Austria, summits and a changing mind

These photos are showing the Zugspitze. When I were camping at the foot of this majestic mountain and it got dark, the light, clouds, stars, sky and the mountain itself got even got even more magic. For me these photos stand for a beginning and a ever flowing, magical change.

I’m now in Italy and my time in Austria will always be the beginning of this new journey I’m on. I visited western and central Austria and for me these areas between the Alps are so much different than what I’m used to know from nothern Germany. I think I learned a lot about “it’s not always everything possible, it does not have to be and there is nothing wrong with it, let’s see what happens next”. I don’t know what triggered this in me. Maybe it’s the dependency on the snow or the absence of snow and the change this region undergoes in winter times. Or the more restricted way you can drive around because there are mountains everywhere.

I’m very grateful for everything I have experienced in my time in Austria: the nice and interesting people I talked to, the exciting pass roads, astonishing landscapes and especially the summits and there magic.

I love these summits

These mountains and their summits… They are fascinating me since my day in Hochkrumbach. And because of that, I started to advance my hikes and after I aborted two tries and upgraded my equipment, I finally got to my first summits! Reaching the summit of Hamberg was awesome and kind of intimidating. The weather was flawless and the view astonishing! 🎉

Only as I got back below the steepest part of the ascent to the summit, I felt like I can take a real break and make some noodles. And I found some sun protection.

Thanks to a really friendly owner of a restaurant, I stayed the night on a very cool parking lot at the end of a road right at the foot of the mountains. And so I got up there again the next day. Not to a summit because the path there looked to crazy to me, but I had so much fun!

That got me really hooked and so I started the next day to the Arbis Kogel and got to it’s summit while it was snowing.

Maybe it’s the change of perspective, the excitement while going up or maybe just loneliness of ascending that got me hooked, I don’t know. But these days were the first real mountain adventures of my life and I’m very grateful, that I experienced them.

I was always fascinated about the race to the South Pole and and these snowy landscapes are reminding me about it. Amundsen was a very cool dude by the way: when he and his crew started to the South Pole, only he knew where they were going because they had planed to go to the North Pole. But the North Pole got discovered just before they started and he wanted to be the first one at a pole. And because he was afraid that his government would forbid his journey to the South Pole, he kept it secret. Here a good video about it.