Mountain · Austria
Grossglockner
The Grossglockner is the highest mountain in Austria at 3 798 metres, a double rock tip on the border between Carinthia and East Tyrol. Its name may come from a bell.
Picture credit: DennisPeeters (Public domain) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is Grossglockner?
Grossglockner is part of the Hohe Tauern, Glockner group.
You will find it in: Austria.
Summit: 47.075° N, 12.695° E
The story behind it
The Grossglockner has two tips, not one: the main summit at 3 798 metres and the Kleinglockner at 3 770 metres, with the Obere Glocknerscharte between them at 3 756 metres, the highest notch in Austria. Where the name comes from is not settled, one idea points to the German word Glocke, bell, because of the shape, another to the Old Slovene word klek, pointed summit. A first attempt in 1799 only got as far as the Kleinglockner, and in July 1800 four mountain guides and the priest Mathias Hautzendorfer stood on the main top. An iron summit cross weighing about 300 kilograms was carried up and set in place in October 1880, and it is still there. On the eastern side flows the Pasterze, the longest glacier in the Eastern Alps, today about 8 kilometres long. In 1856 it covered more than 30 square kilometres and it has lost close to half of that since. Since 1986 the summit and the glacier belong to a special protected area inside the Hohe Tauern National Park.
Find it on the globe
Grossglockner is there as a small peak with its own shape — a horn, a ridge, a volcano — standing on the surface. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
How high is the Grossglockner?
3 798 metres, the highest point in Austria. That is about 800 metres lower than the Dufourspitze in Switzerland.
Where is the Grossglockner?
In the Hohe Tauern in southern Austria, right on the line between Carinthia and East Tyrol, inside a national park.
What is the Pasterze?
The glacier on the eastern side of the mountain, the longest in the Eastern Alps, today about 8 kilometres long. It is shrinking fast: in 1856 it covered more than 30 square kilometres.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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