May 13th. 2012.

We woke up to an other rainy cold day . Had home made breakfast again and packed up. We left our favorite hotel and headed toward Hallstatt.

Hallstatt is a beautiful town in between the amazing alpine mountains next to a sweet little glacierlake. Most of us thought that it could be a perfect retirement place.

"Hallstatt is a tiny village clinging to a minuscule patch of Earth between the beautiful alpine peaks  and a lake, whose image graces many  travel poster and guidebook cover. Easily one of the most photogenic spots in all of Europe, Hallstatt is also one of the oldest settlements in this part of the Continent.

Hall is an ancient Celtic word for salt. The early Celts were mining the white gold here as far back as 1000 BC, long before they migrated west to France and Britain. The late Bronze and early Iron ages (900-500 BC) are in fact known as the Hallstatt Era after the advanced civilization that once flourished here. Numerous artifacts from that epoch have been unearthed and are displayed in the local museum.

With all it has to offer, Hallstatt has become a very popular weekend destination among the Austrians themselves.

This  Hallstatt-Dachstein Salzkammergut area has been added to the UNESCO World Heritage List with the following inscription: "Human activity in the magnificent natural landscape of the Salzkammergut began in prehistoric times, with the salt deposits being exploited as early as the 2nd millennium BC.

Considered by some to be one of the most beautiful places on earth, Hallstatt is sometimes called "the pearl of Austria". "

We were pretty sad to live Hallstatt, but we had to get to the highest peak of Austria, the Grossglockner.

"At 3,798m the Grossglockner is not only the highest mountain in Austria, it also counts among the highest peaks in the Alps.The mountains have always been considered dangerous by people. Difficult weather conditions and the lack of surfaced trails made a crossing unthinkable. Nevertheless, there are ancient traces that prove the daring spirit of the people. Such finds as pre-Celtic bronze knives, Celtic gold jewellery, a Roman Hercules statue, medieval pack-animal bridles and the chains of galley slaves from the 17th century are witness to the crossing of the Hochkar almost 4,000 years ago. Until the highpoint of trade in the 17th century, after the Brenner and the Radstadt Tauern, the Hochtor was the third most important trade route carrying almost ten per cent of the trade goods over the eastern Alps. However, not only danger was found in the mountains, but also fascination. The first ascent of Mont Blanc was a tremendous sensation and also brought forth brave men here at home. But only the second Glockner expedition in 1800 led to success. Victory and failure also accompanied other expeditions. The Pallavicini Gully was named after Margrave Alfred Pallavicini, who died on the Glockner in 1886.

With the building of the Grossglockner High Alpine Road, the majestic peak acquired a new dimension. As a popular excursion destination it is the epitome of an impressive natural experience for many people: size and power can be felt here, one is subject to the fascination of the eternal ice and the elemental force of nature(http://www.grossglockner.com/grossglockner/)."

As we were driving up on the "Grossglockner Hochalpenstrasse", we were more and more astounded by the beauty of the Alps. The splendid view we have just heard about before.

"The Alps consist of parts of the European Plate, a former Jurassic to Lower Cretaceous ocean floor, and the Adria Plate as part of the African Plate. A complicated pattern of overthrusted nappes characterizes the tectonic style. As a general rule, tectonically higher nappes originate further south. If the pile of nappes were hypothetically rolled out, the result would be 4 main former facial areas—the Helvetic, Penninic, Eastern, and Southern Alpine  Additionally, there are the autochthonous to parautochthonous, prealpidic crystalline Helvetic central massifs. Reconstruction of the tectonic evolution resulted in a compression of the former ocean (Tethys) in the order of 500–800 km or even more . During the collision of the African Plate with the European continent, the western Alps were more heavily compressed than the eastern Alps. This had several consequences: The eastern Alps have the greatest diameter, whereas the highest peaks occur in the western Alps. Eastern Alpine nappes have been almost completely eroded in the western Alps.

Today, the western Alps of Switzerland and France are mainly characterized by Helvetic and Penninic nappes, which in the eastern Alps are only visible in the very northern part. The sediments of the Helvetic nappes were deposited on the European shelf during the Mesozoic and the Lower Tertiary. Therefore, limestones predominate, forming many famous peaks in the Alps. In the eastern Alps, Penninic nappes are extensively covered by Eastern Alpine units. There, Penninic units appear only occasionally in tectonic windows. The largest of these is the Tauern Window, which covers an area approximately 30 km × 160 km Schists and ophiolites (metamorphic remnants of the former oceanic crust) are typical rocks in the central part of the former Penninic Ocean. They characterize the suture between the African and European Plates.

http://www.bioone.org/bioone/?request=get-document&issn=0276-4741&volume=021&issue=04&page=0340

Pleistocene glaciation of the Alps, based on Glückert (1987) and Lister et al (1998). (Map by Andreas Brodbeck)

On the road to the glacier

The weather was not very nice to us.

This is the main glacier (Pasterze glacier) of the Grossglockner.

Because of the weather we did not try to go dawn to the glacier. There was absolutely nobody on the path. After the Werfen experience, Dr. Anna decided not to go. So we had a leisure lunch at the restaurant, walked around and got back to the car and started our long drive to Baden-Baden.

We spent the night in the same hotel as the first night.