Saturday night I got very little sleep, only from 01:00 to 06:00, which left me feeling tired for our foray into the regional park behind our house, weather permitting. I made two of the dinky moka pots of coffee in hopes of getting a little jumpstart on my morning and of clearing out some of the cobwebs in my head.
Since we had arrived in Dorf Tirol, we had watched the Seilbahn cars go up and down the mountain every few minutes, taking people to and from the village to the Seilbahnhof up in the park. And frankly, we were jealous. The largest park in Südtirol, Naturpark Texelgruppe comprises a group of mountains of the Ötztal Alps, the very same mountains where Ötzi, the mummified man from 3500 BC was found. Our apartment was within the park and a mere 10 kilometers from the Austrian border that runs along the Central Alpine Divide. Those 10 km are seriously mountainous and there is no easy way to cross that distance.
Upon seeing the mountains, I wanted to climb them to see the lakes at the top, the Spronserseen, the largest group of alpine lakes in the Alps. The snow level, however, was already below the lakes and I really was not equipped for a hike of that magnitude and difficulty, all my gear being at home in Oregon. Still, Ann and I could ride the cable car up into the park and make a day hike along the Meraner Höhenweg, the Meran Highway in the sense of "high trail," down the mountain back to our apartment in Farmerkreuz.
Our day hike would start with a walk down the Apfelweg to the Seilbahnhof (cable car station) on the highest outskirts of Dorf Tirol. We left about 10:45 for the Seilbahn, a 20-minute walk below the house. As we neared the station, we found the source of the constant cowbells that we heard each time we went out on our deck far above. Across the street from the station is a small pasture of beautiful Tyrolean Gray heifers. They are really nice looking cows and very typical of this area.
We arrived at the station to find that the line was already long on a beautiful sunny Sunday. We finally got our tickets at noon, a long wait for a smooth 5-minute ride to Hochmuth, packed in like sardines. I couldn’t see anything ahead because my head was jammed in the roof. I could only see down.
On arriving at the upper station at Hochmuth, we wandered over to an observation point just off the outdoor seating for the Gasthaus next to the Seilbahnhof. There on a gorgeous afternoon, we watched a few paragliders and a dozen or more ravens playing. Many of the ravens are really silver or gray on their backs. Paragliding is a big deal here; people were lining up down in the village for the chance to throw themselves off a perfectly good mountain. We saw dozens of folks in the air.
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| Cable Car Arriving at Hochmuth |
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Seating at Bergasthaus Hochmuth
We Would Have Drinks Under the Umbrellas Later |
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| Meran from on High |
From the observation point at the level of the Seilbahn landing, we climbed slightly to Hofschank Oberhochmuthof where we wanted to have lunch, having looked at the menus for all the restaurants in the park before leaving the apartment. Once there, we were unsure how to get one of the outdoor tables overlooking the valley below.
As Americans, we’re not used to just sitting at any unoccupied table, but the locals have no qualms with it. We always look for a “Seat yourself” or “Wait to be seated" sign. Ultimately, the server just waved us to any open table and we selected one at the edge of the precipice looking the Adige River 4300 feet below. The croaking ravens and a pair of cats entertained us as we looked over the short menu.
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| IPA Girl Tries a Hefe |
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| Speckknödel |
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| Annie's First Ever Wienerschnitzel |
Although most people around us were drinking the local Forst
helles beer, I really enjoy traditional Bavarian-style unfiltered wheat beer, Hefeweizen, when it is on tap,
vom Fass, rather than bottled. So when I saw it on the menu, I ordered two for us. It wasn’t Ann’s favorite, but when in Rome and all.
For food, I ordered the two dishes that Ann wanted to try while she was in Südtirol: Wienerschnitzel and Speckknödel. The Wienerschnitzel wasn’t too bad for tourist food though it was a little greasy. Speckknödel are a special Tyrolean version of Semmelknödel flavored with the local ham called speck which differs from prosciutto crudo mainly in being lightly smoked.
