The Weather Is Always Wrong in Austria
June 21 - July 2, 2020
It was on a sunny Saturday morning in late June hiking the nearly-empty Bodetal trail in central Germany that we realized there was probably never going to be a better time to visit outdoor destinations in Europe than the present moment. By the following Friday, with virtually no planning, we were driving south in a rental car for nearly two weeks of camping and hiking in the Austrian alps. Tegel Airport, where we retrieved the car, was a complete ghost town. There was no one else in the entire massive car rental building other than Kirb and a woman seemingly covering the kiosks of multiple agencies at the same time. We rented a Kia (or similar); they upgraded us “for free” to a BMW M-Class. The catch was that the newer, nicer car had a significantly higher daily rate for full insurance coverage - nearly €200 more over the duration of our trip. We took the basic coverage and prayed we wouldn’t accidentally trash the sports car in the mountains.
It felt strange taking off on a vacation when our friends and family back in the states were dealing with adversity from all angles, but it was hard to look at our trip as particularly irresponsible. We’d be transporting ourselves in a private car, staying outdoors in campsites, and spending our time in the mountains, hopefully away from other humans. Austria had buckled down particularly hard in the spring and fought the Coronavirus outbreak about as a successfully as any other country in the world. Their numbers were so low at this point that masks weren’t even mandatory anymore, as they still were in Germany. This was a truly rare opportunity to see Austria in a way it is almost never seen: with no overcrowding from American or Chinese tourists. We had heard from friends that Hallstatt - notoriously overrun with tourist busses - was essentially empty. And to be honest, aside from being able to justify the minimal risk, there was also a selfish element in choosing to take the trip at this point. We were still concerned about Europe being hit by a second Coronavirus wave in the not-too-distant future, forcing us back into another prolonged lockdown. With the borders now open and the risk low, it was highly possible this might be our one real chance to travel for the entire summer and beyond.
We bought the Cicerone guide “Walking in Austria,” which broke down the hiking areas by region, and decided to move around freely based on which treks looked the most interesting. We even changed course midway through our drive from Berlin, choosing to begin in the Kitzbühel Alps in the west instead of the Salzkammergut to the east based solely on the book’s description of the region. After six or seven hours in the car we arrived at Camping Michelnhof, still too early for check-in but not too early for a beer on the terrace of its on-site restaurant. The place was mostly full of large RVs and permanently-parked trailers, with only a few - if any - other tent campers, but we were still able to find a nice flat pitch with an unimpeded view of an alp. Even though we were roughing it compared to the others staying at Michelnhof, the bonuses afforded to us by traveling in a car made it feel like we were living in luxury. We’re used to only bringing along items we can fit in our packs on camping trips, but now we had a whole trunk! Our buddy Jesus had given us an air mattress; we bought a collapsible table and a standing camp tarp at the Decathalon. Though all of the campsites offered hot showers and sculleries to wash dishes, unlike similar places we’d stayed in Germany and Iceland, there were no communal cooking or seating areas to prepare meals or get out of the rain, so we were glad we had the extra space to bring along our “luxury” items.
Speaking of luxury, that BMW was nice, man. Kirb had never driven a car so fancy. He hates driving, and generally doesn’t care about cars, but he does appreciate the new ones with navigation robots that tell him where to go and show him what to do on the windshield where only he can see, like a secret. We always name our rental cars, and we decided to name this one “OK, Beemer.” Whenever the robot told us where to turn next, we’d respond, “OK Beemer.” And when the navigation system wasn’t quite smart enough to operate on common sense and led us astray, this is also how we would respond to the car, although in a much more sarcastic tone.
According to the weather forecast, rain was going to be a constant concern for this trip. When we left Berlin, there was nothing but rain and thunderstorms predicted for the next week across the entire country, which isn’t ideal when all you’re trying to do is hang out outside. We spent our first overcast morning in the Seisenbergklamm, a paid trail that takes you across wooden platforms along and above the powerful Weißbach River, which has carved out a cavern in the rocks you can climb through. At the top of the klamm, you can continue on the trail up into the valley above and loop back around for a more lengthy hike, with a stop at the Lohfeyer guesthouse for beer or lunch if you need it. We packed peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and ate them on a bench.
With plenty of time left in the day, we moved on to a hike from our book in the Kaisergebirge Nature Preserve, a straightforward out-and-back trail that follows a small river up into the Kaiserbachtal Valley. It was pleasant, if a bit boring for the first half up to the Fischbachalm Inn, but on the way back the dense clouds parted for the first time and let us properly see the valley, which was beautiful. We realized how much of a difference the weather can make when you can’t even see the surroundings you’re hiking in.
