Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
On The Road – BigJimSlade – German and Austrian Alps, Summer 2023, 8/8Post + Comments (16)
So then we took FlixBus to Mayrhofen in Austria. We stayed right in town this time (in GP we were a mile+ down the road from the main part of town). And after resting up for half an hour, we hiked up the hillside right across from our balcony and up the valley to the next town, Finkenberg, down through a forest next to a gorge, and back down the valley to Mayrhofen. The trail was full of nice, little surprises.
On The Road – BigJimSlade – German and Austrian Alps, Summer 2023, part 7Post + Comments (19)
Just a quick note to say that I added “Austrian Alps” as a category, so in case anyone wanted to see the previous parts again to refresh your memory, you can click on Austrian Alps under the title and see the ones that have already been published. ~WG
On The Road – BigJimSlade – German and Austrian Alps, Summer 2023, part 6Post + Comments (11)
A little history: Garmisch and Partenkirchen were 2 separate towns. But in the prep for the 1936 Olympics, Hitler made them combine into 1 town to be a bigger entity for hosting some of the winter sports. The bobsled run was used until 1966. There is a little museum there, which is open… 2 hours per week. We were not there during those 2 hours. The track itself now mostly just looks like a trail, but you can see a bit of the banked turns. Here’s a quick video I made from a foot bridge above it – looking uphill first, then turning downhill following a phantom bobsled as it passes and makes then next turns.
Anyway, these pictures will be about the valley, the forest, and the ski slopes, viewed up close, as that’s where the flowers were.
Here’s a view up the valley as we start the hike. bigger picture
On The Road – BigJimSlade – German and Austrian Alps, Summer 2023, part 5Post + Comments (15)
Looking ahead at the weather, we saw a clear day coming up and took advantage of that to go up the Zugspitze.
Zugspitze is the highest peak in Germany. For the record, the tippy-top of Zugspitze is about 15 feet higher than the top platform (maybe a bit more, but it didn’t look like much), and you can walk atop some rocks in a line with a bunch of other people to get to the cross on top if you like. We didn’t bother. It’s also on the border with Austria (the highest peak in Austria is about 2,500 feet higher!).
There are 2 ways up and down. We went up the cog railway from Garmisch-Partenkirchen, which takes you 95% of the way up (actually, you start on a normal train, then switch to a cog train), then you take a gondola (or hike something of an adventure trail up the steep rocks of the mountainside) for a few minutes to get to the top. On the way down, we took the fancy, big gondola back down to Eibsee. From there we walked back home again. (Home being a studio apartment in a guest house.)
OK, now we continue on our first hike of the trip, starting from the saddle you could see the trail going through in the last picture from the previous post.
By the time we got to the hut for lunch, I was weak and exhausted. This has happened before where, before my jet lag is over (takes about a week for the 9 hour time change), hiking in the morning is tough. After a hearty lunch, I become human. I talked about it in this previous post from Switzerland.
After lunch, we continued down into Höllentalklamm gorge. Here the water churns through narrow rock. It’s fun, wet, and costs money. The entrance is on the downhill side and we were coming from the uphill side, so we had to pay to leave. We didn’t know how much it would cost and were running low on cash. We found out that they did NOT take credit cards, and it was 6.50 / person. We had, I think 12.70 on us :-/
I dug around in my backpack and pulled out a 20 dollar bill (yes, US dollars). They didn’t take that of course, but the guy at the counter said he was going to NYC in a couple months and could change it for us! He traded us 18 euros for the 20 dollars and now we had enough money. Ay-yi-yi. We rulllly didn’t want to walk back through the gorge and up and around the bypass, an extra 60-90 minutes.
When we got down to the road, it would’ve been like 30 minutes for the bus, so we walked the couple miles back, through lovely paths that connect towns in the valley. This is a really wonderful feature of this part of the world, so we were looking forward to walking some of these… and the sun came out!
We will be hiking on the trail on the left side of the canyon, then (after lunch) continuing down along the bottom of it. Supersize.
On The Road – BigJimSlade – German and Austrian Alps, Summer 2023, part 2Post + Comments (11)
