Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

August 27, 2025

2941m

Bischofshofen, Austria

Hochkönig is one of the taller mountains in the Northern Limestone Alps in Austria and subsequently boasts over 2000 m prominence. There are numerous via ferrata routes on the south wall but the easiest is Grade D. This was unfortunate because Erica and I were somewhat more interested in a harder variation than the long slog via the standard route, but Grade D was too much for us. This might be a good news for Adam because he surely wouldn’t be keen on a harder-than-necessary climb, so the three of us eventually agreed on taking the normal route for this one.

In the previous day Adam and I drove about 4 hours into Austria after completing Antelao in the Dolomites and our plan was to pick Erica up from the train station in Bischofshofen. Erica’s connection was late by an hour so we didn’t get together until 9 pm. This meant we wouldn’t have time to search for that ideal camping spot. I figured there wouldn’t have rangers checking (and ticketing) illegal campers at 10 pm so we should simply drive to the very trail-head and pitch the tents in the middle of the parking lot. I was hoping to find some quiet and obscured pull-outs on the way there but to no avail. The trail-head was not free such that we had to pull a parking ticket upon entering. The parked hours were metered so we essentially had to “pay” for spending the night there, but that’s okay. There were at least 10 camper vans in the lot, which was good because that suggested the lack of enforcement in this part of the country. The bad news for us was the abundant cars coming in and out even at midnight. We couldn’t find a quiet corner for privacy so needless to say, we didn’t get much sleep at all. I was doing fine but Erica and Adam were complaining.

Due to the concern of afternoon thunderstorms we opted to get up at around sunrise and start plodding at around 7 am. There were fair amount of hikers arriving and starting before us so we more or less had to wake up before the alarms actually went off. This was a long route with about 20 km distance with over half of them in the alpine terrain. There’s a trail on the Gaia map and this trail is indeed used regularly but this is mostly a “marked route” with lots of micro-terrain and rock hopping. We still did it in a timely manner but the work load exceeded my expectation. In any case Adam opted for a head start and he was still pushing the pace quite hard, so it took Erica and I at least half an hour to catch him up and I was maxing out my uphill pace. By this point we had entered the main valley heading towards a distant tower called Torsäule. To my surprise this imposing tower is non-technical and we debated for a few hours whether or not we should tag it on the return. It unfortunately would add 250 m extra elevation gain, so sanity won in the end. Hochkönig was long enough of an outing such that we would not be doing bonus peaks on this day.

The route traversed underneath the south wall of Torsäule and by this point we were officially in the alpine. The route was still well marked with the ref/white pained flags but we started to encounter micro sections of up-and-downs and scrambling. The micro-terrain was especially annoying on the stretch traversing across the north slopes of Großer Bratschenkopf. We did at least an extra 100 m elevation gain due to those descents and some of the descents were even equipped with ladders, chains and pitons so the terrain was not that easy after all. The weather was also not looking too promisingly with dark clouds to the north, but I caught some cell receptions and checked the weather updates. The forecast was still calling for “mostly sunny” and there’s a fancy hut/restaurant on the summit, so we wouldn’t worry much. With perseverance we made our way to the ladder climbing underneath the summit hut, and got to the top in less than 4 hours. We weren’t planning to spend a lot of time in the hut but the comfort and the warmth was too hard to pass. We eventually stayed for almost 2 hours in the restaurant taking in the European experience. The food was surprisingly not ridiculously pricey so we all ordered something.

By the time we eventually decided to head down the weather had improved such that the winds had stopped and the sun had come out. We debated again whether we should attempt that bonus tower but opted for sanity again. There are enough “bonus peaks” on this plateau to keep us busy for more than a day, so let’s forget about them for now. There’s not much worth noting about the descent but this was such a long slog. My feet never liked the long and monotonous plodding so this peak really worn me out. The round trip time was 6 hours 13 minutes sans the time spent in the hut. Over the past few days Adam and I had been trying to connect with James Barlow and the plan had finally been made to ascend Grimming together on the following day.