle. The climactic finale is the Vorderkaserklamm.  This gorge is higher, longer and more spectacular than all of the others.  It has a series of wooden walkways and hundreds of stairs that climb over various levels and pools and narrow crevices through which the water flows violently.

 

From the Klamm it’s a not very interesting walk to Lofer by way of a bike trail alongside the main highway.  It is hot and sunny. Thirsty, I walk by a water tap with a sign that says “Trinkwasser”.  And for the first time on the trip, I’m not merely amused by, but truly grateful for my knowledge of German. Any English-speaking fool who sees the word “Trinkwasser” next to a water faucet can figure out that it means “Drinking Water,” but it takes a fool with a lesson or two of German under his belt to understand that “Kein Trinkwasser” means “This is Not Drinking Water”.  (Along the same lines my guidebook has pictures of various mushrooms that one might encounter along the trail and next to some of the pictures is the German word “Gift”. This does not mean, though, that you should give these mushrooms to anybody as a present, unless you expect to inherit a large sum of money from them). I cross the highway and go into the forest repeating a section of the Wildbach trail south of St. Martin. Out of the forest it’s mostly through a dull, hot, flat open field until Lofer.

 

The only benefit of this part of the trail are the views of the mountains that surround the Lofer plain.  I can make out some of the places where I climbed in the past few days – Bräugföllalm and the first Trail of Death mountain with the Wechsel. There is a sign for a trail that branches off, with the sign indicating that it’s 2 hours to Knappstadl, the restaurant where I had lunch with Wim and Trees. I get to the Hotel Dax cranky from the heat at around 2:30pm, a 5 hour day.

 

Well, I did it.  6 days, 8 gorges, X total feet of climbing Y miles and Z hours. The trip ended too soon.  The last gorge was spectacular, but the trail back to Lofer was too flat. Why can’t you ever find a Trail of Death when you really want one? But just as I was getting to the hotel along the path there is a picture board advertising another nearby tourist region, this one with 11,000 foot snowy peaks, wild ibixes, and even more spectacular vistas than I experienced on this trip. – the Großglockner Highway.  Hah! This is where I want to go for my next trip.

Epilogue

Lofer has a fine little camera store where I buy a new lenscap and some slide film. Stefan Dax never found my electrical plug, but Lofer has an electrical store, where I buy a new European adapter plug – except the only one they have is not a pocket-sized $3 plug optimized for laptop computers, but a big honker of a $12 plug apparently designed for major appliances like washing machines and weapons of mass destruction. I only got stamps for 25 points, just half the number I needed for a Bronze medal. I visited enough places and rightfully deserved the medal, but was stymied by the killer cow and the fact that in most of the places the stamp-point was too hard to find.  So I guess therein lies half the challenge.

 

I make my way back to Salzburg, Munich and San Francisco, in that order.  The first couple of mornings in San Francisco I wake up at 6am sharp, local time, go figure, but that eventually corrects itself. The blister on my right foot eventually shrivels down to a callus and my waistline eventually balloons its way back to its prior girth. Irene is still pregnant when I return, but by the time I get around to finish transcribing my diary, I have a two-month old son named David.  I look forward to the day when David is old enough for the whole family to hike through the Alps together.