Hiking on Dachstein Mountain
An ancient glacier shrouds the Dachstein in blue permafrost. On Dachstein-Krippenstein, one of Austria's most impressive massifs, five places give a taste of high Alpine adventure.
Those who take it upon themselves to ascend the Großvenediger are rewarded with spectacular insights and panoramas of one of Austria’s largest and most fascinating glacier regions. We set out with a mountain guide who has reached the summit more than a thousand times.
The view of the Mullwitzkees is breathtaking. A sea of snow and ice stretches out behind the rocky landscape we’ve just traversed. Gently rising to form a white peak: the Großvenediger. 3,657 m high and still far away from us, on the seemingly unreachable horizon.
For the moment we are in a different world, with huge ice towers and their turquoise-blue abysses that are often hundreds of metres deep. It feels like being in the Himalayas, or in Antarctica. Incredible space. Boundless silence. There are no birds or marmots to be found up here. All we can hear are our footsteps, our breath, ourselves. Five little dots in a gigantic landscape.
We take a short break; it’s getting hot in the middle of the eternal ice. We protect ourselves against the strong UV radiation with high factor sun cream. It's hard to imagine how the first climbers to ascend the Großvenediger must have felt in this white desert. Ignaz von Kürsinger and no fewer than 40 men who accompanied him into this unknown world in 1841 are said to have smeared gunpowder on their faces to protect themselves from the sun. We wonder whether it helped, and whether it was advisable that wine was the only drink brought along on the expedition. Perhaps that was one of the reasons why fourteen of the forty participants had to give up on the way to the summit ...
Some glaciers appear to be blue for the same reason water does. The white sunlight is actually made up of many colours – easy to see in a rainbow. Water absorbs all these colours except for blue. The deeper the water, the stronger the effect. This can also be seen in a swimming pool – the clearer and deeper the water, the stronger the effect.
The blue colour of glaciers is a result of ice absorbing the red end of the spectrum of sunlight better than the blue. However, if there are lots of air bubbles trapped in the glacier ice, as it is the case with most alpine glaciers, then they appear to be white. This is because the air bubbles quickly disperse the light back out of the glacier.
We, however, are in good spirits. After a (non-alcoholic) refreshment, we tackle the next level of terrain. Sigi leads the way, pushing his two-metre-long hazelnut stick into the snow with force. He uses its forged tip to pick up on possible gaps. Should it come to a fall, the stick would anchor the rope in the ice. We ask him how often he has ascended the Großvenediger. The East Tirolean mountain guide doesn’t have to think about that for long. 1053 times he replies dryly, earning astonishment and incredulous looks. How can he be so sure about the exact number? He has meticulously kept a summit book for the past 40 years, he explains. It all started when he reached the summit for the first time as a 14-year-old farmer’s boy. Now in his mid-50s, he has brought thousands of guests up here as a guide. Yet, he hasn’t lost the respect his ancestors had for the glacier to this day. Because changes in temperature and the constantly running melt water are forever creating new crevasses in the mighty ice stream, unexpected and sometimes treacherously hidden by fresh snow. We can't help thinking about this as we take the next large step over one of the many narrow cracks in the ice.
Martin Betz, born and raised in Styria, lives and works in Vienna. He enjoys outdoor adventures, particularly in the Austrian Alps. A keen hiker, he occasionally takes his camera with him, as he also produces nature and alpine documentaries for German-language TV channels.
An ancient glacier shrouds the Dachstein in blue permafrost. On Dachstein-Krippenstein, one of Austria's most impressive massifs, five places give a taste of high Alpine adventure.
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