Thursday 6 June : Weather: 12°C to 20°C: cool and sunny with threat of thunderstorms after lunch
St Johann to Gaudeamushutte: Train to St Johann: 16k walk to Gaudeamushutte
Accommodation: Gaudeamushutte - Austriam Alpine Hut
Innsbruck HBf, train to St Johann
St Johann, a pretty touristy village
Souvenir shops,classic Austrian gear
Turn off to Rummlerhof
Lunch in the meadows
1st stop - closed, forest operations
2nd obstacle, logs on the path
Early June wild flowers
Sound of Music country in valley
View from afternoon tea
Walking across deep snow drift
Snow everywhere
At last Guadeamushutte
After dinner Schnapps
A challenging day! The highlight was just getting to our destination, Gaudeamushutte at 7pm with no accidents after 7 hrs of hard trudging through snow fields, over logs, and up and down unmarked tracks. All this on our first day of the Adlerweg which was supposed to an easy 13k day. We later learned that this area of Austria received a record breaking 10 metres of snow in January, then heavy rain soon after that added weight to the already sagging trees which came crashing down over many forest tracks. Many of these tracks were closed, but the detour signs were far from clear and we got lost for hours.
A lazy sleep til 7am in at Kathrin’s Air BnB in Innsbruck. It should be an easy 13k walk on this wonderful bright and sunny day. A cup of tea first from the shared kitchen then breakfast of fruit and nut mix with a cup of coffee. We’ve packed a “leave-behind-bag” of airline clothes and other stuff which we leave in the store room then head out of the door to walk 5 minutes down to Innsbruck HBF where we buy a Seniors ticket x 2 for 22 Euro.
The train arrives on time at 10.17am - of course - Tuesdays trains being an exception - and after 30 minutes we change at Worgl before the next train to St Johann in Tirol, arriving at 11.40. I drag out my Cicerone book to follow the instructions to get to Rummlerhof, 4k from St Johann, the official start of the Adlerweg. We pass many tourists as well as touristy shops selling classic Austrian gear - leather pants etc.
It’s an easy walk along the Hinterkaiserweg, a country road heading slightly uphill to the foothills of the Niederkaiser. At 12.30 we reach Rummlerhof, a 10 house village sitting in the middle of a large meadow surrounded by pine forests, and have lunch on a bench seat with views down the valley. About 15 minutes after lunch we encounter our first obstacle. There’s a barrier across the forest track with a sign stating that the track is closed due to forestry work. The warning sign indicated a detour around on tracks 822 and 824. I’d seen these on my map. No problem. Except there were were so many forestry tracks with no labels on them that we went and extra 3 to 4k getting lost. At least it was beautiful country, straight out of Sound of Music, and was a very pleasant 20°C.
After following one forestry road for several kilometres, we encounter another “Closed" sign. It’s getting late and there’s nothing obvious ahead, so we duck under the rope and walk more kilometres before being confronted by a pile of logs blocking the path. Ian puts a tentative step on the logs and they move. Too dangerous. So we clamber up the hill around the logs. Hoping that’s the only obstacle, we check my paper map and Ian’s phone tracker, and take narrow forest track to the top to Guadealm where we see a sign that says one and a half hours to Guadeamushuutte. At last we’re out of the woods. It’s 3.30pm and time to relax with a hot cup of tea with a spectacular view over the valley below. The sign says only one and a half hours to Gaudeamushutte where we are headed.
From there on it should have been easy, but we encountered mountains of snow fields and more worrying was thunder in the distance. Snow shouldn’t be here at 1500 metres in June!! We’ve been to the alps many times and never seen this much snow so low down even in early June. We plugged on and up through snow fields with no track markers, sometimes seeing footprints in the snow that we could follow and sometimes not. Ploughing through more snow uphill we reach the top near Baumgartenkofl at 1545m. It should have been easier going down, but more snow fields, even at 1300metres.
It’s misty rain as we descend through ill-defined tracks but at least the thunderstorm doesn’t eventuate. At 7pm we arrived Guadeamushutte. A very challenging day. Annie, our host was waiting for us. Dinner was at 6pm and already finished, so much earlier than in French huts, but Annie served up a wonderful turkey stew with rice and better still two draught, very cold Austrian beers.
We have a schnapps after dinner - I have a lovely one with a pear taste, Ian has one that tastes like metho. When we were describing our ordeal to Anni and partner Martin, they tell us that there had been severe winter storms with more than 10 metres of snow in the month of January, with 3 metres falling in a 48 hr period. Then heavy rain soon after cause hundreds of large pine trees to come crashing down as well as many avalanches and severe land slides. These were the worst winter storms in the Austrian Tirols for 40 years, and we’re here in early June expecting it to be clear of snow, as is normal. Any wonder that there was still so much snow still around with fallen trees blocking the tracks.
Our little 2 person bunk room is perfectly set up with lots of hooks and shelves. Ian hangs our “fridge”, a bag with butter and cheese, out the window. We’re in bed at 10pm. It’s quite cold now.
Reproduction of a news article. One of the hardest hit areas was Kitzbuhel, the area we are currently walking in.
Austria: “Biggest Snowfall in Recent Memory” — 3 Meters in 48 Hours Buries Towns and Villages
Multiple snowstorms, dubbed “the biggest in recent memory,” have paralysed the central European nation of Austria — up to three meters of snow has been recorded in just 48 hours, killing at least 7.
It started snowing at the turn of the new year and has barely let-up since.
Worst hit regions include Saalbach, Kitzbuhel, Ski Welt and Zell am See, where there is talk of this being the most snow since the winter of 1978-79 (solar minimum of relatively weak solar cycle 20).
“It is certainly the most snow I can remember in these lower Austrian resorts and I have been following weather and snowfall patterns avidly for about 30 years,” said the alpine snow expert, Fraser Wilkin, from weathertoski.co.uk.
Many towns and villages have been buried due to the monster snow totals.
10m snowfall Austria January 2019