For my longer hikes I always make home made energy bars. It would off course be easier to just bring a bag of nut mix with me but, I find nuts quite boring to eat. Furthermore I find them try and they often make me thirsty. Making my own müslibars is not necessarily much cheaper than buying them, but this way I know exactly what is in my bar and what is not.
During the years I have experimented with may different recipes for müslibars and raw bars. Sadly for some reason I always forget to write down the recipe 😦 . So before a long hike I always have to search the internet for a recipe that seems good and then end up improving it some how to make it awesome 🙂
I made some müsli bars for the Großglocknerer hike last weekend and this time I actually noted down the recipe!! Here it is:
Melt the butter together with fibre syrup. Mix all the dry ingredients a bowl and add the fiber syrup and butter. Mix well until you get a sticky dough. Let it rest for 20 minutes. Then cover a oven form with aluminium folio or plastic and press the dough into the form as hard as you can. It really should be compact. Then put it into refrigerator over the night. Next day take it out, cut it into a suitable müslibar size and pack each bar into aluminium folio. Store in the refrigerator. I have had mine in refrigerator for 2 weeks without them getting bad. You can also freeze the bars for later use.
These bars are totally raw and therefore not really suitable for very warm hiking days. In colder temperature they are amazing. They are also not too sweet so they don’t make you thirsty.
At times it feels like looking at the weather forecast has become my new hobby 😀 While other people spend their time checking for Facebook updates, I spend my time on checking the weather forecast for different parts of the Alps! 😀 (Btw, I still trust the Norwegian weather app yr.no the most)
This weekend I had not been been hiking for the two past weekends and was quite desperate, but again the weather forecast predicted thunderstorms and rain in the mountains for the weekend to come. The question was, should I trust the forecast or not?? In the end I decided not to do so, and went hiking anyways! I was off course ready for rain and we had decided that if the weather turns stormy we will turn around.
So we got up at 5:30, took the 6:35 train from Hbf and headed to Heiterwang to conquer Thaneller (2341m). First of all I must say I was totally surprised that I could use the Bayern ticket the whole way, as Heiterwang is in Austria. So this was a pleasant surprise. After 2 hours and 15 Minutes we were there. The weather was perfect, 23 degrees and sunny. Still, I was a little worried because the rain was supposed to start after 12:00, hence we had quite fast pace for the first two hours.
The path from Heiterwang is not hard to find and it is a nice path through the forest and across several green meadows. If the sky is clear you can spot the peak already form the train station (It is the highest one).
This is the peak, but you have to go around to the right, before you start the accent
After two hours, a rocky gravel path starts and heads to the right. We were not aware of this, but in fact you have to go to the right side of Thaneller to get to the peak. This was a little disappointing for us, as it felt that we were almost there as the peak was so near, but instead of heading right up the wall we needed to follow the path approx 30 minutes direction Reutte and decent approximately 150 hm down into a valley, where the real accent started. From the valley we followed a zigzag gravel path direction a rocky wall. When we meet the wall, the most fun part of the hike started. There is some scrambling and some iron ropes, but no equipment is needed. From this point we thought the peak was quite close, but in fact It took us another 1h 30 minutes to reach the peak.
THE WALL , the path follows the left side
The view from the peak was really worth the struggle. Plansee changed its colors from blue to green as the sun hit it and the white clouds made the view to the lakes mysterious and idyllic at the same time:
One happy mountaingirl
As always we took our time on the peak and stayed approximately for an hour enjoying the sun, the view and the calmness of Thalneller. From the peak, we could actually see all the way to Hohenschwangau. We could also easily spot Säuling, so it was cool to spot it and know that we have been on top of it :D:D You can read about our hike to Säuling here.
We went down the same scrambling path as we came up, but choose a different path down in the valley to Heiterwang because I find it boring to go up and down the same path and that way we did not have to climb 150 m up again 🙂 It was a really nice path that followed the river for some time so we could fill up our water bottles and then turned into a forest road which was very enjoyable to walk down to Heiterwang. I would not choose this path up to Thanleller, because upwards it would be too boring to walk the forest road, but downhill after a heavy hike, it was perfect!
The fog got to us on the way down, but we did not really mind after the view we had from the peak.
I have made a GPS track of the whole trail available on Outdooractive.
We got to Heiterwang at 17:50 and had some time to kill before the next train at 18:38. So we saw everything there was to see of Heiterwang, which is not much. We could not even find a place where you could buy a beer 😦 In other words, there is no point to spend time in Heiterwang, there is just nothing to see! But we used the waiting time to do some stretching and yoga exercises, so the passed fast.
In conclusion, don’t trust the weather app 100%. At least I am glad I did not this weekend. I even know people who were braver than me and went for Alpspitze – a peak that I have planned to do for a month now! Perhaps later this month I can finally stand on top of it!
Until the next hike. Now I’m off for some boulderfun 🙂
