Hintersteiner See is a mountain lake in the

Wilder Kaiser The Kaiser Mountains (german: Kaisergebirge, meaning ''Emperor Mountains'') are a mountain range in the Northern Limestone Alps and Eastern Alps. Its main ridges – are the Zahmer Kaiser and south of it the Wilder Kaiser. The mountains are s ...

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 ...

n national park and belongs to the administrative region of Scheffau in the Austrian federal state of Tirol. Hintersteiner See von der Steiner Hochalm

Hintersteiner See von der Steiner Hochalm

The , lake was created during the last ice age and is at a height of 883 m AA. Underground springs fill the lake with crystal-clear water. Hintersteiner See is privately owned by the Tiroler Wasserkraft AG and is cautiously used to generate electricity. It drains into the

Weißache The Weißache is a river of Tyrol, Austria, a tributary of the Inn. The Weißache flows in the Sölllandl, a valley between the Kaiser Mountains and the Hohe Salve. It rises at about on the in the and discharges in , a district of Kufstein, int ...

river. There is a public bathing beach on the lake.

The legend of Hintersteiner See

In Hinterstein, there lived some high-spirited, wealthy farmers, who used to play bowls with lumps of butter on their luscious meadow, which was where the Hintersteiner See is today. It was a brightly moonlit night as they played once more. Then suddenly, the earth heaved beneath their feet and they sank with their farm and everything on it into the depths. For their wanton behaviour however, the farmers were banished onto the

Scheffauer {{Infobox mountain , name = Scheffauer , photo = Scheffauer.jpg , photo_caption = The Scheffauer (far end of the ridge) , elevation = {{Höhe, 2111, AT, link=true ({{convert, 2111, m, ft, disp=output only, abbr=on) ...

peaks and, to atone for their sins, they were condemned to play bowls as long as the

Kaiser ''Kaiser'' is the German word for "emperor" (female Kaiserin). In general, the German title in principle applies to rulers anywhere in the world above the rank of king (''König''). In English, the (untranslated) word ''Kaiser'' is mainly ap ...

mountain exists. Their bowling alley can be found just below the peak of the Scheffauer in a small corrie which is covered with a fine carpet of moss. According to the legend, the wealthy Hintersteiner farmers had a huge argument about a spring. Even on the solemn festival of Corpus Christi they argued the entire day, which then ended in an unseemly scuffle. Bright and early the very next day, the dairymaid for the farmers, a very proper, sober woman who had long found the argument quite absurd, set off across the meadow to milk the cows and saw a small puddle of water in front of the house, which had never been there before. She shook her head as she saw it, but went on her way. It took her a long time to find the cows and she was surprised to find them huddling together in a dip in the landscape. She milked them quickly so as to get back to the farm and get on with her work, but when she walked up out of the dip, she was confronted with a lake where only the tip of just one house peeked out of the water.

External links

* LHintersteiner See Lakes of Tyrol (state) Kaiser Mountains {{Tyrol-geo-stub