The hotel didn't come with breakfast, but was fortunately right across the street from a Spar that opened early, so Arturo and I went to the Spar and bought breakfast, and we all gathered in Arturo and Mark's room to eat. Having a kitchen meant we could fry eggs, make coffee, and have a filling breakfast after yesterday's efforts.
In the past, I'd always ridden from Wald im Pinzgau up Old Gerlos road rather than visit the Krimml waterfall. But given that the Krimml waterfall was a centerpiece of the Tauern National Park, I decided that we should place it on the visit list, and Arturo agreed. The "new" Gerlos pass road was also a toll road, and my experience with toll roads is that meant that traffic would be manageable even if it wasn't light. Our target for the day was set for Mayrhofen, where we wanted to do more hiking. Stephan said he was feeling the strain of so many riding days in a row, and we clearly needed a rest day to dry out our clothing as well, as nothing had dried fully overnight.
We rode down to the campground to dropped our bags at the RV. Then we rode down to the Krimml waterfall. Crossing a bridge, I found what looked like a gorgeous place, but it turned out to be the waterfall therapy location, and closed to visitors from 10:00am onwards. A placard at the location told us that the therapy sessions would go on for weeks.
Turning back, we found the actual location, where we bought tickets and did the hike up to various viewpoints along the waterfall as well as down below where we could enjoy our shower. The waterfalls themselves weren't very impressive, but it was definitely worth a visit. I can see why Jobst wouldn't bother with the waterfalls on subsequent visits though!
By the time we were done with the hiking it was lunch time, so we ate lunch at the waterfall cafe. It wasn't cheap, but it wasn't outrageous either. After that, it was time to bike! We rode back out to the main road and started climbing the Gerlos road. The road is a far cry from the Old Gerlos road with its 14-18% grades, but instead granted a steady 6-8% grade, working its way around the hill, granting us better and better views of the waterfalls as we rode. My front tire felt soft, so I had to stop to put air in the tires.
It being the afternoon, once we got out of the tree cover it got warm rapidly and Boen and I just poured power into the pedals and just got the climb over with. At the summit, there was a huge toll terminal, but bikes were free and so were the bathrooms! So we made use of the bathrooms, filled up our water bottles, and then walked over to the viewing platform to wait for the others to show up. Apparently we were not the only ones to have felt the impact of the afternoon heat, as the others slowly made their way to where we were, with Bowen bringing up the rear.
When we had all eaten our snacks, we started riding down. Not having ridden this road before, I had no intel to provide the others. The road quickly intersected with the old Gerlos road intersection with a descent, and then we were at the familiar Gerlos Stauseewhere we stopped for an ice cream. There were views of the reservoir (Speicher Durlassboden) as well as goats for the kids to feed and play with. We probably spent too much time there, but it was a short day. And then there was a short climb followed by a descent to the town of Gerlos itself. We saw cable cars and what looked like a very wealthy town, and in the future it might be a better place to stop than Mayrhofen..There was a strong headwind through town, so we had to pedal.
Past Gerlos the road once again took a big dive and the headwind was no longer an issue. The descent finally terminated in a series of hairpin turns which dropped us into Zell am Ziller. Stephan was particularly impressed. "I'd driven this in the past, but had no idea that the road felt this good on the bike! And it's not even 3 hours from Munich!" He was moving to Munich in August and this trip had affirmed that the decision was going to be a good one for cycling. In times past, we'd just ridden down towards Jenbach from there, but this time we went up the river towards Mayrhofen. Stephan's dad had found a campground in Laubichi, and I'd identified the Black Eagle Luxury Apartments as being reasonably priced and reasonably close to town.
The river bike path wasn't hard to find, and once we got on it, it switched between gravel and pavement. Since it was just a 6km ride we didn't bother looking for alternatives and just rode along until we found the campground. The campground entrance was surprisingly hard to find, and eventually we just got bags handed over to us over the fence while I struggled to do electronic registration for the apartments on a tiny smartphone screen. The apartments turned out to be one of those zero-contact places, and we would only get entry codes after registering all the guests AND paying the guest tax.
Arriving in Mayrhofen, we found to our dismay that the apartments were right next to the main road. Fortunately, there was a well rated Smashburger place next door, so after parking our bikes and moving into the entirely adequate hotel (no AC though!) we could just walk next door and have dinner. Over dinner, I looked at our schedule and realized that we were ahead of schedule. I had originally intended to arrive in Mayrhofen on June 26th, but we'd somehow made it here on June 24th. That gave us another 6 days!
Arturo had found a panoramic hike using the cable car for the next day, and we were exhausted so after dinner we did laundry, hung up all the clothing, and went to bed, leaving tomorrow's choices till tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment