searching for gratification- tails of an adventure around the corner

22nd to 26th of February 2014 Just around the corner of my homespot, there are some huts from the Austrian Alpenverein (alpine association) in the backcountry. A couple of them have a winter room(Winterraum), where one can stay for a few days. Some of those rooms have a stove, others not, some may have wood, others not. That’s what you have to figure out, when you get the key from the person running the hut in summer. The one we went for had a stove but no wood.

We decided to bring up wood, 30kg, to be precisely, stored on sledges which we would fix to our backpacks. That lead to an awfully exhausting ascent, where we barely made it into the winterroom of the hut before darkness. After approximately 15km and 900m of altitude the hot tea from the first melted water tasted better than whiskey.

working hard on the way up

In a season where powder is a irregularity, one starts searching for other goals than only riding as much altitude per day as possible. We were planning a longer touring trip for quite a while, but one has to wait for a proper weather window.

When finally some more stable conditions occurred, we frantically started to write lists and went in the supermarket to buy the food we would need. We still remembered the first time we went winter camping as we ran short of food, this time we decided to carry up more food to be prepared for all eventualities. As anybody knows who did a tour over a couple of days, there is a lot of stuff you need to bring, and additionally we carried some camera equipment up to the hut.

pretty bad weather and sight at the ascent

exhausted from the hike up, but happy after dinner

Next morning we started off a bit late because we (or at least I did:) still felt the strain from the day before, nevertheless we aimed at a quite exposed peak, roughly only 6oo height meters above us…