visitbayern – Hiking Wonders

Alpspitze 2 628 m – my first hike on my own

October 13, 2017October 13, 2017madeziiusLeave a comment

IMG_20171002_091857

Alpspitze has been on my list a long time because it looks pointy and I just love pointy mountains. Every time I took the train pass Garmisch Partenkirchen I got reminded of that I still had not been on top of top of it. BUT NOT ANYMORE! :D:D Now I can point to it and say have have been on top of it 😀 (as I proudly did when we took the train to Ehrwald last weekend 😀 )

Actually i have tried to climb or planned to climb Alpspitze several times. First I planned to do it in August this year, but then I got sick. Then we tried a month ago, but first we could not find the bus (Bus nr2) that you have to take to get to the Alpspitze cable car and when we finally found the right stop we had to wait 45 minutes until the next bus. That was ok, we had time and the after a coffee and some breakfast we were ready to take the next bus, but when Elias started to look for our train ticket which is also valid on busses, he could not find it anywhere. After some desperate searching we just had to admit that we forgot it on the train. Well ok we thought, we will need new ticket anyways to get home so we decided to buy a new ticket on the bus. Turned out that this bus, which was a local bus and not a regional bus, did not sell Bayern tickets and we had to buy one from the automate in the train station, but as the bus driver did not want to wait for us this meant that we had to take the next bus ad again wait 45 minutes. As we already had very limited time for this hike and needed to be back in Munich for a birthday party that same evening we decided to drop it and take the train back home. It just was not meant to happen, I told Elias and so Alpspitze reminded on my list.

So two weeks ago I decided to try again. It was a very spontaneous decision. I decided to go for it around half past eight in the evening and therefore had to pack in a hurry, not like me at all 😀

Elias did not want to join, not because he don’t like Alpspitze, but because he did not want to use a vacation day. So I decided to be adventurous and go by myself! It had rained so much lately that I could not let this change go pass me.

I wanted to do the Via Ferrata from Osterfelderkopf 2057m. The Via Ferrata was supposed to be easy, but as I was going alone I decided to take the Via Ferrata set with me.

Screenshot from 2017-10-13 21:44:26

Normally I would hike the whole way from the valley, but that is over 2000m climb and with days getting shorter doing this would have most likely meant hiking in the dark on way down. In addition, weather forecast promised rain for after four o’clock. Therefore, not feeling bad about it (ok,maybe just a little), I took the super expensive cable car up and down (27 euros!!) Or at least I paid for it. In fact I managed to take the wrong cable car up! 😦 So if you now read this, learn from my mistakes! The problem was that the bus stops in front of the Kreuzeck cable car station which only takes you up to 1651m. This was the only station I could see when I got of the bus and had bought the ticket. The Alpspitzbahn is further pass the ticket station and I did not see it. I therefore took the wrong one 😦

But it was all ok in then end, it just meant that I had to hike up one and a half hour to Osterfelderkopf, where I could finally start the Via Ferrata to Alpspitz. There was just one problem, I had trouble figuring out where exactly the Via Ferrata starts. There are a lot of signboards, but all of them are for touristy easy walks in the area. To find the via Ferrata I walked around the rocks on the path above the road and managed to spot the right sign. I followed the trail further and found the start of the Via Ferrata together with the warnings “for experienced hikers only”. The Via Ferrata starts before the small tunnel, so if you meet the tunnel you have walked too far. From the spot of the warning signs you hike a little further until you meet the sign where it explains how to use the Via Ferrata set. I geared up here and took a nervous selfie before I started the climb.

IMG_20171002_104555

IMG_20171002_105359

I have heard that it gets very busy on Alpspitze during weekends and summer, but I was all alone most of the time. I passed on couple on my way up and I saw that there was one other group of people climbing up after me.

The Via Ferrata is 500 height meters and quite long, but I felt it was easy, and I did not use my Via Ferrata set once. The route was secured meter by meter, also in places where you really did not need any securing. It was quite exposed at times, so it’s not for people with fear of heights. I used one and a half hours up, but I did not take any breaks so with more traffic and more breaks it would take 2 hours for sure.

