November 2006

November 28 was a very foggy day in Linz, but south in the mountains there should be sunny conditions.
Well, we saw only a little sun this day, but the weather was definitely much nicer than at home and so we could enjoy some nice views on our short climb of mountain Predigtstuhl.

The route is short, but still requires some climbing.

About half way up there's a nice place to rest, from where one has a nice view on the highest mountain of the province of Upper Austria.

Mountain Dachstein, nearly 3000 meters high. Its top is covered by snow for all the year.

Me and my honey with lake Hallstättersee in the background.

At this lake is a very lovely village, which is so cute that it's often printed on posters which are sold world-wide.
We plan to visit there some day next year.

When continuing our way up there were more difficult parts to climb.

Needing a break and a drink...

...but soon we reached the top...

...which is offering some beautiful views.

I wished I could fly!

What's this?

That's fog!

In Austria fog is very common in late autumn, and sometimes can cover the ground below for the whole day.

That's why it's a good idea to climb a mountain on these foggy days, because usually the fog won't reach very high, and above the fog one can find nice weather and great views.

Predigtstuhl isn't very high, but still a nice piece of a rocky mountain.

What do you get if it snowed two days ago, and suddenly temperatures are raising sharply?

You got lots of melting, wet snow, which is making all the roads and paths soaking wet and dirty, thus it's quite difficult to walk.

I think this route could have been nice and we could have taken lots of nice pictures - if only there would not have been so many wet snow and if only our beloved digital camera would not have ceased to function that day.

So we only have 3 pics this time, which we took by our cellphone as a matter of emergency replacement.

The weather was still ok this mid-november, so we went to southern province of Styria (Steiermark) to climb a small mountain and search for another "treasure".

View down on "Frohnleiten", a cute town surrounded by small mountains.

Soon we reached a viewpoint with a small hut...

... and had a rest and some drink there.

The official name of this hut is "Julius Warte", but the local people call it "small house of delight".

Later we continued to climb higher...

... but unfortunately the top of this mountain was a bit disappointing.
All was surrounded by high trees, so not any interesting view up there!

So we didn't stay there for long, but left soon to search for the treasure...

... which we finally found under those white stones in the center of this picture.

Our second "treasure" so far.

This day we combined a hike with a treasure hunt.

The "treasure hunt" goes like this:
Some people have hidden a small box at some secret place and published its GPS coordinates in the internet. Other people can try to go to this place and hopefully find the treasure.

This treasure was hidden near Altausseer See, a nice like in the south of the Salzkammergut region.

Most of our path was just beside the lake.

Small rock climbed, big rock to the back.

Close to the hiding place of the treasure.
We took some rest at this lovely place.

Later we searched for an hour and it was nearly getting dark when we finally reached this place.

Is there something?

There it is!

The "treasure" consists of a box with a log-book and a few small items inside.

If you found the treasure you can take one of the items and keep it, and place another item in there for exchange.

Writing down our names in the log-book.

As the sun had went down just at the moment when we finally had found the treasure, we had to go back in the dark. Scary!

It was my first time to see snow, really felt very exciting, although the view was not so colorful like in autumn, the white snow still looked nice.

My honey and me aways like hugging together on top of a mountain.

Watzmann, the second-highest mountain of Germany, in the sun.

It's shape is very famous and there are some fairy-tales about this big mountain.

Lovely pose in front of Watzmann, wearing my new hiking jacket.

Funny skiing pose.

Standing on the snow and enjoying the sunset.