The Hills are Alive

Taking a drive down memory lane, Ted West relives "The Sound of Music"

I don't ask much of my memory. A random surname here and there and a few color images from last summer at the beach will do nicely. But the prospect of returning to Austria's towering Grossglockner Hochalpenstrasse mountain pass set off chain lightning behind my eyes. Fifteen years ago, some friends and I did a BMW motorcycle tour of that cranium-blasting high road which none of us will ever forget. This time, I would make the same tour in Cadillac's spectacular XLR sports car. In a flash, my mental hard drive began downloading full-color scene after full-color scene from my younger days. I remembered everything perfectly. I was sure of it.

Day One, 160 Miles: Munich to Zell am See
I rendezvoused with my trusted co-driver, Carolyn, at the Munich airport. Out of admiration for the mild early-September sun, we opened the Cadillac's retractable hardtop. Then we streamed south along the A8 to the A12, with the road-devouring 320-horsepower Northstar V-8 eagerly matching the autobahn's legendary pace. Nothing is more satisfying than having bushels of thrust under your right foot, ready at the mere flick of your big toe. In a hiccup, we were in Austria. On cue, the southern horizon began pushing great slabs of rock high into the blue Tyrolean sky, as if to say, Good news: Alps ahead. At a service area in Kiefersfelden, I bought a new map to update the one from my previous motorcycle tour. That should have been a clue: If a map needs updating in 15 years, how could my transient memory be any more dependable?

We continued south and west, drivers on all sides craning their necks toward our rare Cadillac roadster. We felt like celebrities. Then the land became downright voluptuous. Steep ridges on either side marked the course of the Inn River. The city of Innsbruck, 35 miles upstream and surrounded by Alpine peaks in three directions, takes its name from this roiling waterway. We weren't going that far, however; we turned off the A12 at Wiesing/Zillertal, crossed the Inn, and were swallowed by a narrow, dark two-lane tunnel beneath an enormous mountain. And like some Alpine version of the entrance to Butch Cassidy's Hole in the Wall hideaway, the tunnel opened out suddenly, revealing a hitherto unimagined velvety-green inner kingdom. At this sight, Carolyn's eyes got as big as ostrich eggs, sunny-side up, and her mouth made a long, mute wowww! The Zillertal (Ziller Valley, to you) is lush Irish green, populated with small herds of what are the most contented dairy cattle on earth. The U-shaped valley meanders along a narrow corridor between overwhelming three-thousand-foot walls of forest to the east and west. At points, the valley floor is little more than a mile wide.

We crept along between these towering walls in the open Cadillac, getting kinks in our necks from gawking up. The sole oddity in this beautiful vale is that sunrise arrives at about a quarter to noon, and sunset is at ten past, after the soup but before the entrée. We turned off the main road at Ried im Zillertal. This definitive Tyrolean hamlet scrambles up the steep valley wall, hand over fist. On every chalet's upper deck, rows of flower boxes overflowed with blooms in the bright sun.