One of the hikes for that area in our book seemed particularly excellent, but we wanted to make sure before committing an entire non-rainy day to it, so we checked with the woman working at the tourist information spot in Ellmau. She confirmed that the hike was indeed excellent, so made our way to the Hartkaiserbahn gondola station and parked in a big lot full of cars. With the bad weather seemingly pushed off for another day, we were willing to pay the €21 per person to be lifted up to the top of the mountain to walk along the panorama trail between the towns of Ellmau and Söll. At the top of the chairlift station there were several family-friendly eateries and play areas, with cows just milling around everywhere. One of them was eating someone’s straw hat. The vast majority of the people who parked in the lot only stayed in this area, and once we hit the proper trail the number of other humans we saw thinned significantly, though there were still plenty of cows.
Between the description in our book, the map we got from info center, and the often-confusing trail markers, there were several times we had difficulty discerning the proper route, and we found ourselves regularly second-guessing our decisions. Walking through the fields of wildflowers surrounded by green peaks was everything we could have hoped though, and by the time we reached the gondola station above Söll, we would have happily ended our trek there. Alas, that gondola was closed for construction, so after six hours walking along mountain ridges, we had to finish our day by going directly down steep switchbacks for the final 3k, ensuring numerous blisters from Mazz’s new hiking boots and sore calves and thighs on the both of us for the next few days.
When we had hiked the Seisenbergklamm a few days before, the guy at the info center outside Lofer said his favorite hike in the area was a trip up to Kallbrunnalm, a small village in the mountains that looked virtually the same today as it did hundreds of years ago. Even better, they made their own special cheese according to traditional practices from the dairy cows who lived up in the mountains there. We were sold, and chose to dedicate our one possible day of remaining sunshine to this recommendation. Now set up at the scenic Grubhof campground, it was an easy drive up to the small, secluded parking lot in Pürzlbach, which was already mostly full when we arrived in the late morning.
Though the trail itself was simply a dirt road that took you up and up and up, it was surrounded by majestic 360-degree mountain views. At the top, Kallbrunnalm was the first place on the trip (and only, as far as we remember) that was secluded enough that our phones didn’t work. Side note: the phone coverage in the Austrian Alps is incredible. Here, the cows grazed freely, and dozens of hikers gathered in crowds at the restaurant, which still felt decidedly unsafe and irresponsible. We ate our packed-in peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in a field, with no one nearby. Afterward, we stopped by the village cheese shop and bought a hunk of their bergkäse and some venison sausages. Both were fantastic. Outside, we were surprised to see trail markers leading to Ingolstädter Haus, the remote guesthouse in the Stone Sea we had hiked two days to stay in a few summers before. It had felt like that place was in the absolute middle of nowhere, yet we were currently so close.
We felt an inordinate amount of pressure in regards to what to do next because of the good weather. There was a small mountain lake we could continue hiking to, but there was a significant elevation decline to get there, and adding that side-trip would likely make the outing all we could fit into the rest of the day. If we went back now though, we could take the gondola in Lofer up the mountain and see the views unimpeded by clouds. We chose to do the latter, and were gutted to show up at the gondola station around 2:00 to find out they were closing at 2:30. It would still take us up, but we were not particularly interested in walking down another entire mountain for a second straight day. So, we drove to the touristy area of Zell am See, a big beautiful lake, which had a walk around it mentioned in our hiking book. We planned to walk around the water for an hour or so, take the ferry to the other side, and continue back to where we parked. After looking at the wrong timetables online (it was still a few days before high season), the boats were already done running for the day when we arrived at the launch, so we had to walk back the way we came, mostly along a busy road. If this was indeed the last day of sunshine we would enjoy, we definitely felt like we had squandered the second half of it.
The next morning the rain came in force, and together with our aching legs, we decided it was a good excuse to spend the day doing town stuff en route to the next region. Visiting Hallstatt was one of the main reasons Mazz wanted to come to Austria in the first place, as it has a reputation of being one of the most beautiful and charming hamlets in Europe. Even though there were not busloads of Chinese tourists occupying the lakefront town, there were still plenty of Germans and Austrians milling about in the rain. Wary of crowds of any size, we tried our best to steer clear. We explored the backstreets as the rain came down in sheets, taking refuge in an ossuary filled with the bleached and painted skulls of Hallstatt’s forebearers. Though the charm of Hallstatt was undeniable, even in the pouring rain, it was hard to find it more appealing than the mountain views we’d been enjoying the last several days.
