Things to do
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Großglockner-Hochalpenstraße
Forty-eight kilometres of pass road with thirty-six hairpins, built as a public works scheme between 1930 and 1935, climbing to two thousand five hundred and four metres with a spur to a terrace facing the Pasterze glacier and the highest mountain in Austria. Tolled, and open only from May to early November.
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Kitzsteinhorn
A glacier above Kaprun with lifts to three thousand and twenty-nine metres, where snow lies all year and skiing runs from autumn to early summer. A gallery cut through the rock opens onto the national park side. Weather at the top is often nothing like the valley, and the upper lift closes on wind.
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Schmittenhöhe
The mountain immediately west of the town, at one thousand nine hundred and sixty-five metres, with a cable car from the edge of the resort and a summit chapel built in 1929. The panorama takes in thirty glaciated peaks over three thousand metres. In winter it is the local ski area; in summer a network of walking paths.
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Sigmund-Thun-Klamm
A gorge below the Kaprun reservoirs, opened to walkers in 1893, with three hundred and twenty metres of boardwalk bolted above meltwater running grey with rock flour. The walk takes about half an hour each way and is loud. Open from May to October; the path is closed when the dams release.
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St. Hippolyt
The parish church on the town square, Romanesque in its lower walls with a Gothic choir and a west gallery of about 1514 carrying carved figures of the saints. Its tower has stood since the twelfth century, and the medieval street plan still bends around it. Open through the day and free.
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Vogtturm
A residential tower of about the year 1000 in the middle of the town, the oldest building here, holding the local museum on four floors: the salt and cattle routes over the passes, early tourism, and the ski pioneers who made the winter season. It takes under an hour and explains what the resort is built on.
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Zeller See
Four kilometres of clear water enclosed by mountains, warm enough to swim from June and frozen hard enough to skate on in most winters. A level path runs the whole shore in about two hours. Electric boats are rented at the promenade, motorboats are banned, and the lake is fed and drained by the same small streams.