Joye and I are not mountaineers... the dizzy heights of mountains are beyond our comfort zone. But we do enjoy a bit of adrenalin each day... and to get our dose... we need to venture higher and higher up the mountain. Today was our toughest walk yet!
Seefeld sits at a height of 1,230 metres of altitude. We took a cable train up to a height of 1,760 metres... followed by a cable car up to Seefeld Joch at 2,064 metres. That is where our walk began. This phase was hard work... pushing up another 160 metres on a rough track... up to one of the highest point of our walk... lots of people coming and going... but each turn in the track bringing another spectacular mountain vista. We reached the top... did not succumb to the temptation to write our names in the visitor's book... this event appealed most to the younger walkers. After much research, the facts are now clear... men/women are at the height of their mountaineering capabilities at the age of 12. It is largely a weight for age trade off. The 12 year olds do not have to cart around heavy bones... heavy muscles... we won't mention other heavy parts that accumulate with age. Going downhill, the 12 year leaves older trekkers for dead... their light weight allows them to stop on a sixpence... their agility sees them skipping over dangerous corners that has us oldies creeping along inch by inch. Their quickness of mind allows them to make mistakes with their footing... but do a skip to correct their balance without slowing. We were following a 12 year old boy earlier today... and quickly learned we had no hope of keeping up.
The next phase of the walk was the riskiest. Relatively few walkers continue on to this phase. Joye and I took our time... the 12 year old boy disappeared down the track... we caught up to him at Harmelekopf... on the next ridge... when his body became tired. In the riskiest parts, chains nailed to rocks provided security... but all too often, the loose scree rock couldn't provide a base for a chain. We climbed down 160 metres and then climbed back up again. This really tested our fitness. During this phase we watched a couple progress up the walking trail from the town of Seefeld... a climb of 1,000 metres... we met them at Harmelekopf... and told us they did the climb in 2 hours... a very fit couple! We had kept pace with a couple of 25 year old lads... who were going to climb another 150 metres to the top of Reither Spitze... the track consisted of a series of boulders... semi-climbing territory... not for us. We have been surprised how quickly comradery builds between people on walking tracks. Harmelekopf is the same height as Seefeld Spitze... as well as enjoying the scenery... we looked back on the track we had traversed with a feeling of pride... as well as feeling the aching legs.
The last phase phase of the walk took us down 200 metres to a cable car... that swung us across the valley to the head of the cable train... the same one caught on the way up. To get from our hotel to the train terminal involved a 1.5 klm walk... today, we clocked up far more than our goal of 5 klms per day.
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