Moosburg Ponds

Level of difficulty 1 |  Gastronomy 2 |  Length 1.8 km |  Time 30 - 60 minutes

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The ponds are a real haven of peace with small islands and dreamy bays. Surrounded by almost untouched forest, you can glide across the water on your own and, with a bit of luck, spot the odd jumping fish.

General information

• Carinthia Card
• Moosburg Wikipedia
• Moosburg tourist information
• Tour video
• Climate
• Wind, waves, weather

Navigation rules

The ponds are located in the middle of a nature reserve. Please keep the banks and the water free of garbage and only enter the water in public areas. Avoid marked private properties, even if they are accessible from the road! Noise should also be avoided.

Always avoid fishermen, swimmers and other paddlers!

Paddle around water plants instead of over them!

Dangers and risks

Most water accesses on the banks are slightly elevated, so be careful when getting on your SUP! The jetty at the publicly accessible meadow should also be stepped on with caution, despite the steps.

There are dead trees and branches in the water, especially on the banks, so keep your distance!

In some bays, aquatic plants grow that can cling to the fins and the paddle.

The ponds are popular with fishermen, so be careful not to catch a fishing line!

Directions

If you travel by car from the east, drive along Lake Wörthersee to Pörtschach and take the turn-off to Moosburg in the center (right, signposted). Follow the road straight ahead and after 5.4 km you will reach a playground and a small park on the left. Turn left at the crossroads in front of the supermarket and follow the winding road for another 800 m to the parking lot.

The ideal approach from the west is via highway exit 339 Pörtschach Wörthersee, following the road for just over 2 km into Pörtschach. Directly at the Hotel Porcia (red facade on the right), take the turn-off to Moosburg on the left, which you follow for 5 km until you reach the parking lot.

The journey by bus takes you to the bus stop Moosburg Ortsmitte. From there you can either walk 800 m to the dam between the Mitterteich Pond and the Mühlteich Pond or you walk about 1 km to the lawn on the north bank of the Mitterteich Pond.

Parking

There are several free parking options at the ponds, for example the parking lot in the north, where you have enough space to unload and inflate your SUP. A small disadvantage: you then have to walk a few hundred meters to the water.

If you want to park closer to the nearest water access, drive to the top of the dam between the two ponds and you will also find plenty of space there.

If in doubt, paddlers can even park on the large parking lot directly opposite the playground and walk the few hundred meters to the water from there.

Swimming

It is also possible to swim in the ponds, but only a few people do this, most likely the owners of adjacent properties. There are public water accesses on almost all sides of the ponds, but beware of marked private properties. Understandably, this natural paradise does not have the kind of infrastructure we are familiar with from open-air swimming pools. In midsummer, water temperatures of up to 25° C are possible here. Due to the high nutrient content, this results in considerable algae growth, which causes the water to turn green and cloudy.

If you want to swim in clearer water nearby, you have to head to Lake Wörthersee, just a few kilometers to the south. The nearest lake accesses and lidos can be found in the municipalites of Pörtschach and Krumpendorf on the northern shore of Carinthia's longest lake.

From the public jetty at the Mitterteich Pond turn right and go along the shore.

Length

1.8 km

Time

30 - 60 minutes

Start and landing

On the small sunbathing lawn on the north bank.

SUP rental

none

Alone on small water

Yes, they still exist, the unknown paddling spots in your own homeland. Just a few kilometers north of Pörtschach and Carinthia's most famous lake, Lake Wörthersee, are the natural Moosburg Ponds. There are two small and one larger pond, which irrigate each other from the west and tend to increase algae growth in summer due to their high nutrient concentration.

As so-called eutrophic waters, they are particularly rich in phosphate, which leads to a high production of biomass. However, passionate paddlers are not deterred by this, as they know that the slightly algae-rich water on the surface becomes clearer away from the banks. However, the water here remains greenish to yellow-brown everywhere.

We choose the parking lot in the north of the middle pond (Moosburger Mitterteich) and carry our SUPs from there on foot to a spacious meadow with a small jetty. We could have taken a few other suitable path to the water beforehand, but the SUPs anchored at the jetty are reason enough for us to start our little tour here. As I said, you shouldn't let the slightly slimy-looking water surface on the shore spoil your day, as the water is much clearer a few meters further on.

We take off to the right under the midday sun and see a rather large fish jump out of the water far in front of us - and it wasn't a fisherman who pulled it up with a jerk. The animal has probably seen an insect and immediately devoured it - unfortunately the camera is not drawn, as it is in the process of capturing the untouched vegetation on the shore.

Conifers reach meters into the sky, while dead branches and trees protrude into the water, which is barely more than three meters deep here. Water lilies also spread out in some bays, but do not get in the way of the pondweed and the milfoil below the surface.

The light easterly wind allows us to drift westwards with almost no paddling effort, where the tiny wooded islands offer an incomparable visual experience. Unfortunately, their shores are quite steep and heavily forested, so it hardly pays to enter them. This is also better for the flora and fauna, and there is plenty of nature to marvel at from the water anyway. Unfortunately, we see nothing of the abundance of fish below the surface, but there are plenty of pike, eels, perch and zander down there.

Fortunately, we don't come across any fishermen today, so we have the middle pond to ourselves. The southern bank provides wonderful shade at lunchtime and you can take a pleasant nap on board without being in anyone's way. How nice it must be to paddle here in winter, provided there is plenty of snow but no ice.

But before we get there, we enjoy the summer and paddle towards the dam with a view of Moosburg Castle and its guest house. The dam separates the middle pond (Mitterteich) from the small Mühlteich Pond, which is also a popular fishing area. The Dammwirt Inn even runs a small campsite here, and you could quickly climb over the dam and get to the Mühlteich Pond quite flat to conquer the water there.

We'll leave this option out for today and glide under the jetty of the romantic wooden hut by the dam instead. It must have been this idyllic on all lakes a hundred years ago, before the tourism industry began to capitalize on natural oases. From here, it's just the blink of an eye back to our starting point at the jetty and we paddle one leisurely stroke after another until we come ashore again after a few minutes.

It was lovely, and as a fitting finale we stop off at the nearby gluten-free patisserie, while our junior paddler lets off steam at the really great adventure playground next door. The ponds may be small, but their relaxing effect is huge.

Find more SUP tours on Carinthian lakes in the SUP Guide Carinthia.