Stubai High Trail Section 4 - Hike from the Sulzenau Hut to the Dresdener Hut

We spent the night before this hike at the Sulzenau hut, and woke up early to watch the sunrise over the glacier, which I highly recommend.

From the Sulzenau hut, follow the trail as it rises gradually up the valley floor towards the Sulzenau Ferner Glacier. On the route you'll follow a gushing stream and a powerful waterfall. At the foot of the glacier, you'll find a small glacial lake with floating icebergs.

The next section from the lake rises up and over the Peiljoch saddle. This part of the trail is narrow and steep, and with a lot of loose rocks as you ascend over glacial moraine, you need to be sure footed here. Add in to the mix a lot of curious mountain goats who want to stand on the trails and it's certainly a challenge!

As you rise over the saddle, the first part of the descent is quite challenging. It's steep and rocky and has some quite big drops on either side of the trail. At some points you will find ropes to help you down, but do step carefully. 

After this steep section, the last part of the descent is pretty straight forward as it's mostly over a grassy hillside until you reach the middle station of the cable cars and the Dresdener hut.

Route Variations:

The Stubai High Trail is an 8-day hut to hut hike in the stunning Stubai Valley, linking 8 mountain huts over 100km and 8000m altitude difference. The complete route can be walked in two directions. But it is also possible to hike almost every one of the sections individually, as there are valley descents from each of the mountain huts. Meaning you can do as much, or as little of the trail as you like.