Having spent another weekend in Zell am Ziller, with a morning weather and time window, the obvious objective was the klettersteig up the Gerlosstein. As it involved a 40min walk in from the cable car, a 90min klettersteig and then a 60min walk out. As we got the cable car up the mountain we were treated to a fantastic cloud inversion looking back down the Zillertal towards the mountains above Achensee. Other than the inversion there was not a cloud in the sky, and we had perfect conditions for the route. The route itself was fun, with some strenuous sections, some great scrambling, wonderful positions and outstanding views, the only negative was that it was in the shade which meant we were chilly and the photos were not great! After a wonderful route we topped out into the warm sun and enjoyed some lunch with an outstanding view in every direction. After a relaxing lunch we started the decent, which was fairly abrupt, but was over soon enough and were down at the lift in good time. Unfortunately we had forgotten that everything shuts for lunch, and out leisurely lunch. Read the full article…

Having spent a week and a long weekend in Zell am Ziller, it was inevitable that we would end up doing a number of the klettersteigs above Mayrhofen. The topo is like nothing I have ever seen, with 5 klettersteigs on a single topo, four of which start from the valley and finish near an alm, and the other climb the cliff above the alm. On the first day we ended up wanting a relaxing day off paragliding, so didn’t head into the mountains. This did have the unfortunate effect that it was very, very hot! We started on one of the easier routes, the Huterlaner Klettersteig, which had the added advantage that it topped out at the alm. The route itself was nothing to shout about, but given that it was straight out of the valley, and a 5min walk from the train station it was pretty good. On the route we had wonderful views down the valley, the smallest wire bridge that I have ever seen and plenty of sun. When we got to the top we were not sure if we wanted to continue up the higher. Read the full article…