Salmhütte -> Glorer Hütte – Fairyrelaxed Feet

5. July 2025

 

 

3,4 km

195 m up

190 m down

1:30 hrs.

 

As Mapy said — and we already knew — it’s an extremely short stage. But you can always extend it with some extra trails around the hut, or just hang out inside if it’s raining, or whatever else you feel like…

 

The morning window view provided some pretty entertaining show: clouds creeping up the valley, dissolving, gathering back again, drifting here and there. But first, a cozy breakfast — and a bit of hut history.

 

The Alpine Club was founded in Austria in 1862. Their goal was to promote mountaineering, hiking, and nature conservation. Back then, due to logistics and pricey accommodations, mountain adventures were mostly reserved for the wealthy. Building simple mountain huts made the mountain experience accessible to a much wider crowd — and hugely boosted mountain tourism. It’s always been, and still is, a balancing act between conservation and nature enjoyment, comfy vs. Spartan comforts, economic realities, and so on. The idea is to offer mountain experiences to lots of people (who hopefully develop a love for nature along the way) — but one has to be careful it doesn’t get out of hand and become too much for nature to handle. Definitely some interesting topics.

 

 

The Salmhütte has quite a long history. Because of the Großglockner, a kind of shelter was already built here back in 1799, since the mountain was just too high for a day trip from the valley. That was actually the very first Alpine hut ever! But it eventually fell into disrepair. Next, in the mid-19th century, they built a sort of cave shelter with a hut attached, but water leaks showed that wasn’t exactly ideal. In 1912, they wanted to build a proper hut, but with World War I kicking off, that didn’t really happen — so the current Salmhütte was finally built in 1929. And in 2017, they added the extension on the right.
Back to that morning: we had time, the clouds were putting on quite a show, and I was hopping around taking way too many photos.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am sorry for all the mountain landscapes — here’s a little flower for a change! There were tons of them and so many different kinds, but I’m just not much of a flower snapper.

 

 

And then we finally tore ourselves away and set off — first heading a bit down the slope.

 

 

 

Lydia made use of the river down below and took a dip. It was cold!

 

 

 

And then it went up again.

 

 

A view back to the hut:

 

 

 

 

 

Soon, the Großglockner Ultra Run was about to take place (more info here: https://www.ultratrail.at/). We’d already seen the first signs for it — and some people out training and checking the route. That’s even crazier than what I saw in Darjeeling! There, it was “only” 65 km with about 3,000 meters of elevation gain, but here it’s 110 km with 6,500 meters of climbing. How do people even do that?! In Darjeeling there were barely any Westerners at the starting line — I’d actually love to know if folks from other continents come to race here. Maybe I’ll look it up afterwards.

 

We, on the other hand, just kept ambling along at a nice leisurely pace. And sometimes we just sat down, took in the scenery, and felt happy. A treat for my feet.

 

 

 

 

When there are animals and lakes I find it even more idyllic.

 

 

 

Just after midday we arrived at the Glorer Hütte. What an atmosphere shift — this one was run entirely by men, except for one woman. There was one guy I didn’t really like, another one was first a bit not so easy to like, but then he opened up and shared a lot of his story, and turned out to be really likeable. Late fifties, a freelancer whose gigs had dried up a bit, gay, and excited to try something completely new. It was his first time working in a mountain hut, and every day he was just happy about the little moments — gazing around, soaking it all in, and simply being up in the mountains.

 

 

We were in the big dormitory, but with a nice special space for two – and no snorers!

 

 

We had plenty of time, and the rain hadn’t shown up yet, so we wandered over to a little ridge. A small group from the Czech Republic and three other people were arriving there too, and you could stroll along the ridge for a bit.

 

 

 

 

 

Then it did start to get darker, so we all headed back to the hut. Parts of the landscape looked a bit like Scotland to me.

 

 

 

 

At the hut Lydia took a nice pic of me.

 

 

And then the rain really set in. We had a little window above our bed, which made it super cozy to just hang out and listen to it. Then it was dinner time and off to bed pretty soon after. Still no chance to test my rain jacket — again!

 

 
Looking at this picture, I remember that I forgot to ask if that was a pipe for the toilets — or what else it might be.

 
The next day was just downhill and then heading home. Would we hike all the way down to the car in the valley, or take a bus to shorten it? Either way, there was something on the way home that happened to us — and I’d never experienced anything like it before!