The Hafelekarspitze is a mountain in the so-called

North Chain The Nordkette, also variously called the North Chain, Northern Range, rarely the Inn Valley Range or Inn Valley Chain (''Inntalkette''), is a range of mountains just north of the city of Innsbruck in Austria. It is the southernmost of the four gr ...

(''Nordkette'') north of

Innsbruck Innsbruck (; bar, Innschbruck, label=Austro-Bavarian ) is the capital of Tyrol and the fifth-largest city in Austria. On the River Inn, at its junction with the Wipp Valley, which provides access to the Brenner Pass to the south, it had a p ...

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

Location and landscape

Below and west of the summit is the

top station A top station or upper stationFor example, se''Chairlift Blausee (upper station)''at www.outdooractive.com. Retrieved 15 May 2019. is usually the highest station of an aerial lift, a funicular, a T-bar lift or a rack railway. The lowest station is ...

of ''Hafelekar'', the second section of the

Nordkette Cable Car The Nordkette Cable Car (german: Nordkettenbahn) in the Austrian state of Tyrol is a gondola lift from Innsbruck to the Nordkette, the southernmost mountain chain of the Karwendel. It runs in two sections from the Innsbruck quarter of Hungerbur ...

at a height of , from where the Hafelekarspitze may be reached in a few minutes by foot on a metalled path. Not far from there is the Hafelekar Survey Station, a

cosmic radiation Cosmic rays are high-energy particles or clusters of particles (primarily represented by protons or atomic nuclei) that move through space at nearly the speed of light. They originate from the Sun, from outside of the Solar System in our ow ...

observatory of the

University of Innsbruck The University of Innsbruck (german: Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck; la, Universitas Leopoldino Franciscea) is a public research university in Innsbruck, the capital of the Austrian federal state of Tyrol, founded on October 15, 1669. ...

, the only one of its kind in Austria. It was here in 1937 that physicists

Marietta Blau Marietta Blau (29 April 1894 – 27 January 1970) was an Austrian physicist credited with developing photographic nuclear emulsions that were usefully able to image and accurately measure high-energy nuclear particles and events, significantly a ...

and

Hertha Wambacher Hertha Wambacher (9 March 1903 in Vienna – 25 April 1950 in Vienna) was an Austrian physicist. Education After having obtained the general certificate of education from the girls' high school run by the Association for the Extended Education o ...

using

Nuclear emulsion A nuclear emulsion plate is a type of particle detector first used in nuclear and particle physics experiments in the early decades of the 20th century. https://cds.cern.ch/record/1728791/files/vol6-issue5-p083-e.pdf''The Study of Elementary Partic ...

plates, made the first ever observation of nuclear disintegration 'stars' (Zertrümmerungsterne) caused by

cosmic rays Cosmic rays are high-energy particles or clusters of particles (primarily represented by protons or atomic nuclei) that move through space at nearly the speed of light. They originate from the Sun, from outside of the Solar System in our ...

striking nuclei in the emulsion.Marietta Blau and Hertha Wambacher: ''Disintegration Processes by Cosmic Rays with the Simultaneou Emission of Several Heavy Particles'', Nature 140: 585 (1937). File:Gipfelkreuz Hafelekar.JPG,

Summit cross A summit cross (german: Gipfelkreuz) is a cross on the summit of a mountain or hill that marks the top. Often there will be a summit register (''Gipfelbuch'') at the cross, either in a container or at least a weatherproof case. Various other fo ...

on the Hafelekarspitze File:BergstationNordkettenbahn.jpg, The top station of the Nordketten Cable Car at the Hafelekar cirque File:Hafelekar0016.JPG, Research station and amateur radio hut (left)

Routes

In summer, the Hafelekarspitze is the start point for mountain hikes and tours along the Goethe Way (''Goetheweg'') to the Gleirschspitze, the Mandlspitze (), the Gleirschtaler Brandjoch saddle or to the Rumer Spitze. At the eastern end of the Goethe Way is the Pfeis Hut north and below the Rumer Spitze, which is used as a base for the long route via the ''Wilde Bande-Steig'' to the ''Lafatscher Joch'' () and the Hallerangerhaus. In winter there is a ski route from the top station to the ''Seegrube'' (), the centre of the North Chain ski area.

References

External links

www.nordkette-austria.net
– The website about the North Chain

] {{authority control Two-thousanders of Austria Mountains of Tyrol (state) Karwendel Innsbruck Mountains of the Alps