MOTORCYCLE TRAVEL IN Austria

Riding the Grossglockner High Alpine Road by motorcycle is, for much of the global motorcycle travel community, the very reason to go ride the Austrian Alps: 48 km between Bruck and Heiligenblut, with 36 hairpin bends climbing to the 2,504 m Hochtor pass, inside Hohe Tauern National Park.

The road opened in 1935 after five years of construction that gave work to 3,200 people during the Great Depression, and just one day after its opening it already hosted the first international hillclimb race on its curves, on August 4, 1935. Since 2003 an official program has turned it into the most "motorcycle-friendly" road in the Alps.

Alongside it rises the Grossglockner itself, Austria's roof at 3,798 m, almost always in view during the climb; a 1.5 km side road leads to the Edelweißspitze viewpoint at 2,571 m, the highest paved point on the entire route.

Crossing the Timmelsjoch High Alpine Road by motorcycle is, for much of the international motorcycle travel community, the very reason to go ride in Austria: it's a private road built specifically for mountain tourism, connecting the Ötztal valley in Tyrol with Italy's Passeiertal at 2,509 meters above sea level.

Construction began in 1955 and the road up to the summit opened in 1959, though the full crossing between the two countries only opened to through-traffic in 1968. The descent into Italy delivers ten hairpins carved into the cliffside, among the most photographed stretches in the Alps.

At the summit, at 2,175 masl, sits the TOP Mountain Motorcycle Museum, the highest motorcycle museum in Europe: over 450 exhibits across 4,000 m², rebuilt in just ten months after a fire completely destroyed it in January 2021.

For much of the European motorcycle travel community, the Silvretta High Alpine Road by motorcycle is the connoisseurs' cult route of the Alps: 34 pothole-free hairpin bends climbing 1,000 meters of elevation between Partenen and the Bielerhöhe, at 2,032 masl.

The project took three decades to complete: it started as a service road for the Vermunt hydroelectric plants in 1925 and only opened to public traffic on June 23, 1954, widening to two lanes by 1961.

From the summit you can see the Silvretta reservoir with a glacier behind it, next to the 3,312 m Piz Buin, Vorarlberg's highest peak — one of the most photographed balconies in the entire Austrian Alps.

Riding the Nockalmstrasse by motorcycle means crossing 52 bends inside the Nockberge biosphere reserve, a landscape of rounded mountains with no sharp peaks — very different from the rest of the Alps — which gives the area its name ("Nock" means rounded summit in the local dialect).

The road opened to traffic as a toll route in 1981, and since 1995 it has been run by the same company that manages the Grossglockner High Alpine Road. A little-known fact: motorcycles are banned from the road between 6pm and 8am, the only major Austrian alpine route with a restriction specifically aimed at motorcyclists.

The protected area became a national park in 1987 (today the Salzburger Lungau und Kärntner Nockberge biosphere reserve), and from several viewpoints along the way you can see all the way to the Grossglockner massif on clear days.

Climbing the Kaunertal Glacier Road by motorcycle means gaining 1,500 meters of elevation in just 26 km, with 29 tight-radius bends (28 meters each) that carry you from Feichten's 1,273 masl up to the Weißseeferner glacier at 2,750 masl, one of the last living glaciers in Tyrol.

It's a mandatory stop for any motorcycle traveler doing the classic Ötztal valley loop, pairing it with the Timmelsjoch pass, since both routes start just a few kilometers apart. The upper section is home to Austria's highest postal bus stop.

The road even served as a stage finish for the Tour of Austria cycling race in 1996 and 1999, thanks to the brutal climb — a grade that tests a cyclist's legs as much as the clutch of a loaded touring motorcycle.

Crossing the Hahntennjoch by motorcycle has a reputation among European riders as the "real" alternative to Fernpass traffic: a narrow 29 km road, with grades of up to 18.9%, connecting the Lech valley to the Inn valley through a gorge far tighter than the big tourist alpine routes.

The current road was only built in the late 1960s and opened to traffic in 1969; before that, crossing this point in the Alps meant a mule track.

Since 2004 an automatic safety system closes the pass the moment it detects avalanche risk, rockfall, or mudslide — an unusual piece of technology even by Austrian alpine standards.

Crossing the Arlberg Pass by motorcycle means riding one of the oldest natural borders in the Austrian Alps: it separates the Rhine and Danube watersheds, and for centuries marked the cultural and linguistic border between Tyrol and Vorarlberg.

A passable road is already mentioned in the 14th century, used by merchants from Bolzano to move goods north; the route was formalized as the "Josephinische Straße" in 1787 and finished as a reinforced road ("Kunststraße") in 1824. Today it remains the free alternative to the 14 km toll tunnel running beneath it since 1978.

The region around the pass is the birthplace of modern alpine skiing — the Arlberg ski club was founded in 1901 and the 1928 Arlberg-Kandahar races made it world famous — so in summer, motorcycle travelers cross the very ground where much of European skiing history began.

Crossing the Gerlos Alpine Road by motorcycle links two of Austria's most photographed regions: Salzburg's Pinzgau, home to the Krimml waterfalls — Austria's tallest, with a 380 m drop over three cascades — and Tyrol's Zillertal, one of the country's busiest valleys for motorcycle traffic in peak season.

The current toll route was built in the 1960s by the same company that runs the Grossglockner High Alpine Road, which is why it shares the same standard of wide curves designed for tourist traffic.

The older, toll-free road still exists in parallel on the Zell am Ziller side: narrower, closed to trucks, and not always passable in winter — the option for riders who'd rather skip the toll and don't mind a more demanding line.

Crossing the Sölkpass by motorcycle is one of the least crowded experiences among Styria's major routes: just two narrow lanes, no food or services along the way, climbing to 1,788 masl between the Sölk and Enns valleys.

There's evidence of use of the pass since the late Bronze Age, and the first formal cart-road project was already documented in 1593. The current alignment was only paved and widened to two lanes in 1954.

In August 2017, heavy storms damaged both sides of the road and kept it closed for almost a year, until July 2018 — a reminder of how exposed this pass still is to mountain weather, despite being a modern road.

Crossing the Plöckenpass by motorcycle means literally riding a road opened by Roman legions under Emperor Tiberius, between 14 and 37 AD, as part of the Via Julia Augusta linking Venetia with Raetia and Noricum.

Historical inscriptions from the period describe the original passage as so narrow that "only a wagon and a pack animal could cross" at a time; it remained the only route between Carinthia and Friuli throughout the Middle Ages, though impassable for wheeled carts until the early 20th century.

The modern stretch was built by Austrian military engineers between 1907 and 1910 for heavy wagons, and was devastated during World War I (1915-1918), when it became a mountain warfare battleground; it was only rebuilt in 1926 on the Austrian side and 1938 on the Italian side.