After i came back from Sweden, Andi, a friend of mine and me planned a hikingtrip through the Austrian alps. Since I bought a new tent, we decided to test our equipment first. The mountain “Mittagskogel” is part of the Austrian border to Slovenia and close to the city of Villach, where Andi and I grew up. We knew this mountain very well so that’s why we decided to check out our equipment here.
It was a hot day in June 2005 when we started our hike in the late afternoon with our very heavy backbags. The mountain Mittagskogel is part of the mountin group “Karawanken” that consits basically of limestone, so you don’t find springs or any water, you have to take it with you. I tried several times to be on the top of Mittagskogel at sunset. I guess I tried that at least 5 times before, and I always came into rain. This time it was my first sundown on the Mittagskogel without rain or thunderstorm.
Down from Mittagskogel we drove to the railway station in Villach to get our train to “Bad Gastein”. Starting there we wanted to hike to Heiligenblut on the other side of the “Hohen Tauern” (part of the alps), but the weather didn’t support our trip so we had to stay for 2 days and nights in about 2300 m above sealevel. Most of this time it was raining heavily, there were only some short breaks of rain which we used to go out having some activities.
Unfortunately we lost too much time to reach our goal, so we decided to leave the mountains earlier, after staying another night at the lake “Oberer Bockhartsee.”
