Day 19 – A Wet Wanderweg To Reith

Feb 1, 2024

Today’s Adventure

The weather for our first full day in Seefeld was cold with a steady drizzle and a hard, low overcast. The weather was definitely nothing to write home about, and in fact I didn’t even post an update on Facebook about today’s outing as a result! Into each trip some rain must fall, I suppose. Because of the weather conditions and the forecast for little improvement throughout the day we opted to stay fairly close to civilization in case we needed to bail out and head back to the hotel in a hurry.

With the weather in mind we chose the village of Reith as our destination for the day. Reith, with a population of only around 1400, is located midway down the rail line that runs between Seefeld (on the high plateau) and Innsbruck (on the valley floor) – as a result we’ve passed through it any number of times and knew that it had good rail access if we needed it.

Our hike started just south of Seefeld on the shores of a frozen lake called the Wildsee. The trail took us through a few farms and then a small town called Auland that was obviously transitioning from rural agriculture to tourism as the main source of employment – there were a number of cranes and a lot of new lodging under construction. The trail then passed through some fairly large pastures and paralleled a two lane highway before crossing under the highway and climbing up a short hill to the center of Reith.

Once in the center of Reith we turned left and followed the Römerstraße back towards Seefeld. This road is called the Römerstraße or ‘Roman Road’ because an ancient Roman road once passed right through this area. The road took us to the local Bahnhof so it was decision time – if the weather was continuing to worsen we could have simply hopped on the next train for a quick (and warm) ride home. Fortunately the weather was holding so we continued to the end of the Bahnhof’s parking lot where we picked up the clearly marked Forststrasse or ‘forest road’.

Ad the name would suggest the Forststrasse took us into an evergreen forest and through a nature preserve for most of the way back to Seefeld. Once on the outskirts of town we crossed under the highway and over the railroad tracks. This put us at the southern tip the Wildsee, the small lake where today’s hike began. We followed the opposite shore of the lake along the Innsbruckerstraße, a road that took us directly back to our hotel. One landmark in this section of the walk was an Olympic statue commemorating Seefeld’s role as host for various Nordic events in both the 1964 and 1976 Winter Olympics.

Once back at the hotel we had a late lunch in the room and then a quiet afternoon planning the rest of our visit to Seefeld – and hoping for better weather!

For Innichen’s main page click here.

For Seefeld’s main page click here.

For the entire trip’s main page click here.