Klettersteig – Scrambles in the Northern Limestone Alps

Protected climbing paths similar to Via Ferrata. The Northern Limestone Alps run along the Austrian-German border from the Allgäu Alps in the west to Salzburg in the east. Covers routes in the Bavarian pre-Alps, Allgäu Alps, Lechtal Alps, Wetterstein, Karwendel, Rofan, Kaisergebirge, Berchtesgaden Alps, Dachstein and Salzkammergut.

Even before the turn of the century, when the opening up of the Eastern Alps to tourists was completed and the number of mountaineers increased by leaps and bounds, a start was made on reducing the difficulty of specific hard sections of popular climbs by means of wire ropes and iron rungs. The first protection in the gap between the summits of Grossglockner (1869!), the Heilbron Way in the Allgau (1899) and the Eggersteig in the Wilder Kaiser (1903) originated thus. The advance into acknowledged climbing-grounds followed, with the building of the Pössnecker Path on the west flank of the Sella. After the First World War, military routes with fixtures, such as the Alpini Way in the Sexten Dolomites, were also put at the service of the mountaineer.

However the real development of the climbing routes did not begin until the thirties, when the S.A.T (Societá Alpinistica Trentina), an independent mountaineering club from Trent, together with the C.A.I (Club Alpino Italiano), shortened and made easier the time-consuming approaches to popular climbing routes in the Brenta, by installing artificial aids...