Semmelknödel are large spherical dumplings made from torn up bread rolls (Semmeln in southern dialects, Brötchen in Hochdeutsch), eggs, milk, and flavorings. These knödel were more flavorful with speck than most, but a little on the leaden side, though they all tend to be heavy, an acquired taste for some people. The sides with the dumplings were pretty good, both cooked beets and a thinly sliced raw cabbage salad dressed with oil and vinegar.
While waiting on our food, we did a little people watching of those arriving at the Bergstation and restaurants. It was Ann’s turn to remark on the brand new boots, copious amounts of technical clothing, trekking poles, and full backpacks on people who were clearly day hiking. This appears to be the local outfit. I wonder what all could be in those backpacks or why anyone would want to schlep all that unnecessary stuff up a steep mountain.
We also saw a few crazy trail runners, younger folks whose knees I pity in a decade or two. In addition to trail running, apparently fastpacking is a done thing here, a combo of trail running and hiking with minimal gear, flying over the trails quickly. Except for the trail runners and fastpackers, everyone was wearing boots, save Ann and I.
Besides our not wearing the outfit, we would have stood out on footwear alone: I was wearing my trail runners and Ann her Chacos. And speaking of standing out, there were no Americans in sight or hearing range, a good thing in my book. Really, I heard only German except for a tiny bit of Italian. We could have been anywhere in southern Germany, Austria, or eastern Switzerland.
After lunch, we climbed up many flights of steep stone steps to the Aussichtsplattform Hochmuth, a circular observation platform with bowl-shaped walls. The start of the trail up to the platform was right by the table where we had lunch. During lunch, we watched a parade of people going up and down the steep stairs, most going very slowly and most trying to use their trekking poles on stairs. Better to hold the railings.
Near these stairs another trail, the 22, took off to the left. At the intersection to the apparent goat track along a steep mountain face, stands a sign reading, "For experts only" in Italian. The German is more colorful, essentially "for those unafraid of heights." Count me out. I am famously afraid of heights.
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| The Trail by our Lunch Table |
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| For Those Unafraid of Heights |
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| Trail 22: a Goat Track for Crazy People |
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| Aussichtsplattform Hochmuth |
After looking out from the circular platform, we scrambled back down the steep track to Gasthaus Hochmuth for another beer while admiring the scenery. There at the Gasthaus service was kind of indifferent and we had been sitting at a table for a good while without seeing a waiter. So I went in to the bar and asked for a couple of beers. I was told in no uncertain German to go sit down at a table and wait for my waiter. So OK, we're definitely not in America. When our waiter did show, he was quite cheerful and helpful unlike the grumpy pair of women inside.
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| Climbing Back Down to Gasthaus Hochmuth for a Beer |
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| Schloss Tirol from Gasthaus Hochmuth |
After our beers and more looking out over the Etschtal from the heights, we crossed east along the hill just behind the Hochmuth Bergstation. As we walked along near the station, we admired some of the buildings clustered there, largely restaurants and guest houses.
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Menu at Gasthaus Steinegg
Heavy on Desserts! |
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| Signboard at Steinegg, We Need to go Toward Mutkopf |
Once across the hill to Steinegg, we struck out for home east along the Meraner Höhenweg. Along the dirt road, the signage was awesome until it wasn’t. After passing via gates rigged to close automatically with pulleys and rock counterweights, we descended through a couple of sheep pastures on a well signed and blazed trail covered in fresh sheep poop. The trailsides had more wildflowers than I imagined that they might at this season.
