Summer marches on in all its sweltering-but-not-as-bad-as-last-year glory. I have decamped to Britain for August, hoping to avoid the last and hottest month of true summer in Austria. From there I bring you this set of images from a hike near the end of July.
This hike was directly inspired by the previous one I blogged about, as we realised that from the same point we ended that hike we could start and head up to the highest point on the Rax plateau, the Heukuppe (2007m). This isn't a hugely important peak, but as it is awkwardly located I had never climbed it and claimed the Rax plateau entirely as my own, as it were. The date was fixed by other commitments so it was lucky that the weather cooperated, delivering a cool, cloudy but pleasant day for the walk. In fact throughout the day it rained pretty much everywhere we could see from our vantage point, just not on us!
A relatively overgrown path led along the base of the steep slopes / cliffst that surround most chunks of limestone in the alps, until we eventually clambered our way up a steep gully and made it onto the rolling, green, wildflower covered top. From there a quick hike up to the peak, then a leisurely descent facing onto fantastic views over the whole plateau, via many switchbacks on the 'Schlangenweg' (snake path) and back to the car.
Throughout much of the hike the clouds were just low enough to be at or around the heights of the peaks, alternately obscuring and unveiling different views as the wind blew and adding some dramatic grey-blue-white backdrops to the views.
Enjoy the small gallery of pictures!
Der Tom
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