Grossglockner High Alpine Road

Interesting facts

In 1933 road builders near the Hochtor found a Roman bronze statuette of Hercules, evidence that the pass was a trade route long before cars.

The road was a job-creation project of the Great Depression: with Austrian unemployment around 26%, construction employed about 3,200 workers.

Planners in 1930 expected about 120,000 visitors a year, but by 1938 the road already carried 375,000 people in 98,000 vehicles.

Snow clearing in 1936-37 took 350 men about seventy days to shovel 250,000 cubic metres of snow by hand.

Today rotary snow ploughs named after engineer Franz Wallack clear 600,000 to 800,000 cubic metres of snow in about two weeks each spring.

Wallack originally planned a 3-metre gravel road; it was widened to 6 metres and, after 1953, to 7.5 metres with broader hairpins.

The road was first crossed in August 1934, a year before its official opening, and the plan itself dated back to 1924.

The Kaiser-Franz-Josefs-Höhe recalls the visit of Emperor Franz Joseph I and Empress Elisabeth to the Pasterze in 1856.

The Giro d'Italia has finished stages on the road twice: in 1971, won by Pierfranco Vianelli, and in 2011, won by José Rujano.

In 1937 the road was open for only 132 days of the year; by 1963 the season had stretched to 276 days.

Why it is worth it

The Grossglockner High Alpine Road was built to show off the mountains, and it still does it better than almost any road in the Alps. Its 48 kilometres run from Bruck and Fusch in the Salzburg valleys over the main ridge of the Hohe Tauern to Heiligenblut in Carinthia, climbing through 36 hairpin bends from meadows and larch woods into a world of scree, snowfields and ice. The engineer Franz Wallack laid it out; the first charges were fired at Ferleiten on 30 August 1930, and the road opened on 3 August 1935. In its first decades it became one of the great motoring excursions of Europe: by 1963 some 1.3 million visitors a year were crossing the pass.

The route crosses two saddles, the Fuscher Törl at 2,428 metres and the Hochtor at 2,504 metres, the highest point of the through road. From the Fuscher Törl a short spur winds up to the Edelweissspitze at 2,571 metres, a rocky knoll with a panorama of dozens of three-thousand-metre peaks. The stonework is part of the pleasure: parapets, bridges and retaining walls built from local rock follow the curves of the road and make it look grown rather than imposed, and the views change at every bend.

The climax is a side road to the Kaiser-Franz-Josefs-Höhe, a terrace at 2,369 metres directly opposite the Grossglockner, Austria's highest mountain at 3,798 metres. Below it lies the Pasterze, the longest glacier in the Eastern Alps. On a clear morning the pyramid of the Glockner rises above the glacier with an almost diagrammatic perfection. The whole road lies within or beside the Hohe Tauern National Park.

Getting there

The northern end of the road starts near Bruck an der Glocknerstrasse in the Salzburg Pinzgau; Saalfelden am Steinernen Meer, the nearest sizeable town, is about 38 km from the road. Salzburg Airport (SZG) is about 80 km away. Heiligenblut marks the southern end in Carinthia.

From the encyclopaedia

The Grossglockner High Alpine Road is the highest surfaced mountain pass road in Austria. It connects Bruck in the state of Salzburg with Heiligenblut in Carinthia via the Fuscher Törl at 2,428 m (7,966 ft) and the Hochtor Pass at 2,504 m (8,215 ft). The road is named after the Grossglockner, Austria's highest mountain. Built as a scenic route, a toll is charged.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Grossglockner High Alpine Road

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

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From the encyclopaedia