Day 23 – Hiking The Gaistal Valley

Feb 5, 2024

Today’s Adventure

To borrow a title from Charles Dickens, our outing for Day 23 was a tale of two hüttes. For this adventure Cindy and I travelled by bus into the Gaistal Valley, a remote alpine treasure wedged between the Mieminger Range and the Wetterstein Mountains not far from Seefeld, Austria.

From the Gaistal / Salzbach bus stop (literally the end of the road) there were two trails that we could have followed to reach our first destination, the Gaistalalm. Trail 12 was the easier option – it was essentially the single lane access road used by the owners of the inn and, as you might expect, was in reasonable shape. We of course chose to follow the less traveled Trail 7, a steeper footpath through the forest. Our trail was much more scenic and rewarding.

As we rounded the final bend on our trail and broke through the tree line we discovered the Gaistalalm, a charming mountain inn, lying in an alpine meadow with dramatic mountain views all around. This valley is very deep and very steep, so the sun was literally just clearing the top of the Hohe Munde when we arrived at 11:30 – and it would be setting back behind the mountains in just a couple of hours. Much of this valley lives in an eternal twilight during the winter months.

Our hotel tends to feed us very well at breakfast, so today we opted to simply order some Kaiserschmarrn instead of a heavier lunch. Kaiserschmarrn, literally “the Emperor’s Mess” is a shredded and then caramelized pancake that takes its name from the Austrian emperor Kaiser Franz Joseph I. This local favorite can be served as a dessert or, as in our case, a light lunch garnished with apple sauce and jam.

https://www.gaistalalm.at/

Following our sweet treat at the Gaistalalm we headed back down the trail towards our second destination, the Hämmermoosalm. This was a much larger inn with a big sun terrace to take advantage of the commanding views down the valley and towards Leutasch. We arrived just a bit after 1:00 PM, so there was a decent lunch crowd already in place.

Cindy managed to find somewhere for us to sit but we soon figured out that, quite unexpectedly, there was no table service. I went in search of a couple of beers and found them at the bar inside. The scene both inside and out was rather chaotic and made me think of the phrase “inmates running the asylum”.

Cindy and I have been to literally dozens of mountain inns over the years in France, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, and Italy but this was by far the strangest experience we’ve had. These establishments are usually well organized and very efficient, nothing at all like today’s second example. Oh well, the beer was cold and the views were great!

https://haemmermoosalm.com/

We hiked back down to the bus stop at Gaistal / Salzbach and caught the next bus to Seefield. We logged another 6.1 miles today in just under 3-1/2 hours with 1,768 feet of vertical. Definitely not a record pace, but then again we were wearing ice cleats the entire time and that tends to slow you down.

Tomorrow if weather permits we’ll be going on a field trip to Innsbruck. We stayed in this cosmopolitan little city for a few nights back in 2020 and hope to re-visit a couple of the highlights from that trip.

For Innichen’s main page click here.

For Seefeld’s main page click here.

For the entire trip’s main page click here.