We start our tour in the small town of Mürzzuschlag, beautifully situated at the foot of the Semmering. If we want to shorten the tour a bit, because we want to visit one of the museums in Mürzzuschlag, there is the possibility to take the Semmeringbahn from Mürzzuschlag to Spital am Semmering or to take the public bus - here we find the timetable (train and bus).
In Mürzzuschlag we first head towards the train station to reach the Obere Bahngasse through an underpass in front of it. From here the hike leads us to Spital am Semmering on the southernmost section of the Styrian railroad hiking trail, which is managed as a theme trail. Peter Rosegger (1843 - 1918), the worldwide known poet, writer and critical zeitgeist, accompanies us here on this section and meets important contemporaries such as Viktor Kaplan, the inventor of the water turbine, or the actor and poet Otto von Sommerstorff, who died in Spital am Semmering in 1934. Thus, a small, informative cultural history about the Styrian part of Semmering opens up along the way. Via the district of Edlach we reach Spital am Semmering, always slightly uphill, along the railroad line and past viaducts. Before we reach the tranquil town, which is one of the largest vacation resorts in the Mürz valley, especially with the Stuhleck ski area, we get the opportunity to delve deeper into the history of the region. Above our route in the middle of the dense forest we find the robber caves. The Great Robber's Cave with two still visible fortifications can be reached via a somewhat hidden path in 5 - 10 minutes. According to the legend, the robbers lived in it. The only sure evidence of this is a document dating back to 1220, in which these robbers are mentioned. In the 17th and 18th centuries, according to several sources, there were several groups of disarmed soldiers in the cave, who chose this cave as their hideout and harassed the surrounding countryside from there.
Back on our main path, we turn right above Spital am Semmering at the idyllic Zatzka church at the foot of a small rock face to get to the train station and past the Hotel Onkel Fritz directly into the small center of the village. At the town hall we cross the main road and walk past the church with its beautiful vicarage in the direction of Stuhleck. By the way, the name of the village goes back to a hospice (hospital) that was founded here in 1160 on the site of the parish church by Ottokar III. After the church we turn right and follow the Stuhleckstraße for about 200 meters. Immediately after a long left-hand bend we keep to the left in order to enter the beautiful woods of the Hocheck via the Lärchenwaldweg (larch forest path) - nomen est omen - passing under the Stuhleck quad chairlift beforehand. The rest of the way takes us past the Gaißschlager farm over the Hocheck to the Karl Lechner Haus (only open from June to the end of October on weekends and holidays, winter room is always available, tel. +43 1 2902409 or +43 676 4464643 on days when there is service).
From the Karl Lechner Haus we now continue uphill on our hiking route "From Glacier to Wine", initially through a shady forest towards the Stuhleck summit with the Alois Günther Haus (Tel. +43 3853 300) right next to it. The forest is soon replaced by the mountain pine fields and alpine pastures of the Stuleck massif. Through and over these, the path leads us just below the summit once again to a historical gem that lets us look back into skiing history. We encounter the remains of the walls of the Nansenhütte, the first ski hut in the Alpine region. Now it is only a few hundred meters until we finally reach the highest point on the eastern edge of the Alps, the summit of the Stuhleck with the Alois Günther Haus (Tel. +43 3853 300), where, by the way, a toll road also leads. This point is certainly one of the most impressive vantage points in the Eastern Alps, as on one side you can look towards the Alpine region with the Rax, Hochschwab and the mountain world in the south of Austria, but on the other side you can also look towards the hilly landscape of Eastern Styria and the Pannonian Plain behind it. From the Stuhleck we continue our hike along the ridge of the Fischbacher Alps to the Pretul with the Peter-Bergner Warte and the Rosegger Schutzhaus (Tel. +43 3170 522), to which a toll road also leads from the village of Ratten in the Joglland-Waldheimat region of eastern Styria. The next day takes us further through the Fischbach Alps to the namesake village of Fischbach at the foot of the mystical Teufelstein.