If my memory serves me correctly, I had arrived at the first hut and had been rudely assaulted in the middle of the night by an Austrian gentlemen who expected me to have unconscious control of my adenoids. I awoke, drenched myself in the, still cool, nuzzwasser, and, after a breakfast, set off for the Simony Hutte and then to cross the "Stone Roof" to the Adamek Hutte. Ha Ha Ha. The Simony hut was an hour and a half of steep, but I persevered, admired the glacier, filled up with drinking water, went to the toilet, just in case, and set off balancing on whalebacks of limestone. Here, I was now on the moon, there was very little vegetation, and what there was, was secreted down deep ankle-shattering cracks. At the first scree I met my first man travelling the other way, he was an elderly but spry sixty something, dressed in Loden Green, sporting a Tyroler hat and - an ice axe, "Hope he's going to the glacier." I thought.
After my new standby of, "Hello.I'm English and don't speak any German." in German, he raised one white eyebrow at me, plummetting me back to eleven, and said,
"How much water are you carrying?"
"Umm two litres."
"That should be enough. Gruss Gott."
"Umm yeah, oh Gruss Gott!"
And off he went a wandering along the mountain path, I, however, turned up the slope and continued my weary ascent, before going over the col and starting my painful (in all senses of the word) descent.
A diversion, the squeamish may care to skip this paragraph. Some of you will know that I have problems with my knees, other than the fact that they're too close to the ground. My left knee in particular now has a pocket containing a lump of floating cartilage, as I descend it slides gently in and out from under my patella, pressing on the joint capsule, and clicking back home. It makes me feel sick. Imagine my joy at the prospect of several long, excruciatingly long (I forgot after a long time it hurts, probably friction) downgrades (also in all senses of the word). There I feel sick now.
At the bottom I met a young man coming up, he looked - unhappy.
"I'm English and don't speak any German." I said, in German, in reply to his somewhat fractured question (he was on the way up, remember).
"How - far - Simony - Hut-?" I got the impression that while his English may have been up to the task of constructing the whole sentence, that his lung capacity and soul were not.
"Umm, two, two and a half hours?"
"NO!" scorn and disbelief.
I gestured, "'S'very steep."
"That way also!"
End of conversation, he left in high dudgeon.
I continued, forging my way over the next col where I met young man number two. He was just wet, sweat dripping of his face, and his face? His face was like thunder, he glowered, he scowled, his frown was so low that most of his forehead had disappeared, his body language said, "Talk and I will kill you!"
I wondered what had prompted these last two into such a truculent, and possibly in the case of the latter, murderous state?
I found out.
Over the next col I was faced with the "Stone Roof" that the Adamek Hut was so proud of. This was a couple of miles of karstic limestone (great grip but cuts you to ribbons when it trips you up by holding onto your boots a fraction of a second longer than you think it should), weathered into rolls, ridges and boulders, at points it was like walking over the backs of some of the more extravagant frilled-dinosaurs, there was also the odd twenty metre deep pothole to teeter by. The route (!) was marked with paint splashes and on the higher pinnacles large bullseyes had been painted, I discovered that these were starting points for when you lost the path amidst the jumble of stones. I'll not bother to tell you how I discovered this. It was early afternoon, so that the sun reflected off the white stone and slowly cooked me as I travailed, at times I came across rafts of fossil shells, all of which looked at me, and pointed out that I could have had a beach holiday. As I came over the top of the roof the water ran out so that it was a rather raisin-like Nick that rolled up at the hut.
"Hello. I'm English and only speak a tiny bit of German."
As you can tell I was buoyed by self-confidence at this point, though, I didn't point out that, that was the tiny bit (along with "A beer please?"). Still, my evening was rescued by some medical students from Gratz.
No-one woke me during the night, quite probably because I was failing to get to sleep in case someone woke me up. But when I opened my eyes, I did have a very good view of a magnificent teutonic moustache complete with nicotine staining, sadly this was failing to strain the nicotine laden breath behind it, perhaps that's why I stayed awake.
The morning, and matters scatological. The problem that most mountain huts, refuges, refugios and the like, have, is a lack of water, in Winter everything is frozen, and in Summer it's dry, consequently a lot have now adopted the earth closet. This is a large tube, usually industrial ventilation ducting, that plummets down through the building to a pit somewhere in the basement, at the top there is a hopper full of sand, well actually at the top there's a seat with a hole in it, just above and behind this, there is a hopper full of sand. Using one of these is like going back to childhood as, because of the width of the ducting (possibly something to do with Coriolis Force), the box that surmounts it is large, consequently one's (ok, my) knees stop before the edge of the box so that your (ok ,my) feet are floating some distance off the floor, and everything suddenly seems much bigger. There is also the notion that you are going to fall down the hole. You'll be pleased to know that they dig it out in Winter, when it's comparatively frozen and innocuous.
I set off across the moraine under the ever-decreasing glacier and arrived at a cliff (upward). In Italy and France, if the path is going to make you do something foolhardy, then it's marked on the map so that you can decide whether you want to die today - or not, in Austria, with characteristic Teutonic reserve, it's not. Consequently, in front of me were several bars of steel, that had been hammered into the cliff face, and, starting about halfway up, a steel cable for your fingers to rictus onto before having to mentally prise them off again. It was at this point that I regretted having my water permanently accessable, as I couldn't take off my pack and have a delaying rummage around in it, what I did instead was have a comprehensive swear at all things Alpine with special reference to Austria, and Austrian cartographers in particular. I started, I stopped, I started on the other foot, and adrenalined my way up, it was probably five metres. Once on the top and several metres away from the edge, just in case my boots decided to caterpillar their way back to it, or the cliff face fell off, I took stock, and decided it wasn't too bad. Ten metres further on, there was a plaque to someone who disagreed with me, five metres beyond that, there was another one! Thus psychologically enriched I teetered on over the dragon's back of the ridge.
