Ellmauer Halt

September 1, 2025

2342m

Austria

Ellmauer Halt, the highest peak in Kaiser Range is one of the “ultra prominent peaks” in the Tyrolean Alps of northern Austria. This is not a lofty massif from the elevation perspective but is very aesthetic with lots of pointy towers and spires. Fortunately, the highest peak is a non-technical scramble and via ferrata ascent. In the previous day Adam, Erica and I had ascended Birnhorn and camped within a few kilometers from Ellmauer Halt’s trail-head. This was already the 3rd last day of the trip but the exact itinerary was very difficult to decide. I still had 3 “Ultras” to ascend at this point. The weather was problematic that the next day would be downright crappy. The only way to secure success on all of the objectives was to tag both Ellmauer Halt and Cima Dódici in one day, but the driving distance between the two would take 5 hours and neither of them was “no brainer”. I didn’t know if it was feasible but there’s only one way to know, that was to actually give a solid attempt. Needless to say, the earlier we could start the better the situation would be. However, we didn’t manage to set up camp until 10 pm so I only managed to convince Erica and Adam to get up at 4 am. To further complicate things the sleeping was interrupted by a wild cat which we named “Grimming”. I eventually had to unzip the tent and “Grimming” slept through the night mostly on my chest.

Ellmauer Halt and Kaiser Range in the previous evening

Ellmauer Halt via the south route. GPX DL

To make it worse the day was Monday so all of the grocery stores were closed in the previous day. We were forced to make do with McDonald’s food so I only brought two cold burgers for the hike. We did get up at 4 am as planned and started hiking about an hour later. There wasn’t much worth digging as the plan was to take the simplest route and we each downloaded several GPX tracks from peakbagger.com. Adam again, opted to set the pace for the approach to Gruttenhütte and we got there just in time for the dawn horizon. While soaking in the views we made steady progress upwards towards the via ferrata climbing. The start of the route was a series of narrow ledges on a long diagonal leftwards traverse, and some sections were quite exposed (but not difficult).

About an hour into the plodding with the city lights from Ellmau behind

The impressive south face of Ellmauer Halt

Erica leading the way charging into the upper cirque

Looking back towards Reichenspitze on the main Alps divide

Großvenediger the main peak of the Venediger Group

Alpenglow on Kaiserkopf, a subsidiary spire

A zoomed-in view of Großglockner, the highest peak in Austria

Looking back at the valley we drove in from. This is a typical Austrian view.

Another picture of the subsidiary spire of Kaiserkopf

Adam and Erica negotiating the typical terrain on that long ledge traverse

We were then about to scramble up the typical 3rd class terrain

Our first view of Treffauer, a much-bigger subsidiary peak of the massif

We eventually came across a long section of metal ladder bolted to the climber’s right side wall. One could have scrambled around not using the ladder and chain but we thought it was more fun to actually use them. Beyond this stretch the terrain was mostly class 3 scrambling aided by the fixed gears, until the infamous overhanging ladder mentioned in several trip reports. There’s already a bypass route on the climber’s right side but we all opted to take the ladder for the history of it. The term overhanging was slightly exaggerating as the angle was probably only 95 degrees, and the climbing was not difficult. We then scrambled past the upper (abandoned) hut and the summit was quickly attained afterwards. There was still fair amount of exposed scrambling but nothing overly tricky. Overall the quality of this peak exceeded my expectation so this is one of the summits that I would highly recommend.

Erica partway up this metal ridge ladder

Another picture looking sideways towards Treffauer

Summit Panorama from Ellmauer Halt. Click to view large size.

Erica on the true summit of Ellmauer Halt

Looking past Kleine Halt and Gamshalt into distant peaks in Germany

Vordere Kesselschneid boasts just over 600 m prominence to the north

A zoomed-in view towards west with Birkkarspitze being the highest

Looking east towards Birnhorn at center shot

Another picture towards Großvenediger on the main Alps divide

Adam climbing up the last few meters to the true summit of Ellmauer Halt

Erica and I decided to start descending earlier since we were faster and it would be better for me to get some rest before tackling the 5-hour drive into the Italian Dolomites. We chose to down-climb the overhanging ladder for the extra challenge (and fun). We also planned to down-climb the lower set of ladder but somehow made a route-finding error and missed it. To correct the mistake we even had to traverse across some choss (unprotected) and that was not fun. Lower down we took our time exploring Gruttenhütte as we were doing great on time, and I was feeling particularly lazy. But eventually we got up and dashed down to the parking lot. Adam showed up half an hour later and we took off for the long drive ahead. Erica took over for about an hour of driving towards Innsbruck but I did everything else single-handed. The weather was moving in so it was a race against the time. I eventually managed to get us “close enough” to Cima Dódici that both Adam and Erica agreed to give it a shot. I was originally going to tag it rain or shine, day or night but I was happy to have partners to suffer together, at last.