It was a long day in the car getting to Hallstatt and then south towards Dachsteingebirge, and when we finally stopped at a campground called Forellencamp we’d found online that had excellent reviews (4.7/5 on Google), we were ready to be done for the day. We asked the guy at the front desk if there was an area for tents, and he said there was, and the price per night was about half of what we’d been paying at other places, so we paid the man and went to find a spot. We were not rewarded with anything close to what we had anticipated from the good reviews. There were no other tent campers. There were hardly any campers that were even mobile. This place was a bona fide trailer park, backed up against some railroad tracks, and it was a bleak scene. Mazz was so bummed. This was not the Austrian mountain camping experience we’d signed up for. Sheepishly, Kirb went back in and asked for his money back, and they were super cool about it. We continued on in the car for another hour to a different site closer to the mountain that promised spaces specifically for tents. Camping Dachstein was one of the coolest campsites we’ve ever stayed at, with terraced pitches looking up at Dachstein mountain and overlooking a wooded bluff. As the rainclouds cleared and we cooked dinner in front of a pink sunset mountain view, we were so, so glad we didn’t settle for the trailer park.
By now, we were pretty firm believers in paying to get yourself up the mountain so you could use your energy walking around it. There wasn’t a gondola to take you up to Bachlalm, but there was a guy in a sketchy unmarked van loading in passengers at a road block right by where we parked, so we paid him €5.50 a piece and hopped in with a crew of senior citizens. This was one of the few situations during our stay in Austria where everyone wore a mask. Based on how sweaty the fit-looking dudes were when they finally reached the top of the road - where the actual trails begin - we decided we had made the right choice. Again, we had a hard time figuring out which trails were which between our book and the yellow sign markers, as everything had conflicting names, so we asked a woman working at the guesthouse which way we were supposed to go and she pointed us in the right direction. Even with her guidance, we were never quite sure if we were doing the right thing, but the result was fantastic nonetheless. The hour and a half roundtrip trek from Bachlalm had some of the best views we saw on the entire trip, and we had the trail almost completely to ourselves. At the halfway point, the trail got all clogged up with cows, one of whom decided that Kirb was his new best friend.
Following the same logic of “pay for the up to enjoy the around,” we splurged the €20 it cost to drive up the toll road to Dachstein mountain, the top of which had numerous trails, huts, hotels, and a super expensive gondola that took you to its craggy peak. We were most interested in another short hike out to the Dachstein-Südwand Hut, which led from the parking area across the south wall of the mountain to a traditional alpine hut with food and beer that overlooked the entire region. The trail was narrow and went across a couple of stretches of icy snow, which Mazz was not too pleased about, but brought us right along the edge of the big, majestic mountain. Literally the instant we arrived at the hut and sat down outside at a table, everyone who worked there started pulling down the umbrellas and telling everyone to get inside. A storm was a’ brewing. Kirb looked inside; it was packed. So much hot breath. Hard pass. Mazz wanted to leave immediately. She was not interested in getting stuck on the narrow trail in the rain. Kirb was only interested in drinking a beer at the scenic alpine hut, but it looked like that wasn’t happening now, so he pouted about it.
We headed back down the way we came, and sure enough, within ten minutes we were caught in a torrential downpour on the steep edge of a mountain with thunder and lightning coming down all around us. By the time we made it back to the parking lot, the storm had cleared and it was sunny again. We walked directly to the patio of one of the restaurants near our car, laid out our jackets and backpacks to dry on the bench, and drank our beer with a slightly less-elevated view of the surrounding mountains instead.
When Kirb was just a little baby, his family took on a teenage au pair from Austria named Hildegard. We’d met up with her as adults in Ljubljana when we went on a road trip through Slovenia with Kirb’s parents, and she told us to let her know if we ever made our way down to southern Austria. Now that we were finally doing a trip through the country, we sent her a message and she invited us to see her home outside of Velden am Wörthersee and meet her family. Hildegard and her husband Bruno run a hotel there, and they’d built an absolutely stunning house on the property above it. Her children had all been staying there for the last month because of the virus, and were just about to head back to their own homes, so we got to join in on the last family backyard BBQ before they parted ways.
