Best place to hike in October?
 

We will be in Krakow until October 6th and then would like to do some hiking in Austria or Germany or?
We love Wengen, Murren, Zermatt--we like low key and country places with beautiful scenery and day hikes.

What are the best places for hiking in the first half of October? where it is not usually raining or snowing?
Seefeld looked great but the weather is too chancy for mid october. Coming from southern California, we want someplace with lots of greenery, cows, and charm.
Thank you!

By October just about all of the cows will have already come down from their high alpine pastures in Austria, so you'll have to hope for green and charm. In general October is the "in between" month in Austria; the harvest festivals and Almabtrieb (the cows returning from the high alps) are over, and the tourism industry is getting ready for ski season. A number of the lifts that usually take summer wanderers up are closed for ski season maintenance; and, finding open Alms or Hütte may pose a challenge.

For us, October is when we generally restrict our day hiking to the Vienna Woods (we live in Vienna) because a last-minute, weather dependent decision can be made. Also, the Schneebergbahn is still running to the end of the month; and the autumn colors at Hohe Wand and across the region are still rather pretty.

I hope this is helpful.

Thank you for responding. if we can change our dates to Sept 22-30 does that make any difference weatherwise.
Someone suggested going to Hallstatt instead as it is at a lower elevation and said that there are nice trails nearby. But it seems isolated by the water.
thank you again.

In September there will generally be more sunny and dry days, and without the heat of summer. I think Hallstatt for hiking would be enjoyable, but only for a day or two. The village is small and a bit isolated, and it's easy to run out of other activities.

I think I'd choose a more southerly place for being outdoors in the fall, Italy. There are a number of books, I have Lonely Planet Walking in Italy, on the subject, and it seems to me you'd get more reliably good weather, if that's important to you. Amazon has a number you can check out with a "walking in Italy" search.