Drava River – Spittal to Villach

Level of difficulty 3 |  Gastronomy 1 |  Length 36 km |  Time 6.5 – 8 hours

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The gentle Drava invites you to a relaxing SUP tour through Upper Carinthia between the towns Spittal and Villach. With panoramic alpine views and plenty of untouched nature, the route winds through the beautiful Drava Valley.

General information

• Carinthia Card 
• Spittal/Drau Wikipedia 
• Villach Wikipedia
• Villach tourist information
• Spittal/Drau tourist information
• Tour video
• Climate
• Wind, waves, weather

Navigation rules

The first quarter of the route is designated a Natura 2000 protected area. This protected area, called the Upper Drava, ends exactly where the A 10 freeway bridge crosses the Drava River after the two islands. Therefore, especially on this section, only land on the banks when absolutely necessary, and avoid leaving trash and making noise!

Avoid fishermen and any other watercraft (ferries) in advance and always paddle with foresight! Swimmers are unlikely to be seen, but it's not impossible that some people will go into the water at suitable spots.

Dangers and risks

The Drava, of course, carries all the dangers of a flowing body of water, yet it is regulated along this stretch and, due to the predominantly calm waters, is even pleasant to paddle for beginners. Those unsure of their skills can complete the tour with a life jacket.  

Since the Drava Valley, with its encircling mountain slopes, can act as a wind accelerator, you should always check the wind conditions beforehand. Headwinds of 2 Bf or more, i.e., from the east, will make it almost impossible to paddle. Fortunately, such winds are quite rare; most often, they blow across the valley from the north or south.

For the first six kilometers, paddlers should expect to encounter whitewater of category 1 (WW 1), meaning light whitewater. The resulting slightly higher waves, combined with a brisk flow, can make it difficult for SUP beginners to paddle to the oxbows. Those who want to avoid the whitewater should start the tour at suitable spots after the two islands and sidearms. This makes it easy for SUP novices to navigate the water.

However, everyone should of course keep enough distance from the bridge pillars. Countless bridges and footbridges run across the Drava. Driftwood gets caught on their pillars time and again. Even whole tree trunks can lie crosswise in the water. The bridge in front of the Kellerberg power station is particularly low. Here you have to keep your head down and crouch down!

You will find fishermen on both sides of the river after the two islands and at the beginning of the tidal water. For this reason alone, stand-up paddlers should always stay at least 10 meters away from the shore. If you are paddling along a bend in the river close to the bank, you may be surprised by a fishing line that suddenly appears.

Shoals are only to be expected in the two sidearms after the fifth kilometer of the tour. Depending on the water level, there are a number of riffles here that require a brief descent. Of course, you shouldn't paddle too close to the shore, as the paddle blade could repeatedly hit rocks. In general, the water level along the entire route is always high enough to paddle at any time of year.

On the sandbanks, the clay can be extremely soft in places, so you can quickly sink up to your ankles.

The transfer at the Paternion power station is only for physically fit people! First you descend an embankment along a trail for a good ten meters. After crossing the road, there is another descent over boulders of a lower height. Be sure to carry each SUP to the water in pairs and take enough time for each step! Alternatively, you could choose a reasonably shallow water access a few meters further on if the terrain is not too overgrown.

Directions

The good parking facilities at the start of the tour make it possible to arrive in your own car. The pretty little town of Spittal an der Drau can be reached by car from the west via the B 100 Drautalstraße. From the north and east, however, you take the freeway A 10 Tauernautobahn.

As the train station is located close to the river, traveling by train is also highly recommended. As Spittal/Drau is the only town in the area, there are regular train connections from all directions. You can find suitable train connections on Omio and RailEurope, for example. From the train station, you walk just one kilometer to the start of the tour on the Drava.

National and international bus, train and flight connections can be found via the comparison portals Omio, Busbud as well as RailEurope. If you arrive by plane, you will either land in Klagenfurt or in Ljubljana.

Parking

At the local sports stadion (Goldeckstadion) in Spittal an der Drau there is a large, free parking lot just 350 m from the starting point. The walk to the water only takes two minutes.

