Nürnberger Hütte

Our fourth day in the Stubai alps, where I had to take a rest day.

Wednesday 27 July – Nürnberger Hütte

I decided to take a rest day because I was feeling worse than yesterday – I think I have a flu or other virus. We packed up and went downstairs for breakfast, and informed the hut warden that we intended to stay an extra night. Thankfully they were able to accommodate, but we had to vacate our room for cleaning.

Very low clouds around the hut this morning which completely obscured the views at times – at best you could see across the valley or along the mountainside but everything higher was completely socked in. 

I accompanied Allan down to the Schuhraum (shoe room) as he headed out for a hike up to a nearby lake. It was warm and quiet down there with a semi-comfortable chair on which to sit, so I dozed for about an hour before they came to clean that room too.

I relocated to the dining room while the staff cleaned the hut. I was feeling so bad I could barely stay awake. A cup of tea and a slice of raspberry cake helped, but soon I was nodding off again. People began arriving from the trail for lunch, and it became impossible to doze any more. At this point I knew I wasn’t going to be able to continue on to the next hut, and would instead need to try to hike down to the valley and then retreat to Innsbruck for a couple days to rest and try to improve my condition for our second route in a different part of the Stubai Alps. I used the hut’s phone to call the remaining three huts on this route and cancel our reservations.

Allan returned from his hike at lunch time. He ate my unopened sandwich from yesterday, and I wasn’t hungry, so I did not eat lunch today. The hut warden assigned us their only dopplezimmer (2-person room), which gave us a private space and much more comfortable beds. I decided to nap while Allan went out to climb the klettersteig (via ferrata).

I slept all afternoon, and then joined Allan in the dining room a few minutes after 6pm. I took a couple of Advil, and felt much better within a half hour. Allan found a table with a pair of Dutch couples, their university-age son, and a solo traveller from Niederösterreich (the state of Lower Austria). Everyone spoke english well, so we all enjoyed discussion about Ukraine, current events, and European history. For dinner I had schweinbrot with kraut and knödel and a dessert of plums (interesting but not my favorite). I was amazed at how much better I was feeling. We learned that the route we had planned on Friday was now impassable anyway due to damage from Monday’s storm (the one we experienced near the Bremer Hütte). We had also heard earlier that mudslides in the valley below blocked bus operations.

We went to bed around 10pm. I noticed in the middle of the night that the sky had cleared – I could see the surrounding peaks and stars.