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| First Scabiosa I've Ever Seen Growing Wild |
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| A Pretty Red Clover |
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| Campanula, Bellflowers |
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| Looking Back in the Direction We Came |
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Trailside Melissensaft Dispenser, Lemon Balm Juice
"Donation Requested" |
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| Trail Blaze Signifying the Trail Goes into a Pasture |
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Walking with Recently Shorn Sheep
These Hills are No Joke Steep |
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| The Bellwether, Clanking Away |
For many minutes, we had been hearing the rhythmic clanking of the bells on the sheep in the lower pasture and those of what I thought were cows on the hillside a kilometer distant, sounds you do not hear in America. After we passed through the sheep, I got a view of those little dots grazing far away and snapped a photo for giggles. It was not until I got home and enlarged the photo that I saw they were goats and not cows at all. They are very large and very handsome long-horned alpine goats. The big one dead center with the brown head and black body is impressive.
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| Alpine Goats Grazing in the Distance |
As we were descending the mountain, we weren’t necessarily sure that we should be in some farmer’s pasture, yet the blue dot on my phone indicating our current location never varied from the GPS-plotted line back to the apartment. So far, so good. So rarely do we cross closed gates in the US, that I guess it made us a bit uneasy. This easy access through what I think of as private property may be an extension of the Austrian
Wegefreiheit (“freedom to roam”) or perhaps it is because these farms are in the middle of a provincial park, public property.
Ultimately we exited the pastures and came back out on the dirt Höhenweg to see a signboard that no longer showed our destination. Farmerkreuz, the little hamlet containing our apartment, was conspicuously missing from the signboard. About a kilometer further to the east we could see what looked to be an inn (Gasthaus Talbauer, “valley farmer guest house”) and to the right/west we saw nothing but a farmstead with the road gated closed between the house and a barn. Said barn turned out to be a sheep milking barn where they were doing the afternoon milking and where we scared the devil out of a wayward sheep that wandered up onto the road.
Consulting the map and the GPS on the phone, it seemed we needed to go in the direction of the closed gate to the west and that clearly matched my sense that we were already east of where we wanted to be. And yet, it did not look on the face of it to be a viable public path. In the absence of a signpost indicating Farmerkreuz, one indicating Schloss Tirol would work: Farmerkreuz is situated directly above the castle.
But the signboard showed Schloss Tirol in both directions, towards the Gasthaus and the closed gate. Moreover, both signboards naming the castle seemed to be more makeshift than the others; they both lacked the red and white blazes of the official trails. What to do? We walked up to the gate and it seemed that the road dead-ended there, devolving into an earthen courtyard between the house and barn. So we went the other direction hoping to find another trail or another signboard. The further east we walked towards the Gasthaus, the more my spidey sense was screaming “Wrong direction!” at me. And the further off the plotted path our phones showed us to be.
Convinced now that we had to push on through the gate, we reversed course and crossed the gate, making certain to close it behind us. After following the seemingly disused dirt track around the barn and through a couple of switchbacks, we found a signboard for Farmerkreuz pointing down a steep trail off the little used tractor road. Confusion over, we could get on with the business of getting back to our apartment.
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| A Sign Home at Long Last |
The path that we found ourselves on in the thick woods was a rocky beast. The going was really slow down the brutally rocky and steep downhill path and at some point along the way, Ann hurt her knee to the point where she could only hobble. Highlights of this miserable stretch of trail were scaring a long-eared hare and passing through a creek ravine full of beautiful Himalayan Balsam, what we would likely call Monkeyflowers,
Impatiens glandulifera. Sadly, this is a highly invasive plant and is not much desired in Europe where it does not belong.
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| Himalayan Balsam, Impatiens glandulifera |
After about 40 minutes later, the path passed behind the farnhaus and dumped us out on the driveway to the house. We arrived back at 17:00 and headed directly for much deserved showers; we were both sweaty messes. The ample rain in recent days and the naturally high humidity are not things to which we are accustomed.
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| Back Off the Mountain |
Dinner was simple: a little bit of salame and cheese from the refrigerator. We had already eaten our big meal of the day up on the mountain. I slept little the night before, so I tried to get to sleep early. How successful I was, the next post will tell.
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