plateau - Solo walking in Stumern Alm area
Philip Sargent
Attempt to reach Futility Series mythical potential entrance from below.
Cycled to N.end of Altaussee lake (S.route). This took 1 hour from base camp.
Saw entrance in hillside 30m higher and about 1km on Loser side which might be a wet-weather resurgence.
Track up is very cyclable to a (locked) hut [Stumern Alm, 813m] where it stops & there is a steeply ascending
rough path (signposted to Appelhaus) up the Trisselwand side of the valley. I parked bike.
I decided to go directly up the Loser side: "Oh Yes", I thought, "10-15 minutes
and I'll be past those trees and into the clear grass/rock/scree area". 1 hour later
I was in a rock shelter [wpt C05 in gpslog N 47.660271646 E013.804951357 942m],
still in the trees, and I could now see that the track I should have been on was much higher,
and I also had no easy safe way on up this side of the valley. The dry rock shelter is completely
hidden by trees until you are close to it.
The geology is very promising though - at the hut the big face [Pfenningofen] is well-bedded with a couple of useful-looking faults.
I had got to within 600m horizontally of where I wanted to be to look for entrance, but also 600m too low.
Aborted cycle ride home in Bad Aussee for emergency ice cream.
Philip
PS Nettles! Flies !! aarghhh !!!
PPS The better way to do this approach would be to take a jeep up the correct track (the one that says "No Bicycles")
all the way to the road head at Oberwasser Alm at 1353m, and then traverse round to the right area
above the tree line but below the bunde line.
Departed base camp 06:35, returned 13:05