Up a Big Hill in Kitzbühel

Tuesday 29 January 2002. We are swanning around the Austrian Alps on a Leger Holidays coach tour. We have left a rather solid lake at Zell-am-See behind and are heading for Kitzbühel.

It's a glorious day, if somewhat parky (cold... my editor - that's me aswell - has just told me not to assume everyone knows my northwest English!) We arrive at Kitzbühel and Jock parks the coach in a part of the town we don't remember.

We head off to look for the cable car as we all fancy a look at the ski slopes. First we stop for a bite of lunch at a cafe and then find a cable car that, from the bottom station, seems to go a very long way up. Count us in!

Miss Franny and Sheila ignore any feelings of vertigo as we climb rapidly up the side of the mountain. They are facing backwards to the direction of travel and the mountain we are going up is in shadow.

We keep going up and the town becomes a toy in the distance below us. To the side the view is glorious.

We approach the top and somebody decides we would have to jump out quick because the car wouldn't stop so we all dive out like silly beggars, killing ourselves laughing and setting the car rocking away! There are a couple of shops for skiers and presumably some equipment for hire too. People are sunbathing on the bar terrace. To the right of the photo a tiny fence with just one or two cross bars stands between the level ground and a lo-o-o-ong drop. I wondered why it was so small but when I looked there were another three cross bars under the snow...

Photo for posterity - look folks, we are here! Me with Sheila and Diane. A constant stream of skiers came up and poled away. A couple of snowboarders were trying the gentler slopes. I was quite content to stand and watch.

It does look an exhilarating way of spending an afternoon, though up here at the top you don't see the ones who come to grief halfway down, spread-eagled with their ski tracks one each side of a careless tree...

Here James Bond makes a break for it, whilst an Eastern Bloc border guard chases him. Just to the front of us a snowboarder is tentatively falling down a gentle three-foot high slope towards the shops and bar complex. He slithers to a halt where a passing yeti dusts him off and takes him for lunch...

The view facing away from the bar and shops. The sun flares through clouds of ice crystals. Despite the height and all the snow it feels quite warm.

We watch the skiers for quite a while and then head back towards the cable car for the journey back down. They've done it again! Fran and Sheila get in a car that is just about to disappear throught the barrier and Diane and I have to run and dive in at the last moment! There's a real feeling of regret on starting the journey downwards. This afternoon would be thought the best of the holiday by most people on the coach.

Well, here we are at the bottom again. It cost us €14 (euros) for the round trip, each way taking approx ten minutes. The euro had only been adopted at the begnining of January and there was still a lot of confusion amongst the Austrians and Germans, never mind us Brits!

Return to Austria Winter Holiday 2002 Index

Cable Car to the Hahnenkamm

Friday 15 August 2003. We have travelled independently from Niederau to Kitzbühel by train and rain and before lunching have decided on a bold course of action...

This is the Hahnenkamm Bahn - the station for the cable car up the Hahnenkamm mountain. The obvious thing to do in pouring rain is to try to get above it, right? Mum is strangely reluctant. It turned out she was thinking more of a chair lift than a cable car...

Once inside the tiny cabin she calms down and starts to enjoy the views.

The Hahnenkamm reaches upwards to 1,712 metres (5,617 ft) above sea level. To get a decent photo of our ascent I need to open a window and lean out a bit. Or perhaps I just poked the camera out...

Without resorting to this, the view would have been somewhat different... Somehow I don't think we are going to get above the clouds and rain!

We reach the top, where hundreds of cyclists - with bikes - are waiting to go down again. We realise that some of the cable car pods have hooks on the outside and the bicycles can be hung out to get wet whilst going up or down.

From the summit we can look across Kitzbühel to the Kitzbühellerhorn - another mountain. The Alps are full of them! In winter the Hahnenkamm hosts a race meeting for people daft enough to strap planks to their feet and shove themselves off into the snow. There are both steep downhill and slalom courses to challenge skiers and the internet is full of videos of folks coming to grief on them. Just after the start of the downhill is a drop over which they free fall for 40 metres (100 feet) landing with care not to squish themselves to half their normal height before immediately being confronted by a sharp turn to the left which they enter at some 60 miles per hour.

And that, dear readers, is why I don't strap planks to my feet...

We leave the mountain and the other members of the family leisurely get onto the first available cable car. So leisurely in fact that the pod - which doesn't stop, but just trundles around a semi-circular platform - is about to launch into space again before I just manage to leap aboard at the last moment before it leaves. We get back to Kitzbühel to find that most people have folded their umbrellas and the rain has stopped - or at least, paused. It is now time for a bit of lunch.

After that we decide to squelch our way back to the station to get the train back to Wörgle. We are stopped by the train in question crossing our path. As it's a public holiday the next train isn't running so we have an hour to wait. We decide we might as well walk along to the next station but by some strange quirk of fate we don't reach it as quickly as I thought we should and, turning the map the upside down, I realise we have been going the wrong way... About turn!

Return to Austrian Tyrol 2003 Index