Spullersee

The Spullersee is a high-mountain lake in the Lechquellengebirge range, part of the northern Limestone Alps. It sits on the Rhine–Danube watershed between the Klostertal valley and a spur of the Lech valley. The lake was enlarged in the 1920s when the Austrian Federal Railways dammed it to power the Arlberg railway. A second dam now holds water both north and south, while a tunnel brings extra water from the Zürser See. The lake is famous for its trout and draws anglers from June to February. In early 2018 the Spullerseestörung fault produced two quakes of magnitude 3.9, felt as far as Innsbruck and Basel. The Speicherkraftwerk Spullersee below the dam turns water pressure into electricity for the railway. Completed in 1925 after years of strikes and hardship, the plant was rebuilt between 2020 and 2021 to keep it running for another century. Visitors walk along the 1 829-metre shoreline with views of the Grafenspitze. The old surface pipes have been replaced by a buried tunnel, so the landscape now shows only a small intake structure. An automatic weather station at 1 850 metres records snow depth and temperature year-round. The dam’s concrete walls were reshaped with soil and planted to blend with the alpine surroundings.