Mühlviertler ran the Berge-Seen-Trail in 62 hours

2023-10-10 01:11:01

370 kilometers and more than 15,000 meters of altitude: these are the key data of the Mountains and Lakes Trail through the Salzkammergut, which ambitious long-distance hikers complete in 23 daily stages. Gmunden, Bad Ischl, St. Wolfgang, Mondsee, Hallstatt, Gosau: sightseeing included.

Marco Hofstätter from Herzogsdorf (Urfahr-surroundings district) obviously didn’t have that many vacation days left. The endurance athlete didn’t even take a long weekend to do it. The journey began last Thursday at 6 a.m. in Gmunden – and ended there on Saturday at 8:45 p.m. In a hand-timed 62 hours and 45 minutes, Hofstätter circumnavigated the Salzkammergut in record time. There were periods of weakness, but they didn’t last long.

“On the first night I had a real attack of weakness. On the Postalm, at kilometer 130, I had such pain in my limbs that I thought the journey was over again,” he says. Wrong thought. The numerous helping hands that accompanied Hofstätter on his way lifted the Mühlviertel man up again. “The most beautiful section was definitely between Appelhaus and Rinnerhütte. Apart from the forest roads, there is nothing on this path that I could badmouth anyway,” he says.

Hofstätter had friends set up 27 mobile rest areas for his adventure, and he slept in a bus whose trunk was converted into a bed. There were no phases of deep sleep in those three days: “I slept for fifteen minutes twice,” he says. That apparently stimulated the imagination: “At the end I thought the stones on the hiking trail were potatoes and wanted to pick them up,” says Hofstätter. So perhaps not necessarily recommended for imitation.