Travel
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A Walking Tour in Austria
AUSTRIA is a splendid holiday ground for the traveller of Modest means, especially if he is a walker and is prepared to travel light and spend his time mainly in the mountains. The average country inn or Gasthaus will provide excellent accom- modation for three to four Austrian schillings a night (one schilling equals sevenpence). No matter how unpretentious the inn the beds will always be clean and will have good box- spring mattresses. Food is cheap too, particularly if one is prepared to take what is going. It is often cheaper, if one is in a village, to buy food for the day's walk at the various small shops rather than to ask for proviant from the inn. It is well to be provided with good Alpine nails in one's boots so that one may be prepare. d for anything that comes. The edges of the soles must be protected with nails as well as the under surface.
No holiday can be more delightful than one in which the traveller passes on from place to place at his own pace and at his own choice. Austria provides a rich variety of mountain country where the wayfarer will be greeted with unaffected friendliness and hospitality, not merely by innkeepers and their kind but by his fellow travellers, who will be mostly Austrians and Bavarians.
The tour described here covers part of three provinces of Austria—Tyrol, Salzburg and Carinthia, and crosses and recrosses the range of the Hohe Tauern. Innsbruck is the starting point, but the train must carry the walker to Jenbach and up the little Zillertal railway to Zell am Ziller (not to be confused with Zell am See) which is thirty-five miles from Innsbruck. Here the road up the Gerlos Tal must be taken leading to the village of Gerlos in four hours, and on to the Gerlos Platte in another two and a half or so. The frontier between Tyrol and Salzburg is crossed en route. The road runs high up the side of the valley at first but later runs alongside the stream. The inn on the Gerlos Platte (5,561 feet) is a comfortable place for the night, and the views on both sides of the Pass are very fine-,
Next day an hour's walk takes one down to Krimml where the finest waterfalls in Austria are to be seen. There are three
falls with an aggregate height of 1,250 feet, and on a sunny
day the rainbow effects in the spray are very beautiful. Some hours could be spent here exploring the upper part of the falls, and the Postal Motor will take passengers for four schillings
(2s. 4d.) down to Mittersill, eighteen miles down the valley, where the night should be spent at the Post Hotel, which is one of the old coaching inns, and still reminiscent of the old days. It has very thick walls and wide dark landings and pas- sages. The St. Poltener Hut on the Felber Tauern (8,333 feet)
is the goal next day, and this means climbing nearly 6,000 feet during the course of the day, but by fairly easy stages. The walk leads up through a shady valley and passes one of the old farmhouses built about 400 years go, with ancient outbuildings all very solidly built. As the track approaches the mountain range it becomes steeper and ascends by zig-zags to what in early June is snow-level, but later in the year will probably be clear. The path is easy to find and the but itself can be seen an hour away perched on a saddle in the midst of higher peaks.
I cannot speak of the interior of the but as it was closed in the early season and I had to spend the night in the valley two hours farther on. All the huts in this neighbourhood are run by the German-Austrian Alpine Club and are excellent. The descent to the valley below leads ultimately to the delightfully situated village of Matrei in Ost Tirol, which is a centre for two or three converging valleys. I hap- pened to be there at the time of the Corpus Christi Festival, when the whole place was agog with excitement and the population of all the valley had gathered together, many of them in the picturesque peasant dress of the district. Loud mortars greeted the dawn with great gusto and a quaint baroque figure of St. Florian reeled along the village street in the procession with St. Notburga and other notables, all carried by willing hands.
If time permitted two or three nights could be spent at Matrei, and then the track should be followed which leads to Kals over an alpine meadow which gives the most glorious view of snow peaks in all directions, notable among them being the Gross Glockner (12,548 feet), now Austria's highest mountain since the Ortler became Italian. Kals is the best centre for the ascent of the Gross Glockner, and some will be tempted to essay this not too difficult expedition with the aid of a guide from here. From Kals the track leads to Heiligenblut in seven or eight hours. Here is a fifteenth- century church still cherishing its Phial of the Holy Blood which gives the village its name. There is a fine altarpiece in the church, too. The village contains two or three inns and does a large traffic with the motor coaches which come up from Lienz to the Glocknerhaus at the end of the great Pasterze Glacier. The pedestrian can take a footpath which avoids the road, but the views from the road are so grand that it is worth enduring motor traffic, and an early start will avoid most of it. The Glocknerhaus can be reached in about three hours and another hour will bring the walker to the Franz Josefs Haus (8,000 feet) an inn accommodating about a hundred and magnificently situated on the edge of the Pasterze Glacier, which is a mile wide and six miles long. If it is intended to stay the night here, which is most advisable, a room should be booked fairly early in the day in July or August when the place is apt to be full.
The next day an early start should be made over the Pfandl Scharte, a mow covered pass with a well marked track which renders a guide unnecessary. In six hours one can reach Ferleiten, whence the postal motor runs two or three times a day to Zell am See at a fare of 5 schillings (3s.). A more leisurely walker can spend a night at the hut on the Trauner Alp two hours before reaching Ferleiten. Zell am See is a charming place on a lake and makes a good Ending for a walking tour. It is on the main line between Salzburg and Innsbruck, 96 miles from the latter to which the third class express fare is 15 schillings (9s.).
Maps.—Most of the district covered in this tour is included in Freytag and Berndt's Touristen Wanderkarten, Sheet 12, which can be obtained from the Austrian Federal Railways Information Bureau, 31 Regent Street, S.W. 1. Fares from London to Innsbruck : via Calais or Boulogne, £10 11s. 5d. return ; via Dieppe, £9 8s. Ild. return, 2nd Class.
L. F. 13.
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