I thought that when I returned from India and then the UK the mountains would have their winter coat, unfortunately they do not yet, so I decided to make the most of the sunny still conditions and headed to climb the Bleispitze above Bichlbach and fly back down.
As I could travel there for free using the Deutschland ticket, I elected to take the train despite it taking significantly longer than driving. I was surprised at the amount of snow in the valley at Bichlbach and as I headed up the valley towards Berwang, but these valleys hardly get any sun at this time of year so it hadn’t melted despite the sun over the past few days.
I had planned on heading up via a much less well trodden path which involved heading steeply up to join a ridge which runs up to the summit. I could find no trace of a path as I walked past the turn off, and when I used gps to work out where it should be, it appeared to traverse across steep grassy slopes which were covered in wet snow. Due to this I elected to stay on the cold snowy path in the valley as it was a decent path and I was making good time, however when the path shrunk to a much smaller path with lots of slippy snow covered rocks, I decided to make a b-line up a steep grassy slope to the ridge.
This was very hard work, and took a lot of time, however I do believe it was worth it as the views of the Bleispitze and back down the ridge were simply fantastic. Shortly after I joined the ridge I could see a number of pilots setting up their paraglider, who somehow had not taken off 45 mins later when I arrived at the summit!
After quickly taking some photos, I unpacked my glider, stepped into the harness and flew down, still before two of the others had taken off! The flight down was beautiful and I decided to fly back towards Lermoos to make the most of not having a car. I landed right next to the train station, however unfortunately I was about 5 mins too slow at packing my glider to catch the next train. This was not however a disaster, as it meant I could go and enjoy a Weißbier in a local bar before heading back to Munich.
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