Again I was heading out from Vienna's Matzleinsdorfer Platz where I cached the train to Payerbach-Reichenau. From there the bus to the Rax Gondola. Like the last time I missed the first gondola. But this time they made us wait till 8.30 for the next ride. On top of Rax plateau temps were nice between 60's and 70's and that makes for great hiking. I headed out beating the majority of the pack of people. I'm just not a fan hiking in large packs of people. Not my idea of hiking fun. I prefer the solitude of the mountain. Makes for a much more memorable hike ind reconnects you with nature. I did make good time. At Ottohaus I opted to continue on Seeweg. Apparently I remembered wrong. I always thought there was a second option to hike parts of Preiner Wand. Either I remembered wrong or I just missed the intersection. During hiking Seeweg I realized that my knee was acting up. It didn't have any problems on even sections. And hiking upslope wasn't too bad. But hiking downslope really gave me pain in my knee. No idea why. Maybe I didn't warm up enough before heading out or something more serious is wrong with my left knee. Either way I wan't going to let that stand in my way hiking the 20 minutes to summit of Preinerwand. It was an technically easy hike, but having a knee bothering you isn't really helpful. I reached the summit and spent about 20 minutes on the summit. Took pix and video and helped out a few hikers getting a pic at the summit. And from up there I got amazing view of the surrounding montains, of Preiner Wand and of the recent hike down Trinksteinsattel I recently took with Gina.
When hiking down from the summit I saw a several chamois fairly close to the trail. Such experiences are always fun. While hiking down my left knee was even acting more up and starting really to bother me. So I stopped at Neue Seehütte for a Radler and a 20 minute break. At that point it was equally far hiking back to the gondola or hiking down Göbel-Kühn trail to Waxriegelhaus. And of course I opted for the latter. I figured it will get better as time goes on and the trail to Waxriegelhaus really didn't look that steep, at least as far as I could see it. At first I was very right with that assumption. But than the trail starts descending. First not so much but than there are fairly steep sections and that really bothered my left knee. Good thing I never head out without my trekking poles. And the really got some heavy usage. I can only say I love my Black Diamond Trekking Poles. Without them it would have been much, much harder on me. It took some time to figure out the right stepping technique to make my knee hurt
as little as possible. It means that you're actually baking fairly slowly. I was very grateful about every even section on the trail. So I made my way slowly down to Waxriegelhaus. It was supposed to take me about 1 hour, but I made it in a little over 1 1/2 hours. And thats not too bad considering the circumstances.
This entire hike felt very weird. Me hurting and not having my Gina, my hiking buddy with me, just didn't feel right. But I did take a stop at Waxriegelhaus. I ordered a Goulash and a Radler, took a half our break and enjoyed the company on other hikers and enjoyed the view. Shortly before 2 pm I started the descent to Preiner Gscheid. Very quickly it was clear that my knee was still hurting. Especially after exceeding certain grades of steepness. Good thing that there are 2 options. The more direct route and the forest road. I did take the forest road since the grade of the road worked much better for my knee. While hiking the road I was almost pain free. I made it to Preiner Gscheid in a little over the usual time.
And still had about 1 hour to kill before my bus left. Edelweishütte was packed and so I decided to chill in the shade a few large trees relax and have a snack that I had brought with me on the hike. This was actually very relaxing and peaceful. I chatted with a couple of hikers at the bus station. I took the bus from Preiner Gscheid to the strain station from where I headed back to Vienna to a very excited Gina.
While this was supposed to be a training hike it turned into a training hike of a different kind. It really tested out how much determination I have to finish a hike and how much discomfort I can put out of my mind while willingly taking it. It was not exactly a fun hike, but is that going discourage me from hiking...certainly not. It's one of those things only a passionate hiker will understand.
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