IMG_20171002_113854 — This was not uncommon on this path/ via ferrata

IMG_20171002_115021 — The peak, so close yet so far.

At times I stopped up for a moment to join the view and to feel proud of myself. Not only did I go hiking alone, which I find is brave enough since I have terrible sense of direction, but I also decided to do a hard hike which I had not done before, with a long Via Ferrata! Some people probably think that it is dangerous to hike alone, and I guess it can be, but it is also dangerous to cross the street or drive a car and we still do it? For me it is nice to know that I can go by myself and do not need to be dependent of others. Still, I will always enjoy hiking with others more than alone because I like the social aspect of it and I like to share the moments and experiences.

IMG_20171002_120518

On the peak I took a one hour break, and enjoyed the view and my accomplishment. The weather was clear and it was easy to see Zugspitze and Jubiläumsgrat. Jubiläumsgrat is actually on my list. I just need to level up fist or find somebody who has a little more mountaineering experience and will let me tag along 😉

Zugspitze had a construction crane on top of it, the ultimate sign of tourist taking over that peak. This makes me soo sad and this is also why I haven’t hiked Zugspitze yet. I go to mountains to be in nature not to post postcards and stand in a crowd.

IMG_20171002_121722

IMG_20171002_122205

After some time I tried to figure out what path to take down. My original plan was to take Grieskar down, but everybody else were choosing another path called Ostflanke. I did not know how hard Grieskar would be, but I knew that it would be longer. In the end I decided to join another group of hikers who took the popular path down. I just did not want to push my luck and miss the last cable car down. The group of four who I hiked down with german and older than me, but it is easy to find the tone with people who have the same passion as you. We talked about mountains and hiking most of the way down. We had quite fast phase and used one and half hour down. This path was not a klettersteig and was indeed easy, but it was at times hard to spot it. But there is quite a lot of traffic on it so it is always possible to follow others.

IMG_20171002_132254

Back at the cable car station I had just enough time to book a bus ticket back to Munich before the next cable car went down. As it was quite early I could have had hiked down, but since I already had the ticket I did not want to waste it. I could not complain about the views from the cable care either:

IMG_20171002_145035

From the valley I took again bus nr 2 to Garmisch and had 1 hour to kill before the flixbus arrived. The moment the bus arrived it started to rain and I was quite glad that I did not decide to hike down after all.

When I hiked alone I felt the need to share my joy with somebody when I managed to make it to the top, but there was nobody there. I guess I will get used to this after more alone hiking. The good thing is that I will always have this blog to share some of the moments of my adventures.

IMG_20171002_122836

I just finished pacing for my next hike. The weather is supposed to be amazing this weekend, but unfortunately I can only do an easy hike tomorrow. Will blog about it soon 😉

Cheers,

Made.

Säuling (2047m) – A mountain that has been on my list since I moved to Germany.

May 25, 2017June 5, 2017madeziius3 Comments

I remember the very first time I went to Füssen and to Schloss Neuschwanstein. It was back in 2015 and we had just moved to Germany. We were standing on Marienbrücke when I saw Säuling, as a big pyramid in the sunset. I remember telling Elias that we need to find out what that mountain is called and hike it! Eventually we did find out what it was called, but it took me two and half years to finally stand on top of it. Therefore it was a little special to stand on top of Säuling today. It just had been on my list for so long!

IMG_20170525_123724

IMG_20170525_150252

Just couple of words about the Säuling itself. You can hike if from German side or from Austrian side. Or do like us, and hike if from one country to another. We Started from Pflach in Austria and ended in Füssen in Germany. I did not know that one could take Bayern ticket the whole way to Reute im Tirol and Pflach, so that was a nice surprise 🙂 From Pflach we used 2 hours to Säulinghaus. It is a nice hut to take a small break before the really steep ascent to the Säuling peak. We used 40 minutes from the hut to the peak. The weather was perfect, but we were not sure how much snow there could still be. Luckily there was almost none, because this hike would be very difficult to do with snow.

