Salt made all of this. Long before anyone thought of postcards, people were tunnelling into the mountain above Hallstatt for it, and finds from the prehistoric mine and its cemetery were so rich that archaeologists named a whole phase of the European Iron Age, the Hallstatt culture, after a village you can walk across in ten minutes. The Hallstatt-Dachstein / Salzkammergut cultural landscape, inscribed in 1997, takes in the lake, the village, the salt mountain, the limestone massif of the Dachstein and the valleys around Gosau, Bad Goisern and Bad Aussee.
Limestone dominates everything: cliffs, caves, sinkholes and water that runs green and astonishingly clear. In the valleys the air smells of cut hay and woodsmoke; up high, of stone and snow.
Riders have two classic roads here. The Pass Gschütt climbs from Bad Goisern to Gosau, where the Vorderer Gosausee holds the Dachstein in its reflection on a calm morning, and continues down towards Abtenau. The Pötschen pass, on the main road from Bad Goisern to Bad Aussee, is broad, fast and well cambered, with a viewpoint at the top. Both are busy on summer weekends with caravans and coaches, and both deserve an early start. Rain is a regular visitor; the Salzkammergut catches every Atlantic front that reaches the northern Alps.
Hallstatt village has become a victim of its own beauty, swamped by day visitors in high season, with traffic and parking controlled through a tunnel that bypasses the centre. Park outside and walk, or come in the evening when the coaches have gone. The charnel house beside the Catholic church, with its painted skulls, says a lot about how little flat ground there is here. Fish from the lake, especially the local whitefish called Reinanke, often turns up grilled on menus.
Bad Goisern, ten kilometres or so away, is a good, unpretentious base with fuel and shops, and Bad Ischl further north, the imperial spa town where Emperor Franz Joseph spent his summers, has cafés with cakes worth riding for. In winter, snow and ice make the passes demanding, and Gschütt can be properly wintry well into spring.