Glockner Group

The mountains of the Hohe Tauern are seen at their highest and grandest in the Glockner group. Here, within a relatively small area, is a great world of wild glaciers and mighty peaks of overwhelming splendor. The largest glacier in the eastern Alps, the Pasterze (10km/6.5mi long), lies in a great circle below the sheer walls of the Grossglockner (3,797m/12,458ft), flanked by fissured ice slopes - a scene of grandeur scarcely equaled anywhere else in the whole world of the Alps.

The high mountain world of the Glockner group is easily reached in summer by the Grossglockner Road, a magnificently engineered highway which winds from Bruck (province of Salzburg) through the Fuscher Törl in the Fuscher Tal up to the commanding Edelweissspitze (2,571m/8,435ft), goes over the main ridge of the Central Alps at the Hochtor (2,506m/8,222ft) and then descends to the famous little Carinthian mountain village of Heiligenblut (1,301m/4,269ft; see Grossglockner Road) in the Möll valley.