I Attempted to Winter Hike A Mountaintop In Austrian Alps - Bad Idea!

When we went on a mountain ski trip in the Austrian Alps with friends, we also planned to have one rest day between skiing. My friends took it as a rest day, but I didn't, it turned out to be the hardest day in Austria for me because I decided to try a very ambitious idea to hike up the mountain and conquer a 2000m mountaintop, in the WINTER.

The name of the mountain is Sausteigen and is a quite random one to choose but it was close to our accommodation and I had to choose something near me. The house we lived in was at 700m altitude, which means that I had to ascend 1300m, walking on small roads and paths I had no idea how accessible these were. I also needed to keep in mind that I was not going to be left in total darkness somewhere on the mountain.

Right when I started the climb on these small roads, the steep ascent began. It's not really visible that it's steep in the photo above but it was definitely at least 10% most of the time. After gaining the first 150m, I already felt toast. At least I got to see some nice views already.

I hoped for sunny weather because most of the time in Austria we had really nice and clear conditions. Unfortunately on that day, I wasn't so lucky. Fortunately, it also wasn't bad, there were still views and almost no wind.

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It didn't get any easier the higher I got. The path was still just as steep and I went through 1 liter of water very quickly due to insane sweating and ran out of water soon enough. It didn't help that the path got more snowy and harder to walk on.

I was lucky to find a water source. A small stream of water flowed down on a cliff face and I was able to refill my water bottles. If I didn't have that option, I would have probably needed to cancel the hike any further. By that time I was about at 1200m of altitude.

The higher I got, the deeper the snow got and the harder the walking. There was also a matter of altitude. Even though 1300m above sea level is not a crazy height, I definitely started to feel it. At times my pulse was 150-160 and this is a result of very strenuous exercise and less oxygen my body gets. In Estonia, I live on 5 meters above sea level and my body is acclimated to that. The 3 days I had spent in Austria were not enough for my body to properly get used to extreme exercise on altitudes.

But I still carried on.

A cool mountain cabin I passed by. No one was there.

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There I also made a short break to eat my sandwich to replenish some of the energy I had depleted.

After maybe a bit less than one hour I reached 1500m of altitude and the conditions got very tough. The depth of snow was now up to my knee and walking a steep ascent like this was extremely taxing. I knew that I probably had to cancel soon because I felt like death. My pulse was very high at all times, I felt very out of energy and also felt slightly hard to breathe(accompanied by a strange rustle noise when exhaling).

I still pushed on another 70-100m in altitude and finally reached 1600m. There was a mountain cabin that no one was in or visited recently. The only sign of human presence was my footprints in the snow almost as deep as to my waist at times.

Here you can clearly see how deep the snow is as this house is for scale and my footprints in the snow.

It was the start of the summit trail and also the point where the trees ended. The sign showed me 50 min to the top but it was not a reality. 50min in the summer maybe yeah but at this time it felt like a suicide mission and I decided I was not going to do it.

I also found a warning sign that I was not able to understand but logic says that it warns against avalanches. Since there are no trees on the summit trail and currently steep snow, it felt very dangerous. I'm not afraid to take on some danger but this felt like too much and I was already extremely tired.

I was a bit sad to not accomplish the mission but also I think I didn't lose much because the mountaintop was probably inside the clouds and there was nothing to see anyway. This is a view I had and it looked like I was on the height or close to the cloud base.

I took a 20-minute break, ate another sandwich and had to start going back because I had a little over an hour and a half of daylight left. Going down was A LOT easier and faster obviously and I made it back just before the pitch black.

Overall, the takeaway is this... Don't WINTER hike the Alps on the trails that are pretty random because these are most likely under deep snow cover.
Also, a rest day my ass 😁

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