Glass floor over a 400-metre drop
You stand and look straight down into the valley beneath your feet.
Vorwerk — Public domain · Karl Gruber — CC BY 3.0 at · Karl Gruber — CC BY 3.0 at · Dimitry Anikin — CC0
Honestly no. The platform hangs over a void with a partly glass floor, and the Stairway to Nothingness is harsher still. With a serious fear, even the cable car may be unpleasant. The view from lower stations on the mountain is calmer and less extreme.
Obertraun is minutes from Hallstatt by boat, bus or car, and the cable car station is there. Allow at least half a day for the ascent, the platform, the caves and the descent. Start in the morning: fog builds through the afternoon and queues lengthen in season.
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A viewing platform cantilevered off a cliff edge in the Dachstein massif, at over two thousand two hundred metres above sea level. The platform projects from the rock over a drop of more than four hundred metres, and part of its floor is glass, so you stand and look straight down into the valley beneath your feet. That is the whole thing: a direct experience of height rather than a view through a window. The view takes in the Austrian Alps with their year-round snow, the Dachstein glacier, and the region's lakes below. On the very clearest days the range runs for tens of kilometres. Beside the platform is the Stairway to Nothingness, a metal staircase ending in mid-air directly over the cliff, along with an ice cave and an ice palace passage inside the mountain. Access is by cable car from Obertraun near Hallstatt, climbing in three stages. The site is high and cold even in summer, and the weather decides everything: in fog you see nothing at all.
You stand and look straight down into the valley beneath your feet.
A metal stair ending in mid-air over the cliff — for those who can take it.
Ice passages inside the mountain, on the same site.
The Dachstein massif, above Obertraun near Hallstatt