Polinik

September 3, 2025

2785m

Obervellach, Austria

Polinik dominates a large area of the Alps to the west of the Austrian city of Villach and therefore boasts over 1500 m prominence making it one of the 44 “ultra-prominent peaks” in the Alps. This is an easier one in the said category with the standard route being a mere “class 2” plod. There’s also a hut about 1/3 of the way up to facilitate the ascent. This was the final (the 29th) ultra bagged in this trip and this was also the last day of this 35-day trip. The weather forecast was looking promisingly for at least the morning so Adam, Erica and I were hoping to get some nice views. We drove to the trail-head in the previous evening and camped at the small parking lot. The weather was terrible that we even had to set up our tents in the rain, but thankfully the rain stopped at midnight. In the morning we noticed the logging gate was open but I wasn’t fully convinced to drive further, as this was the last day of the trip that being locked in upon returning would be disastrous. However, I was also quite tired so shaving 500 m elevation off sounded very promising. So after about 10 minutes of walking Erica and I turned around, drove the rental 2WD up, picked Adam up and then parked at the last switchback beneath the hut. This was definitely illegal but I’m also not the type of rule-abiding person, and who the fuck would care. Of course there’s a chance of messing ourselves up but we liked to be optimistic.

For some reasons I was anticipating a crowded trail but we ended up seeing nobody in the entire outing. This is quite a pleasant surprise. There seem to have a few ways to get started at least according to the Gaia map. We simply followed the few GPX tracks that I had downloaded from peakbagger.com, but this trail was overgrown in some places. The vegetation was wet thank to the copious amount of recent precipitation so our shoes were soaked through. I wouldn’t be surprised if the other trail is the “standard route” in the current era. The entire route basically traverses on the south side of the long and undulating NE Ridge of Polinik until the last 300 m, where the route ascends the NE Face (class 2) onto the NW Ridge. There’s not a lot worth noting about the ascent other than the route being quite “foreshortened”. The summit appeared to be “right there” but was actually quite far away. We also encountered more scrambling moves than anticipated but I liked that. The ascent would otherwise be a boring-ass plod.

Morning alpenglow seen from near the trail-head

Erica plodding through the thinning forest. There’s nothing exciting

Adam plodding up following the marked route

Traversing around this rib required a bit of elevation loss

The morning sun behind the plains around Villach

One of the pointy towers on the long and undulating NE Ridge

That big peak in the background is Ankogel

This is the typical view looking west from the summit

Adam with the snowy Grossglockner in the background

Adam traversing the NW Ridge towards the true summit of Polinik

Another picture of me on the summit of Polinik

I somehow had forgotten to bring a jacket. It was already September and the peak is relatively high for the area, so I was getting cold in no time. Thankfully Adam had brought a spare jacket so we were able to linger on the summit for about 20 minutes. Given that we were able to drive all the way to Polinikhütte (shaving off 500 m elevation gain) I proposed that we must aim to tag a secondary objective namely Dobratsch in the vicinity of Villach. Because of that we quickly wrapped up our stay on the summit and descended the same route. We stopped frequently for raspberries but asides that, we did the descent in more or less a single shot sans taking a break. Due to the concern of being locked in I immediately drove the hell out of here, and thankfully the gate was still open when we exited. We then turned our attention towards Dobratsch but before driving there, I needed to make one more stop for grocery.