Hiking Rax...

Today I was going to take Gina for a hike to Rax. When we got up in the morning the weather wasn't exactly good. It was really overcast and still wet from last nights rain. But it was supposed to clear up in the morning. So w were still hopeful.
After taking Gina for a quick morning stroll and having a quick bite to eat. We head to Vienna's central station and catch the train Wiener Neustadt. From there we took a local train to Payerbach and the bus to the staation of the Rax gondola. We didn't catch the first gondola. But were taking the second one. With their new ticket system everything took longer than usual. While heading up it started to rain again. Not heavy though. When we got out it was overcast and windy and actually anything but warm. But it had stopped raining. When headed out towards Ottohaus and the temps where around 14 C (55 F). But it was actually a great temperature for hiking. This was until we reached Ottohaus.
There it satrted to rain. But I wasn't going to give up that easily. So I put on my rain gear and we started hiking up Jakobskogel. But with the rain comming down and a the wind blowing with gusts up to 60 km/h (45 miles) you really get the rain hard in your face. Definitely nothing for weenies. Gina wan't particularly fond of the rain either. After we passed Jakoskogel about 1/2 hour after Ottohaus the rain stopped and we got some great views since the wind was driving the clouds over the edge of the mountain plateau. Yes of course we did get wet and dirty at the same time. But on the other hand we did see some mountain goeats very close buy and Gina got quite excited and really
wanted to chase after them. But that was not going to happen. So I let the mountain goeats pass and we continued on our hike at Preinerwandsteig. It's a great hiking trail that takes you all the time along the edge of the mountain plateau.

This was the first time in a very long time that I kept my rain jacket on during the entire hike, since the wind was blowing hard and it was quite chilly actually.
After about 2 hours we reached the "summit" of Preinerwand. After taking some pix and having a little snack we headed down to Neue Seehütte. We didn't stop there. At the intersection I debated about how to continue. The original plan was the hike down Göbel-Kühn Steig. But since it was only 11 am, I figured we could easly hike over to Ludwighaus and down to Preiner Gscheid.
Turns is this would proove to be a very big mistake. Hiking up Trinksteinsattel in the sun and without any breeze was hot and exhausting as usual. Once we had finished the ascend we headed towards Ludwighaus. That only went well for a very short time. There we our way got blocked by a herd of cattle. That usually isn't an issue. Except for that one bull who went after me a couple of times. I yelled a couple of times at him and it seemes that he was going to back off. I had already planned to remove myself from the situation and take an alternate route.

When the bull came back and tried to attack Gina. I protected her with my body and confronted the bull again. Again it looked like as if he were backing down and I slowly started to remove myself, when without any warning he attcked me trampled me down. Good thing that Gina was cowering in a one of the many tiny gullies. So nothing happened to her. I just got trampled really good. But it actually didn't hurt at that time. I yelled again at the bull and threw a few bolders at him. That made him back off for a short time. This gave me time enough to walk straight into a couple of outcroppings of maintain pines. And I know that cattle doesn't walk into them. After that I continued straight into the rocks. And with that we were pretty much out of danger.
I decided to head back down to Neue Seehütte and while hiking down I realized that stepping down was getting hard on harder on my claves, where the bull had trampled me. But we made it slowly down. I did have a beer at Neue Seehütte and Gina got to relax in the shade.
While heading back to the gondola we got to see a chopper ruscue life. Turns out that the had to pull a woman out with the chopper after she had gotten unconcious after having been attacked by the same bull, that Gina and I had been attacked. That was the point when I decided that I would be filing criminal charges against the owner of those animals. But watching a chopper rescue in the mountains is always amazing to watch.
After that we headed back to the gondola and took the gondola back down and headed back home. So this hike didn't quite turn out the way I had planned.