Grossglockner

The Grossglockner, also called simply the Glockner, rises to 3,798 meters above the Adriatic (12,461 feet), making it Austria’s tallest mountain and the highest in the Alps east of the Brenner Pass. It belongs to the Glockner Group within the Hohe Tauern range, sitting along the main ridge of the Central Eastern Alps and the Alpine divide. On its eastern slope lies the Pasterze, Austria’s longest glacier. The mountain’s distinctive pyramid shape actually comes from two separate peaks—the Großglockner and the Kleinglockner (from German *groß* for “big” and *klein* for “small”)—divided by a col called the Glocknerscharte. The name “Glocknerer” first appears on a 1561 map by Viennese cartographer Wolfgang Lazius. A 1583 description of the Tyrolean Kals legal district mentions “Glogger,” referring to the entire ridge south of the Alpine main chain. By the 1760s, the *Atlas Tyrolensis* listed a “Glockner Berg,” but the prefix “Gross-” (meaning “great”) did not appear until the first expedition in 1799. Scholar Belsazar Hacquet suggested the name might come from German *Glocke* (“bell”), due to the mountain’s shape, or possibly from the Alpine Slavic word *Klek* (“mountain”), as seen in the Slovene name Veliki Klek. Geographically, the Grossglockner marks the border between Carinthia and East Tyrol. The peak is part of the Glocknerkamm ridge in the Glockner Group, which branches off the main Alpine chain at Eiskögele and runs southeast, forming the boundary between the East Tyrolean municipality of Kals am Großglockner and Carinthian Heiligenblut. This border also acts as the watershed between the Kals Valley and its Teischnitz and Ködnitz side valleys on the Tyrolean side, and the Möll Valley with the Pasterze glacier on the Carinthian side. Since 1986, the area around the mountain has been part of the Grossglockner-Pasterze special protected area within the High Tauern National Park. The Glockner is the highest peak in the Alps east of the Ortler range and, after Mont Blanc, has the second greatest topographic isolation of any Alpine mountain. Its topographic prominence is also second only to Mont Blanc in the entire Alps, making it one of the most independent peaks in the range. Views from the summit are among the farthest in the Eastern Alps, extending up to 190 kilometers—or nearly 240 kilometers with atmospheric refraction—covering over 150,000 square kilometers of Earth’s surface. These views reach the Upper Swabian Plateau in the northwest, Regensburg and the Bohemian Forest peaks in the north, the Ortler in the west, the Padan Plain in the south, and Triglav and the Totes Gebirge range in the east. The rock summit, heavily glaciated and high Alpine, is often compared to Western Alps mountains. Together with the Kleinglockner to the southeast, it forms a distinctive double peak. Whether the Kleinglockner is a subpeak or a separate main summit is debated in the literature; historic publications treat it as part of the Grossglockner due to low prominence and shared climbing history, while mountaineering guides count it as independent because of its separate routes. The Obere Glocknerscharte between the two peaks, at 3,766 meters, is Austria’s highest col. From it, a couloir with a gradient up to 55 degrees and 550 meters in altitude descends to the Glocknerkees glacier, called the Pallavicinirinne after Austrian mountaineer Alfred von Pallavicini. This couloir runs northeast and borders the Northeast and North Faces of the Grossglockner. Those faces are bounded by the Northwest Ridge, part of the main Glockner crest, which passes over the Grögerschneid, Glocknerhorn, and Teufelshorn to the Untere Glocknerscharte, connecting to the Glocknerwand. A prominent ridge, the Stüdlgrat, named after Prague alpinist Johann Stüdl, runs southwest from the Grossglockner. Together with its extension, the Luisengrat, it separates the West Face and the Teischnitzkees glacier from the South Face and its Ködnitzkees glacier. A couloir called the Pillwaxrinne crosses the South Face below the Obere Glocknerscharte; most of the South Face lies east of this gully below the Kleinglockner. The east side of the Kleinglockner, the Glocknerleitl, is glaciated nearly to the summit and continues into the Kleinglocknerkees and Hofmannskees before reaching the Pasterze. The French-born natural scientist Belsazar Hacquet, who became a professor of anatomy at the Academy of Ljubljana in 1773, traveled the Eastern Alps from 1779 to 1781. In a 1783 itinerary, he described the Glokner mountain, stating it had not yet been climbed, estimated its height, and created the first known depiction of the mountain—an engraving showing the Grossglockner and the Pasterze. His book inspired the first ascent.