Klettersteig – Scrambles in the Northern Limestone Alps – Europe
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Klettersteig – Scrambles in the Northern Limestone Alps
Guidebook to klettersteig routes (via ferrata) in the Northern Limestone Alps along the Austrian-German border from the Allgauer Alps to Salzburg. Includes the Bavarian pre-Alps, Allgau Alps, Lechtal Alps. Wetterstein. Karwendel, Rofan, Kaisergebirge, Berchtesgaden Alps, Dachstein and Salzkammergut.
Seasons
Mid-June to mid-September, but probably best avoided when snowy high up unless you are appropriately equipped and experienced.Centres
Innsbruck, Garmisch and Füssen in the western part, Kufstein, Salzburg and Berchtesgaden in the east.Difficulty
Treat as mountaineering, sometimes climbing. Klettersteig are broadly equivalent to via ferrata, so you need mountain experience, a good head for heights and the right equipment. A great experience if you have all these.Must See
Amazing routes on big mountains where most climbers wouldn’t go. Dachstein routes and the Zugspitze.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...
