Grossglockner

The first ascent of Austria’s highest mountain was organized by a bishop, and the first men on top included a parish priest. Prince-Bishop Count Franz Xaver von Salm of Gurk mounted the expedition, and on July 28, 1800, 62 people set out into the Leitertal valley. Only the four guides and Mathias Hautzendorfer, the parish priest of Rangersdorf, made it across the Obere Glocknerscharte to the 12,461-foot summit. The next day other members of the expedition repeated the ascent and installed a summit cross and a barometer, which stood beside the cross and went on recording data for 52 years.

The map centers on the meeting of rock and ice. Contour lines trace the long tongue of the Pasterze curling below the eastern flank and the smaller hanging glaciers clinging to the faces above. Higher up, the lines sharpen into the summit ridge and the notch of the Glocknerscharte between the two Glockner peaks, while the surrounding contours pick out the deep valleys that set the massif apart from the rest of the Hohe Tauern.