Packrafting Upper Salzach

The upper Salzach river in Austria is an easy one for packrafting. In August 2019 I went there with a friend who is new to packrafting, so this was an excellent exercise to get a little bit familiar with navigating a river in a packraft.

We had a great, sunny day in front of us and started hiking roughly 10 Km from our base in Krimml down to the starting point close to Rosental. The Salzach is white water category WW1 in this area so it’s basically easy floating. Additionally, the river is quite fast, so you can handle 45 kilometers easily in 3-4 hours.

We got out close to Niedernsill - to get back, we took the Pinzgauer Lokalbahn which runs regularly and has friendly operational staff. The last meters back to Krimml, a bus is running or you can also walk. A map of the stops can be found here.

Generally this part of the Salzach is not popular amongst packrafters since it’s comparatively boring to the other parts, that’s at least what my research on the net told me.

For both of us it was a perfect day on a nice river with excellent weather conditions and a great hike beforehand. Always again!

Pictures