An Easter Monday hike! Easter is a very big deal here, it is almost like a second christmas. At work the week before I was almost the only person from our sub unit actually there! Luckily I managed to find two people to occupy me on Easter Monday, I wouldn't have known what to do with my free day otherwise... It is no coincidence that the two people who were still around were an Irishman and an Englishman, in the British Isles we appear to be a lot more relaxed about easter and don't treat it as the kind of holiday where going home to the parents is near-compulsory.
I spent a while wondering which hike to do, and in the end decided to go for the Hoher Lindkogel (ca. 840m), which we have climbed twice before, but never from Bad Voeslau. Partly this was because there had been some definite snowfall the week before and the proper alps were likely to have been a bit deep in the white stuff, and partly because I didn't want to get up early knowing I would be dancing the lindy hop till late the night before. This hike was an attempt at a third time lucky good view from the top of the Hoher Lindkogel, on our two previous trips Fionn and I had been unable to see even the top of the summit viewing tower from the base of it...
The hike started in bright warm sunshine, and we sweated quickly on up to the viewing tower overlooking Bad Voeslau at around 450m up. We were treated to a good view of the Vienna basin, combined with a pretty strong wind. There was a fair bit of haze and cloud on the horizon, which soon resolved itself as the edges of isolated snow/hail clouds. These would be a constant feature of the day, either near or far, but never icing on our heads for very long. For ten minutes we would sweat, not wanting to take off our coats due to the inevitable snow shower we knew would come. Just as the warmth finally defeated us and we took off our coats, the sun would be swallowed, the wind and snow would start, and the whole cycle would start again....
When we reached the top, we were mercifully sitting in a clear patch and could enjoy the panoramic views out over the Vienna basin, the Wienerwald, and the ranks of the alpine foothills to the south of us. The isolated snow clouds out on the plain were really spectacular, the slowly falling snow making incredible wispy tendrils dropping down from the dark bodies of the clouds themselves. Over the course of only a few minutes these clouds could be seen to track across the plain, leaving sunny patches in their wake.
After an Apfelstrudel, we headed on down, first through a steep sided, mossy gorge (in which we were caught in a magical but brief snowstorm that turned everything white just for a few minutes) then through the
Baerlauch-scented woods and into Baden. In the end we had done over 22 km, a pretty tiring first long hike of the year. Check out the rest of my photos of mountains and snow clouds
at this link!
Bis bald,
Der Tom
