Hiking In The Stubai Valley
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We’ve had a couple of great days of hiking. Both days we were in the Stubai Valley – a very important area here for winter sports and tourism.
On Monday we hiked up to the glacier but we couldn´t see it because it was so overcast from the storm the night before – no, wait – it wasn´t so much that it was overcast, as we were actually in the clouds. (huts: Sulzennau Hutte: 2196m, & Sulzenau Alm: 1847m; approx. 600m altitude gained) Sulzenau Alm has the most incredible fence, tables and chairs – they´re all tree stumps with various characters carved into them – dwarves, devils, mountain folk, etc…
The valley is full of tremendous roaring waterfalls coming down through the rock cuts from the glacial lakes on the alluvial plains above. The trees are an incredible emerald green because of the mineral composition of the water in the valley. There were Alpine cows and goats grazing all over the mountains – the sound of their bells echoing up the valley is absolutely musical. On the way to and from the trail head and end in the bus there were goats and cows heading to greener pastures on the road – they were pretty funny – the goats just laid on the road and stared down the bus. It´s amazing there isn´t more road kill here.
Today´s hike saw friends we had met last year return to hike for their vacation this year. It was great to see familiar friendly faces, and catch up on each other´s news from the past year – especially as weather threatened to storm, so our hike guide chose a particularly leisurely route today that allowed for easy conversation. Our guide was a little peculiar today – he chose to lead from the back of the group, and search for wild mushrooms the whole way. We hiked to Meissner Haus (1720m) through the forest on a combination of logging roads and trails – it was like the mountain bike paths at home, and I couldn´t help thinking that it may have been more fun to bike the hike route today, had it not been for the great company of our friends.
Tomorrow we´re off on the trails again – as usual we miss our families, friends and dogs…
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