With me adopting Gina I knew I had to pick a hiking trail. On the one hand it's something I've really been missing in past decade. At first my ex wasn't exactly to motivate to go on a long distance hike and then when I moved back to Austria Daisy was just getting too old to take her on a long distance hike. But with Gina being 3 years old, so basically a young dog and with tons of energy picking a long distance trail seemed to be the perfect choice. It certainly will give her the experience to be a real working dog and it comes close what dogs are meant to do...it's to travel on foot with their pack.
There are about 80 long distance hiking trails I know of in Austria. But I took only 3 into serious consideration. Most of the others are located in western Austria and some in southern Austria. So that's not exactly very practicable when you're going to start out with day hikes and hiking weekends. So here are the 3 trails that were left.
The 02 or Trans-Alpine. It's a hiking trail about 900 miles and goes from Vienna through Austria until it reaches Austria's border with Germany and Switzerland. While I would love to do that trail, it has a lot of very rugged and exposed terrain and I'm not sure it would be the best pick to take Gina on her first long distance hike. For that trail I will have to do some hiking in the mountains with her first. So I pretty much discarded that trail for now.
So I was left with the following trails:
The 05 or North-South. I absolutely would love to go on that trail. It's something Gina definitely should be able to handle. The terrain is way less rugged and it takes over 200 miles of hiking before you actually reach the mountains. This trails goes from Austria's border with the Czech Republic to the border with Italy. Downside of this trail is that the part of Austria's norther border is not exactly easy to reach by public transportation. The best way to do the most northern part is to take a week off and hike it. But in the middle of winter that's just not an option. Too much snow and too much damage from the past couple of winter storms.
The 04 or Voraplen. This trail starts in Vienna and runs west to Austria's border with Bavaria. And it even has the added option that you can continue on the Maximiliam Trail trough southern Bavaria to Austria's border with Switzerland. The Voralpen is a way better choice. Much easier to reach with with public transportation for day hikes and hiking weekends. And of course it's not really rugged especially the parts in Vienna and Lower Austria. And I think that's really a good trail to start Gina on a long distance hiking trail and see how things work with her. You pretty much have no winter limitation, since you can hike most parts in Vienna and Lower Austria year round.
So in the end I went with the Voralpen long distance hiking trail. And I actually plan to start out with Gina in Mid-February always depending on the weather and snow pack. It's really exciting since I get to pick some new hiking gear and also a doggy back pack for Gina. As I said in the beginning we're going to start out with day hikes and hiking weekends. But down the road the idea is to take a week or 2 weeks off and do real back country hiking. And that means carrying all the stuff you need camping out in nature in tent and only occasionally staying in town in a motel. It's something I'm really looking forward to and it will be great experience for Gina as well. And of course it will give me the choice to take great pix and great video of this endeavor.
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