Austria: Kaunertal Glacier
A short detour leads to a long ride
SOMETIMES A HUNCH can pay off. Sometimes, it can all go horribly wrong. Looking across at the mountains rising on my left, I thought: “I bet there’s some brilliant riding up there — and the views must be amazing.” Only one way to find out…
I was in Austria on a group tour with Globebusters. The route down had been good and, while based near Neukirchen for the Triumph-focused Tridays event (now rebranded as ‘Club of Newchurch’) we’d had a couple of great daytrip rides. Now we were going home — with a bit of motorway in the mix to cover ground. But as we headed west along the A12 from Innsbruck my exploring gland started twitching. I managed to bite my cheek as I sailed past the B186 leading to the Timmelsjoch but, when I spotted the exit for Imst, I snapped and put the Tiger’s indicator on.
I didn’t have a particular plan but a few bits of information were bobbling around in the back of my mind. First was that, in a spur valley above Solden, on the way to Timmelsjoch, was the
Ötztal Glacier Road, which I’d visited before. This is the highest paved road in Europe at 1830m above sea level and, even if it is a dead end, it’s a great ride. The second morsel of info was somewhere near me was another glacier road. Not so high, but surely just as good to ride?
From Arzl in Pitztal I headed through tight hills past the villages of Fuchsmoos and Puschlin, on a road so high on the slope of the mountain that the buildings below looked like Lego bricks. I dropped down to Prutz in the valley bottom, where I turned left on a road that headed back into the hills, twisting its way beside a river as steep valley walls rose beside it.
This was promising stuff — a quiet, wellsurfaced and twisty road… not to mention scenic in an innocuous kind of way. But not in a must-ride, detour kind of way. Then the road tightened, ducking into one of those open-sided tunnels you only get in the Alps, getting better and better and… leading to a tollbooth.
The Austrians like their tolls. You need a toll vignette for the motorways but there are extra
tolls for some key bridges and tunnels… and certain passes and biking roads. Like the Timmelsjoch, the Grossglockner and Ötztal. It not only means the road should be well maintained, thanks to the tolls, but also that it should be worth paying for. I took this to be a very good sign, not least because it confirmed that I’d blundered my way to the right place: this was the Kaunertal Glacier Road.
I now know that the toll road is just under 16 miles long and what I didn’t know then was that it includes 29 hairpins. Shortly after the tollbooth I crossed a cattle grid, past a huge statue/rock-with-horns representing the ibex that’s the emblem of Kaunertal. This seemed to be the start of the first stage of the road. This was relaxed riding: trees on either side, gentle turns, nice views, nothing too taxing.
Then a broad 180° turn followed by a tighter trio of hairpins introduced the second stage of the road. After gaining perhaps 100ft of height, a more gentle curve led to the imposing wall of a reservoir. There was a café to the side, with a group of bikes parked outside. I nodded to the riders who waved as I passed but didn’t stop. This section was narrower and quite twisty as it hugged the shore, and if the surface was less perfect than the toll suggested I should expect, the streams crashing down the slope beside the road in a series of dramatic waterfalls more than made up for it.
At the end of the reservoir, another long,