It seemed like a gloomy day on the bus to Saalbach-Hinterglemm, and we found it hard to believe the images on the TV at the gondola station, being beamed down from a web-cam high above. But sure enough, the early morning ride whisked us steeply through the clouds and deposited us on a sun-drenched mountain ridge with perfect views of the High Tauern and the rest of the Kitzbühel Alps to which this ridge (the Pinzgauer Spaziergang) belongs. It was a challenge to reach the other end of this long, L-shaped ridge before the last cable car down to Kaprun, but we managed it.

So, we finally found the sunshine in Austria, and took advantage to do some serious hiking, along the narrow Sigmund-Thun Klamm gorge above Kaprun, around the lake at Zell am See, and along another rather spiky ridge between the cable car stations at Kitzsteinhorn and the Maiskogel. We thought the views of the Kitzsteinhorn Glacier had been quite poor until a lady at the bus stop told us the following day that we were supposed to follow a long tunnel to the viewing platform. Oops!

But apart from missing out on the glacier, this was a perfect few days in the mountains, topped off with a relaxing day in the large spa complex and a street festival. The medieval "spectaculum" in the castle, however, was a bit too much to take. The German narration even flummoxed Helen who is fairly fluent, so we gave up at the interval and went off to find a good restaurant instead, and there were plenty of those around.

Pity about that glacier though!

Posted on November 4th 2015.