Naunspitze (1633m) South-west Ridge

Technical difficulty: 7/10
Fitness: 4/10
Objective danger: 4/10
Landscape: 7/10
Busy: 5/10

A short loop good for late autumn days, climbing to the summit of Naunspitze with a little technical ridge in the last part before the summit.

Starting point: Village of Schwanz
Ending point: Village of Schwanz
Length: 14km
Vertical: 1100m
Speed: Very technical trails. Expect slow going.

Route:

We start running towards the rock face away from the road until hitting the trail, than we continue north-east on the trail until getting to a trail turning off steeply uphill east/south-east. The trail is called the Oberndorfer Weg and climbs steeply up towards Ritzau Alm. A beautiful meadow opens up with great views towards Wilder Kaiser mountain range. We continue further north-east and continue climbing towards Vorderkaiserfeldenhütte.

We pass the hut and continue further uphill towards the summit. You can take the trail all the way to the summit if you prefer. However, we follow the GPS track and turn left around 200m below the summit on a little path through the forest towards the South-west ridge of the mountain.

The ridge is mostly easy scrambling, with the hardest point being around II+ UIAA. You can check the topo of the route here.

We run down from the summit back past the huts. From Ritzau Alm, we can follow the Kaisertal trail back towards Kufstein. The trail descents all the way to the start of the town of Kufstein, mostly along a forest road. The last few hundred meters turns into a cool trail called Kaisersteig. Once we are back to the valley, we take the forest road back north-east for a few kilometers back to the car.

# Pro tip: You can extend the downhill over the ridge over Rogerkopf (1138m) and Teufelskanzel (802m). The trails are not very frequented and can have a lot of weather damage.

Photos by @the.running.nomad