Grossglockner High Alpine Road

Listen first. Up here the air is thin and cool, even in summer. You might hear the high, sharp whistle of a marmot from the rocks. Then the wind returns, carrying the smell of wet stone and short alpine grass. Below you, a grey ribbon of tarmac turns back and forth across the mountainside, bend after bend, until it disappears into the valley. This is the Grossglockner High Alpine Road, one of the great mountain drives of Europe.

You are near Rauris, in the Austrian state of Salzburg, deep inside the Hohe Tauern range. The Rauris valley sits just to the east of the road's northern approach, a quieter neighbour to the Fusch valley that the road climbs out of. Together these valleys form part of the Hohe Tauern National Park, the largest protected area in the Alps. The road runs south from the Salzburg side, crosses the main ridge, and comes down into Carinthia at the village of Heiligenblut.

The road takes its name from the Grossglockner itself. At about 3,798 metres, it is the highest mountain in Austria. Its summit is a sharp, pointed pyramid of rock and ice, and on clear days it stands above everything around it. Many visitors drive the whole route without being sure which peak is the famous one. Here is a simple clue... look for the steepest, most pointed summit, usually carrying snow even in late summer.

People crossed these mountains long before cars existed. The pass at Hochtor, near the highest point of the modern road, was an old trade route. Merchants and pack animals carried goods such as salt and wine across the ridge for centuries. And here is a surprise — when workers built the road in the 1930s, they found a small Roman bronze figure of Hercules near the pass. It suggests that travellers were already crossing here in Roman times, almost two thousand years ago.

The road you see today was built between 1930 and 1935. The project was led by the engineer Franz Wallack, who planned the route to fit the shape of the mountains. It was built during the Great Depression, when Austria had many people without work. The construction gave jobs to thousands of men. Much of the work was done by hand, with picks, shovels and simple machines, at altitudes where snow can fall in any month.

The road opened in 1935. From the start, it was meant for pleasure as much as transport. Wallack designed it as a scenic road, with viewpoints, car parks and gentle gradients that the cars of that era could manage. That idea still shapes the experience today. The road is not a fast way to cross the Alps. It is a way to slow down, stop often, and look.

The numbers are worth hearing once. The main road runs for roughly 48 kilometres between its two toll stations. It climbs through 36 hairpin bends. At its highest point, near the Hochtor tunnel, it reaches about 2,500 metres above sea level. As you climb, the landscape changes in layers — first forest, then open meadows, then bare rock, scree and snowfields. In a single hour, you pass through zones that would take weeks to cross if you travelled north toward the Arctic.

At the pass called Fuscher Törl, there is a stone memorial to the road workers. Some of them died during construction. It is a quiet place, and many drivers pass without stopping. If you do stop, look at the slopes around you and imagine building a road here without modern machines. Nearby, a short side road climbs to the Edelweissspitze, the highest viewpoint on the route, at around 2,570 metres. That side road is paved with cobblestones, and it is narrow and steep.

The other great stop is Kaiser-Franz-Josefs-Höhe, on a side branch toward the Grossglockner. It is named after the Austrian emperor Franz Joseph, who visited the area in the nineteenth century. From the terrace, you look straight across to the mountain and down onto the Pasterze. This is the longest glacier in Austria. It is a river of ice that flows very slowly down from the snowfields below the summit.

The Pasterze is also a lesson in change. The glacier has been shrinking for well over a century, and the loss has become faster in recent decades. Along the path down toward the ice, small signs mark where the glacier edge stood in earlier years. The distance between those markers is the second surprise for many visitors. Ice that once filled the valley is now far below, grey with rock dust, and smaller every summer.

Keep watching the ground as well as the peaks. The national park protects animals that are easy to see here. Alpine marmots live in burrows in the meadows near the car parks. They often sit upright on rocks and whistle to warn each other. With luck, you may also see ibex, a wild mountain goat with long, curved horns, on the higher cliffs. Golden eagles and bearded vultures, a very large bird of prey, sometimes circle above the valleys.

The weather up here changes quickly, and it is part of the experience. A sunny morning can turn into cloud, wind and even snow by afternoon. Fog can fill a valley in minutes and then lift again just as fast. Because of the deep snow, the road is open only in the warmer months and closes for the winter. Even in summer, bring warm layers. The temperature at the top can be many degrees colder than in Rauris.

Now take one more look around you. The road below you is a human line through a very old landscape. People have crossed this ridge for thousands of years, on foot, with mules, and now in cars and on bicycles. As you drive on, notice how the stone walls along the bends are fitted to the slope, and how the curves follow the shape of the mountain. And listen once more for the marmots... they were here long before the road, and they will still be whistling when you have gone.