Loop from Salzburg
Grossglockner
8 days · 1300 km · Austria
Route Salzburg → Wolfgangsee → Bad Ischl → Hallstatt → Gosausee → Zell am See → Grossglockner → Krimml → Gerlos → Zillertal → Ötztal → Timmelsjoch → Reschen → Innsbruck → Salzburg Distance 1300 km Duration 8 days, ~24 hours at the wheel
7 nights, four bases Best Months Mid-June to September
The Grossglockner runs early May to early November; the Timmelsjoch opens late May and shuts with the first snow World Heritage Historic Centre of Salzburg
Hallstatt-Dachstein — the Salzkammergut cultural landscape The Set Pieces The Hochtor at 2504 m, and the road twice
The Pasterze glacier from Franz-Josefs-Höhe
Hallstatt at dawn, before the buses
The Timmelsjoch, highest paved border in the eastern Alps
The Krimml falls, 380 m in three tiers Parks & Protected Areas Hohe Tauern National Park
The Dachstein massif
Ötztal Nature Park Signature Roads The Grossglockner Hochalpenstrasse, 36 hairpins to 2504 m
The Edelweissspitze spur, 2571 m
The Timmelsjoch, 2474 m
The Gerlos alpine road
The Salzkammergut lake roads


Route Map


Open in Google Maps The Plan

One road is the reason for this trip. The Grossglockner Hochalpenstrasse was built in the 1930s for no purpose but the view — 48 km, 36 hairpins, over the Hochtor at 2504 m through Austria's largest national park, with a spur climbing higher still to the Edelweissspitze and another running out to the Pasterze glacier. It gets a full day and gets driven twice, south in the morning and north in the evening, because the light changes everything and the second pass is free.

Around it, a loop from Salzburg. East first and gently: the Wolfgangsee, Bad Ischl, and two nights at Hallstatt — a village wedged between a lake and a cliff, unbearable at midday and extraordinary at six in the morning. A day out to the Gosausee and the Dachstein, then west to Zell am See for the mountain.

After the Grossglockner the drive turns west across Tyrol by the Krimml falls, the Gerlos and the Zillertal, and finishes with a second great pass: the Timmelsjoch at 2474 m, over into South Tyrol for lunch in the orchards and back through the Vinschgau and the Reschen. Innsbruck, then the run home to Salzburg.


Day Route Distance Highlights Night stay
01 Salzburg — Land, collect the car, and leave it parked. The old town on foot, Hohensalzburg above it, and the Mirabell gardens. An easy day to land the body clock Salzburg
02 Salzburg → Fuschlsee → Wolfgangsee → Bad Ischl → Hallstatt 120 km
3 h		 The lake roads of the Salzkammergut, St Wolfgang on its shore, and the imperial spa town at Bad Ischl. Into Hallstatt in the late afternoon, after the day buses have gone Hallstatt
03 Hallstatt → Gosausee → Bad Aussee → Hallstatt 130 km
3 h		 The village at dawn with nobody in it, then the Dachstein reflected in the Gosausee, the salt mine above the town, and the quiet lakes around Altaussee Hallstatt
04 Hallstatt → Bischofshofen → Zell am See 160 km
3 h		 West along the Salzach into the Hohe Tauern, with the Liechtensteinklamm gorge on the way. An afternoon by the lake at Zell am See, and an early night before the mountain Zell am See
05 The Grossglockner, both ways 180 km
5 h		 Through the gate at Bruck early, up the 36 hairpins to the Hochtor, the Edelweissspitze spur for the view over 37 peaks, the run out to Franz-Josefs-Höhe above the Pasterze, lunch at Heiligenblut — then the whole road again northbound in the evening light Zell am See
06 Zell am See → Krimml → Gerlos → Zillertal → Ötztal 230 km
4 h		 The Krimml falls dropping 380 m in three tiers, the Gerlos alpine road over into the Zillertal, past Innsbruck and up the Ötztal to Sölden Sölden
07 Sölden → Timmelsjoch → Merano → Reschen → Innsbruck 290 km
6 h		 Over the Timmelsjoch at 2474 m into South Tyrol, down the Passeier to the orchards and arcades of Merano, then back north up the Vinschgau, past the drowned church at Reschen, and over into Tyrol Innsbruck
08 Innsbruck → Achensee → Salzburg 200 km
3 h		 The old town and the golden roof, then the lake road by the Achensee and east to Salzburg. The airport is fifteen minutes from the old town flight out
Notes

The Grossglockner is a private toll road: about €47 for a car as a day ticket, dropping to €37 after six in the evening — which is worth knowing, because the northbound run at the end of day five falls inside that window. The gates close overnight and reopen at dawn. The Timmelsjoch is about €20 one way or €28 return, and the return ticket covers both the Austrian and the Italian side. The Gerlos is tolled too. All of this is separate from the motorway vignette, which the hire car should already carry — check the windscreen before leaving the airport.

The Silvretta Hochalpenstrasse is not on this route because it is shut. Rockfalls in 2024 and a further slide in July 2025 closed it, and the operator's long-term safety plan now keeps it closed until 2030. The Kaunertal glacier road, a 26 km climb to 2750 m off the Inn valley near Landeck, is the nearest thing to a replacement and fits as a detour on day seven if the Timmelsjoch is weathered out.

Hallstatt gets two nights on purpose. The village takes around ten thousand day visitors on a summer day into a lane you can walk end to end in twenty minutes, and the only way to see it as itself is to be there before nine or after six. Park in the tunnel garages above the village; the lakeside is closed to through traffic.

Nothing here needs more than a normal car in summer — the passes are wide, paved and well graded, though the Grossglockner's hairpins are steep enough that a low gear saves the brakes on the way down. Fuel in the valley towns rather than at the top. And the weather at 2500 m is its own country: it can be twenty degrees at Zell am See and near freezing with cloud at the Hochtor, so carry a layer even in July.

© 2001-26 Zishaan Hayath