It’s quite hard to get to the Warnsdorferhütte ever when your knee is perfectly fine (unlike mine). You have to get to the end of the Achental valley, which is easy if you plan it ahead when ordering the taxi, and which requires two hours of walking if you forget the above and stupidly hope that the taxi will have enough space for you. From the end of the valley, you have to climb for 1 ¼ hours more (more like 1 ½ hours unless you are a superman) on a steep stony path. I am quite sure that the people working in the hut have it easier and take the “goods cable car,” while no one is watching (cows and marmots notwithstanding).
Anyway, unlike the other huts of the valley that produce and serve their own stuff, the Warnsdorferhütte must rely on the constant supply of edible stuff via the cable car, and I am quite sure that most of the ingredients for the Jausenbrettl (the cheese place may be a different story) come for the SPAR supermarket in the village of Krimml nearby. It is either that or the local farmers must have perfected the art of packaging and labeling their produce.
The herb-spiced cheese and the super-boring chicken Pâté came industrially pre-packaged, while the other ingredients – cheese, Speck, long salty sausage, Extrawurst and Wiener would have looked like something out of plastic, but I suppose were cut from a bigger supermarket-bought slice, because it is cheaper that way.
I am not blaming the Warnsdorferhütte, by the way. Had I been its manager, I would have done exactly the same. People end up there not because of the food but because of the amazing view of the glaciers or because they want to sleep there before continuing a multi-day hike. Actually, serving the bread as fresh as the one I ate there today must be quite an achievement by itself.
Now that I have more-or-less crossed out the Warnsdorferhütte from the list of places I wanted to visit, my subsequent visits to the Achental (of which I hope there will be many, it’s an incredible place) will concentrate on the numerous huts I ignored during my day-long hike. There is certainly something to discover there, at least cheese-wise. The Jausenbrettl of the Warnsdorferhütte, on the other hand, is very good considering the circumstances, but at the end of the day is not worth the climb.
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