Alpine Spring Tour, Austria

Another year, and once more off to the alps for some Ski touring ... this time Bryon and I were heading for the west end of Austria, an area called Vorarlberg. We had an "apartment" in Schruns under one of the cable cars.
Bryon picked me up at before lunchtime, and we squeezed into his C-Max, and headed off to Calais.

The arrival at Dover was slightly held up by the trucks stacking on the Folkstone to Dover road, and a 40 mph limit.
At the docks we eased through with very little queues, but found out why all the stacking .. the ferries were delayed by the strong wind in the channel ...  we were originally on the 15:40 sailing, but were brought forward to the 14:05 which actually left at 17:20  ...  90 mins late.
We arrived at the F1 in Challons around 10:30 pm, and were soon fast asleep.

The next day we were up around 8 and after a minimalist breakfast, we headed off following the "idiot box", which instead of heading for Switzerland took us to Strasburg and down through the back forest in Germany. Picking up a motorway "carnet" at the border service station we headed down the Montafon valley.

We arrived at the "apartment" - haus Tisch ..  not easy to see the drive, but we headed up and parked outside what would be our room, and tried to find the owner.
After wandering around the house, we found her and soon installed. More like a hotel room, than an apartment, but an all important kitchen area.

Around 4 and feeling hungry, it was time to go an get some food, we stopped off at the Lidl for some essentials - milk and ham, and then we went up the valley searching for dinner.  At the end of the valley the road was closed before heading up to Bierlehole. we had seen a few restaurants on the way up, but never saw them on the way down, however back in Tshuguns we found a Pizza restaurant that we would revisit several times (Pizzeria Casa Mia).

After dinner, the locals had just lit a beacon on the local park .. apparently to scare the witches away for spring.  It seemed the thing was to build a bonfire around a tall tree, with firewood blats, and a witch dummy on top and the last couple of meters of tree branches. Somewhere there is also one large banger firework.
On the surrounding hills were another 2 or 3 similar events.

Back at the apartment we found a notice on the local festival practice. then we saw they lit the one next to the valley station for the cable car, and we could watch from the window.
Tomorrow's forecast was not great but we would see in the morning and decide from there.

Trip Time Line

	|
	|	Arrive Schruns
Montafon	|
	|	Wannakopf
Vermunt Stausee	|
	|	Changeover Day
Snow Day	|
	|	Lindauer Hutte
Heinrich Heuter Hutte	|
	|	Snow Day 2
Gargellen	|
	|	Retreat