IMG_20170525_121929

IMG_20170525_120717

After a nice lunch and some selfies on the top, we started our descent to Neuschwanstein. I must say, I did not expect the descent to be so steep and so long. Therefore I recommend to start and end the hike in Pflach instead of hiking down to Neuschwanstein and taking the train from Füssen. That is unless you really want to see the castle. We had already seen the castle plenty of times so in retrospective I think it would have been nice to avoid all the tourist and the super slow train from Füssen to Munich. A map of the route is available on outdooractive here.

Säuling in not the only hike that can be started from Füssen, Branderschrofen is also a nice hike that has a hut and is not as long as Säuling. From Branderschrofen you will also have a very nice view to Säuling. I wrote a small post about it here.

IMG_20170525_131034

This was the first hike over 2000m in Germany this year, I’m happy to see there that the season is here and the snow is gone.

PS. My next hike is already planned and will be from Kufstein area, so stay tuned.

My first ski touring experience

January 29, 2017June 5, 2017madeziius1 Comment

For several years I have been thinking that I want to start with ski touring. For three years to e exact. This weekend we finally realized our dreams – well it was not quite according to what we had dreamed but at least we got out there.

ski-touring1

Picture by Štěpán Jirka

So why ski touring? Couple of years back we realized that during the winter season we are quite inactive. Yes, we went skiing couple of times, but you really get bored with riding the same slopes after couple of days and its also quite expensive sport. Another thing is that it does not provide the freedom that I usually feel while hiking. I think anybody who as been to a ski resort knows that you are no exactly alone in the mountains while there. All in all I think it is nice, but my husband and I wanted to try out ski touring so that we could have more freedom, get away from the people and closer to the mountains also during the winter season.

In order to go from dreams to action, we rented the equipment from DAV and found an “easy” tour that we could try out. I was a little anxious before the tour because we have no avalanche training. I know that many of you know think safety first – what were you thinking. BUT to my defense, I did try to sing up for avalanche course for ski touring, but it turned out that some ski touring experience was a prerequisite. How you should get one before the other, I wondered? I guess the way we ended up doing it. You just do some ski touring without avalanche training. Not the ideal scenario, but I decided that after three years I just can’t use more years on finding somebody who already knows this sport and is willing to let me tag along.

Long story short we found a tour marked “easy” in one of the ski touring books, rented skies from DAV, followed the avalanche reports and were ready for a real adventure. We didn’t even know how to use touring bindings, but luckily you can learn a lot from watching YouTube 🙂 .

The tour went to Fockenstein (1564m). We had to do a 900m climb and were supposed to use two and half hours to the top, but in the end we used three and half hours. Nevertheless, the trip up was actually quite as expected. I guess I had mentally prepared myself that it will be supper heavy and the reality was not as heavy as I had thought. It is amazing how you can walk up using skins and not even slightly glide backwards! We also had super nice weather so the way up was really nice.

After a while I started worrying about the snow conditions. Since it was warm the snow was very wet and I was afraid that on the way down, when temperature was decreasing it would be very slippery and icy. Another thing that worried me was that there was not that much snow on the top and that my rented skis were too long for me. I tried not to think about that too much on the way up but on the way down all my fears became a reality.

skitourin2

Picture by Štěpán Jirka

First of all I must admit that I am not the best skier, even on slopes. So I did not have the best confidence in myself. The fact that my touring skis were longer and wider than my regular skis did not help. Therefore there was one place where I actually took of my skies and walked 😦 😦 . At that point I was thinking that my overall goals was to not get insured and when I was standing there I was not sure that I would not get insured when trying to ski down. So I did not. Off course this is a defeat that strikes me hard. Trying to do something that you have dreamed of for so long and then failing so hard, makes me so sad. I would almost say depressed. Because it is so easy to just generalize this defeat to every other dream I have regarding outdoors. I know that it is not how I should think, but I am not going to lie and tell you that I sit with just positive thoughts after this experience. Yes, I try to focus on the positive – I made it down without insuring myself or destroying the skis, It was easier than expected to go up and I am one more experience wiser. I also know that one can not expect to be good at something the first time you try, but I was expecting to be able to ski down the whole way even if very slowly. Therefore I still feel defeated and unmotivated.

