Tyrolean Zugspitze Cable Car

Interesting facts

The building of the original line is the subject of Die Bergbahn, the first play by Ödön von Horváth, written in the late 1920s.

The 1926 cable car did not reach the summit: it stopped at 2,805 metres below the ridge, and its 19-person cabins took at least 16 minutes to climb.

In its early years the line could carry only about 80 passengers an hour, compared with 730 an hour in each direction today.

From the old top station, skiers walked through a tunnel about 700 metres long to reach the glacier plateau of the Zugspitzplatt.

Opening on 5 July 1926, the Tyrolean line beat the Bavarian side in the race to bring the first mechanical lift up the Zugspitze.

The summit itself was only linked in 1964, by a short 250-metre lift from the ridge station to the west summit, which had been blasted lower in 1938.

Before the 1991 rebuild, passengers had to change cabins twice on the way up; the new line runs straight from the valley to the summit.

Building the new line was delayed by 13 months, partly because about 2,000 tonnes of concrete had to be injected into crumbling limestone to anchor the first pylon.

After a fire in the valley station in February 2003 damaged a cabin and the ropes, the line was rebuilt with new equipment and running again by August.

The Wiener Neustädter Hut on the mountainside below is supplied by winch, with goods lowered from the cable car cabins passing overhead.

Why it is worth it

The Zugspitze, the highest mountain in Germany, rises on the border with Austria, and from the Tyrolean side a cable car climbs straight up its western face. The Tiroler Zugspitzbahn starts at Obermoos above Ehrwald at 1,225 metres and rises 1,725 metres over a distance of 3.6 kilometres to the summit station at about 2,950 metres, in a single sweep of about seven minutes. It is a thrilling ride: the cabin swings high over cliffs and scree, and the rock face comes steadily closer until the cabin reaches the summit station.

This was the first cable car on the Zugspitze. It was built by the Leipzig firm Adolf Bleichert & Co. and opened in 1926, an economic project initiated by Hermann Stern, deputy mayor of Reutte. A summit extension opened in 1964, and the whole system was rebuilt in 1991 with two large cabins, each carrying up to 100 people, running on paired track ropes over just three pylons.

At the top, the view opens across the Alps in every direction, with the Ehrwald basin far below. The summit building includes a small exhibition on the history of the Zugspitze cable cars, with a working model of the original 1926 installation.

Getting there

The valley station is at Obermoos above Ehrwald; from Ehrwald railway station a bus runs up to it. Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Germany is about 12 km away, and Telfs in Tyrol about 14 km. The nearest airport is Innsbruck (INN), about 33 km away as the crow flies.

Tyrolean Zugspitze Cable Car

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

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