Dear Readers, when it’s a wet, misty day where visibility is at a premium, we always seem to find somewhere high up so we can gaze out into the clouds and see approximately nothing. And so it was that today we decided to take a trip to the Tiefenbach Glacier, on the second- highest paved road in Europe (2,830 metres at its highest point). The highest, in case you’re interested, is the Veleta, which is a dead end road to Granada in Spain. Hah! This road has numerous hair-pin bends and practically no barriers, so there is a lot of tooth-gritting involved if you’re sitting on the right-hand side.

And look at this tiny chapel! This is the Saint Bernhard Chapel, situated next to the Rettenbach Glacier. When I first visited Obergurgl back in 1997, there was a single-person chair lift that operated above this glacier, and I remember it being a spectacular though terrifying ride. These days, the Rettenbach gondola is open in August, and the Tieffenbach gondola is open in July, so on we went.

St Bernhard Chapel

Rettenbach Glacier

You then travel through the highest mountain tunnel in Europe and emerge onto, well, a car park. With an ancient lift system crossing some exhausted-looking ski slopes.

In the tunnel…..

There are a whole bunch of solar panels (though not much sun around today), a cafe in the round building to the left, and to the right there’s some ice with a blanket over it – there’s a lot of ‘ice duvets’ on the slopes up here. 

The gondolas here are of the old-fashioned kind where it’s easy to brain yourself, as indeed I did on the way back down. They are also the slowest gondolas in the whole of the Oetzal Valley. But it’s all an adventure, so off we pop….

When we’re near the top the wind starts to blow a hooley (as my Scottish pal would say), and there’s a lot of groaning, both from the lift and from me. My husband is much more copacetic. When we get out we can’t see anything below us, and the gondolas just disappear into the mist.

I take a few steps and nearly get blown over, whereas my husband goes out onto the viewing platform, shown below when we here in much warmer conditions in 2023 – Readers, I can’t even see the blooming thing. I wonder if he’ll get blown off and I’ll never see him again.

The viewing platform in better conditions

But somehow he survives, and back down we go, missing the 11.35 bus by exactly 30 seconds. Not that I’m bitter.

Anyhow, a cup of tea in the round hutty thing (called ‘Snow Beach’ in case you’re ever at the Tieffenbach Glacier) and then it’s the midday bus and back down to Solden.

Once we’re down, we hot-foot it off to the Öetzal Bäck in Solden. I had promised a photo of the baked goods, but they are particular about people taking photos of their cakes, so here are two that I sneaked. Highly, highly recommended.

The weather is supposed to improve for our last two days, and so tomorrow, if all goes well, we will be off to the Timmelsjoch Pass (a mere 2474 metres high, pah) and we will walk down to the Sahnestuberl for yet more cake (and probably to apply some Compeeds to our blisters). Wish us luck!