We had planned on doing the Gartnerwand traverse, but due to wind gusts in excess of 100km/h on the Gartnerwand while we were heading there on the train, we decided to abort to a plan b (or was it c) to head up the Schellschlicht, hoping that the larger mountains to the south would protect us from the strong southerly wind.
The walk up was mostly in the forrest, which was surprisingly still full of beautiful autumnal colours, and when we were treated to glimpses out of the forrest the views were wonderful. As we ascended we eventually climbed out of the forest and were able to appreciate a view uninterrupted by trees, which just became better and better as we climbed up.
The summit provided us with an excellent panorama, where we enjoyed (a quick) lunch while everyone appreciated the view. The reason for the quick lunch is that despite the wind being significantly weaker than to the south, it was still fairly strong and was very cold.
The descent was down a relatively gentle ridge, which provided us with a lovely backdrop looking south to the larger Austrian mountains and thankfully we dropped out of the wind fairly quickly. As we were making good time with the decent, we realised that we could just about make the last train before they changed from hourly to two hourly. As if we missed it we would have a two hour wait, the rest of the descent was fairly quick and without any faff.
Thankfully we made the train with 5 minutes to spare, and enjoyed the train ride home after a wonderful day out in the mountains.
Max elevation: 2039 m
Min elevation: 818 m
Total climbing: 1313 m
Total descent: -1309 m
[…] lot had changed in the mountains since the previous weekend on Schellschlicht, as a significant amount of snow had fallen during the week. The weather forecast in the morning […]