Austrian Alps



Dana, me and Brinton-Untersberg, Austria

 Brinton, Dana and I woke up in Salzburg with no plans. Dana pushed pretty hard for the Sound of Music Tour, but luckily it ended up being a bit too expensive. We looked at some of the advertised options on the back of the free map from the tourist office and settled on taking a cable car up into a mountain in Unterberg, a neighboring town.

Like my mother and grandfather, I am sensibly cautious about heights. My sister and grandmother would each call this "scared of heights." I was a linguistics major for a semester, so I think I would know what it's called. This past summer, I took a cable car up Jay Peak in Vermont with my family, elevation 1176m, and did great (in comparison to my dog and my mother), so I was pretty sure I'd be all good.



Clouds caught on one side of the mountain



It wasn't until I was in the cable car that I really realized that these were the damn Austrian Alps and we were headed for a 1972m peak. About 5 minutes into the cable car ride, we reached what I thought was the end of the cable line. I would have been happy to get off there because it was plenty high and would probably get some cool pictures. I was also slightly concerned that we were in such thick clouds that we couldn't see the cable even 5 feet ahead of us. So much for nice views or sensibility.

Five minutes later a second peak appeared and I was pleased when the car started to slow down and we were able to get off.  On the Salzburg side, the views were very impressive and the skyline was still dominated by the Salzburg fortress miles away. On the opposite side, we couldn't see much because of the thick clouds.

After a quick hike to the highest point, we decided to hike down the opposite side to get to the famous ice caves. It was an impressive view once we got out of the clouds. By the time we got to the ice cave, we decided that if we took the 45 minute tour, we would have been cutting it really close to make the last cable car back down the mountian. As impressed as we were with the views and terrain, we were fairly certain that we didn't want to sleep in the Alps.