I now need to decide what I will do next. Should I say OK ski touring is not for me or should I make a plan on how to get better?? I don’t know yet. I think I will try it once more before I decide. With shorter skis 🙂 .

Anyways, here are some pictures from the trip, as I said the way up was a really nice experience.

skitouring4

skitouring3

Picture by Štěpán Jirka

img_20170128_145905 img_20170128_145843

Did you see the supermoon? From Jochberg (1565m) you could.

November 17, 2016June 5, 2017madeziius2 Comments

So on Monday everybody were exited about the “supermoon”. Apparently the moon did appear larger than it has since the 1940s. It was supposed to be the whole 14% bigger and 30% brighter compared with the smallest full moons. Pay attention to that last fact “compared with the smallest full moons.” In other words it was not THAT big, but I still thought it would be worth taking a step outside to see this supermoon and so at the last-minute, I joined a hike that a friend of mine was organizing. This meant that I had to pack everything the evening before and take it with me to work. I did not even have enough food in the refrigerator to make sandwiches, but once I have decided something, nothing can stop me!

So I packed everything and got up 6:20 to buy some sandwiches from the bakery and get to work early. At 4 a clock I left work and had to get to the other side of Munich, where we were to meet. One hour later we were on our way. Once again I was hiking with new people who I had never met before. This is almost becoming a habit :D. We were a group of five and had a really nice time.

This was also my first winter-night hike in a very long time. I think I did something like this back in Norway but in a much smaller scale.

2016-11-14 19.29.35.jpg — We were truly hiking in winter wonderland.

I must give my friend Anna all the credit for choosing the mountain and planning the hike. I know she put a lot of effort into finding the perfect mountain where we could see the moon. And perfect it was 🙂 .

The hike we did was the following:

Route: Parkplatz am Kesselberg (850 m) – Jochberg (1565 m) – Parkplatz am Kesselberg (850 m).

Time: Estimated time was 2 hours to the top, but we used closer to 1,5h.

Climb: 750m

The drive there from Munich took ca one and half hour. We honestly thought that we would be the only crazy people going hiking in the middle of the night just to see the moon, but when we got there, there were about 4 other cars already parked. Turns out we are not the only ones who had this idea!

We started from the parking lot with lots of layers and headlights. After 10 minutes the layers came off and after 30 minutes we turned off our headlights. It was so snowy and the moon was indeed very bright, so the headlights were not even needed. There was however a lot of fog, so we could not see the moon. At ca. 1400 meters (when the forest ended) we finally walked out of the fog and saw the moon.

2016-11-14-20-14-24 — The magical moment as we exit the forest and see the moon.

So imagine this: you are standing in the snow, under the stars, under a bright moon, you look down into the valley and it is covered with thick soft fog. In the horizon you see all the mountaintops reaching out of the fog. It was amazing.

2016-11-14 20.23.51.jpg — The fog in the valley and the mountaintops rising up from it – Amazing.

Tonight, the full moon will appear larger than it has since the 1940s. The moon will appear around 14 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter compared with the smallest full moons. It will be worth taking a step outside to see this super supermoon.

What is a supermoon, and why does it happen?

The moon’s orbit around Earth is not a perfect circle. It’s an ellipse, a saucer shape that’s longer than it is wide. That means as the moon follows this orbit, it’s sometimes closer to the Earth and sometimes farther away. At perigee, the closest spot in its orbit to the Earth, it’s around 31,068 miles closer to Earth than at apogee, when it’s farthest away.

