Glocknerkrone – Tour Introduction

30. June 2025

 

 

When I travelled to France, I wrote an email to all my friends, acquaintances and relatives, telling them what I had planned for the summer (spending time in the Alps) — and that I wouldn’t mind some company on a hut-to-hut tour. And someone actually replied who had both the time and the enthusiasm: Lydia! We quickly found a time slot, and since she didn’t really mind what or where we would be hiking and I didn’t feel like doing much more research, but remembered reading about the Glocknerkrone and had wanted to do it — the plan was quickly set.

I met Lydia in 2017 in Ladakh, or actually a bit earlier in Berlin for a pre-trip meeting. In Ladakh, we had a small women’s travel group, which I was leading.

 

 

Back then, we visited various places, met lots of people and also did a bit of (day) hiking. Afterwards, Lydia came to visit me once and we climbed partway up a mountain (see above), and after that I saw her more often whenever I was in Berlin — sometimes I could even stay at her place for a few nights. With her, you can have great chats, enjoy comfortable silences, and have deeper conversations too.

If you’d like to get to know Lydia a little better — here’s her website: https://lydia-roeder.de/

 

Hut-to-hut hiking is new for her — and I really hope it will be a wonderful experience for her!

I used the time between France and the start of our tour to go hiking in my area. The vegetation and the smells are quite different from France. Somehow it feels more homely. The summit-cross Jesuses also feel familiar — but in a different way. They’re something I’m used to, but here in Bavaria I still feel a bit alienated by this strong visual presence of Christianity.

 

 

Anyway, I thought once again how wonderful it is that there’s such a great abundance of hiking trails here — and that it really doesn’t matter if you walk the same ones more than once. It’s best to start early in the day, when everything is still so quiet, the air is clear and fresh, and it’s a bit cooler. Because — for June, I find it definitely too warm overall. There hasn’t been a day over 30°C yet, but it comes close. So you end up sweating a lot. Earlier I used to find it a bit annoying that you always have to walk through so much forest to reach the rockier heights. By now, I’m really grateful for the shade!

 

 

The Großglockner is about 150 km away from me — or rather, the place it’s all about: Kals am Großglockner. We’ll drive there by car, take a taxi to the starting point, and at the end we’ll return there and drive back home. You could hike all the way around it, but that seems a bit too ambitious to me. But online I found the “Glocknerkrone-Tour”, a route that goes from west to east, south of the Großglockner. It’s supposed to take six days. The problem is: the last hut is currently not open. So for now we’ve booked four huts in advance — and left it open whether we’ll hike to another one at the end, whether the elevation gain will be enough for us, or whether the weather will be too bad. After all these sunny and hot days, thunderstorms and rain are expected. We’ll decide on the spot. But for now, it looks like this:

 

 

This is basically one version of the tour, as offered by Mapy. In the route description, some longer sections are suggested in places. That means there are different route options between the huts (except for the ascent to the first one), so we can decide each day exactly where we want to go. According to Mapy, the elevations looks like this:

 

 

From hut 5, we could also continue further east to Heiligenblut — or to another hut that’s further south. With Mapy, maps.me, and photos of the trail maps that are posted along the way (taking photos of those was my solution back in 2022 when I couldn’t get hold of a hiking map in advance — and honestly, being able to zoom in on the phone photos actually worked even better for me than carrying a full map) we’re well prepared.

Since the previous hike didn’t go exactly as planned already, I’m yet mentally prepared for changes. What still drains me, though, are these necessary advance bookings. Some huts are very popular, and even for this tour there was already a booking bottleneck — some days were already fully booked when I reserved, and of course they can turn people away. I find Nepal and India much more relaxed in that regard. So now we’ll see how things go with the huts we’ve planned — and the open ending!

 

 

So that means Lydia will be arriving later today, tomorrow we’re setting off — and in a week the blog will start, and we’ll both be richer in so many experiences!