Wilder Graben translates as the wild ravine, and the name fits the country south of the Enns valley in Upper Austria, where the Kalkalpen National Park protects a great tangle of limestone mountains, gorges and forest. This is the Reichraminger Hintergebirge, a maze of steep valleys with clear green streams at the bottom and almost no settlements at all. It is one of the largest forested areas in Austria, and parts of its old beech woods belong to the World Heritage site of ancient beech forests across Europe.
You will not ride into the gorge itself; the interior of the park is closed to motor traffic and reserved for hikers and cyclists. What you get instead is the ride around it. The Enns valley road between Steyr and Altenmarkt follows the river through a narrow, wooded valley, part of the old Eisenstrasse, the iron road that carried ore and finished goods from the Styrian Erzberg to the blacksmiths and markets downstream. The curves are smooth and flowing, with frequent changes of rhythm as the valley twists, and traffic is usually light outside weekends. Side roads climb out of the valley to high farms and small passes, narrower and steeper, with views of grey limestone walls above the forest.
The iron industry left its mark everywhere: old hammer mills, workers' houses, chapels and the ruin of Losenstein castle perched above the Enns. Inside the park, a former forest railway built to carry timber out of the Hintergebirge is now a cycle track running through tunnels and over bridges along the Grosser Bach, a sign of how the region has shifted from extraction to protection.
The nature here is the main attraction. The streams run cold and turquoise over white gravel, fed by springs from the karst. Chamois live on the cliffs, golden eagles nest on high crags, and the forest is home to lynx, which have been reintroduced to the area, and the rare white-backed woodpecker. In autumn the beech woods blaze orange and yellow against the pale rock.
Reichraming, about six kilometres away, is a small village with a few inns and basic shopping. For fuel, Grossraming and Losenstein are close, and Steyr, a larger historic town at the confluence of the Enns and Steyr rivers, has everything. The nearest town of five thousand or more listed here is Micheldorf, about twenty-three kilometres south-west.