Lienz -> Obertilliach -> Porzehütte – it goes up

11. September 2025

 

 

9,2 km

595 m up

80 m down

3:20 hrs.According to Mapy I had enough time to reach my destination of the day. And – yeah – the weather was indeed dry! That way, Lienz looked a little nicer right away. I continued my journey calmly, taking the train to Tassenbach and from there the bus to Obertilliach. As is often the case in rural areas, the local public transport was fairly empty.

 

 

 

 

 

And in Obertilliach I thought, since I was already so close to the Italian border and wouldn’t have it in the coming days, an espresso in advance would be a good idea. And it was!

 

 

My hunger for cake wasn’t quite strong enough yet. I did have an appetite for it, but the sun was also tempting, so I set off on my way. Here you can see it quite well: the path first went downhill and then followed this valley higher and higher until just below those rock walls.

 

 

In this picture you can already see a bit of the forest that doesn’t look all that great. I forgot to ask about it while I was there, and I can’t quickly find anything on the internet either. But to me the forest seemed to be in poor condition. Yet you usually read about sustainable forestry here. Here are my pictures of it:

 

 

 

 

A quick look back at Obertilliach. It’s a small municipality with 669 inhabitants as of January 1, 2025. On the German Wikipedia, you can find loads of information about the place: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obertilliach.

 

 

Maybe I should have looked around a bit more, but then I felt the urge to head up to the hut. At first it was a rather boring forest road, but after a certain point you could cut across and shorten it. Then I came to a lake. It was lovely, and I lingered on the shore for quite a while before walking all the way around it. There was very little going on there—apart from the cows on one side and some people from the hut who seemed particularly interested in one cow. But I only saw that from a distance..

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then the clouds thickened more and more as I climbed the switchbacks up to the Porze Hütte. From there I could see that Obertilliach down below was still kissed with sunshine.

 

The hut, on the other hand, was already in the shade. It was fairly new, run by a very kind man who managed everything smoothly and was just as welcoming as I had hoped—even though I wasn’t exactly a big spender. I was back to my usual mountain hut routine: one mountaineer’s meal, one or two drinks, and my own breakfast—which, in some huts before, didn’t always seem very welcome. When I got to my room, I thought maybe I’d gotten some kind of “senior bonus” or something: I had booked a dormitory, but it looked more like a shared room with comfortable space for seven wide mattresses. But it turned out: this was indeed the dorm. Unfortunately, though, even with more space, you’re not spared from snoring companions—once again someone sawed away wildly through the night. Maybe just their way of processing stress at the sight of the forest’s condition?
After the last three tours with friends, I was a little anxious about being all alone among lots of people who all seemed to belong together. But already in my room there was a two-meter-tall Dutchman who had taken a year off to recover from burnout. And at dinner I ended up sitting with two couples at one table—one of them very nice, and we had some lovely chats; the other a bit more prim and proper, but still up for a bit of conversation.

 

All day long I ran into very few people; there were no cable cars or anything like that—and in general, this tour seemed pretty good to me.

 

 

 

Although everything was newly built, what I also really liked was that it wasn’t too big, and therefore there was no annoying mass tourism. The next day, I was going to a special, unique hut. One of the couples at dinner had come from there, which made me very curious.

 

But what happened there – that was really incredible!