WILKOMMEN IN TIROL!

After arriving home at nearly midnight I showered and slept well in my bed, worn out from but satisfied with a long and beautiful day of hiking in the Tirolean Alps. My Google Earth mileage calculation? ...over 17 miles of hiking!

I had to wait a bit for my train back to Munich so I spent some time along the Inn River photographing the Kufstein Fortress as the sun went down.

I got to the trail head and found the last bus to the train station had left hours before, so I walked leisurely into town and stopped to rest on the Inn riverfront.

Soon Kufstein was again in view as the last rays of sunlight were going behind the mountains.

After sitting for awhile after my wonderful dinner, I started on my way again, spotting a barred warbler perched leisurely on a fence.

There was a cool breeze as I enjoyed my dinner and it all tasted wonderful. I watched the moon rise and felt like I was on Endor.




I chowed down while enjoying the spectacular view of the Kaisertal (Emperor Valley) and seeing the Stripsenjoch where I had hiked to just hours before.

I arrived at one of the mountain guesthouses to find the kitchen still up and running. There were some diners eating inside but the shady back patio was empty. So I went and found a table with an amazing view of the surrounding valley. I ordered my food, took off my boots, sat back in my chair in the evening breeze, and then finally my food came: roast deer in a dark gravy with berries on the side, German red cabbage, a large dumpling, and a freezing cold Apfelschorle. It tasted wonderful.

As I looked behind me I could see I had already come a long way from the Stripsenjoch.

I love seeing these little mountain houses nestled in the lush valley.

On the way back to Kufstein I almost had the trail to myself. I rejoiced in a mountain pasture.

You've gotta love those little mountain chapels!

I passed by the St. Antonius chapel again (built in 1711).

...Beautiful gardens, and an open door of welcome.

I passed by the mountain guesthouses that I had greeted that morning.

The cows were cool.

Milk shake!

I happened along a barn with the cows coming slowly out to pasture complete with bells!

I came back through the forests and meadows I had hiked that morning.

There was light at the end of the tunnel.

I filled my water bottles one last time from the alpine spring and set off further down the trail.

Another one of the quirky things one sees along the way, was this little garden and signpost dedicated to an old mountaineer.

The viper slithered away, and it wasn't until I got home that I realized I had been dealing with such a poisonous snake!

It was an asp viper recoiled and ready to strike!

It wasn't long before I noticed something slithering across the trail. It wasn't moving too fast, and I didn't want it to get away too soon, so I picked it up by the tail and gently tossed it into the middle of the trail for a better look.

After my refreshing dip I said goodbye to the Hinterbärenbad Haus and the little chapel.

Look out!

I thought, "ah what the heck!"

So I jumped in and soaked my feet... it felt SOOOOOO good after the long and hot uphill/downhill climb of the Stripsenjoch.

I got back to the Hinterbärenbad Haus and found some kids playing in the river pool. It looked so nice and cool!

From the logging site I looked back towards the direction I had come.

I came back to the logging site and saw this stone filled with memorial markers.

The afternoon sun made for a pretty site everywhere I looked.

After the heat of the climb up, it was nice to find this little spring on the way back down to refill my bottles with water melted that morning.

I hiked back through the quiet meadow, surrounded by the peaks of the Wilder Kaiser like a castle courtyard.

The chamois continued to eat her way up the grassy slope.

She spotted me, but didn't seem to mind.

As I started my descent I saw something moving on a nearby slope... it was a chamois! (Gämse auf Deutsch). I had always wanted to see one of these little goat-antelopes in the wild.

And so I left the Stripsenjoch saddle behind me and headed back down to the gulch.

Though the view was stunning, I knew I couldn't linger too long because I had a long trail back to Kufstein still ahead of me. I turned around for one last look into the Kaiserbachtal (Emperor Brook Valley) and began my descent.

These alpine choughs were everywhere!

The chough is a member of the corvidae family which also includes crows, ravens, jays, and magpies. This puts them at the top of the bird intelligence list. Look how this little chough carefully uses his foot to hold the pretzel while tearing a piece off with his beak. For another amazing example of corvid intelligence, check this out.

One of the first things you notice when you are high in the alps is all the choughs ("chuffs") flying around and squaking. I sat on a secluded bench with a grand view to eat some of the snacks that I brought. The pretzel that I had bought that morning in Munich had already become tough and icky so I started throwing pieces of it around hoping to catch the attention of the choughs. Sure enough...

