< Previous | List | Next > 10-hour hike over exposed mountain ridges and through green pastures, from Glungezer Hütte to Lizumer Hütte
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Looking back at Glungezerhütte, with the Inn valley covered in clouds
The plan for this first hiking day was a fairly ambitious one - rather than follow the traditional route of Munich-Venice travellers that would be down in a valley for the first half of the day, we had decided to take a "black trail" over the "seven tuxer summits" that mostly followed exposed ridges, only rejoining the regular trail to Lizumer Hütte towards the middle of the day.
Getting going in the morning took longer than I would have expected - breakfast, packing our belongings, waiting for the group member with the smallest backpack to repack so everything would fit, making use of what might be the last cell phone reception for a while, enjoying the view down into the Inn valley with Innsbruck, and taking the obligatory group picture. We finally left the Glungezer Hütte at around 9:20. It took less than a quarter of an hour to climb up to the mountain that gave the hut its name, and from here we proceeded over stony ridges, heading into a south-eastern direction.
Less than an hour into the hike, which so far had involved only minor scrambling over rocks, and for the rest had been quite leisurely, we made our first stop for Ralph to tend to blisters on his feet. (Already!) At around 11am, we reached the first spot that was secured with cables. While it wasn't anything major, I still started to ask myself, "what have I got ourselves into?" - I am moderately afraid of heights and the hike today would prove to be a first obstacle that had to be overcome.
Jacques on one of the first (still comparatively easy) cable-secured passages
We stopped for drinks a little while later, and after I got up from my sitting position, my knee didn't feel happy. "What have I got myself into?" was the second question that I asked myself, and I really hoped my knee wouldn't let me down. However, I overcame that initial impression, even though the next segment of the hike was a steep descent, and this would pretty much be the worst my knees would be throughout the rest of the hike.
After the first four hours of hiking, we arrived at a trail marker indicating it was 2.5 hours back to Glungezer Hütte - so I guess we were a little slow. We hiked on, going through a few more cable-secured passages that invariably looked more initimidating "before" than "after", but it was still impressive to look back upon a descent we'd just made and hardly be able to discern that there was any way to climb down I was glad to be hiking with friends, rather than on my own - it provided a proverbial safety net, and also gave me some perspective on perceived difficulty... if they easily mastered a short passage that looked quite hard to me, then I shouldn't have any problem mastering it either.
An hour later, we still hadn't made up time... we had been hiking for slightly less than five hours, but according to a new sign, ought to have covered the distance in three and a half. What was more discouraging was seeing that there were still five and a half hours to go. We were slightly reassured when just a few minute later, the "5.5 hours" were revised to "4.5", but it would be a recurring theme the rest of the day that any time indication on trail signs were purely fiction and had seemingly nothing to do with the real time it took us. By 3pm, we were past the most demanding part of the trail, and at 4:30pm we finally reached "Naviser Joch", where we'd rejoin the classic Munich Venice trail. From here, we first descended to lower elevations via a small trail switchbacking down a grass-covered slope, then joined an unpaved single-lane road that would take us almost all the way to Lizumer Hütte.
Glad to finally have reached Lizumer Hütte
This part of the trail was obviously the most boring one, and we were glad to finally reach the hut at 7:15pm, a full ten hours after setting off. We put our belongings in our (newly renovated) four-bed room, had our showers, washed some clothing, and then headed downstairs for dinner. I was awfully tired - the route I had chosen, and convinced the others to take, had possibly been too tiresome for our first real hiking day. We had been lucky though: the weather was first sunny then partly cloudy, but there had been no rain.
Written February 3rd 2008 in Bivange, Luxembourg
Accommodation: Lizumer Hütte
- Kilometres hiked: 14km (8.7mi)
- Ascent: 750m (2461ft)
- Descent: 1350m (4429ft)