Grossglockner Glacier

As we were talking about Austria a couple of posts ago and seeing as my web pages on our Austrian holidays have gone bye bye, I was nudged to follow the entry on Krimml Falls with a memory of Grossglockner Glacier.

We've visited it twice,on 16 August 2000 and again on 13 August 2003 when we thought it was somewhat diminished in size from our previous trip.

The High Alpine Road that you must take to reach the glacier is one of those spectacular car-advert type of roads with series of S-bend hairpins winding their way up the mountains, gorgeous scenery and views of distant waterfalls, cascading immense vertical distances. It's well worth a trip!

The Austrian Marmot is much in evidence at Grossglockner too. Larger than praire marmots, they have a liking for bread that we took advantage of on our first trip, though by the second there were notices asking visitors not to feed the marmots who were by now sitting around looking up at the roadway expectantly and muttering amongst themselves; "Are they not going to chuck us anything to eat? I'm dying for a good butty!"

You can climb down to stand on the glacier but we didn't. In fact there's a funicular railway to take you part of the way down. Fran decided that the souvenir shop was a better bet...

Larger Versions of the Photos: the glacier, marmots