Hiking Schneeberg

I wrote this a while ago, but had not published it out. It may be useful information for someone looking for a dayhike in the Vienna, Austria area so here goes.

I recently had a day off from work in Vienna and so I headed to Schneeberg to get a day hike in.

I found getting there to be super easy, just take the subway to Philadelphiabrücke which is also the Wein Meidling train station and buy a ticket to Puchberg am Schneeberg and take the first train to Wein Neustadt. These trains are very frequent, I would say about 5 an hour.

At Wein Neustadt look at the boards for trains to Puchberg am Schneeberg and then hop on. This train runs every hour all day.

At Puchberg am Schneeberg there is a nice little cafe to get some breakfast, but be prepared to either speak German or have a tough time of ordering food more complicated than coffee.

Also at the train station you can buy tickets for the Salamander cog railway which goes up the mountain. I took this to the mid station and hiked from there. If your goal is to just hike the mountain by the standard route I would not buy the cog railway ticket and just hike from town, it is not that far(I hiked in half the advertised times).

As it was I was glad for the rail ticket though.

I got off at Hengsthütte and from there hiked to the end of the cog line(Hochschneeberg.) I found the first half of this hike to be very easy, on a graded and wide gravel path. The second half was a bit more challenging, a bit more narrow and definitely not a gravel path. For this part it was pretty protected from the weather and even though it was overcast I was comfortable in my t-shirt. Once I got up to Hochschneeberg though it was exposed and I was glad for my softshell and rain jacket.

I then hiked up to the summit, Klosterwappen and then to the Fischerhütte. From when I turned off the trail to Klosterwappen I was in a dense fog and didn't get much of a view. The food at the Fischerhütte was fantastic, but again here, the person taking my order didn't speak any english, he actually asked one of the patrons to translate for me. I got bacon dumplings with sauerkraut and hot chocolate with rum. The hot meal was very welcome as it was quite blustery outside.

Afterwards I hiked down another way, and ended up traversing around a good portion of the mountain in the cold rain. It was gorgeous and I was very happy to arrive at a mid mountain stop and take the last train of the day down as I was soaking wet and freezing! The trip back to Vienna was uneventful. All in all a great day hike!