Today I took a day off from work so that we could head off early to visit the Stubai Glacier. We'd caught glimpses of it driving to and from our accommodation, but it's invisble from where we're staying and for most of the journey up the valley towards it.
The drive to the cable car car park was only 20 minutes or so, but it was already busy when we arrived, both at the cable car itself and at the car parks on the way that were used by hikers. We spent some time in the car park sorting out hiking boots, coats and bags, then headed off to buy our tickets.
We'd seen a few leaflets and read the website for the cable car, but having a few different possible routes and not understanding a great deal of German made it difficult to work out how much we would be paying. Luckily the lady at the ticket desk spoke English and when we explained we wanted to take the cable car up to the ice grotto and walk down, she sorted us out with the cable car tickets for 48E.
The ride up was very smooth. A very different affair to the 8 seater cars we'd been in in Romania, these sat up to 24 and running on three cables instead of one meant it was almost like being in a glass elevator. There is an intermediate station at 2300m (we started at 1600m), but we stayed on until 2900m,the bottom of the glacier. We could have ridden up to 3200m, the 'Top of Tyrol' viewing platform, but we thought our plans for today would be plenty, especially since there was a risk of thunderstorms at about midday (fortunately they never materialised).
At that altitude, and being by a glacier, it was cold, and we were glad we'd dressed up! There was a park and cafe, and the kids spent some time playing in the park while me and James took photos, then we carried on to the ice cave.
We paid a total of 21E at the ticket booth, which randomly included some small packets of sweets for the kids, then went in through an insulated door. It was amazing being inside a glacier, and the visit basically consisted of walking through tunnels along a walkway with a few information stations along the way. The one rule was not to touch the walls, it was very informal and unsupervised, we really enjoyed it (and the temperature of 0 degrees), but it didn't take very long at all.
We returned to the cable car station, and dithered about whether to have hot chocolates there or walk down to the middle station. We could only see hot chocolate with rum on the menu, and it wasn't cheap, so we decided to aim for the middle station, with the added advantage that we would have completed half the walking we needed to do. First though, we discovered that you could walk straight on to the glacier, so we did, past the section that is covered with white fabric (to try to reduce glacial melt) and onto the glacier itself. There was a path leading right up to the top which me, James and Felix would have loved to do, but the younger two were not keen and it didn't seem very sensible without sticks anyway.
Unfortunately, we weren't that sure of the route, despite having studied maps and the available signage. Through luck rather than judgement, we managed the first part of the route ok, but then we ended up travelling down the main service road rather than the much more comfortable and direct footpath. We were heading for the same destination (slowly) but the steep gravel track made for a very difficult decent, and the kids were getting very upset. Lowenna and Jowan both endure rather than enjoy walking, and the level of moaning we had as we took on the final stretch was such that I threatened them with no hot chocolates if we didn't get to the middle station by 1.30pm (it was 12.40pm). This did the trick for Lowenna at least because she took off like a rocket and was down at the middle station five minutes later (the rest of us took another 15 minutes to arrive).
There was a large flock of sheep hanging out by the middle station, and I was a bit concerned at one point as the whole flock gathered up and headed towards me - I must have been looking particularly shepherd-like! They soon dispersed but one stayed with me and it turned out they liked being stroked - I don't think I've ever met such friendly sheep!
We sat down and ate our sandwiches as it was just threatening to rain and we didn't know whether we would get a chance later. Then we headed to the restaurant for the promised hot chocolates, only to discover while standing in the queue that they were cash only and we'd left most of our cash in the car! This was a bit of a disaster, although the place was a bit chaotic, crowded and expensive, so probably not a great loss.
The kids were not happy though, and since even James was suffering from wobbly legs, we did consider him and the kids riding down to the lower station in the cable car. FOMO (fear of missing out!) won the day though, and the route was thankfully a lot clearer, easier and we could see our destination, which helped.
Even the younger two set off with renewed enthusiasm down the steep, winding 'steps' which made for quick, although jolting, walking. Felix disappeared into the distance yet again while we stayed back with the younger two. He missed out because we found wild blueberries and wild raspberries along the path, and they were delicious!
When we got to the lower station, there was nowhere really suitable to get drinks and snacks. We picked up two ice cold bottles of 'Tirola Cola' from the Intersport that was based at the cable car station, to keep us going until we got to a lakeside cafe that we'd passed between the glacier and our accommodation.
We were pleased to find that it was a lovely, family-run, reasonably priced cafe that served everything from sundaes to strudel (and probably a lot of savoury food that we didn't much care about at that point!). James had strudel and hot chocolate, the kids had ice cream sundaes and I had an Aperol cooler, basically a coke float with Aperol instead of coke. The kids played by the lake until teatime, and then we headed home via the supermarket for a relaxing evening.
Published on Thursday 9 August 2018
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