Meanwhile, we see different phases of the moon — full, crescent, waxing, and waning gibbous — depending on if the sun-facing side of the moon is facing the Earth.

These two phenomena don’t always match up, but when they do, astronomers call it a perigee full moon (a.k.a. super moon). This occurs about one in every 14 full moons, Jim Lattis, an astronomer at the University of Wisconsin Madison, notes.

The relative difference in size between a full moon at perigee and apogee. It does appear bigger, but not dramatically so.

To be sure, this isn’t an enormous difference compared with a regular full moon. Neil deGrasse Tyson has called the frenzy around supermoons overblown. “If you have a 16-inch pizza, would you call that a super pizza compared with a 15-inch pizza?” he said on theStarTalk radio show.

Whether or not you’re impressed, it’s a good enough excuse to go outside and marvel at the beauty of the cosmos. Sky and Telescope reports that the night of the 13th or 14th should make for good viewing (perigee will occur at 6:23 am EST on the 14th). But “[t]he tiny difference between the two evenings will be undetectable,” the magazine writes. You may want to try to catch the moon earlier, when it rises (for those of us on the East Coast, around 5:30 pm), because near the horizon, an optical illusion will make the moon appear absolutely huge. Like this:

But why is this supermoon extra special?

The moon will appear slightly larger than it has in decades because of mere chance. The moon will reach fullness just three hours after perigee on November 14. Because perigee and the full moon are so closely timed, this full moon will be the largest (relative to our perspective on Earth) since 1948. The next-closest supermoon will be in 2034, as NASAreports.

Again, though, the differences in size between a really close supermoon and a typical one would be are pretty negligible. The full moon Monday will be just 30 miles closer to Earth than the last record in 1948, National Geographic reports. In astronomical terms, that’s tiny.

The moon will also be a bit brighter than usual — also due to the fact that it will be a bit closer to the Earth.

And if you miss it, fear not. We’re currently in a run of supermoons, and there will be another on December 14 (it won’t be quite as big). After that, we’ll have to wait until December 2017 for the next one.

Correction: This article originally misstated the how the moon’s phases occur. They do not occur due to the moon’s passing in and out of the Earth’s shadow. Rather, they’re due to thechanging angles between the sun, Earth, and moon.

Was this article helpful?

Krottenkopf (2086m) and hiking with hikingbuddies.

November 7, 2016June 5, 2017madeziiusLeave a comment

As I wrote in previous post, this weekend I joined an organized hike by a group named Hiking buddies Munich (you can check them out here). This is a quite active hiking group on Facebook, where everybody can organize hikes and invite people to join. Hikes that are organized vary from difficult hikes for experienced hikers and easy hikes for complete new beginners.

The hike I joined went to Krottenkopf (2086m) in Germany and in the end we were 9 people doing it (one person did not feel good and decided to turn around quite early in the hike).

Route: Oberau train station (659m) – Weilheimer Hütte (1955m) – Krottenkopf (2086m) – Weilheimer Hütte – Oberau.

Elevation gain: ca. 1500 m

Time: We used 8 hours, with 3 long breaks and some short ones.

Distance: about 17 km.

Transport: Take train form München HBF to Oberau.

This trail is steep. You have a little beak when you reach the ridge and are going to the hut, from the hut it is just about 15 -20 min up to the peak on a perhaps even steeper trail. The trail is steep but involves no scrambling and it is not exposed at all. Therefore the only requirement to do this hike is to have good enough fitness level. Alternatively you could do it during the summer so that you don’t need to worry about hiking in dark.

Now, I promised to write about how the hike went with new group of people. As I already wrote I had hiked with only two of these people before. And therefore I also knew that the pace would be quite fast.. perhaps too fast form me 😛 Nevertheless, I joined ( I could not just sit home now could I?) So what happened was that they were quite fast and the group was naturally divided into two. This was actually very good because nobody needed to hike alone. The fast part of the group was very inclusive and waited for us at the hut before we started with the last climb all together. That said, I think we were not more than 15 -20 minutes behind them while hiking.

