The Wetterkreuz Trail owes its name to its distinctive starting point - the Wetterkreuz 1,000 metres above Unken. The tour starts with an ascent: from the village, the trail climbs steadily uphill on pleasant forest tracks. Fortunately, the entire upper section of the trail from the Wetterkreuz to Unken belongs to a farmer who responded favourably to an enquiry a few years ago as to whether this trail could be turned into a mountain bike trail.

We reach the Wetterkreuz at dawn. Shortly after five, the time has finally come: after a few shivering minutes, the red colour of the rising sun rises in our faces. The red ball appears over the Berchtesgaden National Park and travels all the way to the Steinernes Meer by autumn. After a few minutes, we detach ourselves from the warmth of the sun and its refractions on the mountain silhouettes and devote our full attention to the challenging and scenically varied single trail.

Even the start of the Wetterkreuz Trail is a tough one:

• over karst rock it goes
• numerous bends and twists
• sometimes more, sometimes less steeply downhill
• between sparse woodland and
• Passages across meadows

Full concentration is required here - and to be honest, this is quite difficult, as the morning sun shines ever more intensely on the Almenwelt Lofer and Loferer Steinberge in the background. An almost surreal sight. We try to let our eyes oscillate between trail, panorama and karst at different distances without risking too many riding errors. Fortunately, we manage to keep our balance quite well. At the end, the trail releases us at the farmer's hut, who agreed to its use by bikers a few years ago and thus made our uphill and downhill fun possible in the first place.

However, the Wetterkreuz Trail should not be our last adventure today: Our route runs through the Wildenbach Gorge on a narrow trail above the Wildenbach stream and you have to be a bit free from vertigo to fully enjoy this and, above all, the gorge. A perfect end to this eventful trail day in the Salzburger Saalachtal.