My latest trip led me to the region of the highest mountain in Austria - the "Hohe Tauern".
Glacier covered mountains, difficult trails and rocks that offer lots of grip.
Compared to the trails I did in the Dolomites, these here are steeper and more demanding.
One of them I did quite often over the last years. It´s not that hard to get up, thanks to a road
they build up to a man made lake. Depending on how much descent you wanna do,
you can either start at the lake or hike up to a glacier. The second version offers
about 1100 meters of descent - and most of them are a hard work down.
Lots of sections are tricky: either they are steep or have tight switchbacks or high steeps -
often a combination of all.
One is very special to me: till 2010 we didn´t even consider riding this section.
It´s like a stairway made of rocks, very steep and - the tricky part - a "S"-bend curve.
So you can´t just open your brakes, you have to do it really slow.
In 2011 I had an incredibly good day and for the first time I could ride it flawlessly.
One year later I was too scared of the steepness and failed.
This year - with my new bike - I had enough confidence to master it again.
Due the high level of difficulty and therefore slow speed it takes a long time to get back
to the starting point. Only the last meters are a simple, fast singletrack - pure enjoyment
after all the exhausting riding.
The pictures below on the slick rocks - polished from the glacier long time ago -are "selfies".
What can't be seen on the pictures is the cold and strong wind, making it a very
uncomfortably place to be. With stones I build a small tower for my camera to put it
in a higher position, setting it to the 10 sec selftimer function, pushed the trigger and
hurried to my bike - hoping that I´m at the right place at the right time ...
Greetings from Austria,
Horst
