Pt. 4 On the road with Thor and Wolverine

Day 7
23.7.

The Tiefrastenhütte had a great breakfast. It was our last lodge and even though it’s hosts weren’t as open as the others, they were still friendly and amazing cooks. So after fruits with yogurt, hard boiled eggs, buns with jam and coffee we started our day trip to the Eidechsspitze / lizardpeak. Our host said it was a trip „the children did too“. Well I think she meant mountain goat babys.

We however weren’t mountain goats or any kind of animal ment to climb. So again it took us twice the time to get up that „hill“ than the signs said.
But an advice for every hiker: Go on top of one mountain and touch a summit cross / Gipfelkreuz. It is a great experience. There was also a little box with a book in it and we made our little entry 🙂

Sadly I was in a bad mood that day because I slept bad and didn’t see the point of a hike to somewhere and back. It is much more motivating to hike to an other location to sleep and eat. You don’t want to be stuck in the mountains at night. If the trip is just 4 hours long and you are back at the starting point in the end, what’s the point? Still it was nice to be on top of the Alps 🙂

The rest of the day we took a sun bath on the bank of the little lake of the lodge. We jumped in too. And here an IMPORTANT FACT: Don’t swim too far out in an ice cold lake where you can’t stand. I am a good swimmer but it was so freezing that it got really difficult to swim after a view minutes. So stay close to land and don’t stay inside for too long!

Also after that day I looked like a Teletubby! My stomach was tanned and the rest still bone white. GREAT! At least my cousin didn’t look much different.

That evening we met some really interesing people. A couple that was part of an NGO in Nepal which told us a lot of interesing stories and a Bulgarian couple that got lost on the way and needed 3 more additional hours. But when they arrived after night fall they were still relaxed, good tempered and funny just a little hungry. We all admired them for their moral and physical strength.

Day 8
24.7.

Our last day of hiking was cloudy. In the night another thunderstorm had worried the hikers but the day was free of rain. We started early and in a good mood. We were going down today. No hiking up or at least almost no climbing up.
Marie and I chatted and talked about our plans for the future. These were after all our last summer holidays as high school students.
We encountered some more cows and met some other hikers. Two which showed us the way, one who seriously jogged in the mountains (a sport I will never understand) and three sweaty men who worked on improving the trail. My cousin and I were a little ahead of the adults and so we met them first. I greeted the first one friendly. He had blond, longish hair and a blond beard. He looked like Thor from the movie. I went on. I greeted the second. He had brown hair was a view years older than Thor and had the typical wolverine beard. His spiky hair added to the impression I was meeting Wolverine. Well that could have been all coincidence if the third man didn’t look like spiderman’s Uncle Ben from the new Spiderman movies.
After we passed them my cousin and I looked at each other and I asked quietly: „Do you also think that the first one looked like Thor?“ She nodded. „And the second like Wolverine?“ Another nod.
Only Uncle Ben couldn’t be confirmed, she hadn’t watched the movie.

After climbing up to the Little Gate we saw our destination: Mühlwald. A little village next to the one where our car was parked.
We decided the day before to take a different route to avoid the big stones and the steep ascent where we had come down two days ago.

Well in the end it would have been the easier way. Here we had to descent 3 hours in a wood over slipprery pine nerdles. Marie and I used our hiking sticks like skiing poles. We rammed one into the earth, curved around it and then did the same with the second. So in little serpentines we made our way down. It was annoying, long and exhausting! I fell more then once and the trail split up from time to time and left you wondering where to go.

At least the rain waited until we were safely in the car of the hotel owner who picked us up once we reached the bottom.

In the end we were all very happy to have a real shower with fluffy, white towles and a real bed. But before we drove to the city Sand in Taufern and ate the best Italian Pizza I ever ate. The restaurant was brilliant! And after we had an Olga (sparkling whine with raspberry sirup) in a cute deco café.
The people down there are so open. I was suprised how fast they talk with strangers about their business or their life.

The evening was a great end to our hiking trip. But even in the sleepy villages of South Tirol I missed the silence and calm of the mountains. The feeling that it’s just you, no phone reception, no advertisment, no meetings, no school, no TV, just you and what’s been there for thousands of years is something special and the reason for gladly going through a week always being dirty, sweaty, tired, exhausted and amazed.

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