Hiking the Alpe Adria Trail: Day 6

Day six of my journey through the Alps to the Adriatic, for reasons that will become clearer, turned out to be probably even more long and arduous than day five. But when I set out in the morning, after taking a bus from my overnight hotel back to the route of the trail, although I knew that I had another big ascent and descent in prospect, I felt surprisingly refreshed after a good night’s sleep and was largely recovered from the efforts of the day before.

The first couple of hours I spent walking gently downhill and on the level, enjoying the pleasantly warm morning sunshine. I walked alongside the Fragantbach river for a while, through the village of Laas and down to the main road, which helpfully had a supermarket where I bought my picnic lunch.

Shortly after Flattach, the long climb up commenced. At first, in the full blaze of late morning sunshine, the sudden steepness quickly became a challenge. Soon the path led into shady forest, which made it less sweaty, but the path was unremittingly steep. I paused at a helpfully placed bench (in this region of Austria there seem to be a lot of these helpfully placed as rest points, picnic spots, or viewpoints).

At the next bench I met two hikers, Karl and Haimo, who I had chatted to earlier that morning at the bus stop, and who, rather than walk the first part of today’s stage had opted to stay on the bus to Flattach and visit the nearby Raggaschlucht gorge instead. As they, like me, were walking the rest of this stage of the trail, we walked together for the next two or three hours, initially steeply up, soon then joining a quiet road which zigzagged its way to the highest point of today’s walk, near Staneralm, some 1500 metres above sea level.

Karl was a native of Austria, while Haimo was from Belgium, but it was Haimo, who had first visited the region some 45 years earlier, who was the more familiar with this region of the Alps. They were planning on hiking a week or so of the trail, having started the day after me, with the aim of returning later in the year to do some more. Once again, as with other conversations with people I’ve met on this trip, I felt a little embarrassed at how well they spoke English, when my German is non existent. We had an interesting and friendly chat- something I have encountered often when walking together with people you have never met before but who share a love of the mountains.

I think also they helped keep my pace up, but nevertheless it was still around 2pm before we gained the high point of the walk, and I had my lunch. At this point I said goodbye to Karl and Haimo, and having had a sit, started descending myself. One thing I do know is that not only can’t I walk when I’m hungry, but that I’m often very slow going down and I’m sure I would have held them up if we had continued together.

The views since reaching the top had unveiled a new panorama, this time eastwards towards Danielsberg- a seemingly diminutive hill against the backdrop of its neighbouring mountains, but which Karl and Haimo had said was a highlight of this region. The trail passes its summit and I should be there later in the week.

After the huts of Stanerhauser, the path descended further to Himmelbauer, perched on a little crevice overlooking the valley, and home to a little restaurant with spectacular views from its terrace, which the trail passed through.

From here the path wound round the hillside and then back into the forest, where it again became narrow, uneven and tricky. It was not as bad as the area affected by tree and rockfalls yesterday before Goldberghutte, and luckily the ground was drier too today, but nonetheless this was the part of the day I enjoyed least and I was glad when after a while the path descended to a wide logging trail.

The official route from here was signed continuing downwards on a continuation of the narrow path but broadly parallel to the logging track. After I had begun walking on this path and had realised it was likely to be more of the same, I instead retraced my steps and took a gamble on following the logging track down instead. This was easy walking, being used by big vehicles, but it had to be said, not especially attractive to walk down, although the views beyond to the mountains remained magnificent.

However, when the logging track began zigzagging downhill far south of where my gps was showing as the official route, I realised that although the walk down this way would undoubtably be easier, and likely faster, I was going on a long detour to add to what was already going to be a long day. Finally after about 45 minutes on this seemingly never ending descent (going I knew not where) I could see on my gps we were approaching a path going in the right direction, and was relieved to see a sign off the track marked as the Alpe Adria trail. This puzzled me, but after checking on my app, I figured out that this must be part of the next day’s route from Mallnitz, my destination, not today’s towards it (the route doubles back around Mallnitz).

This section of path was a very pleasant level forest walk. But I wanted to cut back to the actual part of the trail I needed to be on today and this, unfortunately, meant coming off this path and following a sign to Mallnitz with yet more uphill, having descended further than I should have earlier.

Then to add to the confusion, on reaching the point I was aiming for it turned out that Alpe Adria trail had been rerouted compared to the track on my gps, so I had to follow the signs and phone app instead which led to yet more uphill and a further extra walk.

Finally I could see the end in sight- first the railway station at Mallnitz-Obervellach, where we had alighted from our train the previous week on our way to Heiligenblut, and then the town of Mallnitz itself ahead. It was still a further two km along farm tracks and between a river and the railway line before I finally arrived at my hotel in Mallnitz at about 7pm, having been walking for over nine hours. I had walked considerably further – some 29 km- and ascended and descended more than intended, when it would already have been a long day.

As a write this I am enjoying a welcome rest day then at Mallnitz, before a few easier stages of the walk in the coming week. Unfortunately, after my silly little slip on the grassy ramp outside Goldberghutte on day five, my back has been playing up, especially after I finished day six. Hopefully a day’s rest and recuperation, plus some medication will help.