Hiking in Austrian Alps

Then in one fine morning, we headed from our University towards Bartholomaeberg in Vorarlberg, Austria which is adjacent to Konstanz. It's a small village situated up in the mountain, from where spectacular views of Mt. Zimba and drei Tuerme (three sisters) were clearly visible, as well as the city that lie down in the valley. We stayed in a chalet for a few nights and enjoyed the landscape with, off course, an extensive conference session. Then on the hike-day (yaaay!!), six of us headed towards a challenging trek lead by two professors, while the rest of the students group decided only to go-around uphill for a small untiring walk.

Without showing any pity to these non-hiking fellas, we happily started our trip to drive towards Silvretta Alps. A dam, named Vermunt-Stausee is constructed up in the hills where we got down from our respective cars and initiated the hike after a short interval ("die kleine pause"). The first impression was to hike up to a hut in the Alps, but later we discovered that the hut was closed due to extreme weather conditions in the last few days, that wasn't advertised over the web. Fearing that we might starve with shortage of water after having a strainous hike up in there, we chose another section of hike to Mt. Hochmaderer, where we assumed that the hut is open. Though we never really ended up to that hut, our assumption was not completely wrong, while we distantly observed a few hikers from the opposite ridge to reach and enjoy drinks and beverages at that hut.

We crossed a small mountain stream and started to ascend with an eye on the landscape, that evolved rapidly. The Vermunt-stausee started to display it's shape more profoundly, finally making a complete disappearance after we landed in the first mountain valley up above few hundred meters. The slopes weren't really steep at that point in time but I slipped once, while I wasn't very careful and was enjoying in taking pictures while ascending. So I rectified that, only to bring on the camera after reaching the summit and did extremely cautious steps toward the summit. A group of European hikers that we saw at the initial stage of hiking equipped with proper equipments e.g. poles, backpacks, clamps and what not, were found chilling out in a neighbouring fountain. The ice though were melt and the lush green grass reigned the dynasty, high up there were still some leftover structures of ice.

Then we started the last and the most difficult part of the hike - good amount of steep ascend and the landscape was totally rocky. The last part were too challenging for me, but I never wanted to quit when the destination is only a few feets away, so I dared myself to take the risk. Thanks to my destiny that day, I could make it well to the top and the reward was truly spectacular. The name of it was Hochmadererjoch, and "joch" denotes the "V-shape". Up above, I could look at both the valleys, distant Austrian dams, Swiss mountains of the East (St. Moritz side), and the crazy play of the clouds and their reflection over the valley. I also saw a few Marmot and Ibex while in going up, which totally made the excursion worthy. We rested for an hour and had our lunch there, took some beautiful group photos, celebrated our victory and finally decided to descend. Again the starting point now is challenging not to slip, which I successfully did. While descending, we rested a little bit near the fountain. Finally, the Hochmadererjoch disappeared and the Vermunt stausee lake down in the valley was visible. The broken clouds and their reflection made the moment a really really unforgettable one.

After descending, we walked a little more towards the Silvretta-Stausee dam and had our late lunch at the Madlener Haus. The Austrian delicacy offered to us was "Kaiserschmarn with Apfelmuss", it's a sweet cheese preparation with Appel sauce. After having spent a great day, we came back to the Vermunt-stausee lake to catch our cars. Finally, Au-revoir to Silvretta and we came back to Bartholomaeberg for the next day's conference. The trip, though we had in 2012, takes a permanent history in my memory, and only good-memories.