When I arrive at the meeting point in Altenberg an der Rax at around 10:00, Otto from the mountain club is already waiting for me. He's going to teach me the art of trail maintenance today and tomorrow. After a short stopover at our accommodation, the Lurgbauer-Villa, we head straight on towards the Schneealm, as thunderstorms are forecast for the afternoon.
We drive up the forest road in the off-road vehicle and soon we stop - a signpost needs maintenance. We improve its fastening with better screws and immediately speed on to the next signpost, which needs cleaning. Next up is cleaning up the Kutatschhütte, an emergency shelter. Not all visitors leave the small hut as they found it. So that the next visitors can enter an inviting hut again, we fold the blankets neatly, dispose of the garbage and sweep the floor.
On the top of the Schneealm plateau, we take care of the small wooden poles with path markings. Some are crooked, some are wobbly, others are already too colorless. A red-white-red adhesive foil and a hammer are therefore used quite frequently. The wooden poles also all need a piece of barbed wire around them, otherwise the cows grazing on the mountain pasture will scratch and play with the poles until they fall over. We also check the distance between the marker poles, and where they are already too far apart to provide sufficient orientation in the fog, we hammer in an additional pole between them. We take a short break in the hut and then carry on: we use a touch-up pen to redraw the lettering on the signposts and touch up a few more poles.
