Kitzbühel: Großer Rettenstein - Aug 19

1 minute read

We biked twice in Kitzbühel the last year and we had great time there on bike trails. Including, the longest singletrack in Tirol - Fleckalm trail. As we did not feel for cycling on Saturday, we decided to go for a hike to Großer Rettenstein. I remember a great picture taken by Danka while we were on bikes the last year, Großer Rettenstein was in the background.

We used the toll road to get to Hintenbachalm. There is a parking lot and a restaurant nearby (Kasplatzl). Otherwise you can park before the toll road and hike from there. I believe better option would be to use bikes and go even higher than we started (you can climb on bike a bit as there are couple of roads leading up there. It would shorten the total hike distance quite a bit.

We immediately turn to the forest from the parking lot to start ascending fast. We gained over 400 meters within the first half hour. It flattens a bit once you cross the Schöntalbach. The valley opens and Großer Rettenstein summit is visible on the left. As soon as you approach the peak, the trail goes steeply up. It is gravel, soil and rocks. Steps need to be sometimes longer, made us slow down a bit. Some scrambling at the end to reach the summit, and we made it there a bit after 2 hours. Wilder Kaiser, Hohe Tauern visible from the summit. We also were looking around for possibilities to bike and of course, finding the lines for skitouring :-)

The descent was much faster than we expected as we were worried for the scrambling part to be slow. We only met few people on our way back, the trails just for us to our suprise almost entire time.