Expedition report – Stubaital, Austria 8 to 19 August 2016
By Jonathan How
The idea of a trip began with Jen’s brother getting married in the Czech Republic and a subsequent appeal for ‘a Coupsy walker’. Jonathan was interested in returning to Austria and the Stubaital was readily identified as a base that would offer a range of mountaineering opportunities. The party would be Coups, Jen, Jonathan and Jack (Coups and Jen’s young collie).
The trip began with two extremes of weather: on one day Coups, Jen and Jack were being poached in the van driving through the Czech Republic and Austria and less than 24 hours later were on a very wet and rather cold campsite in the Alps.
Base Camp
Prior planning had identified Camping Edelweiss, Volderau as a picturesque venue and it proved to be well located for the mountains, with good washing and drying facilities and plenty of shade, and a new wooden shelter for cooking and eating which provided a place to meet fellow campers. It is a site at which you can just turn up and then register when the office opens in the morning. A good pizzeria opposite adds to the virtues of the site. It is, however, next to a river (more a raging torrent at 63dB than a babbling brook!) and substantially wetter and colder than a small and very smart campsite (Sonnencamping, Telfes) lower down in the valley next to the Stubay swimming pool.
Volderau and Camping Edelweiss are 6km up the valley from the village of Neustift which functions as the main centre in the Stubaital, offering a good tourist office, gear shops and supermarkets. Alpine club maps can be purchased and klettersteig (via ferrata) kits hired. There are two buses an hour from Innsbruck which run the full length of the valley, making the area easily accessible. Innsbruck itself is a small city, well equipped with gear shops. Detailed Austrian Alpine Club guide books can be purchased at freytag & berndt in Innsbruck. While written in German, they provide more current info on the less popular peaks and routes and descriptions can be reasonably accessed with the help of Google Translate.
Good information on the huts, lifts and klettersteig can be found on the Tirol website. The tourist office were very happy to ring and book huts for us. The weekends were fully booked and some walkers we met advised booking in April if you wanted a room!
In contrast with Swiss mountaineering the main mountain activities in Austria seem to be hut to hut walking and klettersteig. This gives the huts more of a family holiday feel – indeed as we left an English family were setting off on a tour with their children, aged 4 and 7. Do not, however, be deceived. While well way-marked, many of the routes are steep with exposed sections, and very loose rock and scree are not unusual such that good footwork is rightly valued as a skill even on fairly basic routes.
Mountain Days
Coups and Jonathan managed three high mountain trips.
- Traverse of the Grosser Troegler.
Uplift to Dresdener. (€6.60) Drop down (signage not clear). Steep climb. Ridge. Views. Drop to Sulzenauhutte (good base for klettersteig & routes on other side.) Snow had fallen previous day and night down to around 2100m but was clear by the evening. The walk out from the Sulzenauhutte goats too us through a field of sweet chasing goats. They were very used to walkers and tourists and had acquired a taste for sugar. Ascent 740m, descent 1440m, in guide time of 6.5 hrs.
- Attempt on the Lisener Fernerkoegel.
On the Friday we headed up to… Oberissalm. The route was rather difficult to find as tourist walking maps don’t seem to distinguish between roads and tracks across fields. The road goes up from Milder, not Neustift. There is ample parking for €6 per day and a taxi service is also available. Its not the greatest walks otherwise.
