Austria

June 17 - July 14, 2009

July 2 - Harlisanger & Gaisberg

Today was one of the nicer days weather wise - mostly sunny and hot. Although of course it did rain on us when we tried to have a snack at one of the crosses... how many days straight of rain have we had? Our destination today was Gaisberg which is also known as the "flower mountain" because so many different wildflowers grow on its slopes.

This was a new hike for us and so we were happy that Oma came along to show us the route. Lots of locals were on their way today because it was the annual mass celebration at the Harlisanger church up on the mountain. Years ago there was a period that was very bad for the farmers and the locals prayed that if times got better, they would promise to pay for a mass at the church every year as thanks... hence the tradition.

Along the way we ran into a guy we had met at the Brechhorn peak yesterday. He did a double take when he saw us and couldn't believe that Sam was yet again hiking so far all on her own at 4 years old. We stopped at two crosses along the way and then headed down to the Kirchberg lift. A kerfuffle about the lift tickets caused us to dub Kirchberg as "Shelbyville". Before taking the bus back to Westendorf we stopped at the tourist info place and got our Kirchberg silver hiking pins.

• Harlisanger Cross
  
  
• Gaisberg Cross
  
  
• Gaisberg Flowers

  

elevation profile of our 10.4km hike
(this does not include the additional kms we did in the towns, etc.)

our hiking path