Lünersee, Reservoir lake in Vandans, Austria

Lünersee is a high mountain lake located in the Brandnertal valley, surrounded by steep limestone walls of the Rätikon range. The water sits at about 1,970 meters in elevation and displays a deep blue color shaped by the lake's depth and water clarity.

The lake formed naturally as a high mountain basin in the Alps long ago. In the 20th century, a dam was built to hold back the water and turn it into a reservoir for power generation.

The lake lies at the end of the Brandnertal, but the meadows around it belong to the municipality of Vandans and have always been grazed from the Rellstal side, because the rocky paths from Brandnertal are practically impassable for large cattle. The Douglasshütte by the dam station, built in 1960 to replace an 1870 hut flooded by the first full impoundment, serves hikers as a snack and overnight stop.

A cable car connects the valley directly to the lake, saving visitors from a strenuous hike. A walking path circles the water's edge, allowing people to explore the shoreline and enjoy different viewpoints along the way.

The lake's natural inflow from its 13 km² catchment would take over five years to fill its usable volume, so the Lünerseewerk was built as a pumped-storage plant; its pumps refill the reservoir in about 40 days. The 1.35 km Totalpstollen, built from 1957, carries meltwater from the Brandner Glacier into the lake.