The hook
A 1930s mountain road of thirty-six hairpins that climbs to a balcony staring straight at Austria's highest peak and the long grey tongue of its shrinking glacier.
01Why it's worth it
The road was built in the Depression, partly to put men to work, and it was engineered as a scenic drive from the start, which is why it wastes no chance for a view. It switchbacks up through alpine pasture and bare rock to a spur called the Franz-Josefs-Höhe, where you stand level with the Grossglockner, Austria's highest mountain at 3,798 metres, and look down the Pasterze, the country's longest glacier. Marker posts on the walk down to the ice show where the glacier reached in past decades, and the retreat is stark. Marmots whistle in the meadows, and the whole thing sits inside the Hohe Tauern national park. It is a toll road, open only in the warmer months, and it is a drive rather than a hike, but the payoff at the top is real.
02How to experience it
Go early in the day for clear peaks; cloud and tour buses both build by afternoon. Walk at least a little way down the path toward the Pasterze glacier to read the retreat markers up close. It works as a spectacular link between Salzburg and Carinthia rather than an out-and-back.