Day 44 -Austria

Today we were up at 6.15am ready to do the seven summits walk. This walk is described on the Saalbach website as only suitable for “experienced mountaineers”. Yikes! Terrified already.

For reasons only known to Saalbachers, the cable car opens at 7.30am for ten minutes, then closes again until 8.30am. We had to catch the early one as we wouldn’t finish the walk in time to get the last bus back to Saalbach.

We got into our cable car and 3 large Austrian men bundled in with us. Now I don’t know if you’ve experienced these small bubble like cabins, but there’s lots of them and when there’s only 5 people waiting to go up the mountain, you don’t need to share.

Still, I have never actually seen anyone seriously wear lederhosen so it was interesting from that point of view.

My heart sank as we whizzed up the mountain – lots of low cloud. A mountain walker’s nightmare. Amazingly once we reached the top, we were actually above the worst of the cloud and it looked to be a beautiful day.

And so the walk – unsurprisingly, we walked up seven mountain summits. Only one was easy, the rest were varying degrees of extremely steep. One was quite scary as to get to it we had to walk along a very high, very narrow ridge. One slip and it’s game over.

There only seemed to be two other people doing this walk – a father and son team. We think they were German as it seems Austrians don’t speak much English. Sometimes we were in front, other times they were. They had done it four times which was heartening as they were both still here, and hadn’t expired from either falling or their hearts giving up.

The last summit was a killer. It just went on and on. I zone out on these. I can’t look up and see how far there is to go, it’s too depressing. I just watch my feet and trudge.

At last, we arrived! Hurrah it’s over! Don’t get me wrong, I love walking and the scenery was beyond words, but the continual steep descents and ascents are very wearing.

Of course, it’s at this point that I remember we have to walk to the nearest town and catch the bus back to Saalbach.

Two and a half hours later, we arrived at the bus stop. We have hiked through the most beautiful valley, stepped across tinkling streams of ridiculous clarity and walked past a thundering waterfall – and all I can think of is “where’s the bloody road?” And “if we miss the last bus I’m going to lay down and cry”.

We go there in time for a quick beer at a hostelry next to the bus stop. I love Austria!