46 years ago today I set out from Malnitz , Austria with two young German Redemptorist priests from our seminary in Gars -am - Inn ( Baveria) ( I was a Redemptorist seminarian) to climb Austria's second highest mountain..... the Hochalmspitze , some 3500 metres straight up. We reached the hut in the pic below sometime late in the afternoon and decided to spend the night there as two weather fronts were approaching from the West and from the North .... and the innkeeper informed us that snow was in the offing.... lots of it !!! Up till then the going had been rather rough but no major problems for young bucks like we were back then......... but the more difficult climb to the peak still lay ahead so we prudently took refuge in the small inn dorm. There were seven other people already in the corner of the shack drinking beer and eating a frugal meal of cheese , Wurst und Brot.. bread. These folks , I would learn later , belonged to the hikers group which circled the middriff of the mountain and had no intentions of matching wits with the obstacles that separated them from the summit of the Hochalmspitze looming high above them.........Anyways they too decided to stay the night rather than run the gauntlet of an off-season alpine snowstorm.......
To make a long story shorter... we told the innkeeper and his wife who we were and what our needs were and took the crawl space way up in the rafters of the warm little hut. Since all the guests were Catholic ... innkeeper and wife also.... we made up our minds that Helmut , the older of my two priest buddies , would say Mass as it was Sunday... the 23rd of July , 1961. That night the three of us rolled out our sleeping bags and as we lay there looking up at the ceiling Bernhardt and I jokingly insisted on helping Helmut prepare the sermon for the following day's Mass. I .. as an outsider ..... still pride myself today that both my companions gave in to my suggestion for a title.. Unserer Herr War Auch ein Bergsteiger... or Our Lord Was Also a Mountain Climber...... since each time He wished to pray and speak with His Father ... He withdrew to a mountain where he could find peace and solitude... etc. We had so much fun that night ..... feeding Helmut with more than enough pious thoughts for his Sunday sermon on the mountain !!.... and laughing our tails off as we composed along ! I shall never forget that night and the following morning ...when we could hardly see out the front windows because of the snow....... we remained shut in that little hut for four days straight until finally ... on the 25 th ... we headed for the top and made it .
P.S. In the Catholic Church Saint Mary Magdellan's feastday falls on July 22nd. Many of these stories that I have been writing about these last two years will hopefully fill in some blanks in my life that I never seem to find the right occasion to talk about whenever my two sons come acalling.... anecdotes from the life of Papa.....Hopefully they'll get a chance to read them some day either before or after I cash in my chips .
Bernhardt , SeanRud , Helmut and Gerhardt Hanke as we come home to monastery plus the three of us having a big meal .
The three mountaineers ... SeanRud , Bernhardt und Helmut with a friend in Malnitz the day we returned to base camp. On the right is Rojacher Hutte where we slept those four days on our way to the summit of Hochalmspitze. Foods and other provisions are lifted here by cable.
Just a black and white pic of a lesser peak , Hohesonnblick , which we crossed .... along the edge..... on our way down !
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