Today the weather was lousy, so we went into Innsbruck for a couple of hours. The public transport here is great. There is a bus terminus a short walk from our apartment, so we decided it would be easier to take the bus to Innsbruck. The timetable said that we had 30 minutes to wait until it went next. But as soon as we got on, he departed. We ended up in Innsbruck 30 minutes later. Innsbruck and Salzburg are very much alike. Both have a river running through the city and have buildings that are very similar. Nothing out of the ordinary though but a nice break from the hiking. Came home to some yummy home baking. Maria had made a delicious apricot slice using fruit from her garden and came down with 2 huge slices for us. She has also been giving us other fruit from her garden. She and her husband have been great hosts.
29th August 2010
Today we decided to do a local hike instead of joining the guided hike. The guided hike was up to the same area as last Sunday, so we thought that we would do something different. We had already checked out the road up to Kemater Alm a couple of days before, so instead of driving all the way up for the start of the hike, we parked about 30 minutes before to give us a longer walk. Our goal was Adolf Pischler Hutte. When we reached Kemater Alm, there were sign posts pointing to the hut in 2 directions and the map showed the 2 different paths. One was a quicker path up and back the same way and the other was by a more varied path, up one way and down another.So we decided to tackle the longer one. The going from the car to Kemater Alm had been up-hill all the way and so was the trail from Kemater Alm to the turn-off to start the mountain trail to the hut. But what the map didn't tell us was that the route we were about to take was marked 'Black'. All the hiking trails are colour coded according to difficulty. I think the family routes are yellow, the medium ones are red and white, and the difficult are black. And this was marked black. Oh Well! Too late to turn back now. Onwards and upwards! And we did it!! Some steel ladders over steep sections, clambering over large boulders and at stages, the path only narrow enough to walk on with a sheer drop at the side.At one stage I went to put my walking pole into the path at the side of where I was walking and it just kept going down.When I looked, there was nothing at the side to hold the pole. Only air. Certainly gets you out of your comfort zone and gets the heart rate going.
The path from the car to Kemater Alm is along a gravel road which follows a small creek that flows through our village, Grinzens.This is a photo of the creek.
You will already have worked out that I like to look for Fungii. It gives me something to look for as we walk through the forests. Here are a couple more.
The walk up the valley before our turn-off to Adolf Pischler Hutte was magnificant. Stunning scenery. This is Kemater Alm where the hike starts.
This was the scenery as we walked up the valley and also looking back the way we had come.
And this is the hut and the surrounding mountains.
Aren't these guys cute!!
When we got back to the car, I decided to walk all the way back home. Armed with the camera and some water, off I took to look for some more of those fungii.
When I got back home, I had been walking for almost 6 hours. It was a long slog down-hill to get home. But I enjoyed the challenge.
Could be the last of the sunny weather for a while. Snow on the mountains tomorrow and expected to be falls quite low down.
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