Everybody in the group were friendly and social. I think I got to know everybody except 2 people.. It kind of depends who you end up walking with. It was very nice international group and during the hike we shared our tips for hikes and travels in general. I truly believe everybody had a nice hike and I would not mind hiking with these people again 🙂

2016-11-05-15-46-16 — Enjoying the sun during a nice break on our way down.

On hiking buddies hikes there is often Gipfelbier (peak beer) and Gipfelschnaps (peak shot). I still not used to drinking while hiking ( I first experienced this strange tradition in Germany) , but I do not say no to a cold nice weissbier on a top of a mountain during nice whether. With not so sunny whether, I must be honest, I don’t really feel the urge for it

2016-11-05-13-09-37edited — Anna enjoying her beer with a view.

Ah I just got a selfie stick as a present from my sister, so I was testing this out. I am a complete newbie with selfie sticks, so it was actually hard to catch both the group and the mountains in the same picture with it 😀 Here is my attempt:

2016-11-05-13-17-02

Today it is snowing in Munich (kind of) and it is suppose to snow (for real) above 1000m. This means that the snow-hiking season is here 😀 Last year I did not do snow-hiking, but this year I might just try it 😀 I have also yet to try snowshoes so this promises to be an interesting and adventurous winter.

What are your plans for the winter season? Have you ever tried snowshoes?

Hiking with people who you have never hiked with before.

November 4, 2016June 5, 2017madeziius1 Comment

This weekend I will join a group of people for a hike. Most of these people I have never met before. We are supposed to be a group of ten. They do not know me and I do not know them. There are both positive and negative sides to hiking with a group of new people. The obvious positive thing is that you will be meeting new people who also like to hike! What a nice way to make new friends right?

Yes, it is a nice way to make new friends, be social and share the experience, but whenever hiking with new people my biggest concern is their fitness level and experience. Will they be too slow? Too fast?

When asking a friend or a family member to join your hike you also need to consider these things. I have myself experienced that people who I thought would be fit enough for the hike were not. This is not a nice situation to be in for neither the organizer or the attenders.

group

So to conclude, when organizing a hike:

Make packing lists.
Tell everybody how much food and water they need to have with them as a minimum.
Inform attendees about how many meters the hike is, if there is some scrambling or exposed areas, what you expect the terrain to be like. How many hours you expect to use etc.
Ask attendees how much hiking experience they have and if they have done any hikes recently (people who hiked a lot 2 years ago may not be fit now).
While hiking adjust your speed to rest of the group and take care of the slowest ones.

If you have a slow hiker in your group you will in worst case need to shorten the hike but people may also turn out to hike much faster than you. Maybe you asked some more experienced hikes to join your hike and now they are running up that mountain? This is for me an equally bad situation. I hate hiking so fast that I barely can catch my breath. I mean, I hike not to workout but to enjoy the views.. and I must say that I am not fit enough to run up mountains ( I wish I was). Therefore this situation can equally destroy my hiking experience.

How to handle this? Well, I try to put the people I know are fast at the end of the group. BUT this only works with people you know. When you don’t know your new hiking partners ,you can’t go and command them to go behind everybody. In this case I just remind myself that I need to hike in my own speed. Normally that works fine (because I will not be hours behind) and I still have nice time because the fast ones will wait for the rest of the group on the top.

And now comes the deal breaker for me. If I hike with people who are fast – they more or less “run” to the peak, and then when I get there they are all ready to head down again.. Well, then I will NOT be hiking with these people again. I need my time on the top of the peak!!!

11108830_10155402017195456_2723520704133390341_n — There is nothing better than a nice cop of tea on a mountain top during this time of the year.

What do you think of hiking with people you don’t know? Ever done that?

I will make a post about the hike itself and how it went sometime during the weekend. Until then I hope you get out to explore some mountains this weekend, be it alone or with new hiking buddies :).

