My rain gear turns out to be inadequate in an important way: my feet get wet. I'm going to have to go back to hiking with proper rain pants, although I think I'll keep the poncho, for the breathability, even if it does tend to whip around a little too much in hurricane force winds :-).
In consequence I found myself faced with a choice: I could either be miserable or I could have fun. I opted for the latter and spent the rest of the day charging ahead and jumping from rock to rock like some demented red-garbed Gollum, then waiting for the others to catch up while exhorting them to greater effort. This had the additional benefit of generating extra heat (metabolic, not interpersonal) that was, in general not entirely dissipated by the time the other two caught up.
The other element of my stay-warm strategy was to eat. We stopped after 2.5 hours at the Mindelheimerhuette (around 9:45) and I ordered a big plate of spaghetti bolognese for second breakfast. Then at around 13:30 at the Obere Widderstein Huette I had a piping hot Germknoedel with Mohn and Butter for lunch. I may not have lost much weight today, but my chill was certainly lessened compared to what it would have otherwise been!
Otherwise there isn't much to report about the hike: there was nothing much to see, because we were surrounded by clouds, other than multitudes of Molche (salamanders). Russ theorized that they were Sally's mini-ones gathering for a mass attack upon me. The necessary million to one numerical advantage was however not achieved.
Schroecken seems to be a somewhat godforsaken place, much busier in the winter, apparently, and consisting of a church and a few houses and hotels clustered together under narrow set steep glowering mountains. Our hotel is practically empty, but it has one great asset: the daughter of the house runs the kitchen and she seems to be a gifted cook. Traditional fare, but mmmm.. very well done.
Tomorrow it is supposed to snow down to 1600m and since we will be going over the 1850m Schadonapass to Buchboden, we'll probably start in the rain, switch to snow, and then have rain again at the end of the day. What happened to summer?
For those who are cross-referencing these blogposts with the website, I'll note that we are doing the shorter option tomorrow: a super-long day in these weather conditions seemed guaranteed to provoke a mutiny :-).
Until tomorrow (later for you since I have no email / Net access).
