A short Halltal round

Technical difficulty: 3/10
Fitness: 2/10
Objective danger: 2/10
Landscape: 6/10
Busy: 6/10

A short loop in the Halltal, with steep uphill, technical downhill and great views over Innsbruck.

Starting point: Halltal parking lot
Ending point: Halltal parking lot
Length: 9.5km
Vertical: 1000m
Speed: Steep and quite technical trails.

Route:

We start from the parking lot up the road into the valley of Halltal. After a few hundred meters, a forest road veers off to the left and starts climbing uphill on the winter bob track. Just before a small hut at the end of the bob track a trail disconnects and starts climbing steeply uphill nord-west. The trail is quite overgrown. We climb through tall grass and forest for a few hundred meters.

We soon get out of the forest into an old burn area, continuing up a very steep slope, covered in burned tree stumps and avalanche prevention barriers. We continue altogether for about 900 meters, getting into an increasingly alpine-feeling environment, until reaching the trail cross-roads starting downhill. From here it is only about 200m distance further uphill to the summit of Hochmandlkopf (1738m).

We retrace the last 200m and take the steep and quite technical trail through the forest to eventually reach the Alpengasthaus St. Magdalena, which can get busy on nice days and offers a place to stop and rest if you need to. We take the Fluchtsteig trail from here heading east (and downhill). The trail alternates more flowy and technical sections. Eventually it starts running closely in parallel to the paved road running up the valley and gets nice and runnable. From here it is only a couple of kilometers of enjoyable downhill running to get back to where we started.

Photos by @the.running.nomad and @bennibru