Recently the heat wave in Slovenia got worse and the temperature went well over 35 degrees Celsius. As a getaway from the unbearable conditions we decided to go much higher for a few days. And since my training for the Tortour cycling race is at it’s peak, Grossglockner high alpine road seemed like an obvious choice. The actual alpine road starts in the town Heiligenblut which already lies at a pretty high altitude (1350 m). Once you get to around 1850 m altitude there is a crossroad, left road is leading to Kaiser-Franz-Josefs-Höhe which gets you directly before Austria´s highest mountain, the Grossglockner (3,798 m). The right road is leading to the high mountain pass called Hochtor.
For the first day we decided to visit the famous glacier at Grossglockner. On the way up it started to rain a bit, but after days of tremendous heat, it was a welcome sight.
The road itself is pretty spectacular, with big mountains and vast meadows all around it.
Grossglockner glacier is one of the biggest glaciers in Europe and the views are impressive indeed.
On the way back we stopped at Nassfeld waterfalls. I simply love reflections in photography and most of my favorite photographs include beautiful waterscapes like the image below.
Waterfalls were just everywhere …
Further down the road this vast landscape panorama opened before our eyes, it’s just stunning. You can see the road leading to the glacier in the upper right corner of the image.
I think we all prefer sunny days most of the time, but in this case I think the stormy weather really added that extra touch to the gloomy atmosphere of the Grossglockner glacier and it’s surrounding landscape.
The obvious choice for the next day was to go right at the crossroad and visit the Hochtor and Edelweissspitze. The weather was different this time, it was sunny and hot.
At the top of the mountain pass is a short tunnel (I forgot to take a photograph of it) and the road descends for a few kilometres. It was the peak of the heat wave, even at 2500 m altitude the temperature was over 20 degrees Celsius.
On the other side of the mountain pass the views really started to open up.
The road leads to Edelweissspitze which is the highest point that you can drive to with a car (2570 m). It can be seen in the images above and below, just above the cottages.
I went on a short hike and found a little peak that offered really spectacular view of the valley below and the mountains behind. A self portrait in a location like this is of course a must.
And for the end it was time to cool our feet in the freezing glacier river.
