All to quickly it was once again the end of another year and time to reflect on the year. This year we really started to settle into our routine of living an hour from the Alps, with travel being much easier and having settled into Munich life, both professionally and socially.
Unfortunately at the start of the year Becky had an accident and badly broke her wrist which was also misdiagnosed which delayed her recovery. This significantly impacted our year as we were unable to climb, klettersteig or ride our bikes for most of the year.
The highlights of the year for me have to be Becky’s continued progression at skiing with her initial foray into ski touring, my ski mountaineering adventure on the Ruderhofspitze, my continued paragliding progression with my first flight over 100km, our wonderful holiday together to Slovenia and a beautiful walk near munich with a combination of snow&autumn colours.
Winter
Winter continued with lots of weekends away skiing with family, friends from the UK and friends from Munich, it seemed like we had a constant stream of visitors which as wonderful. Becky’s progression continued and she had an early birthday present of some touring skis from me so we started doing some piste tours and even one night tour after work. The piste conditions throughout the season were excellent and we were mostly very lucky with the weather on our weekends away.
While the piste conditions were very good, the same cannot be said for the touring conditions and I was only able to manage a limited amount of touring away from piste tours. The highlights being a pre-work sunrise ski tour up Hirschberg and a ski mountaineering weekend where we climbed Ruderhofspitze.
- Christlumkopf Piste Tour
- Pre work Hirschberg Skitour
- Christlumkopf Ski Tour with Becky
- Ruderhofspitze 3474m
Paragliding
As we moved into Spring my attention quickly turned from skiing to flying, however the weather had other ideas and the weather took a long time to realise it was spring and I was forced to wait quite some time until good flyable weather arrived. In the middle of April this finally happened and I headed to Hochfelln where I started the flying season as it went on with an absolutely fantastic flight. My first flight of the year was my longest flight at that point with some of the best views I have experienced in the air, although the spring thermals didn’t agree with my body which wasn’t used to flying and I was very air sick.
Throughout the year I didn’t do anywhere near as much flying compared to the previous year, but there was a much higher ratio of high quality flights, the highlights of which being my 74km FAI triangle from Hochfelln, my Vol Biv weekend where I flew from Stubai to Bruneck, my 140km one way from Wallberg to Radstadt and my unplanned flight from Tegelberg to Farchant.
I finished the year with a few short flights in the Dolomites before I completed my first SIV course, which was certainly intense with fully accelerated side collapses on the first flight and self directed Stalls, SAT and Vrille on my final flight.
- 74km FAI Triangle from Hochfelln
- Volbiv from Stubai to Olang-Antholz
- Schmittenhöhe Paragliding
- Wallberg to Bayrischzell Paragliding
- 140km XC from Wallberg to Radstadt
- Tegelberg Paragliding
- Tegelberg to Farchant XC Paragliding
- Achensee Paragliding
- Col Pelous Hike&Fly
- Col Rodella Paragliding
Spring/Early Summer Hiking
With Becky’s wrist we were unable to climb, cycle or do via ferratas in the spring and early summer, but we made the most of living an hour away from some excellent walking in spring and early summer when the weather allowed and did some really fantastic walking, the highlight of which was definitely the Roter Stein with Katherine on her birthday.
- Gamskogel
- Tegelbergsteig and Neuschwanstein Castle
- Ehrwald Bergfeuer
- Roter Stein
- Brecherspitz Ostgrat
- Aiplspitz and Jägerkamp
Rauris Long Weekend
Visiting the Rauris Valley in the Pinzgau had been on my todo list for a while as it looked like a beautiful valley with some excellent walking, so when a long weekend came around in August it seemed like a perfect opportunity to finally visit the valley. We had wonderful weather for the entire weekend and had a wonderful time, even if on occasion it was a bit too hot! I would certainly recommend the valley for hiking as it was beautiful to be hiking on green alps with a view into the bigger mountains, and there is some mountaineering at the end of the valley on the main alpine ridge so we will definitely go back.
