Trekking Austria

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!!!! :) I am celebrating your birthday by going out for some ice cream in honor of you!

Today was amazing. It was our first day off since coming here and we got a group together to play ultimate frisbee and hung out around campus playing card games watching the rain. It has been SUPER rainy here... and we jumped in the frigid river, it reminded me of Yosemite and brought a little piece of home here.

Last night we were woken up around midnight to yelling in the dorms alerting us that we were supposed to go to the bistro. After we all met in the bistro we were told we couldn't talk until the next morning after breakfast and that we were to go and get our rope, hiking boots and flashlights and meet in the lecture hall. After hearing about the history of Austria during the 1600's and how people used to have to smuggle Bibles we were told to get into our groups, tie ourselves to each other and go for a night hike. We hiked for about 2 hours and got back to Taurenhof at 3AM and had to sleep outside in our tents. It was crazy! But lots of fun...

Yesterday, the instructors here wanted us all to experience the various types of terrain that we will be backpacking on, so we packed lunches and took a bus up to the base of the Dachstein mountain range. We then ventured off in the rain straight up a mountain until we were at the base of where you would have to rockclimb with a rock field below. We were then instructed to run down the rock field to the bottom of the mountain (at this I was thinking "we did all of that hiking just to run down!?!?) But it was a very fun experience, one hard to explain, but I will post pics. What made it even more fun is that we were in the clouds so you couldn't see the bottom. Then we climbed back up the mountain to a glacier and learned what to do if you slip and fall down a glacier and how to walk on a glacier and we finished up the day by learning how to use our hikingboots to climb granite. It was a really fun day... i am exhausted and sore, but so fun. I will try to post more pics and think I am leaving for my first multi day trek in the next couple days so I will post when I can... Hope all is well at home!!! Love.