We spent the night at the Franz Senn Hutte. A large 250 bed hut on 4 floors. The fact that there are free hot showers and drinking water in the taps immediately tells you that this is a different environment! Hut fees were €46 half board. A normal BMC card was accepted for the usual members discount. The food was good and substantial. Breakfast the next day was a very substantial buffet with as much bread, meat, cheese and jam as you fancy and the usual flask of hot sweet fruit tea to take away. It was clear that, despite our initial concerns, it would not be busy on our route the next day. In fact a look at the hut book seemed to suggest last ascent was a month earlier. We took breakfast at 6am (which the huttenwirt thought was quite early enough!), aiming to depart 6.30 in order to be back off the glacier by 2pm. There was a long walk to col above glacier (which should have been 2½ hours but took a bit longer, being slowed down by verglass on the boulder field around the Rinnensee. We geared up and descended onto the glacier, seeing feint signs of only one of one previous party through the thin covering of snow (it is probably dry after a period of sustained warm weather). The glacier showed little sign of crevassing. We traversed across to 2950m (some 50m lower than guidebook, suggesting a drop of some 50m in the height of the glacier over the last 30 years) and scrambled up the Plattingenwand, aided by a few small but welcome cairns to pt 3045m. It was now 12.30 and clear that would need another 2 hours at our pace to reach our objective so took photos and set off back on the descent past hut to Oberissalm. The warden had warned of rockfall risk on the upper glacier and inspection suggested it was steeper and more technical than the very straightforward Ferner glacier. In all a very pleasant day out, the variety of terrain and lack of other parties (we saw only two others In that open valley all day and they were not on the same route) making this a route of quality and one to return to. We had climbed some 1100m and descended 1500m. A guide time of 7 hours is probably more realistic, other than for the superfit, and once back I have seen it on one or two web sites. The long walk before getting onto the glacier also suggests bringing your own breakfast and making a proper alpine start of 4.30 or 5am, contrary to the more relaxed Austrian approach.
- Elferkogel Klettersteig.
A first experience for Coups and Jon. Kit was hired in village (€10/day), the route in the guide published and freely available at the tourist office. Took the cable car up and ascended the ridge. The start lies beyond Elferspitze. The route follows mainly scrambling terrain, but includes shorter passages which would be graded climbing were it not for the aid of the cable and/or pins. The quality of the limestone was not dissimilar to that in the Wye Valley or at Swanage and the cable provided welcome safeguard on what was often quite chossy rock. We enjoyed the experience and would be happy to include it as part of an alpine trip, but not enough to want to make it the main activity.
Other Activities
The small lake at Kampl provided an excuse for sitting in a sunny valley swimming in the open water. The Schlick cable car leads to some easy and pleasant walking, including a curated flower trail and views of some very committing klettersteig.
Maria Himmelfart (the Assumption of Mary) on the 15th August is a major holiday in the more Catholic parts of Europe and culturally only a little behind Christmas and Easter. The morning celebrations centered around Mass, a procession with the various village groups (brass band, mothers Union, young farmers, schnitzel battalion (rifle brigade firing volleys from time to time)), all in traditional dress and lunch washed down by copious quantities of pork, cake, beer, and schnapps. While Jonathan went to church Jenny, Jack and Coups trekked up to farm above the village for a couple of rounds of cake and coffee. An interesting break in the middle of the trip.
Food and drink
Tirolean cooking is perhaps best described as hearty and substantial. The following were sampled during the trip and should be tried as part of an Austrian Alpine experience.
- Bacon dumplings, served either in a beef broth or on a bed of sauerkraut. Also made with spinach or with cheese.
- Kaiser schmarren. Shredded pancake, dusted with icing sugar and served with either apple purée or a cranberry sauce.
- (Chanterelles?) these wild mushrooms come into season in August and some of our fellow campers were collecting them by the bucketfull. They get served in a cream sauce with dumplings, with meat p, pasta or even on pizza.
The discovery of the trip however was the Banana slice. It was the last bit of cake on the counter at the end of the day and, while it looked lonely and forlorn, once shown a fork it revealed layers of sponge with a chocolate and banana filling topped off by a thin soft layer of marzipan.
Most of the beer in the valley is Zipfer, which is very welcome indeed after a good day on the mountain, but is not really a worthy representative of the Brewer’s art in German speaking lands.
An excellent wine merchant (Vino Ribis) was found in Telfes, and worth a visit if looking for best quality Austrian wines and spirits to bring home.
Other advice.
In keeping with much of the Alps remember that shops are usually closed on Sundays. English is pretty widely spoken, but words of German are always appreciated. It can be cold and it is worth taking a 3 or 4 season sleeping bag.
Some other campers reported that screw fix gas canisters are not always easy to find.
Two Guide Books to the area are available in English and supported planning. The information was checked for currency against the OAV guide obtained in the ground.
Allan Hartley, Hut to Hut in the Stubai Alps. Milnthorpe: Cicerone, 1990(?)
Dieter Seibert, Eastern Alps. London: Diadem, 1992.
Walter Klier, Stubaier Alpen. Muenchen: Bergverlag Rother, 2013.