Love Valley & Pigeon Valley

Love Valley and Pigeon Valley are routinely combined to form an iconic, 11-kilometer figure-eight or loop hike connecting the towns of Göreme and Uçhisar. Starting from Göreme, hikers enter Love Valley, internationally famous for its towering, monolithic, phallic rock formations (fairy chimneys) that thrust dramatically from the valley floor. After navigating beneath these massive rock spires, the trail forces a steep ascent up to the town of Uçhisar, which is crowned by a massive 'castle' (a gigantic, porous rock monolith riddled with ancient tunnels). From the castle's panoramic peak, hikers descend back to Göreme via Pigeon Valley (Güvercinlik). This valley is defined by its sheer cliffs packed with thousands of tiny, ancient dovecotes (pigeon houses) carved into the rock, originally designed to collect pigeon guano to fertilize the volcanic soil.

Starting at the end of the high-alpine Grossglockner High Alpine Road (Kaiser-Franz-Josefs-Höhe), the Gamsgrubenweg is a masterpiece of high-altitude trail engineering. It contours high above the Pasterze, Austria's largest glacier, leading into the heart of the Hohe Tauern National Park. The trail passes through several tunnels built to protect hikers from rockfall, eventually opening into the vast, tundra-like 'Gamsgrube' (Chamois Pit), a special protection zone where the rare flora and fauna of the high Alps thrive in the shadow of the Grossglockner (3,798m).