A similar day to yesterday. A bus ride to the top of one of
the valleys, a 2000 ft climb, rain and getting short the walk.
We went to the top of the Ziller valley; this is known as the
Zillergrund. In the Tyrol dialect, "grund" does not mean
"ground"; it refers to the upper section of a river valley, usually
above the hanging section. The drive up was lovely and the day was really
promising. The top of the valley is dammed and the dam wall was absolutely
enormous. The lake behind it is called the Speicher Zillergrundl.
Our first objective was a mountain hut, the Plauenhutte. The
climb was steady and broken only by a meadow below a massive ampitheatre of rock
with several big waterfalls coming over the ledge; it's very impressive. More
climbing to the hut and as we did so the weather turned. The cloud rolled into
the valley, it grew cold and it started to rain. We took shelter in the hut - as
did everyone else.
I had intended to take the contour path to the far end of the
lake and then return to the dam in the valley bottom. However this did not
promise to be good and we returned more-or-less the way we'd gone up. There were
a couple of points where there were alternative paths and we took those.
Of course as soon as we were back on the bus the sun came out
again.