In Villach, however, parking is a little more difficult. In the area of the power station, you can actually only park for free at the beginning of the riverside promenade (Draubermen) on the left-hand side of the road. There is also a freely accessible visitor parking lot at the power station. However, it is not clear whether this may also be used by recreational athletes. Both options require a walking distance of at least 500 m.

Swimming

In midsummer, when the air is around 30° C, you can expect the water temperature on the Drava to be around 15° C in undammed areas. So it's great for cooling off. However, there is only one special bathing spot along the shore along this stretch (in Kellerberg). But paddlers can jump from the SUP into the water at any time and at their own risk if the gentle flow speed allows it.

Spittal an der Drau is home to the Drautal Perle indoor swimming pool near the start of the tour, which offers year-round swimming fun. Spittal's lake (Millstätter See) offers a water surface area of 13.28 km², which also cools down relatively slowly in the fall.

The Kellerberg leisure facility is located along the route, shortly before the Kellerberg power station. There you have access to the Drava via the footbridge with the dominant photo heart. A few turns of the river further on is the small natural swimming pool in the municipality of Puch.

In the Villach area, in addition to the Carinthia Thermal Baths, you are spoiled for choice between Lake Faak, Lake Ossiach and a number of smaller lakes.

Tour

From the Goldeck Stadium in Spittal/Drau to the Rennstein power station near Villach.

Length

36 km

Time

6.5 – 8 hours

Start and landing

Start at the Goldeck Stadium in Spittal/Drau.
Land on the left bank before the Rennstein power station near Villach.

SUP rental

Draupaddelweg
Dahlienweg 14, 9161 Maria Rain
Phone +43 (0)463 2032 30100

Fels & Wasser
Flurweg 20, 9524 Villach
Phone +43 (0)650 6161327

SUP2GETHER
Mobile SUP rental
Am Birkengrund 26, 9073 Klagenfurt
Phone +43 (0)463 20323020

Multifaceted river SUPing through Upper Carinthia

What's the best way for stand-up paddlers to spend Easter Sunday? Quite simply, by kicking off the SUP season with a magnificent river tour. At the same time, this paddling experience will pick up where we ended the season last October: by exploring a section of the Drava that was previously unknown to us.

For today's river tour through the Lower Drava Valley, we are taking the option of traveling by train for the first time. Thanks to the great and well-timed connections of the Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB) to Spittal an der Drau, we enjoy a pleasant journey, which is just as diverting as the easy online booking a few days earlier.

From the train station in Spittal, we walk just one kilometer to the town's sports stadion, where we find a great start for the upcoming tour. A small tributary of the Drava forms a loamy delta, where we make our final preparations and can look 2100 m up to Mt. Goldeck.

The Drava flows past us with gentle white water, and we set off on a brisk wave ride early in the morning. The clear forest air tickles our nostrils with its terpenes and supplies our lungs with high-quality oxygen right from the start. We really need it to fully concentrate on the light white water ahead of us.

We overlook the mouth of the river Lieser, a tributary of the Drava, flowing in from the left. Our eyes are directed ahead and towards the sun, full of expectations for this varied paddling route to Villach. The Lower Drava Valley stretches from Spittal to Villach, but no longer reveals the natural course of the river. Nevertheless, it still has a number of natural highlights to offer despite regulation.

Apart from the fact that the undulating water with its brisk speed will not last forever, there are dreamy sand and gravel banks, floodplains and deserted reed landscapes to marvel at everywhere. Until the 20th century, there was lively raft traffic, especially from Upper Carinthia, which was instrumental in transporting economic goods quickly, but not without danger, along the then still wild river.

The course of the river was probably designed precisely for us paddlers, and regulated so that we would find it highly entertaining. The route is winding throughout and never monotonous, so that after around 5.5 km we are already faced with a fantastic natural spectacle.

The Drava forms an island, creating a small sidearm that diverges from the main river and is partly shallow but easy to navigate. There is never a lack of water along this route, but depending on the time of year and the weather, it can get quite shallow here in the side arm. Due to the meltwater, we only have to descend a few times and pull the boards through the ankle-deep, cold mountain water.

The approximately 800 m long sidearm allows us to immerse ourselves in absolutely untouched nature and even leads us to another, somewhat shorter sidearm. If there were no floodplain landscape on the starboard side, you would now be able to look 150 meters up to the Kleinsasserhof - certainly one of the most quaint and best restaurants in Carinthia.

