The Green Lake in Austria, which keeps disappearing

This place is truly amazing: Half of the year it is a park, an Eldorado for hikers, and the other half – a clear, shimmering emerald-green mountain lake. How it works?

No feet stroll through the grass, fish brush the tufts. No shoe walks over the hiking trails, the bridge does not run over the water, but through it. And if you approach the park bench, you don’t do it to sit on it, but rather to hover over it. Because under water it’s such a thing with gravity. A park under water? At least for a few months of the year, benches, signs and hiking trails around the Grüner See in Austria say: land under.

Color of the Green Lake in Austria is an attraction

This always happens when the snow in the mountains melts and fills the lake in Styria with meltwater – with crystal-clear water that shimmers emerald green through the green on the ground. And that alone is worth a visit. How high the water level is depends on the amount of snow or rain.

There has been a ban on diving in the Green Lake since 2016

The Green Lake in the municipality of Tragöß-Sankt Katharein in Upper Styria is particularly popular with divers. After all, where else can you stroll through an underwater park? Especially since the visibility here is up to 50 meters and you can enjoy a wide-angle view of the surrounding forest and the towering mountains under water. But for amateur divers it is no longer possible to discover the underwater world of the Green Lake. Because after around 2500 divers explored the lake in 2015, the waters should now recover again. That is why there has been a ban on diving since 2016.

Even if the lake seems to be made for bathing in it – most people should only be able to endure it for a short time without a wetsuit, because the temperatures are usually below 8 degrees.

The best time to visit Green Lake

The Grüner See reaches its greatest depth around Whitsun with about 10 meters, after which the water level drops quickly. The rush is correspondingly large on those days when it is at its lowest.

In autumn the Green Lake dries up almost completely. In late autumn, only a small remnant remains at the lowest point. The bank should then be dry again – and offer many a hiker a rest and a view.