Mercian Mountaineering Club

EDIT: DATE CHANGE

This year's summer holiday will be in the Ötztal Valley, Austria! We've previously hit the hotspots of Chamonix, the Dolomites and the Aosta valley but never (in recent memory) has there been a club trip to Austria. Given that it's one of the major Alpine nations with more outdoor activities than you can shake a stick at it seems time to rectify this.

Activities

There's fantastic trad and sport climbing, an unbelieveable amount of hiking trails, several great looking Via Ferrata (or Klettersteig as we must call it from now...) routes, mountain and road biking and even some Alpine Mountaineering! No excuses not to go

Here's a good UKC article detailing some of the major attractions:

https://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/des ... pital-9870

For Alpinism, try a traverse of Austria's second highest mountain, the Wildspitze: https://fatmap.com/discover/route/austr ... tte/170348

or maybe the Zwölferkogel North Ridge: https://fatmap.com/discover/route/austr ... dge/170242

If you want to rock climb there are hundreds of high quality routes on (Adam, look now) beautiful Granite and (Adam, look away) limestone. Try the Oberried crag with over 150 routes.

For VF it is home to arguably the Tirol's most spectacular VF at the Lehner Waterfall and high alpine Schwärzenkamm. There's also several easier beginner-friendly routes for those who haven't done any Via Ferrata before.

There's too much hiking and MTB to go into so I'll invite you to ask Mr Google

Accommodation

Chalets aren't as abundant as they are in France but there's are some and plenty of pensions and apartments. I will look further into accommodation when we have a rough idea of numbers. In terms of location, Solden is the central hub but there are several other villages such as Oetz which would also be a great base.

Sundries

Obviosuly, the most important reason to visit Austria is to sample the delicious Bavarian Beer and enormo-sausages. I intend to come home at least 30% sauerkraut.

We'd probably have to hire a car or two depending on numbers

Flights would be to Innsbruck which is a major airport and I imagine would have plenty of Birmingham flights.


Please sign up below if you are interested.

Interested:

1. Tom
2. Ruth
3. Zoe
4. Huw
5.Chris K
6 Dan H
7. Adam
8.Simon
9. Louise
10. Stew
11.Vic
12. Inge
13. Ian M
14. Andy
15. Jane

STARTING AGAIN FROM NOW:

I'm still keen - albeit with more expensive flights

I am in!

I’m in!

Me also

Still keen

still keen.

I'm still in.

Still keen. Simon and Louise

Me and Vic please.

Looks like Jet2 are the only Birmingham flights on th saturday-saturday. Times look good - you don't need an alpine start just to get a flight.

I'm also still keen. Might combine it with another trip, so I'll have to figure out if I'm flying to/from Birmingham or not.

There is now a whatsapp group - if you are keen to join let us know.