Hochschwab

 

This weekend I went on a hiking-trip with my mother, two friends and our dog. It took us about one hour to get to the mountain called Hochschwab in Upper-Styria. We decided to spend the night there at the foot of the mountain in guest-house, so that way we could hike to beautiful tours: One was a loop over hills and through valleys and the other one was a hiking trip up to the top of the "Zinkenkogel", which is about 1900 meters high. Fortunately, we were very lucky with the weather, since it didn't rain and it was sunny almost all weekend long!

Most of the first hiking tour was pretty mellow as it didn't have very long steep ascents. The various landscape was still very beautiful! Especially the valley was breath-taking! The flowers were starting to bloom in a lovely yellow colour and there were butterflies flying over the deep green meadow. After a short but intense hike up a mountain, we finally arrived at some kind of ancient inn, where we took a break and enjoyed the view. After we regained our strenght, the path downhill to our guest-house wasn't a big challenge anymore. We arrived there just before sunset and appreciated that we didn't have to cook, since each one of us was very hungry:)! The food was amazingly delicious and after we finished our dinner, everybody was happy to hit the sack.

The other tour was defenitely more challenging, since it started already with a very steep hike to the ancient inn from the day before. From there, we hiked up a path that led us to a huge snow field, which we had to cross to get to the top of the mountain called Zinkenkogel. It was a very difficult hike, since the snow was pretty much frozen and you could slip very easily. Besides, this mountain is known being covered in fog in no time so we really had to hurry up to get to the top. Every time I hike a mounatin that is as high as this one, I am surprised how windy it can get there. You have the feeling like it will blow you of the cliff in the next second. Unfortunately, we didn't dare to stay there for long, so after 10 minutes we were on our way back to the guest house. That was no minute to early. We could see big and grey clouds coming up towards us, so we tried to get down as fast as we could. It was great fun to slide down the snow! With a big portion of luck, we arrived at the guest-house just when it started to rain.

All in all we hiked about 35km in two days, of which more than the half was steep up or down walking. It was an awesome adventure I look very much forward to my next big hike!

Sorry, I don't know why I can't upload any images... every time it says: error. I will try it again in few hours...