Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

September 3, 2025

2166m

Villach, Austria

Dobratsch is the highest peak of the large massif to the immediate west of Villach and thereafter boasts over 1200 m prominence. Due to the proximity to civilization this is a very popular objective. A paved but expensive toll road goes all the way up onto the east ridge “plateau” but this is not a “drive-up freebie”. The road does go all the way to near the summit but the last 4+ km is not open to the general public. One must park at the designated lot and walk 1-2 hours to the summit. Erica and I had seriously considered to ignore the “no driving” signs by attempting to drive to the top of this mountain but there were at least several hundred people around. Trespassing in such proximity to the public might not be the smartest idea, so Adam managed to talk us out of doing that.

Earlier in the day we together had bagged Polinik which was the final “Ultra” in this trip. We did do our fair share of trespassing by driving past the (open) gate to Polinikhütte so shaved 500 m elevation gain off the standard route. As a result we were ahead of schedule so I proposed that we should make use of the sunny weather by tagging another prominent peak in the vicinity. Adam had been wanting this Dobratsch throughout the course of this trip and we finally got that perfect oppourtunity to actually tag it. The toll road turned out to be 24 EUR which sort of pissed me off, but there’s no way around this actively manned gate. And as mentioned above we thought about to illegally drive higher but decided to not do that. This was definitely the right call because the road was quite steep, loose and rough. The condition of the road beyond the legal drivable end was questionable for the rental 2WD Yaris anyway.

I was not in a particularly good mood since I was hoping to drive higher, so I more or less did this hike on my own. Erica was too fast for me to catch up so she went ahead, whereas Adam was a few minutes behind me. We all essentially did this hike solo. And because we all did this hike as fast as we humanly could the outing turned out to be shorter than I thought. There was also views accompanying us throughout so the plodding wasn’t too boring. I also did a few notable short-cuts to fasten things but still wasn’t able to catch up to Erica. Nearing the summit I gave her the car key and then tagged the summit on my own. There are two contenders so I made sure to tag both to be 120% sure. I was fairly certain that the one with the church was slightly lower.

Adam showed up a minute or two behind me but I still took off on the descent. I took a few bigger short-cuts since descending the open grass slope was easy and enjoyable. The round trip time was only 1 hour 45 minutes whereas I was originally anticipating 3 hours. There’s a decision to make at this point. We had 5 hours of driving ahead (to Vienna) and we had booked a hotel in the middle of the city. I thought it would be “late evening” by the time we got to the hotel so packing would be miserable and tiring by then. It would be smarter to lay our wet gears and sort out the luggage right now. This was the correct decision as there were way too many shits to sort out, and we easily spent an hour or two here. I don’t know why I was so energetic but I managed to drive us all the way back to Vienna afterwards with only a stop or two for gas, but the day was not finished yet. Before checking in at the hotel Adam and I needed to have an argument with the rental car company since they charged us 50EUR plus some expensive taxes for “excessive dirtiness” of the previous car. The extra driving and the argument as well as finding the agency together took at least 2 hours, and we didn’t manage to get a penny back. That was okay, as our logic was to at least give them a hard time to make them earn their extra charges. I think we did succeed in this part, so moved on. The next morning we all got up at 3 am and flew home. And of course the airline lost all of our checked bags. Mine eventually got home a week later.