The Mountains are Where I’m Happy
Hiking in Salzburg
Between Vienna and Salzburg the train goes through a really long tunnel. Where one side was sunny with scattered clouds, I emerged under a downpour that continued as a drizzle for the remaining two hour train journey.
Salzburg is the where Mozart was born and the Sound of Music film took place. It’s located at the western reaches of Austria about an hour and a half away from Munich by train.
I actually came for the hiking and stayed three nights. This was to give me two days of hiking but because of the rain I was only able to hike one day.
My original plan was to hike Dachstein Krippenstein near Obertraun but the non-rain day looked like it might still be partially cloudy and obscure any views from the top so I elected to visit the second day’s mountain which was closer and lower.
An hour away by bus is the town of St Gilgen where it’s possible to take a gondola up the Zwölferhorn (1,521m). When I arrived it was partially overcast and during the ascent I entered the clouds. I thought this would be a disappointing day because there was nothing to see and the suggested 1 hour hike was more like 10 minutes. Fortunately to my relief the clouds began to part and were soon blown away, revealing tree covered hills and cyan lakes. St Gilgen is at the edge of the alps and from this vantage I could see the landscape slowly smooth to the north German plains.
I descended by gondola, having been told falsely that the hike down would take 4.5 hours. It’s probably more like an hour. Back in St Gilgen I took the ferry boat across the lake to St Wolfgang where there’s a cog wheel train up Schafberg, a slightly higher mountain with an elevation of 1,783m.
The cogwheel opened in 1893 and takes about 30 minutes to climb from St. Wolfgang beside the lake to the summit where there is a hotel called Schafbergspitze that was established in 1862.
The Schafberg is an excellent mountain to see from the top because it is prominently isolated from any other high summits and is surrounded by three lakes. This provides panoramic views in all directions. Notably the north face is a steep cliff making for some dramatic photographs.
It was here that I remembered what makes me happy: to be in the mountains. The sea is my calm and the mountains are my happiness. In between, where the mountains meet the water is where I want to be. It’s no surprise that that’s precisely the geology of the west coast where blue mountains with white tops border blue seas with white spray.
I’ve begun to make preparations for the trip after Europe when I’m back in Canada. Hopefully I’ll be able to purchase a vehicle and road trip to the Maritimes. It seems like obtaining and preparing a motorbike in the time frame would be too difficult so I’ve begun my contingency planning by focusing on the Honda Element and assessing alternatives. It will be a compromise, but without an actual home, I don’t really have anywhere to sit around either. I need to get a vehicle to continue travel so that I have a place to live.
On the Schafberg I took photos of the landscape and expressed my joy by messaging my friend that I’d, “remembered my happy place.”
She replied, “Walking on mountains and trying not to die?”
I hopped along the ridge line to the nearby Spinnerin peak.
I descended the mountain by foot, stumbling and slipping a few times on wet rocks. Running shoes are definitely not the best for hiking mountaintops.
I didn’t take the cogwheel because it saved me 10 euros and I was being cheap. To my surprise, the offline maps were actuate and it only took 2 hours. This was also a nice descent through some farm fields and coniferous forests.
The next day it rained and so I visited the old town where I walked by the house Mozart was born in and a few cathedrals. Mostly I just got wet feet going up the hillside for an elevated view of the city. On the flip side, I stayed in a hostel that was run like a hotel and was really comfortable. Not only was It cleaned daily, but the bed sheets were changed and each bed had a usb charger. For hostels it was excellent but I still didn’t sleep well because of the noise and tension of being around others.
