Summer is before winter. Enjoying the sun and keeping in shape. And having a lot of fun in beautiful East Tyrol!.

Right after earning some money in July I hiked up the second highest mountain in Austria, Großvenediger, thank god there’s Google, I had no clue, how high it is, but there we are: 3.666 m.

Above everything else, pretty much.

We were a group of people who hiked the upper bit roped up with a mountain guide. The top of Großvenediger is consisting of old snow and only in some places the rocks peer through. We were highly motiviated and carried up our crampons, but there were such good conditions, that we actually didn’t need them.

Good to have such nice company!

Don’t get me wrong, no extreme sports:) There were actually two 8-year old girls hiking up the same day, without any moaning.

Großvenediger is a touristic mountain, and other than on Großglocker there are no dangerous rock falls. Loads of people are on the tracks, and very little space on top. Still, if one walks from the bottom village Hinterbichl(1329 m) there are roughly 1600m altitude to walk for the first day and another 700m over the Glacier for the second day. One is Sleeping on Defregger Haus(2964m) and gets up at app. 5am to start hiking for the top.

Just for the record: One could also skip part of the ascent of the first day and take a taxi instead to Johannishütte(2121m), we didn’t do that, though.

Actually we are in the middle of Summer!

The ascent to the top started in the early morning hours, we got told nice stories from our mountain guide, and the light conditions were always changing, the mountains glowed like in a fairytale.

It was really good to step on snow again and rather impressive to see all the open crevasses and peer into the heart of the mountain through the ice.

Only peer in crevasses when you are on the rope!

As our group was in good shape, we hiked up a small bit to get to the top of Hohe Aderle (3504m) on our way down. More freedom on that peak and time to eat some of the food, I was already quite hungry at that point.

On the rope is where you learn abjection, good lesson for me!

I don’t want to bore you with too many words, but rather post some photos, if you feel you’d like to have more information, just ask in the comments!

Evening light