Puchenstuben: Hiking Trails, Nature and History

Puchenstuben, together with Gösing and Wastl am Wald, lies at an elevation of 871 m at the entrance to Ötscher-Tormäuer Nature Park. The village combines striking landscapes with hiking trails and regional history. When planning a stay, specific trail distances and walking times provide guidance, as do the seasonal conditions for winter sports.

Hiking trails and distinctive natural features

Puchenstuben has a geology trail, as well as opportunities for hiking, mountaineering, mountain biking and horseback riding. One themed trail is the Planet Trail: it starts at the Klauser Observatory with the Sun and continues as an educational trail to Neptune in the Sulzbichl adventure village. The distance is 4.5 km, and the walking time is about 1.5 hours. Expert nature guides take visitors along the trail on a guided tour that also lasts about 1.5 hours. Check in advance whether a tour is available on your chosen date.

For those planning longer hikes, the route from Puchenstuben via the Treffling Nature Park entrance to Trefflingfall is 8.8 km and takes around 3.5 hours to walk. This makes it more time-consuming than the Planet Trail. The walking time is a guide; check current trail conditions before setting out.

Trefflingfall is in the Vordere Tormäuer area of Ötscher-Tormäuer Nature Park. There, the Trefflingbach plunges up to 120 m into the Erlauf; the waterfall is considered the highest in the state. Another route, Sulzbichl – Trefflingfall – Toreck – Trübenbach, starts right at the Sulzbichl adventure village and passes the Teufelskirche, a pyramid-shaped, hollowed-out rock tower. Toreck is a striking, 100 m-long gorge and the narrowest point of the Erlauf in the Tormäuer.

Winter sports on Turmkogel

The Turmkogel winter sports center has a drag lift, a platter lift, a ski school, a ski kindergarten, a tobogganing area and a children's area with a magic carpet lift and ski carousel. Winter operations are seasonal and depend on snow conditions.

The Puchenstuben-Turmkogel cross-country skiing center is located in Ötscher-Tormäuer Nature Park at an elevation of 1,000 to 1,250 m and offers a scenic network of trails totaling around 40 km. One individual loop is the 5 km Silbergruben trail, groomed for classic technique and offering panoramic views. It starts and ends at Berghaus Turmkogel. This gives visitors both a larger trail network and a specifically named loop to use as a guide when planning.

Church, railway and local history

The Baroque St. Anne's Church was completed in 1728 and remains almost unchanged to this day. The Mariazell Railway also shaped the village's history: its construction reached Puchenstuben in August 1904. This difficult section of the route included, in particular, the Puchenstuben and Gösing stations, as well as the 2.4 km-long Gösing Tunnel between them. The Puchenstuben to Wienerbruck railway hiking trail starts at Puchenstuben station.

The woodcutters' museum in Trübenbach is housed in a barn and uses original tools to tell the story of the lives and working methods of woodcutters in the forested area around the Ötscher. Another link to local history can be found at Hallerhof: a high relief was installed there in 1977 in memory of the peasant leader Christian Haller. Together with the almost unchanged Baroque church and the railway's history, it offers a look at different eras in the village's past.

Discover more destinations: Lassing, Wieselburg, Hochreit, Purgstall An Der Erlauf, Sankt Georgen An Der Leys, Reinsberg, Oberamt, Schliefau.

Return to the main travel overview: Scheibbs.