4 days on the North alpine long distance trail at the Totes Gebirge

Hello everyone,

It is now the 9th years that I organize a multiday hike for my friends. Usually we start Thursday and end on the Sunday.
We have been ramping up our challenges more or less every year. Since two and a half year SOTA get including in my plans of course.
Many years we have been talking about the Totes Gebirge traverse hike in Upper Austria. Which mean somehting like “dead mountains” - because of it’s usual lack of water and rough landscape.
This route is part of the Northern alpine long distance hike Nr 1.

There are quite a number of SOTA summits but activating all of them in the course of one single the hike is just impossible.
So I came up with a route that included two of them and was still manageable for the group.

Radio gear used:
FT1xde handheld
3m glassfibre pole (Decatlon)
2m J-pole wire antenna
Logbook
3 cell 18650 pack and cable to charge the FT1xde

Day 1: Placing the cars and hiking up to the hut Prielschutzhaus
Thursday we met at the parking place Offensee near the town Ebensee. This is were we planned to end our hike. Leaving one car there and driving with the other one to the train station Kremsmünster took quite some time but the first day was more or less just the warm up.
So we took train and bus and arrived at the Bus stop Schiederweiher near Hinterstoder.
We hiked to lake Schiederweiher and continued up-ward in about 2,5 hours to the hut.
As we had booked accomodation early (mid July) we got a nice 4 person room.

Schiederweiher lake near Hinterstoder:

Spitzmauer, Brotfall and Großer Priel in view

Day 2: Hike to Großer Priel OE/OO-004, 2515m and to Püringerhütte
We got up for breakfast at 7 and started our ascent at 8 sharp. The morning was quite cold and the grass and alpine herbs had a coat of ice that diapeared with the morning sun. A number of chamois watched our ascent and at about 2100m asl we followed the steel cable that secures that way up to the saddle Brotfallscharte.
There we climbed the ridgeline up to Großer Priel. I heart Alfred OE5AKM calling CQ SOTA so I rushed up to the summit to have an S2S with him. His activation report can be found here.
After switching from the quaterwave antenna to the j-pole on the 3m fibreglass pole the number of 2m QSO increased quite a bit.
The finger tips started to get numb and so I joined my friends for a hearty lunch snack next to the impressive red summit cross (8m high).
After the break we continued on another 5 hours including breaks to reach the Pühringer hut just an hour before sunset.
A tough day for sure and with 1390m ascent, 1150m descent on 12,8 km taking 7,5h netto time shows that the path was not always smooth and easy. With the rough landscape it is always an up and down and rarely a straight path ahead.

Thomas, Stefan and Anna (l.t.r) are in with me on that tour

View to Ostrawitz (I first activated that summit just some weeks ago)

Chamois

Follow the via ferrata from the snow field up to Brotfallscharte saddle

First view to the rough landscape of the Tote Gebirge

At the summit Großer Priel, 2515m

This activation brought a new personal S2S distance record to my log on 2m FM along with
DF1AKR/P on DM/BW-086 Hohenhewen 397 km :+1:
@DF1AKR

And coming back along the summit ridge:

Rocks and more rocks…

And a bit of green and colour fighting the odds

Püringerhütte in view. Our goal for today is almost reached

Day 3: Hike to Salzofen OE/ST-344, 2070m and to Albert Appelhaus:
That day begun with a nice breakfast of ham and eggs + bread and coffee. We followed the path along the little lake near the hut in the frosty morning but soon the sun got stronger and we changed to short sleeves.
A slightly more relaxing day from my point of view but not everone in the group saw it that way. But everyone managed well with the one or other curse word spoken :wink:
Again a very nice view at the summit and very good contacts on 2m FM. The extremely nice weather made a good number of S2S possible. Increadible views distances allowed us to gaze on the ice and snow covered mountains of Großglockner, Großvenediger, Ankogel and many more famous landmarks.

Breakfast:

Hut in the morning frost

Icy flower

View back to Pühringerhütte

On the way to summit Salzofen

Summit Salzofen ahead (the grass covered in the center)

Panorama

View back to Großer Priel from Wildgössl summit - I think you understand the name for the area

Descent from Wildgössl summit

Our place for the night: Albert Appelhaus

Kaiserschmarn as dessert :smile:

Day 4: Albert Appelhaus to Offensee via Rinnerhütte
All good hikes come to an end and so this one too. We left the hut at about 8:15 and made our way to the mountainlake Wildensee. I have been there alrady last year but it is always worth a visit. After enjoying the views and cooling the feet in the lake we continued on to Rinnerhütte mountainhut and had a cold Radler beer.
When you are up at a high plateau mountain area the descent is needed at some point so killing 1120m of altitude with all the gear and soar muscles was not too much fun but the past two years of SOTA hiking was a good training for me.
After mastering the partially wet and slippery sections we reached to lake Offensee and took a short lunch break at the shore.

At the Wildensee Alm high pasture area: View to glaciers of Dachstein OE/OO-001

Can you find the lake?

Wildensee lake

View to Offensee were we parked our car

We made it :smile:

We had such incredible luck with the weather. Just perfect in temperature and so stable. Great view distance on day 3 too.
Thanks for all the QSO on 2m FM. I trully enjoy being able to activate also during such hikes. Thanks to my friends for being patient and making the best out for the time needed for activations.

I hope you like the short report with a lot of pictures.

73 de Joe

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Great pictures - bet you had a super time! Thanks a lot for the QSOs along the way!

73, Sylvia
OE5YYN

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Great scenery, great pics, great tour! Congrats and thanks for S2S!

73, Alfred, OE5AKM

Thanks for our QSO Sylvia and Alfred.
Always good to hear you both.

The scenery is amazing up there. But I don’t want to be there on a foggy day.

It was a lot of fun for sure.

Joe

I now also got the pictues from my co-hikers.

That was the activation setup on Großer Priel

73 Joe

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