St Wolfgang - Schafberg - St Wolfgang

"I can't go on."
"March or die son."

While the weather is still good and as we are sitting at the base of the Schafberg mountain we decided to go for a walk to the top as we'd heard the view was quite good from the summit.

We spoke to our host and it was suggested we follow the rail line that ran behind the house rather than the trail as, although it was steeper, it would be quicker to get to the summit.

First hut - 1 hour from top

'Steeper' wasn't the half of it.  The incline was something else and we found out later on this cog rail line is one of the steepest in Europe.

We made it to the first hut after an hour and three quarters of non-stop continuous uphill hiking and had a small picnic lunch and wondered whether to go on.  Had a yarn to some Austrians and they said the summit was another hour further on.  

We could see the summit from where we were and after we finished talking to them we said 'there's no way that's an hour, let's keep going'.  

Last bit - first hut in background

As usual we were wrong as it was bang on an hour.  Our legs were feeling it by the end but the view soon washed away most of the pain.  From the top you had a 360 degree view of the whole area.

We saw a few lads with massive backpacks on the way up and I asked them where they were camping and they told me they were paragliders.  

I had a chat to them and asked them what their packs weighed all up and they said between 15 and 20kgs which is quite a load to carry on a 3 hour walk up a mountain.  

Schafberg summit

I asked how long they'd be in the air thinking they'd say 1 or 2 hours and was surprised to hear them say 12 to 15 minutes.  Madness!  

3 hours of hard graft for 15 minutes of fun.  I'd be taking up a new hobby or at the very least finding a mountain you could drive up.

Walked down the track on the way back as the rail line was far too steep and it would have killed the knees.  

Looked at the stats from the GPS when I got home and we'd covered 16kms in total and climbed over 1200 metres at an average grade of 15%.  In mountain biking 10% is a killer climb so 15% walking for 8kms straight is sheer murder.

View from top

Interestingly Ryan (aged 7) did it easy and was first up the mountain and was still going strong at the end of the day.  No wonder the poor bloke has trouble sitting still at school.