German Cities
With our summer holiday plan of heading to the Swiss alps unfortunately curtailed due to Becky’s wrist, we had not developed any alternative plans until the week before. As the weather in the alps was looking questionable we decided to head to Hamburg for a few days, so that we could explore some of Germany which was not Bavaria!
We had a wonderful time in Hamburg where we learnt a lot about the history of the city, including the horrible bombing by the UK in WW2, and enjoyed the local seafood a lot.
Having had such a good time in Hamburg, later in the year we decided to have a long weekend in Berlin. It was a very different city to Hamburg and was certainly very different to Munich. It took us a while to get used to the scale of the city and it was unbelievable to think that only 33 years ago the city was decided into two parts and I certainly learnt a lot of history about east Germany during the trip.
Slovenia Holiday
We had been planning to go to the Dolomites for our September summer holiday, but just before the trip Becky came up with the idea of going to Slovenia instead. We had an absolutely wonderful time there due to the beautiful mountains, friendly people and brilliant weather. During our entire time there we were constantly blown away by just how beautiful the scenery was, and when the weather in the mountains became worse, we just headed to the coast to enjoy some alternative scenery, east some wonderful local seafood and drink some Slovenian wine.
After being at the coast we headed to some beautiful caves and then onto to the capital city, Ljubljana, where we enjoyed another wonderful day as city tourists before heading back to the mountains for some more walking and kayaking.
- Mala Mojstrovka Klettersteig (Hanzover pot)
- Prisank Fensterweg Klettersteig (Kopiščarjeva & Grebenska pot)
- Martuljek Waterfalls (Martuljški slapovi)
- Mala Mojstrovka North Arête (Severni raz)
- Triglav Seven Lakes Valley
- Izola sunsets
- Ljubljana Day Trip
- Soča River
Autumnal Sunsets
Having returned from Slovenia, autumn was definitely with us and we made the most of this and the earlier sunsets by heading out for a few sunset hikes. The first to the Rotwand where we enjoyed a wonderful dinner at the Rotwandhaus before heading up to the summit for sunset, and the second was a very last minute post work hike to the Kranzhorn.
Dolomites Long Weekend
When we first visited Lou and Adam in Munich 5 years ago, we visited the Dolomites for a week and they commented that despite being closer than the Lake District, they probably wouldn’t go there for a weekend as it involved driving past so many mountains. At the time we didn’t understand this, but having been living in Munich for three years, we had failed to make a weekend trip due to the distance!
With a perfect weather forecast we decided to head there for a long weekend just prior to Becky’s return back to Bristol and my SIV course at Lake Garda. We drove down and parked up in the Drei Zinnen car park where we stayed for the night, along with a lot of other people. We woke up to a beautiful sunset, before heading out on the very classic Paternkofel klettersteig, but instead of doing the short circuit, we extended it by descending via the Schartenweg.
We had to have a short day the next day, but certainly got bang for our buck on the Ettore Bovero Via Ferrata, before I dropped Becky off at the train station to make her way back to Munich.
- Paternkofel – Innerkofler und Schartenweg Klettersteig
- Landscapes around Tre Cime
- Ettore Bovero Via Ferrata
Autumn
Back in Munich autumn was in full swing and we certainly enjoyed it in Munich and in the mountains.
Photography Weekend
David came out to visit me for a long weekend of photography, and while we were not blessed with good weather, we certainly made the most of the conditions we had and enjoyed taking photos in the Munich U-Bahn stations on the rainy days and was topped off by a wonderful day in Salzburg with perfect weather enabling me to get exactly the photograph that I wanted.
Winter
All too soon winter was making its appearance again, however due to the very late autumn and the early onset of winter it created some mindblowingly beautiful conditions with snow on the autumnal trees. The first winter walk is always special and it was great to do it for the first time this year with Becky.
As December arrived it was back to early season skiing with plenty of snow for early season, which meant that we enjoyed a few good days out before Christmas and the proper ski season
We finished the year back in the UK for Christmas with our families and before hosting a wonderful new year party at ours with friends from Bristol.
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