Austria and the attack of the munchies, part two...

Before anyone wonders, we're still not in Italy and I am still writing this in Innsbruck - that's a good thing though, it means that Julia is actually able to do her job from abroad and we are not going to go broke in a week.

So...the nights were still cold, and my sleeping bag was getting more and more broken. We had found a way of stuffing all our clothes under ourselves to warm up and it was mostly working. In any case the coldness of the nights was more than made up for by the lovely mornings...

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We were also getting our cook on at the same time although we had yet to find decent fuel so we were using petrol. One night decided to prove you could eat well on the road and put together a diced bacon and Gorgonzola sauce for some tortellini and we ate like kings - that day I also blew our food budget by about 100%, so we haven't eaten quite so well since, although the local food was growing on us.

Austria in general was also growing on us - this was supposed to be a weeklong warm-up for the main event but it's become a journey in itself as we iron out the kinks before we hit serious walking. It isn't a great expedition or a battle through some feared frontier but so far at least it has been a great diet for the soul, if I may be allowed so neat a phrase.

About lunchtime on day six we hit Pfons. We'd already put in a brisk mornings work mostly on roads because our trail had been paved over since the map was made, and we had got into a rhythm of buying food in the afternoon for the next day and then heading out of town to start making camp around 5-6pm. Julia got told by a bored mechanic that the shop we were looking for was in the next town over the river on the left. So we walked. It's one thing to cover miles on tracks and paths, but it's just not nice to follow the roads for seemingly interminable periods with heavy packs in the hot sun. About an hour after we hit Pfons we found a decent food shop, Julia spent an hour in the shop, and by about 4.30 we had food and water and were looking to get the hell out of dodge. The lass had spotted a road out of town that would take us to a good trail for the next day so we headed off, feeling a bit tired. What we hadn't really appreciated was that this path was a concertina of chicanes heading 800 meters up from where we were mostly at 45 Degrees followed by another 400m at 50 Degrees or more up a supposed path which was just straight up a steep meadow before we even got to the trees and thought about camping. With our packs and the hard day we'd had before it felt like being screwed twice in three minutes each time for over an hour - very satisfying in the end but my god we were glad when it was over. Our fitness was already much improved though, because on day one a single look at that would have had us reaching for the guidebook section labelled 'hotels'. We felt good.

The next morning called for a pretty steep climb for most of the day followed by a very steep descent for the last couple of hours. In a brisk but satisfying morning we reached our lunchtime target at the source of a spring where we refreshed ourselves and were surprised to find ourselves amid patchy snow, which was fun.

The afternoon started wonderfully, we had a great time on the rough trail we had chosen along the side of the mountain - it was sometimes tough to follow but never impossible. At around 3pm we hit a little patch of snow we had to wade through...it looked fun so we puckered up, tried to remember that irrellevent advice about crossing snow and ploughed in. The snow was deeper than we expected, one meter or more in places, but we were quickly through it. Ten minures after that we came across a 100 meter field covered in the stuff. It was pretty compacted and so we thought little of it. About 50 meters in to got deep but what the hey...we had good boots and very helpful trekking poles so carried on. At the end of that field we lost the trail, and realised that an even larger field was ahead of us. We looked at the map, and without really enough food to turn back and hit the last settlement we put our waterproofs on, found the trail again somehow, and continued. At about 4pm, and still climbing higher, I started to worry a bit. In the snow we were going to have trouble weathering the night and the view hadn't changed much from the below for rather a while...

It wasn't all just walking either, I have this vivid memory of Julia near waist deep in snow screaming at her pole trying to free it. After some further ado, I managed to get to where she was and gave the pole a massive great yank, succeeding only in separating the top two parts of the pole from the bottom. I did eventually get it by driving one of my own poles repeatedly at the hole until it freed. After using all that energy and sitting in the snow for a minute or two it did take me another desperate age to get myself and my pack up onto two feet again. There are probably methods and systems for doing this but we knew of none - this was supposed to be a walk in the park! Nothing quite that dramatic happened again, so we ploughed on and in the end made camp above Steinach at about 6.30pm with the light slowly fading. Panic over! Awesome!

That night there was a big storm in the valley - being in the trees and on a slope we avoided the worst, but we stood at the edge of the trees watching the black sky rolling in through the long straight valley past where we had camped the night before and towards us. The next morning we were cold and miserable as it kept up a drizzle. Just before we were about to start down the last hour or so to Steinach a snowstorm started, which we waited out huddled on the mountainside around out packs and sleeping bags lamenting that in spending all our time together we now had less to talk about in idle moments.

Walking into town we were struck by a certain quiet deadness in the air, but thought nothing of it. We made our way to the train station to try and find something out about our options...we had decided to spend a night indoors - we felt we had earned it. The snowstorm had held us up so we had hit siesta time and would not be able to go to the information office before 3pm, so a friendly lady at the station told us the cheapest hotel was out by the ski lift, but said it was 'a bit too far to walk'. 20 mins later we were there and confronted by a sign 'closed between the 20th and the 25th of April due to the end of season.' It was repeated all over town. We had hit Steinach in the one week that we could do nothing here - we had hoped of Internet and washing and pizza (I had hoped of pizza) and the one hotel that was open would have cost us more than a train there and back to Innsbruck and a night a the youth hostel there.

To Innsbruck we went. The plan being to kill some time 'till more snow had melted, to get me a new sleeping bag and for Julia to see if her working abroad plan would work out. As I sit here she is beside me having earned money, I have a new bag, and we are on the next train south.

Bye for now!

J-P