Civilized hiking

The snow has piled up high enough in the backcountry to close most of the huts shutting down our prospects for anything overnight.  So this weekend, we opted to day hike to as many of the open restaurants that overlook the city of Innsbruck in a sort of hiking/progressive dinner of sorts.

It was clear at the top of the mountain so we decided to ride the Nordkette all the way to the top and summit the nearest peak called Hafelekarspitze. It’s not more than a few hundred yards from the lift but it’s got killer views in 360 degrees and is WAAAY above treeline! We could see the ski runs that we will access from these lifts once they are covered in snow and stood at the top of one of the steepest grade ski runs in all of Europe! (I think I’ll be passing on that one)

The Eagle Walk (Der Adler Weg) sits right along the top of these mountains too and is Austria’s equivalent of the Appalachian Trail in the Eastern United States and the Colorado Trail from Durango to Denver through the Rockies. We put that down on our bucket list for post Highschool for the boys. At 24 stages and around 250 miles to complete (depending on which route you take) I guess we should start planning that one now.

We could see Italy to the south and the sun was shining in great big beams through the clouds over the city. It was spectacular.

Considering all of the guys were in Converse skate shoes (for the lack of packing anything else so that I could fit all of my own fancy shoes in), we decided slippery ice and snow with cliff drops was probably a bad combo for us. We cabled from the mountain ridge back down to the Seegrube station and started our food tour from there. We hit 4 of the alms on our way back down, eating or drinking at each one.

Here you can see what we covered between hiking and cable cars.

#wanderings #everydaylife #culture #food #views #family