From the Stripsenjoch I was able to look back one the Kaisertal valley where I had hiked.

In the distance was a helicopter rescue. If you look closely you can clearly see people dangling at the end of the life line.

A grand view of the Kaiserbachtal and the continuing Alps.

I had made it to my destination! A couple of nice Austrian ladies with their funny Tirolean accents offered to take a picture of me.

The mountains stretched far into the horizon.

Exhausted and hot I finally made it to the Stripsenjoch and enjoyed a mighty view of the Kaiserbachtal valley in front of me.

The last stretch of the hike was the hardest. It was very hot, there was little shade, and the trail was steep. But finally I saw the end of the trail... the Stripsenjoch saddle was only a few steps away.

The trail started to get steeper as I ascended out of the valley towards the saddle.

I passed through beautiful meadows and forests surrounded by the peaks of the Wilder Kaiser like stone organized union members trying to keep health-care protesters out of townhall meetings with their local congressman or woman.

A memorial to an old climber who died climbing one of the great peaks of the Wilder Kaiser in the 19th century.

I filled my water bottles up at one of the springs, not knowing if there would be another chance before I reached the top of the saddle.

Nearby was a logging operation in operation. You can see a log hooked to a zipline zooming down to the other logs.

Finally I reached the Hinterbärenbad Haus. After hiking for over two hours without stopping, it was time to rest at this mountain guesthouse. There was a restaurant, a playground, a little wooden pool fed by a spring, and a cute little chapel built in the 19th century.

I found a shady bench and ate some snacks and shook the pebbles out of my boots. Originally I thought that this would be my destination, but it was only 1pm and the Stripsenjoch didn't seem too far away. I couldn't just turn back, so I decided to go for it and make the two hour climb to the Stripsenjoch saddle.

The trail opened up onto green pastures and the Wilder Kaiser mountains jutted out wildly on the near horizon. I pressed on hiking through fields and forests.

Soon I came upon the St. Antonius Chapel, built in 1711. I couldn't photograph it upon approach because of the direction of the sunlight. Here it is as I looked back towards Kufstein.

One encounters all kinds of Christian crosses, memorials, markers, and mini-chapels along the trails of Catholic Austria and Bavaria.

I turned around and looked at the several mountain guesthouses I had just passed by thinking I might just stop at one of them on the way back for dinner.

A waterfall along the trail.

This guy was going at his own leisurely pace, slow but steady. You're never too old to hike!

This sight just made me happy: an old fellow with two canes and all his hiking gear, slowly wending his way up the valley.

Before I went around the bend, I took a last look at Kufstein.

A memorial from an 18-year-old killed while working in the mountains.

It wasn't long before I noticed one of many memorial plaques I would see along the way. This one was very new, it says:

On the way to the Vorderkaiserfelden hut, Herr Karl-Heinz Neeb of Obernburg/ Bavaria died here on Sunday June 21st, 2009 in the 76th year of his life.

In memory, his mountain and hiking friends.

Hopefully my hike would go better than his.

The hike began with a steep ascent onto the mountainside. It wasn't long before I found myself level with the Kufstein fortress.

As I left Kufstein behind and approached the trailhead, I knew it would be a loverly hiking day.

I'm glad I had decided to walk the distance from the train station to the trailhead. The view of Kufstein over the corn fields was veddy nice.

July was almost over and I hadn't really gone anywhere. The weather looked like it would be great on Thursday the 30th. So I woke up that morning and rode the train a little more than an hour to the town of Kufstein, just over the border into Austria. I had been hiking in the area before in the early days of my time in Munich.

I arrived at the train station, then crossed the Inn river into the old town. I decided to walk the mile and a half to the trailhead instead of taking the bus.

I didn't have a map with me, but I had spent quite a bit of time the day before studying my route on Google Earth. I wasn't sure where my final destination would be, but I was hoping to maybe hike the length of the Kaisertal (Emperor Valley) to the Stripsenjoch, a saddle between two mountains.

Who knows where I would end up, what I would see, how far I would go, what surprises lay in store? With the map in my head, a yellow sun in the sky, and the whole day ahead of me, I marched confidently through the town towards the trailhead, knowing that whatever happened I would end the day with the feeling of peace, exhaustion, and exhiliration that only comes from being high and deep in Nature.

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Way to go Nature!

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