Afterward, Hildegard took us down to the lake for a spin on her boat. Though the weather had originally predicted thunderstorms in Velden, the whole weekend there was sunny and hot, and we were happy to have a reason to go swimming in the bright turquoise lake. This area was a strange departure from the rest of Austria we had seen so far, as it was full of expensive resorts and massive lakeside mansions. Hildegard explained that Velden was a favorite summer vacation spot for rich Viennese socialites, pointing out the opulent estates of some of the country’s most prominent rich recluses.
We didn’t camp on Wörthersee, as that place was for rich people and didn’t even have a campsite, so instead we stayed about 15 minutes away on the smaller Faaker See. It was a hot summer weekend, and though we hadn’t needed reservations anywhere else up to this point, the smaller campsites around the lake were already booked out when we arrived. There were still plenty of spots available at the Arneitz campground though, which strangely felt almost American in its expansive scale and big dumbness. When it wasn’t Virus Summer, the place had concerts, a nightclub, a cafeteria-style mess hall, and design touches like a Harley Davidson parked indoors as a statue for no reason. We secured a nice shady spot on the edge of the campsite, just a minute’s walk from the lake. Mazz had some business to attend to, we needed to do laundry, and at one point Kirb had a lil stress breakdown driving the car and needed to go back to the campsite and take a hammock nap. So, we didn’t do any real hiking or exploring in southern Austria, but we did have a nice vacation-within-a-vacation on the lake for the weekend.
When it started raining as we broke camp Monday morning, it seemed as though the promised bad weather had finally caught up to us. Earlier in the trip, Kirb’s mom had seen the blue skies in pictures we’d sent her and remarked how lucky we’d been with the weather, and we told her that luck was likely going to end soon. Being the sweetheart of a lady that she is, she sent us some money as a treat to get out of the rain and stay in a nice hotel for the night. Now that the weather was actually gross, we decided to put that money toward staying in a surprisingly affordable farm house for the next three nights, ensuring we weren’t going to be stuck in a tent for several days of storms. The rain was intense driving back up north to the Hohe Tauern region, and we were pleased with our decision to pay for lodging. But when we finally arrived at the town of Matrei in Osttirol, the weather had cleared again and blue skies were poking out behind the clouds.
When we arrived at the nearby Matzenhof farmhouse, it took a while to get the attention of the old woman who ran the guesthouse, and when we finally did she informed us that the room wasn’t quite ready yet, so she sat us on a now-sunny patio and made us some coffee while she finished up. By the time the room was ready, we had dropped off our stuff, and drove 30 minutes to a trailhead, the weather was back to overcast and gray.
The hike to Innergschlöss is considered one of the most beautiful in the eastern Austrian alps, and even with clouds covering the surrounding mountain peaks it was a lovely walk, but you just can’t help but wonder what sort of views you’re missing. This hike takes you past waterfalls and the small hamlet of Außergschlöss along the Gschlössbach stream, with great little cabins along the trail and a church constructed completely out of stone. The secluded village of Innergschlöss is also comprised entirely of classic wooden homes, with a lodge/restaurant that lets you sit on the patio and enjoy an unobstructed view of the Schlatenkees glacier.
The next day, we went to the info center in Matrei in Osttirol and asked the woman there how we should spend our day. She confirmed that the most beautiful activity one could do in the area was to take the gondola up Großglockner, Austria’s highest mountain, to do the panorama hike. On a clear day, you can see over 60 different peaks in just a few hours. The question though was if the weather was going to be better that day or the following, as those were our only two chances to go up the mountain. Her computer said the clouds were going to break up later in the afternoon, so she recommended we go that day. We agreed, and drove to Kals am Großglockner, where we parked at the gondola and paid €52 for the pair of us to take the cable car directly into a cloud.
You could not see anything at the top of the gondola. Visibility was like, 20 feet tops. Leaving the cable car station, we had no idea if we were following the right path, and narrow side trails that veered off simply looked like they would dump you directly off the edge of a mountain to your death. We eventually found our way to the panoramaweg, but it was simply a trail that led along the side of a cloud into a bigger cloud. At the halfway point, where you can either continue back on a steeper trail or come back the way you came, we stopped and waited for an hour, hoping for the clouds to clear. They were constantly moving, out of the valley and over the ridge, and occasionally they would open up for juuuuust long enough to give you a taste of the big, beautiful mountains they were hiding, but it was all just a tease.
The fog eventually lifted enough to give you visibility in front of your face, but never enough to actually see any peaks for more than a second or two. We kept hiking around the mountain, approaching the gondola station from behind and walking up a very big hill, catching little glimpses of different vistas. With some time to kill before the gondola stopped running for the afternoon, we decided to go up to the bar on the deck of the station to drink beer while we yelled at clouds. Unsurprisingly, that was much more fun than being let down by them.
