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Grossglockner
My son
and I planned an ascent on Grossglockner for several years. It is not so
far; by car it takes cca 7 hours. You can do the whole thing during a
weekend. Therefore we kept postponing this trip, because the time factor
was easier although we never found the time. Finally in summer 2008 we
planned a trip to the western part of the Alps and then we decided to
fulfill our longstanding wish on our way and climb this highest mountain
of Austria.
Several
ascent routs lead to the top of Grossglockner; we chose the normal
route from the south. A beautiful view of the mountain opened before
us from the parking lot in Kals, Luckner-Haus, when we arrived on
Monday 28 July 2008 before one p.m. It
was an unknown view for us, because we always saw Grossglockner
from
another angle, for example from the road Grossglockner Hochalpenstrasse.
 It
started raining when we got ready to go, although it doesn’t look like
it in our photo above. It rained quite a lot more than one hour.
Around half past two we finally set off to the hut
Studel-Huette,
where we arrived quite wet after the second heavy rain.
Summit day
 But
the next day morning was delightful, the sky without any clouds, so we
started our way to the summit full of hope. Soon we were on the
Koednitz glacier and the
view of the surrounding mountains opened on
the southeast, in light of the rising sun. On
the opposite side we could watch the
approaching profile of
Grossglockner. After
crossing the glacier our route continued on a
ridge with fixed
cables to the hut Erzherzog-Johann-Huette.
 The
view of the Venediger
group and the next part of the
ascent route opened from there. The
route continued first across a snow field that rose more and more
steeply and finally joined the top ridge. After
we crossed over Kleinglockner a
rock ridge led us to the
summit.
The
weather was sunny and quite
a number of people were there. But
alerting clouds appeared in the east, so we didn’t stay there a
long time. We took several photos and set out using
the same way to
return. Rain
caught us several minutes before the hut Studel-Huette. When the rain
stopped we made our way back to the parking lot. Changeable weather
influenced the next part of our trip, but our ascent of Grossglockner
was successful. |
