Hiking Austritaly and Switzerland
- jasey5
- Aug 12
- 7 min read
You’d think I would have had enough hiking by now but I’m coming to the conclusion that that’s not possible. After a chaotic adventure that started by looking for a ski resort and ending up in a grain field trying to explain myself to the Slovenian farmer through Google Translate, I left Slovenia and headed to the Austrian Alps.
I met a good friend from CU, Ryan, in the small Austrian town of Lienz for a 6 day hut to hut trek along the Austrian/Italian border. When I say it was along the border, I mean the trail was actually ON the border. The trek follows the border drawn at the conclusion of WWI and as a consequence of the fighting in the area, there are tunnels, trenches, old barbed wire and other relics scattered along the trail. Due to walking by many border markers and crossing between countries countless times, I think it’s only fair to say our trek was in Austritaly.
The trek is called the Carnic High Route or the Peace Trail and is quite popular. It provided incredible views of the Dolomites, lovely huts, some beautiful lakes, llamas and of course 46 miles of gorgeous and somewhat challenging trails. One of the coolest things about this trek was the fact that there were many other groups doing the same trek, thus we started to get to know some of the other travelers and by the end we had gotten to know a couple from Lithuania, two groups of women from Germany and a group of three college-age German girls who we ended up playing cards with most nights.
During the trip, we started to build up a reputation of going on side quests (ok, really for taking wrong turns). The trail mainly followed a ridge but there were many opportunities to take either the high route over the peaks or a lower route. We, of course, climbed the extra peaks but between wanting to always take the high routes, being surprisingly bad at reading maps/noticing signs and getting distracted chatting, we took multiple wrong turns. Thanks to that, and hiking fast, we would pass our friends in the morning, veer off the normal trail, add some extra time to our hike and then end up either passing the same people again or showing up at the hut after them.
Our best misadventure put us on a via ferrata route, something between a hike and a climb that has been made easier with metal rungs put into the rocks and cables to hang on to and clip a harness to. The sign said the trail was for experienced hikers, which of course we assumed we were, (we were not by Austrian standards) and we shortly found ourselves picking our way along a very narrow ridge with steep drop offs on both sides. After making our way down a section that took some careful maneuvering and some trust of the cables, we saw a group coming the other way with helmets and harnesses and we decided we had better bail before we got ourselves stuck. So instead, we made our way very, very slowly down a loose rock gully on the wrong side of the ridge from our destination which put us on a rarely traveled trail trying to beat approaching storm clouds to the next pass. Thankfully, it turned out to be quite a successful misadventure and Ryan even had energy left over for a quick evening trail run.
We wrapped up our trip by hiking straight from the last hut to a bus (I love European public transport) and then made our way to Innsbruck and finally Zurich, Switzerland. Ryan has spent the last year living in Zurich doing his masters at ETH. Naturally, I had to take advantage of having a tour guide and a place to stay. We were joined by another college friend, Ben, and together we played a game of ‘chase the ok weather.’ Ryan has developed a curse of having bad weather whenever he has visitors and so naturally it was cloudy and raining almost the whole week. We handily avoided it though by taking advantage of the amazing Swiss train network and going for hikes and adventures in three different regions.
Since he moved to Switzerland, Ryan has been raving about swimming in the river that runs through town and so of course we had to add the Limmat river to the list of bodies of water I’ve swam in this summer (25 in total). Swimming in a fast moving, big river is such a different experience to swimming in a lake or the ocean. Zurich has built side channels for swimming which are much calmer and the one we went to had a great bridge for jumping off of. Because of the current, you swim in laps: jump off the bridge, float down the river, try to catch hold of a tree, play around in the current, get out, walk back up stream, repeat.
One of my other favorite adventures in Zurich was a dance night. Ryan has been learning ballroom dance with a university group and so he gave me a crash course in 7 different dance styles and then took me to their open dance, where I did my best not to step on too many people’s feet, twisted my brain in knots and generally had a blast.
The final big adventure of the trip came as a total surprise. I knew I’d have a few days after visiting Ryan before my flight home, and in June, when I attended a family friend’s family reunion, I met his nephew and he invited me to do a Swiss mountaineering adventure with him. The number of things that aligned to make this happen was crazy and so with a pair of rented mountaineering boots and all my warm gear that I’ve been hauling around since Norway, I met Samuel and his friends at the train station to head for Valais, one of the French speaking regions of Switzerland.
We began our adventure marveling at the parade of people hiking the Tour du Mont Blanc and then quickly found our way to a 5000 vertical foot 3.9 mile hike - so yes it was kind of a staircase - up to a solitary hut perched in the middle of rugged peaks. On the second day we crossed the end of a glacier which was super cool and full of little rivers and small crevasses, and then hiked up through a boulder field to a bivouac. Bivouacs are non-staffed huts, similar our huts in Colorado where you have to bring your own food, as opposed to the typical alps huts that serve meals. After arriving, the guys went off to climb a nearby peak and I decided to enjoy having a Swiss cabin to myself for the afternoon.
Our final day started at 2am and with an August snowstorm. We left the bivouac with headlamps and scrambled our way up a loose, rocky, lightly snowy ridge to the beginning of a massive glacier. After roping up, we began our glacier crossing spaced out so as to be able to catch someone if they fell in a crevasse. Because we were much higher up on the glacier, it was a massive, perfectly white, snowy expanse between peaks, under an incredible bowl of stars. Walking across fresh snow on the glacier at 5 in the morning with just the slightest sunrise glow on the horizon and the Milky Way overhead, might be one of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen and it gives me chills just remembering it.
As the sun rose, we were joined by other groups coming from other huts heading for a peak sticking up out of the glacier called Aiguille du Tour. With ropes to add some security to our scrambling, we made our way to the top and a crazy, stunning view of endless snow and craggy mountains. I hate to say it now, but I finally found a mountain view the Rockies can’t compete with.
Then we began a descent through three seasons. The peak crested at 11,423 feet and near sunrise we were solidly in winter. As the sun climbed the sky, the fresh snow began to melt off the rocks, bringing us into early spring. Then, as we descended the glacier and began to hike down, we hiked from spring to full on summer, from barren alpine to lush forest. The full descent was about 7000 vertical feet and was definitely the furthest down I’ve ever hiked.
With my first mountaineering adventure complete, it was time to return my boots, say my goodbyes to Ryan and catch one last series of ‘runs every 7.5 minutes’ trams (I’m so jealous) to the Zurich airport. 10 weeks after I landed in Norway, I’m both excited to be returning home and incredibly sad to leave so many wonderful people and places behind. Thank you to everyone who made this summer so memorable, to those who traveled with me, those I met along the way, and to everyone who took the time to read about my adventures. It’s an honor to have you in my life and it’s been such a privilege to be able to travel and share my adventures with you.
‘Til the next time I decide to fit my life into a backpack, Jasey