Myrafalle

Myrafalle (or more accurately Myrafälle) was a series of cascades and small waterfalls on the Myrabach. While the waterfalls themselves didn’t have the kind of scenic allure that most of the other waterfalls we had seen in Austria possessed, it did have a historical pedigree in that Queen Maria Theresia and King Franz II with their family made a visit back in September 1801.

Given that this was the closest waterfall to the great city of Vienna (or Wien) that we visited during our big Summer trip in 2018, it didn’t come as a surprise that this was a pretty popular place. I’d bet that being a place where the royalty had visited also aided in this place’s popularity.

There was certainly a family theme going on here because there was a very fun playground that Tahia really enjoyed (especially the little raft that you had to use a rope to pull yourself across as well as a pretty tall slide). The walking trail that was completed by the Austrian Tourist Club and opened to the public since 1885 further made things easier for the family to enjoy to this day.

We managed to do this hike early in the morning as we beat the rush. With the early start, we scored one of the spots closest to the Myrafalle kiosk though one could have easily done a slightly longer hike from the neighboring town of Muggendorf. In any case, after a short descent past the playground, we then crossed a bridge over the Myrabach, where there was a cute water-powered carousel right in the middle of the creek.

Beyond the bridge, we paid 11.5 euros as a family to procure tickets to use the automated turnstiles to get into the well-built trail. From there, we followed the mostly wooden walkway with steps as it zig-zagged several times across the Myrabach before the cascades of the Myrafalle.

There wasn’t a particular waterfall that seemed to feature as the main drop though there were a few attractive sections worth pausing for. Indeed, with this excursion, it seemed like it was more about the ambience of being around falling water in natural settings more so than being a photogenic waterfall. Perhaps that was the perfect kind of escape that Maria Theresia (matriarch of the powerful Hapsburg Family) needed to contrast all the political happenings in and around Vienna.

In any case, I managed to go as far as the very top of the cascade series. The trail continued onwards further upstream towards the Hausstein Massif as well as eventually further upstream to the Steinwandklamm Gorge quite a ways further. However, the top of the falls was pretty much my turnaround point as I rejoined Julie and Tahia at the playground back by the nearest car park, where they spent quite a bit of time while I was doing some further exploration of the trails here.

Even though we spent nearly two hours total here away from the car while taking it easy, a good chunk of that time was spent at the playground. Add to that, some additional time that I spent exploring the waterfalls themselves, and I’d bet that in terms of time commitment of a typical visit, it might take no more than an hour to really experience the Myrafalle. According to my GPS logs, we only walked roughly 1.2km round trip.