A hike with the view to the Neuschwanstein castle.

November 1, 2016June 5, 2017madeziius1 Comment

This weekend my Mom is visiting. Unfortunately she is really not into hiking. Therefore, instead of visiting some nice peaks in the alps, we are going to do the regular touristy stuff. One of the sights that are really worth to visit while in Bavaria is the Neuschwanstein castle and I have good news – you can combine the visit with a hike. That is if you don’t mind missing the inside tour of the castle (actually I really recommend the tour, so the best option would be to do the hike and the castle visit on separate days).

Anyways, my Mom and me are not going to hike (since we prioritize the castle visit), but I have done a very cool hike just in the area, which gives you also a perfect view to the castle.

Route:

Talstation Tegelbergbahn (840 m) – Tegelberghaus (1707 m) – Branderschrofen (1879 m) – Tegelberghaus (1707 m) – Schloss Neuschwanstein (964 m) – Talstation Tegelbergbahn (840 m).

From Talstation Tegelbergbahn there are several possible routes up to Tegelberghaus. You can do some level D/C via Ferrata (Tegenberger Klattestaig) take the Gelbe Wand (KlattestaigA/B) or do no Via Ferrata at all.

Elevation gain: 1039m

Time: 3 hours up and 3 hours down, for the Gelbewand route. But it depends also how many pictures you take 😉

Transport: Train to Füssen from Munich. It does not leave every hour so check the schedule. In Füssen take a bus from the train station to Talstation Tegelbergbahn. Make sure you get on the right bus and not on the one that all the tourists who want to visit the castle take. Therefore ask! Remember you can use the Bayernticket for the bus as well, some poor tourists don’t know that 😦

When we did this hike we had planned to the Tegenberger Klattestaig, but it had rained the day before so it was quite slippery and we ended up doing the “Gelbewand” route instead. Both my husband and me felt that it was the right choice, but lets see, maybe we will do the “real”klettersteig next year :D.

klettersteg — Start of the Tegenberger Klatterstaig, just walk pass the ladder to take the Gelbe Wand route.

The Gelbewand route does not really require Via Ferrata equipment, but if you are not comfortable with little climbing and heights then differently take the set with you ( we did not use our equipment, but better be safe than sorry). Which ever route you choose it is a reeealy nice hike! PS. chose some good shoes with some grip and water resistance, it’s quite wet terrain.

After you are done with the part of the route that is called Gelbe Wand you reach the hut where you can take a break before climbing the last meters to the Branderschrofen. You can also see all the lazy people who have taken the cable car to the hut (please don’t be one of those 😉 ). The view is very nice, especially when the mountaintops are still covered in some snow (We did this hike end of May 2016)

From the hut it will still take you about 30 -40 minutes to Branderschrofen peak. So if you are not doing well on time I would just skip the peak and go directly to the castle. But don’t misunderstand me, the Branderschrofen peak is deferentially worth it and it is not as crowded as the hut since almost of the (lazy) tourists don’t make the effort to climb the peak. In fact I remember we having the peak completely to ourselves for 20 minutes. Spoiler alert there is a panorama view with all the peaks that you can see from the Branderschrofen available here.

On you way down you have to go via the hut again and since the hike up to Branderschrofen is little bit exposed I recommend to wait with the Weisbeer until your way down ;). At the hut you need to choose the path the castle which goes across the famous Marienbrücke 🙂 :). There are signs so it is easy to find.

img_20141101_111355 — View from Marienbrücke this weekend.

fussenedited

If you have any energy/time left after the hike enjoy Füssen village. The old town is so nice and cozy!

I hope you get out and do some nice peaks this weekend! I know many of my friends are doing so and I am jealous because hiking in autumn colors is so beautiful.

Picture by Štěpán Jirka

Picture by Štěpán Jirka

Picture by Štěpán Jirka

What is a supermoon, and why does it happen?

But why is this supermoon extra special?

Was this article helpful?

Next Up In SCIENCE & HEALTH