Sunday 22 August 2010

Climbing Mt Mirnock

August 20th

Today we climbed Mt Mirnock, which stands at 2116ft above sea level and towers above the Millstatter See. We started the climb at Glanz which was pretty high to begin with and climbed for about 2.5 hours up to the peak. On the way we passed some more funky fungus, as well as alpine strawberries and raspberries, which we had to try. The way up was through woodland with mountain streams cascading down occasionally. This was really tasty to drink and we regularly filled out water bottles wherever we found one. The weather was glorious and this made it slightly harder work, but it was absolutely worth it as the views from the peak were incredible. There were some  great places to sit and rest on the way up including these purpose-built chairs and sun loungers near the peak. it was fun to look down at the houses below, and Nailz was not afraid of getting quite close to the edge. In fact Nailz was in bullish mood as he growled at everything in sight, from intimidatingly large horses to the cows that roam around the hillsides.
Mount Mirnock is known as the Mystic Mount by the locals as the peak is crossed by two "energy" or geomantic lines, the Kloster and the Kult lines. Locals say it is possible to feel the energy in various sensations such as heat, cold, tingling etc. I felt a strange sensation in my stomach which only abated after we had passed the peak and had lunch.
It took slightly longer to get down, as I was knackered by now, and we did go a different, and slightly longer way back down. It was nice to view to the lake we had scuba-dived the day before from such a great height, and houses looked tiny.

We finished with a drink at Gasthouse Klammer before we headed away from Austria and, briefly, into Italy to a town called Tarvisio which is where we bedded down for the night.

Click here for our photostream (flickr)

Click here for our route (google maps)

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