Gerlitzen Hike

Gondola Middle Station

From the gondola station you start your hike southwards towards “Kanzelhöhe“ on hiking path number 4.  After about ten minutes you will reach a fork in the road, where you turn left and follow trail number 34 (Panoramaweg).  You are now on the panorama path near the gondola, looking down on the “Sonnenhotel Zaubek.” You follow this path for about fifteen minutes until you reach a meadow.  If you look up from here you can see the Pöllinger Hut and even catch a glimpse of the stunning Gerlitzen summit.  Now you head east by taking a right into the woods and hike slightly uphill on path number 33, where you will pass several huts.  After 45 minutes you will reach the village of Schönfeld. 

 

After passing Schönfeld the path becomes steeper for a short time and heads north to “Noreia Himmelslatter,” or Jacob’s Ladder.  Be warned that this part of the hike is a bit steeper.  From the Schönfeld settlement to the summit will now take you between 30 and 40 minutes.  Once you have arrived at the summit you follow the course to the west, relatively parallel to “Gerlitzen-Gipfelstrasse.”  You will be on path number 32, going towards “Stifterboden.”  After about thirty minutes you will reach another small village, “Stifterboden.”  At the fork in the center of this small village you follow the road west in the direction of “Steinwenderhütte/Steinerner Tisch” until you reach the next fork in the road.  Here you turn left, southwards on path number 77 which will be a steep path down towards “Steinwenderhütte.”  After about ten minutes of hiking downwards, you will hike on flat ground for the next twenty minutes on path number 41, heading west.  This will take you past a pasture to the Steinwender hut.  The final turn before reaching Steinwender hut is a right, which will lead you up a very short but very steep path to the hut.  From the Steinwender hut, you strike out to the east by taking a right, and hike comfortably for the last sixty minutes on a trail directly back to the gondola middle station.