The room we had rented in Matzenhof was exceedingly cute and had a fantastic view from the balcony, but it didn’t have a kitchen, so we either had to go into town for dinner or bring something back that didn’t need to be cooked. One night we (mostly Kirb) decided to get some strange Austrian cheese we hadn’t seen before and some cured meats from the butcher shop in Matrei. The meats were delicious, but boy those cheeses were bad! Who would have guessed that something named “gray cheese” wasn’t going to be delicious? The dorfkäse, or “village cheese” tasted as if it had been aged inside of a dead animal. On the other end of the taste spectrum, one of the perks that came with staying at this farmhouse was, as hotels.com proclaimed, an “exceptional breakfast,” and that was not hyperbole. The adorable Austrian grandma who ran the place doted on our every need, bringing us a spread of way too much food every morning, as well as farm-fresh milk for our coffee. Every afternoon when we’d get back from hiking she’d ask us how our day was, and even recommended the hike that we ended up taking on our final day.
Choosing to stay just outside of Matrei ended up being a perfectly central location for our time in Osttirol, as each day we drove 30 minutes in a different direction to get to our hikes. For our final trek, we headed west until the road ended in a parking lot in Ströden. Here, you could pay for parking for up to a month at a time, as the trailhead was the gateway to a number of spectacular long distance through-hikes. Based on what we had read and what the woman at the farmhouse had told us, we expected this hike to be a leisurely stroll through a mountain valley that took us past several waterfalls. This was partially true: In reality, the hike takes you up switchbacks for the first hour and a half as you climb up and over a series of scenic waterfalls. After the falls, the trail levels out a bit as a stunning mountain valley covered in wildflowers unfolds, and eventually leads to the Clarahutte. Perched in the absolute middle of nowhere, this hut is the perfect example of rustic European hiking luxury. Though we had brought along peanut butter sandwiches as always, seeing that the hut made homemade spinach, bacon, and cheese dumplings with beer on tap, we happily left our crappy sandwiches in our pack and ate that good, good mountain food instead. Really, there’s not much better that comfort food and crisp beer after a long walk up a mountain.
We were rewarded with surprisingly blue weather once again that day, though the peaks stayed shrouded, so we didn’t really regret our decision to go to Großglockner the day before. Fittingly, at the very end of the hike just a few minutes from our car, the rain began to fall again. We followed our perfect lunch on the mountain with dinner in Matrei at a restaurant called Alte Mühle, which ended up serving us the best Austrian meal we ate on the whole trip.
We felt particularly bad about how we left Matzenhof when we checked out the next morning, though we didn’t do any of it on purpose. The bathroom in our space was just a tiny closet with weak ventilation, and after two weeks of profusely sweating on the trail, Mazz’s backpack had developed a spectacularly strong odor and earned the nickname “the stink bag.” Well, right before we checked out, Mazz left her stink bag on the floor in direct sunlight while we ate breakfast, permeating every molecule of oxygen inside the room with B.O. stench. To make matters worse, Kirb followed that up by doing some serious damage in the toilet closet right before hopping in the car to leave. Our German simply isn’t good enough to try and explain that hideous amalgamation of smells to that sweet, old Austrian woman, so we simply waved goodbye and drove away as fast as we could.
The original plan was to only drive about 6 hours back towards home and camp somewhere in Germany, then finish the final 4 hours the following morning. Once we’d reached Munich and realized that if we just kept driving we’d be home by dinner, it seemed like a no-brainer just to rip the band aid off and be done with it. Things were slowed a bit however when all the rain and thunderstorms we’d been promised but avoided in the last 12 days conglomerated into one megastorm somewhere in southern Germany. For a sizable stretch of time, it rained so hard that even with the windshield wipers on full blast and the car merely idling along the freeway we could not see a single thing in front of us besides blurry brake lights. It was a long drive from Osttirol to Berlin, and occasionally the car would tell us to take breaks. We’d say, “OK Beemer,” and then pull into a gas station to get iced coffees and Haribos.
Germans are particularly good about emphasizing a healthy work/life balance, and they are big proponents of taking extended vacations that are long enough for you to “reset” from your everyday routine before having to return to it. For the first day or two back in Berlin, we walked around the city with a fresh new outlook, feeling good about being able to hit the reset button in the mountains after such a rough spring. Then we got back to everyday life in 2020, and that sensation wore off real quick. It was fleeting, but it was grand.