Both sidearms are highly recommended, especially as there is only absolute silence here apart from the twittering of birds and the splashing of the water. As we leave the sidearms and return to the main river, we notice how the water becomes more and more tame and increasingly challenges us to paddle stronger. From now on, the water remains largely leisurely, but if you paddle continuously, you will still experience rapid propulsion.

Unfortunately, this propulsion gets weaker and weaker as we approach the Paternion power station, and we paddle the last few turns of the river to the weir as if we were paddling on a reservoir. More and more fishermen populate the easily accessible spots on the bank and wave to us. To avoid getting tangled up anywhere, from now on, it makes sense to paddle the rest of the route more in the middle.

We find a suitable landing spot on the left bank and start the rather challenging crossing around the power station. First we follow the asphalt path to the power station, or more precisely, to the cycle path leading over the dam wall. It leads off to the right and at its beginning there is a footpath by a fence leading steeply down to a road (about 10 m). From here, good mobility, sure-footedness and balance are extremely important:

The two of us carry each SUP down to the road along the fence and over the crash barriers on the other side. Once there, we both take extreme care down the steep boulders while carrying the boards to the water. This is probably the most critical part of the entire route, especially as you can only get back on the SUPs just below the weir. Alternatively and more safely, you could board a little further downstream, provided the terrain is not too overgrown.

All goes well, and we continue to flow with a little more momentum into the next river meanders. On the left, the railroad line passes close to the Drava, on the right the already busy Drava Cycle Path, which runs through the entire province. Far behind it, we recognize Mt. Dobratsch, Villach's local mountain with its dominant transmitter mast at over 2000 m above sea level. Nevertheless, we still have to cover about half the distance to reach the west of Villach in a few hours.

After 22 km, we pass the Drava Ferry in Feffernitz, which is still in the final phase of its winter hibernation. In the summer months, when the weather is good, cyclists and walkers are ferried across the river for little money or free of charge. The SUP board does this for us, and it finally gets a little help from the forecast SW wind, which takes some of the paddling out of our hands.

Paddlers should always check the wind conditions beforehand so that they don't have to attempt to paddle against a headwind. With a headwind of 2 Bf or more, it will be impossible to complete this tour. Especially since the water keeps flowing slower the closer you get to Villach.

After passing Kellerberg Castle, we land at the 300 m warning sign on the left before the power station in Kellerberg and carry our SUPs along a dirt track and a small road. After the power station, don't take the first turn-off to the right, but go straight on across the stream to the small gravel parking lot! A clearly visible path through the thicket starts at the wooden bench and ends at a great clearing below the weir.

Today, the April sun is beating down so strongly on the stones that we decide to take a leisurely break here in a summery atmosphere. As the access to the water is so good, we even take a short swim in the cold river. Well rested and highly motivated, we start the last leg of our tour, as we still have 10 km to go to Villach.

We glide between fields and meadows and enjoy the bright yellow dandelions blooming everywhere. The light wind blows white cherry blossoms around our ears and also covers the river with a soft coating. This spectacle contrasts with the open-cast mining site on the Wollanig Mountain in front of us. The Omya factory, which has long been located in Gummern near Villach, mines industrial minerals and gives the mountain a striking white flank.

Local paddlers know that it is now only a few kilometers and river meanders to the destination, the Rennstein power plant near Villach. Like the other two power stations along this route, it is part of the "Obere Drau" (Upper Drava) power station chain and was completed in 1984. If it weren't for the exhaustion in our arms and legs, everything would go much faster now. We paddle at what feels like a snail's pace in slightly rippled water with a slight headwind under the dizzying bridge of the A 10 highway.

We end this wonderful start to the season with a view of Mt. Mittagskogel, which is still covered in snow, and again find a great bank access on the left. From there it's a 600 m walk along the well-paved path to the road where the bus stop Unterwollanig is located. Bus line 8573 runs from here to Villach's main station within 10 minutes. Or you can be picked up by car. Either way, this tour makes paddlers conclude with a hurrah.

Alternatives: Of course, you can start and finish the tour at countless other easily accessible points along the route. Even after the power station in Villach, the route continues for a long time, as the Drava can be paddled almost all the way to Slovenia. So there are many more options for SUPficionados.

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