Away from the crowd…into the rest and quietness! After a traffic jam in Zell am See we continue our car drive in the direction of Salzburg. Exit Rauris follows soon: let’s get this party started! A magnificent, breathtaking scenery will envelop more and more, while we drive into the Rauris valley. This valley is known for gold hunting back in the days, and the big eagles that are often spotted. We are curious what we will find out and experience! After we park our car at the end of the valley, we start our 2-day hike. The start looks like the fairytale like scenery of the movie ‘Lord of the Rings’, very green. After 30 minutes of hiking, wild horses are awaiting us. They are grazing at a creek. This creek stems from many waterfalls.
The climb up has started. We are on our way to the hut, where we will stay overnight. The waterfalls, different types of flowers and wonderful smells of herbs make this part of the hike beautiful and full of variety. At the end of the morning we arrive at the hut with a warm welcome. After a short break we continue our hike up to the glacier, and to find gold. This glacier is still very long and thick. This is because it is the north side of the mountain, which is in the shadow most of the time. The melt water is very cold. Unfortunately, the outside temperature is low today, so I won’t go for a dip this time!
We didn’t find any gold today, but have seen many stones with gold traces! No wonder, because from 1880 people worked hard to get as much gold as possible. They even built a village up on this mountain, which is called the Goldberg. We can see the remains of this village! All in all they found about 15000kg of gold during that time!
Dinner tastes great and the beds are nice. Our first day was a good one! After a good and big breakfast we start descending. After a while we leave the waterfalls behind us and walk through a beautiful area with ponds and water streams. After a hike of 5 hours we get back to our car feeling satisfied. We drive home with many wonderful memories!
